Article contents
The Environmental Policy of Charles I: Coal Smoke and the English Monarchy, 1624–40
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2014
Abstract
Early modern London burned quantities of dirty coal that were unparalleled anywhere in Europe before industrialization, and the consequent smoky air was a matter of more serious and sustained concern than has been appreciated by either early modern or environmental historians. During the 1620s and 1630s, King Charles I and his government sought to remove smoky industries, above all large brewhouses, from the vicinity of the court in Westminster. This was part of a broader campaign for order and beauty that has been described by other scholars, but a focus on smoke highlights the very partial successes achieved by attempts to reform the real spaces of royal government. The improvement of Westminster's air during Charles's personal rule displays an early modern variety of environmental concern that was expressed through courtly display, hierarchy, distinction, and exclusion.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2014
References
1 Francis Windebank notes of the Committee of Trade, 30 January 1636/7, The National Archives (hereafter TNA): State Papers Domestic (SP) 16/345/38. Spelling and punctuation have been standardized in this and other quotations.
2 Petition of the Brewers Company to Queen Elizabeth, TNA: SP 12/127/68. The editor of the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 12 vols. [for 1547–1625] (London: 1856–72), 1547–80 (hereafter CSPD) calendared this document under 1578, but the records of the Brewers Company of London show it to date from 1586. See Brewers Company Minute Book, February 17, 1585/6, Guildhall Library (hereafter GL) MS 5445/7. This mistaken dating has been repeated by subsequent scholarly studies and has passed into numerous popular histories of pollution. Cf. Nef, J. U., The Rise of the British Coal Industry, 2 vols. (London, 1932), 1:157, 244, 438–39Google Scholar; Te Brake, William H., “Air Pollution and Fuel Crises in Preindustrial London, 1250–1650,” Technology and Culture 16, no. 3 (July 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 341; Hatcher, John, The History of the British Coal Industry: Volume I. Before 1700; Towards the Age of Coal (Oxford, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, Keith, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500–1800 (New York, 1996)Google Scholar, 244.
3 Bennett, Judith M., Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World, 1300–1600 (New York, 1996)Google Scholar; Luu, Lien Bich, Immigrants and the Industries of London, 1500–1700 (London, 2005).Google Scholar
4 William M. Cavert, “Coal Burning and Energy Consumption in Early Modern London's Brewing Industry,” forthcoming.
5 The relative importance of domestic and industrial coal burning, as well the broader context of early modern concern for urban air pollution, will be examined in my forthcoming book The Smoke of London: Coal and Air Pollution in the Early Modern City.
6 Russell, Conrad, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sharpe, Kevin, ed., Faction and Parliament: Essays in Early Stuart History (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar; Peck, Linda Levy, Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Hibbard, Caroline, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, 1983)Google Scholar; Smuts, R. Malcolm, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peck, Linda Levy, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (Boston, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar; Bellany, Alistair, The Politics of Court Scandal: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660 (Cambridge, 2002).Google Scholar
7 Harris, John, Orgel, Stephen, and Strong, Roy, The King's Arcadia: Inigo Jones and the Stuart Court (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Orgel, Stephen, The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance (Berkeley, 1975)Google Scholar; Lake, Peter and Sharpe, Kevin, eds., Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Stanford, 1993)Google Scholar; Bevington, David and Holbrook, Peter, The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar; Atherton, Ian and Sanders, Julie, eds., The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Politics and Culture in the Caroline Era (Manchester, 2006)Google Scholar; Butler, Martin, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008).Google Scholar
8 In addition to the above, see also Griffiths, Paul and Jenner, Mark, eds., Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern London (Manchester, 2000)Google Scholar; Merritt, J. F., ed., Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720 (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar; Robertson, J., “Stuart London and the Idea of a Royal Capital City,” Renaissance Studies 15, no. 1 (March 2001): 37–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Sharpe, Kevin, Image Wars, Promoting Kings and Commonwealths in England, 1603–1660 (New Haven, 2010), 137–276CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Earlier statements include Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992)Google Scholar and “The Image of Virtue: The Court and Household of Charles I, 1625–1642,” in Politics and Ideas in Early Stuart England, Essays and Studies (London, 1989), 147–73Google Scholar. Such a vision of royal rule is also at the heart of Peter Paul Rubens's Temperance Triumphing Over Intemperance, an image selected for the cover of Ethan Shagan's study of the dialectical relationship between restraint and coercion. Shagan, Ethan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 Barnes, T. G., “The Prerogative and Environmental Control of London Building in the Early Seventeenth Century,” California Law Review 58, no. 6 (November 1970): 1332–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duggan, Dianne, “‘London the Ring, Covent Garden the Jewel of that Ring:’ New Light on Covent Garden,” Architectural History 43 (2000): 140–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Paul Griffiths, “Politics Made Visible: Order, Residence, and Uniformity in Cheapside, 1600–45,” in Griffiths and Jenner, Londinopolis, 176–96; Harding, Vanessa, “Cheapside: Commerce and Commemoration,” Huntington Library Quarterly 71, no. 1 (2008): 77–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smuts, Malcolm, “The Court and Its Neighborhood: Royal Policy and Urban Growth in the Early Stuart West End,” Journal of British Studies 30, no. 2 (April 1991): 117–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zucker, Adam, The Places of Wit in Early Modern English Comedy (Cambridge, 2011).Google Scholar
11 Lindley, Keith, Fenland Riots and the English Revolution (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Holmes, Clive, “Drainers and Fenmen: The Problem of Popular Political Consciousness in the Seventeenth Century,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Fletcher, Anthony and Stevenson, John (Cambridge, 1985), 166–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bowring, Julie, “Between the Corporation and Captain Flood: The Fens and Drainage after 1663,” in Custom, Improvement, and the Landscape in Early Modern Britain, ed. Hoyle, Richard (Farnham, 2011), 235–62.Google Scholar
12 Argued most forcefully and influentially by Merchant, Caroline, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco, 1980).Google Scholar
13 Thomas, Man and the Natural World.
14 Grove, Richard, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge, 1995).Google Scholar
15 Bamford, Paul Walden, Forests and French Sea Power, 1660–1789 (Toronto, 1956)Google Scholar; Appuhn, Karl, A Forest on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore, 2009)Google Scholar; Wing, John T., “Keeping Spain Afloat: State Forestry and Imperial Defense in the Sixteenth Century,” Environmental History 17, no. 1 (January 2012): 116–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Blackbourn, David, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (New York, 2006)Google Scholar, chap. 1; Reynard, Pierre Claude, “Explaining an Unstable Landscape: Claiming the Islands of the Early-Modern Rhône,” Environment and History 19, no. 11 (February 2013): 39–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Galloway, James A., ed., “Flooding,” Environment and History (special issue) 19, no. 2 (May 2013).Google Scholar
17 This is a very large literature, but among it for Britain see especially Thorsheim, Peter, Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain Since 1800 (Athens, OH, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as Mosley, Stephen, The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar, and Ritvo, Harriet, The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism (Chicago, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Beyond Britain see Rome, Adam W., “Coming to Terms with Pollution: The Language of Environmental Reform, 1865–1915,” Environmental History 1, no. 3 (July 1996): 6–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tarr, Joel, The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (Akron, OH, 1996)Google Scholar; Bernhardt, Christoph and Massard-Guilbaud, Geneviève, eds., Le Démon Moderne: La Pollution dans les Sociétés Urbaines et Industrielle d'Europe [The Modern Demon: Pollution in Urban and Industrial European Societies] (Clermont-Ferrand, 2002).Google Scholar
18 Thorsheim, Inventing Pollution, 5.
19 Jenner, Mark S. R., “Follow Your Nose? Smell, Smelling, and Their Histories,” American Historical Review 116, no. 2 (April 2011): 335–51CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, esp. 344.
20 Cockayne, Emily, Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England (New Haven, 2007)Google Scholar, in which change over time is primarily addressed in chap. 10.
21 Hamlin, Christopher, “Public Sphere to Public Health: The Transformation of ‘Nuisance,’” in Medicine, Health, and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1600–2000, ed. Sturdy, Steve (London, 2004), 189–204.Google Scholar
22 Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 245; Merritt, J. F., The Social World of Early Modern Westminster: Abbey, Court, and Community, 1525–1640 (Manchester, 2005)Google Scholar, 185. Cockayne, Hubbub, 206–16, does not discuss the material explored here, but does cite numerous examples of smokiness and dirtiness, presenting them as general and pervasive problems of urban life. The one study that has identified a concerted campaign against smoke is Brimblecombe, Peter, The Big Smoke: A History of Air Pollution in London Since Medieval Times (London, 1987)Google Scholar. While this article will argue that Brimblecombe, a professor of atmospheric chemistry, misinterprets many aspects of this story, historians of pollution nevertheless owe a debt to his pioneering work.
23 Nef, Rise, esp. 1:157–58; Hatcher, History, esp. 25, 39–40. The teleological significance of Britain's coal industry is especially central to Nef. Hatcher's language is much more judicious and his research more comprehensive, but his story endorses the broad outline of Nef's account.
24 The work of Anthony Wrigley is fundamental here. See most recently Wrigley, E. A., Energy and the English Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, summarizing many earlier publications. Important development of Wrigley's arguments include Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000)Google Scholar; Allen, Robert C., The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Parthasarathi, Prasannan, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850 (Cambridge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For dissent from the position that coal was an important cause of British industrialization, see Mokyr, Joel, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1850 (New Haven, 2009), 267–72Google Scholar, and McCloskey, Deirdre, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World (Chicago, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 22.
25 Compare the 283,375 tons imported into London in 1637–38 with the 30,000–40,000 tons of British coal imported annually by all of Holland from 1700–09. Hatcher, History, 501; Ormrod, David, The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1770 (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar, 254. Ormord (252) argues that the vast majority of Dutch coal was British in origin.
26 This term referred to mineral coal, which is to be distinguished from charcoal, a form of processed wood. Whatever its origins, the term probably made sense to Londoners because such coal was shipped by sea from northeastern England, whereas charcoal was produced more locally. For the murky origin of the term “sea coal,” see Nef, Rise, 2:452–53.
27 Hawkins, William, Apollo Shroving (London, 1627)Google Scholar, 36; Anon., Sea-Coale, Char-Coale, and Small-Coale; or, a Discourse betweene A New-Castle Collier, a Small-Coale-Man, and a Collier of Croydon: concerning the prohibition of trade with New-Castle. And the fearfull Complaint of the poore of the Citie of London, for the inhancing the price of Sea-Coales (London, 1644)Google Scholar, 3. For a vigorous, though at times overreaching, statement of this perception, see Hiltner, Ken, What Else Is Pastoral? Renaissance Literature and the Environment (Ithaca, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 5.
28 Parkinson, John, Paradisi in Sole paradisus terrestris; or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed up (London, 1629)Google Scholar, 2.
29 Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 18.
30 Cogswell, Thomas, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar; Kyle, Chris, “Prince Charles in the Parliaments of 1621 and 1624,” Historical Journal 41, no. 3 (September 1998): 603–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31 Journal of the House of Lords: Vol. 3, 1620–1628 (London, 1802)Google Scholar, 269, for 19 March. On 14 April the bill was voted “fit to pass, with some amendments and addition.” Ibid., 342. What these changes were is unknown, because the only text of the bill is dated 19 March in the Lords manuscripts. It seems unlikely, however, that they were substantial, because there is no sign of debate in either house. No debate is recorded in John Pym's diary of the Commons, British Library (hereafter BL) Add. MSS 26639, f. 35, and neither John Holles's nor Sir Walter Earle's diaries discuss it at all. BL Add. MSS 18597; Harleian MSS 6383.
32 “An Act Concerning Brewhouses in and about London and Westminster,” 19 March 1624, Parliamentary Archives (hereafter PA) HL/PO/JO/10/4/1.
33 Francis Nethersole to Dudley Carleton, 24 May 1624, TNA: SP 14/165/34. Both author and recipient were prominent political actors, Nethersole having served the king's daughter Elizabeth and her husband Frederick, Elector Palatine, while Carleton was ambassador to the Netherlands.
34 Journal of the House of Commons: Vol. 1, 1547–1629 (London, 1802)Google Scholar, 790; Thrush, Andrew and Ferris, John P., eds., The House of Commons, 1604–1629 (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar, s.n. “Lowther, John I,” “Lowther, John II,” and “Richard Lowther,” 5:179–84. “Richard Lowther, JP for Middlesex” had been retained from August of the previous year as the company's “particular councilor.” Brewers Company Wardens Accounts, extraordinary payments 1623–34, GL MS 5442/6, n.p.; Brewers Company Minutes, 6 August 1623, GL MS 5445/14.
35 Compare the sums of a few shillings spent on following the 1624 bill with the £275 distributed at court in 1637 when the company's charter was threatened. Brewers Wardens Accounts, extraordinary payments 1623–24 and 1636–37, GL MS 5442/6.
36 Brewers Wardens Accounts, extraordinary payments 1623–24, GL MS 5442/6; Brewers Minutes, 29 April–18 May 1624, GL MS 5445/14.
37 Nethersole to Carleton, TNA: SP 14/165/34.
38 Kyle, “Prince Charles.”
39 Regulations for the Royal Household, temp. Charles I. TNA: LC 5/180, f. 16. For Charles as more concerned with order at court than James had been, see Sir Warwick, Philip, Memoires of the reign of King Charles I (London, 1701), 65–66Google Scholar; John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 9 April 1625, in The Court and Times of Charles the First, ed. Thomas Birch, 2 vols. (London, 1848)Google Scholar, 1:8.
40 For Caroline and earlier measures against new buildings and urban growth, see Barnes, “Prerogative and Environmental Control.”
41 Quoted in Robertson, “Stuart London,” 39.
42 Privy Council Registers, 8, 24 April and 8, 13, 29 May 1629, TNA: PC 2/39, 181–82, 210, 241, 248, 276.
43 Privy Council Registers, 8 October 1632, TNA: PC 2/42, 220.
44 For the historic development of nuisance as a common-law protection of property, see Loengard, Janet, “The Assize of Nuisance: Origins of an Action at Common Law,” Cambridge Law Journal 37, no. 1 (April 1978): 144–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spencer, J. R., “Public Nuisance—A Critical Examination,” Cambridge Law Journal 48, no. 1 (March 1989): 55–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
45 See Hales's Case (1569) in A Brief Declaration for what Manner of Speciall Nusance Concerning Private Dwelling Houses (London, 1639)Google Scholar; Baker, J. H. and Milsom, S. F. C., Sources of English Legal History: Private Law to 1750 (London, 1986), 592–97Google Scholar; Bland's Case (1587) and Aldred's Case (1610) also in Baker and Milsom, Sources, 597–601.
46 Material from two manuscript reports on Jones v. Powell are translated and printed in Baker and Milsom, Sources, 601–06; Les Reports de Sir Gefrey Palmer, Chevalier & Baronet; Attorney General a Son Tres Excellent Majesty le Roy Charles Le Second (London, 1678), 536–39.Google Scholar
47 Graunt, John, Natural and Political Observations (London, 1662)Google Scholar, 70.
48 Privy Council Registers, 15 September 1633, TNA: PC 2/43, 239.
49 Harvey was describing air's role in the death of “old Parr,” reputed to have died in London during his 153rd year. Willis, Robert, ed. and trans., The Works of William Harvey, M.D. Physician to the King, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to the College of Physicians (London, 1847)Google Scholar, 591. For a contemporary description of the benefits of one's native air, see Hart, James, Klinike; or, The Diet of the Diseased (London, 1633)Google Scholar, 15.
50 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part II. The Manuscripts of the Earl Cowper, K.G., preserved at Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire 3 vols. (hereafter HMC Cowper) (London, 1888), 2:11–12.
51 CSPD 1633–34, 107.
52 Questier, Michael, ed., Newsletters from Caroline Court, 1631–1638: Catholicism and the Politics of the Personal Rule, Camden 5th series 26 (Cambridge, 2005)Google Scholar, 201; CSPD 1633–34, 196.
53 Questier, Newsletters, 205; CSPD 1633–34, 242. It may be relevant here that Charles and Queen Henrietta's first child, born in 1629, had lived only a few days.
54 Detailed quantitative information is forthcoming in Cavert, “Coal Burning and Energy Consumption.”
55 Birch and Williams, Court and Times, 1:113, 117. The political implications of this storm, which included a whirlpool that broke against the Duke of Buckingham's house even as Parliament was attacking his enormous power, were too worryingly clear to be spelled out plainly by Boswell. See Walsham, Alex, “Vox Piscis, or the Book-Fish: Providence and the Uses of the Reformation Past in Caroline Cambridge,” English Historical Review 114, no. 457 (June 1999): 574–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
56 Dekker, Thomas, A Strange Horse-Race at the End of Which, Comes in the Catch-Poles Masque (London, 1613)Google Scholar, sig. D3.
57 Joseph Bradshaw, Member of Parliament, complaining of malt taxes in the 1628 Parliament. Keeler, Mary Frear, Cole, Maija Jansson, and Bidwell, William B., eds., Commons Debates 1628: Volume IV, 28 May–26 June 1628 (London, 1978)Google Scholar, 85.
58 Brewers Minutes, 12–18 May 1624, GL MS 5445/14; 2 August 1636, 5445/16, f. 50v.
59 Will of George Prynne, 16 February 1661, TNA: PROB11/303/379; Merritt, Early Modern Westminster, 185. Castle Lane, also called Cabbage Lane, lay near the southern edge of St. James Park. Prynne's will of 1636 describes his brewhouse as occupied by a William Green. By the early eighteenth century another William Green still occupied the same location and carried on a substantial operation. See 1723 list of brewers, Brewers Company Livery Lists, GL MS 5458; 1706 donation of William Green of c. £80 to the Westminster Grey Coat Hospital. Hughson, David, London; Being an Accurate History and Description of the British Metropolis and its Neighbourhood, to Thirty Miles Extent: Volume 4 (London, 1807)Google Scholar, 312.
60 The 1633 will of Joseph Bradshaw, Abraham's brother and partner, bequeathed an estate of thousands of pounds. Will of Joseph Bradshaw, 4 January 1633, TNA: PROB 11/163/10. Parker paid substantial taxes and fees to the Brewers Company in 1641 and to his Westminster parish in 1648, and before his death in 1653 he had already settled an unspecified number of “houses” on his daughter. Assessment on the parish of St Margaret Westminster for the relief of Ireland, 1647, Westminster Archives Centre, E1624; Brewers Minutes, 27 July 1641, GL MS 5445/16; Bartholomew Parker will, 12 December 1653, TNA: PROB 11/227/519.
61 As argued by other brewers in similar circumstances; Petition of the Brewers, 1586, TNA: SP 12/127/68; Privy Council Registers, 17 and 31 August 1664, TNA: PC 2/57, 188, 214.
62 Answer of Richard Coventry, John Guy, George Prynne, and Thomas Fisher, 16 January 1620. TNA REQ 2/392/83, f. 19. In his deposition Prynne describes the prominent role played by Parker in this dispute.
63 Funeral Expenses for James I, 1625, TNA: LC 2/6, f. 72.
64 Thrush and Ferris, House of Commons, 1604–29, 3:291–92.
65 Privy Council Registers, 15 September 1633, TNA: PC 2/43, 239.
66 Ibid., 240.
67 Jansson, Maija, “The Impeachment of Inigo Jones and the Pulling Down of St Gregory's by St Paul's,” Renaissance Studies 17, no. 4 (December 2003): 716–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
68 Pardon to Bartholomew Parker, TNA: SP 38/16, calendared under 15 January 1636, CSPD 1635–36, 161.
69 Privy Council Registers, 27 March 1640, TNA: PC 2/51, 402.
70 Bradshaw claimed a debt for £106 worth of beer delivered to Aquila Weekes, who was keeper of the Gatehouse Prison, near Westminster Abbey, throughout Charles's reign. Order regarding debt of Aquila to Abraham and Job Bradshaw, 1636, TNA: E125/18, f. 384.
71 Certificate of Westminster JPs regarding Westminster brewhouses, 1 February 1636/7, TNA: SP 16/346/4.
72 John Burghe to John Scudamore, 24 February 1635/6, TNA: C115/108 (letter 8606). Kevin Sharpe misdated this letter to the beginning of Charles's reign in “The Image of Virtue,” 150, and Image Wars, 223.
73 Richard Daye to Ralph Weckherlin, secretary to the Secretary of State John Coke, 23 June 1638, HMC Cowper, 2:186. See also Colvin, H. M., Ransome, D. R., and Summerson, John, The History of the King's Works: Volume III, 1485–1660 (Part I), ed. Colvin, H. M. (London, 1975), 138–39.Google Scholar
74 Jones, Inigo and Davenant, William, Britannia Triumphans a Masque, Presented at White Hall, by the Kings Majestie and His Lords, on the Sunday after Twelfth-Night, 1637 (London, 1638)Google Scholar, 20.
75 Slack, Paul, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar, 217.
76 Windebank's notes of Council meeting, 30 January 1637, TNA: SP 16/345/38.
77 Baker and Milson, Sources, 603–06.
78 Cited in Morley v. Pragnell, The Third Part of the Reports of Sr George Croke (London, 1669), 510. Croke calls this “Tohayle's Case,” but this seems likely to be a printer's (or transcriber's) error for Tufnayle, or Tuffnell, perhaps a case involving the brewer and member of the Short Parliament Richard Tuffnell. For Tuffnell as “Tufnayle” see his will, 1 September 1640, TNA: PROB 11/184/92.
79 In the 1670s Collins produced a manuscript that attempted to take substantial credit for the Stuart restoration. HMC Report on the MSS of F.W. Leyborne-Popham, Esq. of Littlecote, Co. Wilts (Norwich, 1899), xv, 198–239.
80 Penington and Young noted that they appeared before Justices Jones, Brampston, and Berkeley, each of whom had accepted ship money's legality. The famous judicial opponent of ship money, they are careful to note, was on their side: “[I]t was the opinion of Mr. Justice Crooke that it was no nuisance.” Petition of Louis Young, 25 May 1641, PA HO/PO/JO/10/1/58, f. 42; Petition of Penington and Young, PA HL/PO/JO/10/1/231; Journal of the House of Commons, 2:156. Arundel had a record of exerting pressure on neighbors who burned excessive coal; see Petition of John Taylor 1621, PA HL/PO/JO/10/13/7.
81 Petition of Thomas Mathews to the Earl of Essex, n.d., c. 1645, Papers of Arthur, Lord Capel, BL Add. MS 40630, f. 164–70. Mathews's brewhouse seems to have been distinct from the Young/Penington establishment, because Mathews claimed to have built his house himself whereas they claimed their house to have dated from the reign of Edward VI. Petition of Penington and Young, PA HL/PO/JO/10/1/231. Brewers Company records confirm that Mathews brewed in Whitefriars, and his scale was sufficient to supply nearby Salisbury House with 238 barrels over seven months. Brewers Minutes, 24 September 1635, GL MS 5445/16, f. 35; Munby, Lionel M., Early Stuart Household Accounts (Ware, 1986)Google Scholar, 72.
82 The records of King's Bench during the seventeenth century have attracted very little study because their bulk and the lack of any modern calendar or index makes them particularly intractable. The volumes of plea rolls for Charles's reign up to the end of the personal rule in 1640, TNA: King's Bench (hereafter KB) 27/1541–1647, include tens of thousands of cases.
83 Certificate of Westminster JPs, 1 February 1636/7, TNA: SP 16/346/4. Of the five brewers listed, one brewed on a small scale at Ebury farm, far from central Westminster, and the remaining four were found to hold from 6 to 50 chaldrons, or c. 8 to 70 tons. Fifty chaldrons would probably have supplied a large brewhouse for about 2 months.
84 Ibid.
85 Petition of Michael Arnold, 24 February 1641, PA HL/PO/JO/10/1/52.
86 Privy Council Registers, April 1639, TNA: PC 2/50, 343–44.
87 Petition of Michael Arnold to Privy Council, before 10 May 1639, TNA: SP 16/420/129–129i; Privy Council Registers, April 1639, 3 July 1639, TNA: PC 2/50, 525–26.
88 Petition of Sir William Brouncker and Doctor Thomas Cadiman, TNA: SP 16/257/104. This petition is calendared under 1633 but seems more likely to date from 1638 when royal tolerance of smoke was at its lowest and when they were busily involved in establishing a monopoly over distilling in and around London. For their monopoly, see Ashton, Robert, The City and the Court, 1603–1643 (Cambridge, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 76. See also the petition by Brouncker and Cadiman in favor of Bond and Arnold, Privy Council Registers, 22 April 1640, TNA: PC 2/51, 454–55.
89 Privy Council Registers, 27 March 1640, PC 2/51, 402; John Ayliffe's petition, 1640, HMC The Manuscripts of the House of Lords: Vol. 11, Addenda 1514–1714 (1962), 241–43; Assessment on the parish of St Margaret Westminster for the relief of Ireland, Westminster Archives Centre, E1624.
90 HMC Cowper, 1:200; Privy Council Registers, 13 May 1629, TNA: PC 2/39, 248. The Fleet was a river that emptied into the Thames at the present site of Blackfriars Bridge.
91 Nor was this recovery merely temporary: Arnold's son also pursued the family trade in a career that made him the king's brewer and member of Parliament for Westminster in 1685.
92 Louis Young too continued brewing, near enough to his previous Whitefriars site to provide hundreds of barrels annually to Christ's hospital, Newgate, from 1638 to 1642. Christ's Hospital Treasurer's Accounts, 1632–44, GL MS 12819/6.
93 Privy Council Registers, 3 February 1637, TNA: PC 2/47, 122. Warrant for Bond's arrest, signed by Attorney General Bankes, 28 November 1638, Bankes MSS 5/67, Bodleian Library, Oxford University.
94 Bond of Arnold and Bond, 1639, TNA: SP 16/420/122; Privy Council Registers, 31 March 1639, TNA: PC 2/50, 213; 6 March, 1639/40 PC 2/51, 341.
95 Bond's testimony against Archbishop Laud, n.d., TNA: SP 16/499/20.
96 The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, D.D., 7 vols. (Oxford, 1847–60), 4:112–14.Google Scholar
97 Petition of Edward Bond regarding suit against Michael Arnold, undated Lords papers, 1645, PA HL/PO/JO/10/1/198; Will of Edward Bond, 31 January 1657, TNA: PROB 11/261/355.
98 Brewers Minutes, 1 August 1637, GL MS 5445/16, f. 71.
99 John Evelyn, Fumifugium; or, The Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated (1661) in The Writings of John Evelyn, ed. De la Bédoyère, Guy (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1995)Google Scholar, 129.
100 Keith Lindley, “Isaac Penington,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, suggests that he may have hidden the famous Five Members from arrest by the king in January of 1642. If so, Bond's claim to have turned to Penington's protection, and thereby to compare his own plight with that of Hampden, Pym, and so on, is another example of his attempts to magnify the ideological stakes of his persecution by the king and council.
101 It is not entirely clear how many men named Hammond or Hamond are referred to in the records explored here. An Edward is recorded petitioning, along with Bartholomew Parker, against the activities of Arnold and Bond, but a Thomas Hammond of Westminster is recorded as Arnold's partner in 1639. Privy Council registers, 27 March 1640, TNA: PC 2/51, 402; Brewers Minutes, 18 July 1639, GL 5445/16, f. 117v. The “Hammon” listed in the JPs' survey of 1637 as having taken over Prynne's brewhouse could be either, or perhaps neither, of these. Certificate of Westminster JPs, TNA: SP 16/346/4. A Robert and a Leonard Hammond also paid quarterage to the Brewers Company. Brewers Wardens Accounts, 1634–35 quarterage, GL MSS 5442/6, n.p.
102 See Hiltner, Pastoral, 117–18. Hiltner follows the argument of Brimblecombe, which accepts Bond and Arnold's testimony at face value, arguing that what they framed as Laud's culpability could also be seen as forward-thinking environmental policy.
103 In addition to Laud, the records discussed here described actions by Windebank, Dorset, Arundel, Maltravers, Porter, Vane, Bankes, Littleton, Jones, Whitaker, Heywood, plus the collectivity of the Privy Council, various royal justices, the queen, and her mother.
104 Archbishop Laud to the Dean and Chapter of Chester, 29 October 1638, TNA: SP 16/400/118; Abstract of Laud's Metropolitan Visitation, Norwich, 6–8 April 1635, CSPD 1635, xxx. Laud's rebuttals to Arnold and Bond's arguments, while rejecting some specific claims, primarily stress the corporate responsibility of the council for royal policies. Laud, Works, 4:112–16. There are parallels here with the ways that Laud was also framed as the principal persecutor of William Prynne, which Mark Kishlansky has recently shown to be a misrepresentation of the course of Prynne's trial. Kishlansky, “A Whipper Whipped: The Sedition of William Prynne,” Historical Journal 56, no. 3 (2013): 603–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
105 It may be seen as significant that the 1633 measures against Bradshaw, Parker, and Prynne occurred so shortly after Laud was elevated to the archiepiscopal see. In contrast, by that date Laud had been bishop of London for five years and had shown no particular interest in urban smoke.
106 Bishop Williams, for example, patronized elaborate church decorations during this period despite arguing against Laud's altar policy and a well-known personal rivalry with Laud himself. For the “beauty of holiness,” see Lake, Peter, “The Laudian Style: Order, Uniformity, and the Pursuit of the Beauty of Holiness in the 1630s,” in The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642, ed. Fincham, Kenneth (Basingstoke, 1993), 161–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fincham, Kenneth and Tyacke, Nicholas, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547–c.1700 (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chaps. 5–6; Parry, Graham, The Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation: Glory, Laud and Honour (Woodbridge, 2006).Google Scholar
107 Sharpe, “The Image of Virtue.”
108 Regulations for the Royal Household, TNA: LC 5/180, f. 1.
109 The term was used, for example, in the petitions of John Gaspar Wulffen, 5 June 1638, TNA: SP 16/392/19; Bankes MSS 11/30, Bodleian Library; and of Sir Nicholas Hulse, “Great Britain's Treasure,” Egerton MS 1140, f. 44, BL.
110 Woodcroft, Bennet, ed., Alphabetical Index of Patentees of Inventions, From March 2, 1617 (14 James I) to October 1, 1852 (16 Victoriae) (London, 1969)Google Scholar, 11, 16.
111 Platt, Harold, Shock Cities: The Environmental Transformation of Manchester and Chicago (Chicago, 2005).Google Scholar
112 Evelyn, Fumifugium. For the immediate political contexts of Evelyn's proposals, see Jenner, Mark S. R., “The Politics of London Air: John Evelyn's Fumifugium and the Restoration,” Historical Journal 38, no. 3 (September 1995): 535–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
113 For darker versions of environmentalism in contexts outside of Britain, see Uekoetter, Frank, The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamblin, Jacob Darwin, Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism (Oxford, 2013).Google Scholar
- 8
- Cited by