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Could Charles I Be Trusted? The Royalist Case, 1642-1646

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

J. W. Daly
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Extract

The followers of King Charles I in the Civil War, long among the whipping boys of English history, have been receiving better treatment since the Whig interpretation of the seventeenth century lost its pristine vigour. This is particularly true of their constitutional position as set forth in the great outpouring of manifestoes and pamphlets during the war. Edward Hyde, perhaps the key figure in this aspect of royalism, has recently profited from a capable defence of his opinions and policy. Similarly, pamphleteers such as Henry Ferne, Dudley Digges, and John Bramhall are now fairly well known, thanks largely to J. W. Allen's pioneering study of their writings. From work like this it is clear that the royalist spokesmen accepted the increased importance of Parliament, the end of prerogative courts and nonparliamentary taxation, and the supremacy of common and statute law. Like their armies in the field, they were defending the monarchy as overhauled in 1641, not as the Tudors left it, much less as James I may have conceived it. Indeed the classical doctrine of the mixed or balanced constitution, glorified by Blackstone and widely accepted until nearly 1830, is now credited, not to Philip Hunton, but to the royalists. Such rehabilitation has done much to remove the patronizing label of “wrong but romantic,” which was once the best which they could hope for from historians or the general public.

Allen and those who followed him naturally concentrated on the legal and constitutional analysis of the origins of authority, the veto power, sovereignty, nonresistance, and so forth.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , November 1966 , pp. 23 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1966

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References

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2. Allen, J. W., English Political Thought 1603-1660 (London, 1938), I (1603–1944)Google Scholar, Pt. 7, leaves little to be said on the subject, and it has been treated only twice since in any detail. Judson, Margaret, The Crisis of the Constitution [Rutgers University Studies in History No. 5] (New Brunswick, N. J., 1949)Google Scholar, devotes a chapter to Ferne's and Digges's views on sovereignty. Salmon, J. H. M., The French Religious Wars in English Political Thought (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar, deals with one aspect of royalist controversy. Neither of these books breaks much new ground, though Salmon does point out that Allen underestimated the impact of French ideas on both sides.

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