Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:50:11.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Clarendon and the Caroline Myth of Peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Raymond A. Anselment
Raymond A. Anselment*
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The origins of the Civil War are apparent from the outset of the History of the Rebellion: “he who shall diligently observe the distempers and conjunctures of the time,” Clarendon contends, “will find all this bulk of misery to have proceeded, and to have been brought upon us, from the same natural causes and means which have usually attended kingdoms swoln with long plenty, pride, and excess, towards some signal mortification, and castigation of Heaven.” The relationship between prosperity and calamity is, of course, commonplace in classical as well as seventeenth-century chronicles of civil conflict, but both the sections of the History written in 1646 and those added some twenty years later insist that “the like peace and plenty and universal tranquillity for ten years was never enjoyed by any nation” (I, 84). Although he modifies his praise of this peaceful era in The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, claiming that “England enjoyed the greatest Measure of Felicity that it [and not, as he earlier said, any nation] had ever known,” this view of Caroline prosperity remains extreme. Clarendon likens the years of Charles's personal rule to a golden age. Without specifically invoking the classical tradition of the halcyon calm or the return of Astraea, his recollection of the 1630s gives central importance and new immediacy to a well-established Caroline myth of peace.

Modern historians have generally found much amiss in the decade of Charles's personal rule, and they have naturally questioned Clarendon's characterization of unrivalled happiness. Only B. H. G. Wormald's seminal study of Clarendon accepts the notion of “unparalleled prosperity,” which, it argues, “is an indisputable fact so far at least as the gentry were concerned.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Spring 1984 , pp. 37 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion, ed. Macray, W. Dunn (Oxford, 1888), I, 2Google Scholar. Hereafter cited in the text.

2 Lucan, for example, emphasizes the relationship between peace and war in The Civil War, trans. Duff, J.D. (Cambridge, 1943), p. 15Google Scholar; MacGillivray, Royce surveys seventeenth-century adaptations of this tradition in “The Surfeit of Peace and Plenty,” an appendix to Restoration Historians and the English Civil War (The Hague, 1974), pp. 237–42Google Scholar. Firth, C.H. discusses the composition of the first books in “Clarendon‘s History of the Rebellion,” English Historical Review, XIX (1904), 29–33Google Scholar.

3 Hyde, Edward, The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon (Oxford, 1759), I, 70Google Scholar.

4 The myth of the golden age found particular currency in the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline courts. See, for example, Yates, Frances A., Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Strong, Roy, Splendor at Court (Boston, 1973)Google Scholar and The Cult of Elizabeth (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Parry, Graham, The Golden Age Restor'd (New York, 1981)Google Scholar; and Palomo, Dolores, “The Halcyon Moment of Stillness in Royalist Poetry,” Huntington Library Quarterly, XLIV (1981), 205–21Google Scholar. None of these studies, however, details the following tradition.

5 Among others who consider the accuracy of Clarendon's “famous passage” see Aylmer, G. E., The King's Servants (London, 1961), p. 63Google Scholar; Trevor-Roper, H. R., “Clarendon and the Practice of History” in Milton and Clarendon (Los Angeles, 1965), pp. 39–40Google Scholar; and Alexander, Michael Van Cleave, Charles I's Lord Treasurer; Sir Richard Weston, Earl of Portland (1577–1635) (Chapel Hill, 1975), p. 164Google Scholar.

6 Wormald, B.H.G., Clarendon; Politics, History & Religion 1640–1660 (Cambridge, 1951), p. 181Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., p. 182. Wormald believes that Clarendon may have formulated his positive view of the earlier years in response to the criticisms of Charles expressed in the Grand Remonstrance.

8 The phrase is Trevor-Roper's, “Clarendon and the Practice of History,” p. 23.

9 Sprigge, Joshua, Anglia Rediviva (London, 1647), p. 1Google Scholar, and Hutchinson, Lucy, “The Life of Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson” in Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. Sutherland, James (London, 1973), p. 279Google Scholar. Although the attitudes expressed in the pamphlet literature of the 1640s have not been explored, some of the histories are discussed in MacGillivray, , Restoration Historians and Richardson, R.C., The Debate on the English Revolution (New York, 1977)Google Scholar.

10 SirWarwick, Philip, Memoires Of the reigne of King Charles I (London, 1701), p. 46Google Scholar.

11 L'Estrange, Hamon, The Reign of King Charles (London, 1656), p. 143Google Scholar. None of these historians, however, would have seen Clarendon's manuscript; he might have read L'Estrange and Sanderson before he began his revision of the History, but even so his vision of Caroline peace was set down essentially in 1646. The following analysis assumes, therefore, that Clarendon responded to an earlier tradition which may have also influenced to varying degrees the other historians.

12 Sanderson, William, A Compleat History of the Life and Raigne of King Charles (London, 1658), p. 311Google Scholar.

13 Warwick, , Memoires Of the reigne of King Charles I, p. 64Google Scholar.

14 Clarendon, , History, I, 94Google Scholar; Lloyd, David, Memoires (London, 1668), p. 13Google Scholar.

15 Lloyd, , Memoires, p. 13Google Scholar; Warwick, , Memoires Of the reigne of King Charles I, p. 62Google Scholar.

16 The seventeenth-century translation of Virgil is from Cowley's, Abraham “Of Agriculture” in The English Writings of Abraham Cowley, ed. Waller, A.R. (Cambridge, 1906), II, 409Google Scholar.

17 Wormald's Clarendon, in particular, stresses the importance of Clarendon's commentary on the Psalms and the role of providence; Trevor-Roper recognizes the classical indebtedness in “Clarendon and the Practice of History.” The Virgilian echo, it will become apparent, plays a less obvious though important role in the History.

18 The roles the Whitehall paintings and masques played in the King's peace are discussed by Palme, Per in Triumph of Peace (Stockholm, 1956)Google Scholar and Orgel, Stephen and Strong, Roy in Inigo Jones (Berkeley, 1973)Google Scholar, particularly the chapter “Platonic Politics,” I, 49–75.

19 May, Tom's praise of Elizabeth in The History of the Parliament Of England (London, 1647), pp. 1–4, is typicalGoogle Scholar. Other nostalgic celebrations are found in Wedgwood, C. V., Oliver Cromwell and the Elizabethan Inheritance (London, 1970)Google Scholar and Barton, Anne, “Harking Back to Elizabeth: Ben Jonson and Caroline Nostalgia,” English Literary History, XLVIII (1981), 706–31Google Scholar.

20 See, for example, The Peace-Maker: Or, Great Brittaines Blessing (London, 1619)Google Scholar; Markham, Gervase, Honour in his Perfection (London, 1624)Google Scholar, and Williams, John, Great Britains Salomon (London, 1625)Google Scholar.

21 May, Tom, The History of the Parliament Of England, p. 18Google Scholar.

22 Kenyon, J.P. takes issue with the Whig interpretation in Stuart England, (London, 1978)Google Scholar, arguing that Charles is “one of the most complex of English Kings” and that his eleven years of personal rule are “extraordinarily difficult to assess” (pp. 362, 118). Russell, Conrad observes in Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar, “In peacetime, his regime was perhaps stronger than has been thought” (p. 426); and he too takes exception to Gardiner's, S.R. influential interpretation of Charles's reign in his “Introduction” to The Origins of the English Civil War (New York, 1973), pp. 1–31Google Scholar. See also Elton, G.R., “The Unexplained Revolution” and “The Stuart Century” in Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government (Cambridge, 1974), II, 183–89, 155–63Google Scholar. Though Morrill, John also emphasizes this trend in scholarship, he recognizes in Reactions to the English Civil War 1642–1649 (New York, 1982)Google Scholar “signs of a reaction against this so-called ‘revisionist’ approach” (pp. 1, 219). Morrill cites, among others, Hexter's, J.H. and Hirst's, Derek responses in Journal of Modern History, L (1978) particularly to essays written by Conrad Russell, Paul Christianson, James Farnell and Mark KishlanskyGoogle Scholar.

23 As Kenyon, J.P. observes in Stuart England, “it is extraordinarily difficult to answer the simplest economic questions” (p. 10)Google Scholar. Different judgments of the economic conditions of precivil war England include: Supple, B.E., Commercial Crisis and Change in England 1600–1642 (Cambridge, 1964)Google Scholar; Wilson, Charles, England's Apprenticeship 1603–1763 (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, The Causes of the English Revolution 1529–1642 (London, 1972)Google Scholar; and Coleman, Donald C., The Economy of England 1450–1750 (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar.

24 Support for the report in Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts… Venetian, ed. Hinds, Allen B. (London, 1919), XXII, 67, and XXIII, 499Google Scholar, can be found in Taylor, Harland, “Trade, Neutrality, and the 'English Road,' 1630–1648,” Economic History Review, XXV (1972), 236–60Google Scholar; Kepler, J.S., “Fiscal Aspects of the English Carrying Trade during the Thirty Years War,” Economic History Review, XXV (1972), 261–283Google Scholar; and Pearl, Valerie, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar.

25 Conrad Russell explores the complex attitude towards war in Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629.

26 See Gardiner's, Samuel R. chapter “Futile Diplomacy” in History of England (London, 1884), VII, 169–219Google Scholar; Dietz, Frederick C., English Public Finance 1558–1641 (New York, 1932), p. 260 ff.Google Scholar; Jones, J.R., Britain and Europe in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1966), p. 22 ff.Google Scholar; Howat, G. M. D., Stuart and Cromwellian Foreign Policy (New York, 1974), p. 40 f.Google Scholar; and Smuts, R.M., “The Puritan Followers of Henrietta Maria in the 1630s,” English Historical Review, XCIII (1978), 26–45Google Scholar.

27 Fanshawe, Richard, Shorter Poems and Translations, ed. Bawcutt, N.W. (Liverpool, 1964), p. 6Google Scholar.

28 Randol, John, Noble Blastus (London, 1633), p. 28Google Scholar.

29 Gouge, William, The Saints Sacrifice (London, 1632), p. 276Google Scholar.

30 Dahl, Folke, “Amsterdam—Cradle of English Newspapers,” The Library, Fifth Series, IV (1949–1950), 174Google Scholar.

31 Russell, John, The Two Famous Pitcht Battels of Lypsich, and Lutzen (Cambridge, 1634), p. 32Google Scholar.

32 Carew, Thomas, “In answer of an Elegiacall Letter upon the death of the King of Sweden from Aurelian Townsend” in The Poems of Thomas Carew, ed. Dunlap, Rhodes (1949; rpt. Oxford, 1970), p. 75Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., p. 77.

34 Wedgwood, C.V., Poetry andPolitics under the Stuarts (Cambridge, 1960), p. 45Google Scholar. See also, in particular, Zagorin, Perez, The Court and the Country (New York, 1970), p. 70Google Scholar; and Thomas, Peter W., “Two Cultures? Court and Country under Charles I” in The Origins of the English Civil War, pp. 175, 179Google Scholar.

35 Rubens, Peter Paul, The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, trans, and ed. Magurn, Ruth Saunders (Cambridge, 1955), p. 320Google Scholar; Memoirs of the Mission in England of the Capuchin Friars in The Court and Times of Charles the First, ed. Birch, Thomas (London, 1848), II, 331Google Scholar; 1633 edition of Mercure François as quoted by Disraeli, Isaac in Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First, King of England (London, 1838), III, 31Google Scholar; Sir George Goring, HMC Cowper, II, 25, as quoted by Hamilton, Elizabeth, Henrietta Maria (New York, 1976), pp. 114–15Google Scholar.

36 Cowley, Abraham, “In commendation of the time we live under the Reign of our gracious K. Charles,” II, 64Google Scholar.

37 William Douglas, “Grampivs Gratvlation,” n.p., and Primrose, David, Scotlands Welcome to Her dread Soveraigne K. Charles, sig. b2r, in Scotlands Welcome to King Charles (Edinburgh, 1633)Google Scholar.

38 Cowley, , “On his Majesties returne out of Scotland,” II, 47Google Scholar.

39 Wotton, Henry, “A Panegyrick To King Charles” in Reliquiae Wottonianae (London, 1672), pp. 151, 158Google Scholar.

40 See particularly p. 299 in Shirley, James, The Triumph of Peace, ed. Clifford Leech in A Book of Masques (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar.

41 Carew, , Coelum Britannicum, p. 183Google Scholar.

42 CSPV, XXIII, 499; XXIV, 223; XXIV, 295–308.

43 CSPV, XXIII, 444.

44 For example, Pestell's, Thomas “Song of King Locarus. 1636” in The Poems of Thomas Pestell, ed. Buchan, Hannah (Oxford, 1940), p. 43Google Scholar.

45 Daniel, George, “The Genius of this Great and glorious Isle” in The Poems of George Daniel, ed. Grosart, Alexander (Boston, Lincolnshire, 1878), I, 186Google Scholar.

46 Heywood, Thomas, Londini Status Pacatus: Or, Londons Peaceable Estate (London, 1639), sig. C3vGoogle Scholar.

47 Davenant, William, Salmacida Spolia, ed. Spencer, T.J.B. in A Book of Masques, pp. 350–52, 361Google Scholar.

48 Gauden, John, The Love of Truth and Peace (London, 1641), p. 38Google Scholar.

49 Ibid., p. 41.

50 Moore's, Horace untitled poem in Eucharistica Oxoniensia (Oxford, 1641), sig. b3rGoogle Scholar.

51 Glapthorne, Henry, “White-Hall” in The Plays and Poems of Henry Glapthorne, ed. Pearson, John (London, 1874), II, 247–48Google Scholar.

52 Cowley, Abraham, The Civil War, ed. Pritchard, Allan (Toronto, 1973), p. 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Hausted, Peter, Ad Populum: Or, a Lecture to the People (London, 1644), p. 4Google Scholar.

54 Cavendish, Margaret, Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life (London, 1656), p. 92Google Scholar. The most memorable lament is Andrew Marvell's reaction in “Upon Non-Appleton House.” Lesser poets like Fane, Mildmay and Fletcher, R. develop the same theme in Otia Sacra (London, 1648), p. 50, and Ex Otio Negotium (London, 1656), pp. 197 and 212–13Google Scholar. Turner, James offers other examples in his discussion of “The Happy Estate” in The Politics of Landscape (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 85–115Google Scholar.

55 See, in particular, the chorus at the end of Act IV in Fanshawe's translation, pp. 85–86, and Cowley, 's untitled poem in A Discourse By way of Vision, II, 343–15Google Scholar.

56 MacGillivray, , Restoration Historians, p. 202Google Scholar.

57 See Wormald, Clarendon, pp. 180–185, and particularly pp. 100–01 of Robinson, Thomas H., “Lord Clarendon's Conspiracy Theory,” Albion, XIII (1981), 96–116Google Scholar.

58 Cary, Lucius, “Lord Falkland's Speech about Ship-Money”in Historical Collections, ed. Rushworth, John (London, 1692), III, i, 86. Falkland's use of this idea to argue against the need for ship-money levies quite obviously suggests its rhetorical attractiveness for the orator as well as the historianGoogle Scholar.