1603-42
Overview
 | James I succeeded to the English crown on the
death of Elizabeth, 24 March 1603. |
| James had become King of Scotland in July 1567
when he was eleven months old. He could not remember a time when he
was not king. Hardly surprisingly he had a high opinion of himself.
[More on James]
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The rough handling that the infant James had
received from his Presbyterian tutors - particularly the dour
George Buchanan (1506-82) - soured his view of
Presbyterianism throughout his life. |
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| From the 1590's, James was in close contact with
Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury.
James was very eager to ensure that he
inherited the English throne, for England was a far richer and
more powerful country than Scotland, and its nobility and clergy far
less unruly than their Scottish counterparts. |
| Salisbury became James I's chief minister and
secured the downfall of Sir
Walter Raleigh, who was convicted of treason in 1603.
(It was alleged that Raleigh had plotted to install
Arabella Stuart on the
throne. He spent some years in prison, was released in 1616 to find
gold in the New World, but angered the Spanish and was executed in
1618 on the basis of his 1603 treason conviction).
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Robert Cecil became Lord Treasurer in 1608,
Viscount Cranborne in 1604, and Earl of Salisbury in 1605. |
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| Cecil's power was to some extent counterbalanced
by that of the Howard family, especially Henry Howard, Earl of
Northampton (1540-1614), who had been imprisoned in Elizabeth's
reign for intriguing with James' mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. James
made Henry Howard Lord Privy Seal in 1605. Henry Howard was a man of
great learning, but his involvement in the Overbury scandal
tainted his final years. |
| Another of James I's early favorites was
Robert Carr (1590?-1645). Devoid of intellect, but extremely
handsome, Carr became Viscount Rochester (1611), and Earl of
Somerset (1613). The Overbury scandal led to his fall from favor. |
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James I was as extravagant as Elizabeth I had been frugal. He handed
out titles, offices and pensions with a trowel. This made him popular
in the short-term, but increased the financial problems of the crown. |
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One
method that James tried to raise money was impositions. These
additional customs duties were seen as taxation by Parliament and as
requiring parliamentary consent. In 1606 the Judges in
Bate's Case ruled that impositions were legal, and the government
continued to collect them despite protests in parliament. |
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Salisbury tried to resolve the dispute by the Great Contract of
1610. This scheme involved James giving up impositions and other
unpopular levies in exchange for a permanent income from Parliament.
Negotiations initially made progress but collapsed in mutual distrust
- the King thought that the sum he was been offered was too low
(£200,000 p.a.), while Parliament could not bring itself to institute
a permanent tax on land. |
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Problems with the puritans continued. They had been optimistic that
James would be more favorable to their cause than had Elizabeth and
had presented him with Millenary Petition as he traveled to
London for his coronation 1603. In 1604 at the Hampton Court
Conference, James showed himself as hostile as Richard Bancroft to
puritan aspirations. Fortunately for the puritans, many bishops were
more tolerant and sympathetic than James and Bancroft. |
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James I continued Elizabeth's policy of fining Roman Catholics for
recusancy.
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In 1604, James made peace with Spain which destroyed Catholic
hopes of liberation by a Spanish invasion. |
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A few Catholic gentlemen turned in desperation to violence. The
Gunpowder Plot was a plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament when
King, Lord and Commons were all present and then seize control of
England.
After the plan's disastrous failure, severe laws were passed against
Catholics (in practice, they were rarely enforced). In fact, because
of the absence of a foreign Catholic threat, James I's government
could afford to be less severe than Elizabeth's - only twenty priests
were executed between 1603 and 1625. |
2.
1612-1618
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The rapid rise of
Henry Howard and Robert Carr was ended by a sensational case of
divorce and murder: the Overbury scandal.
Robert Carr fell in
love with Frances - the daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk.
Unfortunately Frances was already married to the Earl of Essex (the
son of Robert Devereux). They had been
married when children and had lived separately. When Essex arrived to
claim his bride, Frances (who was attracted to Carr but not to Essex)
did all she could to discourage any advances and then divorced him on
the grounds of impotence.
James took Frances' side in the matter and rigged the divorce court to
ensure that France got her annulment (September 1613). Frances and
Carr were married in December 1613.
Ten days before the divorce was annulled a young gentleman - Thomas
Overbury - died by poison in the Tower of London. In 1615, evidence
emerged that he had been poisoned by an agent of Frances because he
was about to reveal that she had been living as Carr's mistress before
her divorce, and had used drugs and witchcraft to engineer her
husband's impotence. There was no direct evidence of Carr's
involvement in the murder, but enough suggestion of his and Henry
Howard's complicity to lose James I's favor entirely.
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The Howard faction was pro-Spanish,
anti-puritan, tolerant of Roman Catholics, and supportive of royal
power
- this was more or less the opposite of the predominant opinion in the
House of Commons. In 1614, the Addled Parliament had been
dissolved without passing any laws or granting any taxes in part
because of the Howards plots. (Continued disputes over impositions
also caused trouble). |
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The Howard faction also met
opposition at court from George Abbot (Archbishop of Canterbury
from 1611)
and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (the richest nobleman in
England). |
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George Abbot decided to take
advantage of James' weakness for handsome young men by introducing the
king to his own client - the particularly handsome and charming
George Villiers. |
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James certainly fell for Villiers,
making him an Earl in 1617, a Marquess in 1618, and a Duke of
Buckingham in 1623. Unfortunately for Abbott, Villiers grew so
powerful that he no longer had any need of Abbot's help, and began to
make his own choices. |
3.
1618-1628
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During the early
years of James reign, patronage was divided between various factions,
but after 1618 all patronage was in the hands of Buckingham. This
aroused great resentment. |
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Buckingham's
support for a marriage of Charles (James' heir) to a Spanish princess
was also very unpopular.
| From 1618, Spain was at war with Frederick V, the Elector Palatine,
(briefly King of Bohemia) and son-in-law of James I by his
marriage to
Elizabeth. Frederick was the leader of the German Protestant Union
against Hapsburg attempts to reestablish Catholicism
throughout the Holy Roman Empire. |
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Territorial and dynastic problems also played their
part in causing the Thirty Years War (1618-48), but in England
it was widely regarded as a contest between Protestants and Catholics.
In England, public opinion was in favor of war with Spain, not
alliance with it. |
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In 1624, the
marriage negotiations collapsed and Charles and Buckingham called for
war. This made them popular for a while. |
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After the death
of James I in 1625, England did declare war on Spain. However, not
only was the war executed incompetently, but also England started
simultaneously war with France. |
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The war was very
expensive, and in 1626-27 Charles and Buckingham resorted to measures
of very dubious legality to raise money. The most unpopular was
the Forced Loan and the imprisonment of those who refused to
pay it. The government also billeted troops in civilians' homes. |
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Even with these
methods, Charles still had insufficient money and had to call
Parliament. It condemned Charles' illegal methods in the
Petition
of Right.
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William Laud |
The Commons also attacked Arminian doctrines and their
most powerful exponent, William Laud. |
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23 August 1628,
a disgruntled soldier, John Felton assassinated Buckingham. |
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1629, Charles I
called another session of Parliament, but when it opposed him as
vigorously as in 1628, he dissolved it and decided to try and rule
without parliament. |
4.
1629-1640
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The period from
1629 to 1640 is known as the Eleven Years Tyranny or the Personal
Rule. Charles I pursued unpopular religious policies, that emphasized
ceremonies and sacraments and were seen by many as a return to popery.
In Ireland, his trusted agent Thomas Wentworth adopted severe
policies to suppress all Irish resistance to English rule. |
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Charles revived
long-defunct taxes to finance his regime, that many though simply
illegal. He revived and extended Ship Money to finance the
expansion of the English Navy. |
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Charles I had as
little taste for presbyterianism as his father, and in 1637 he tried
to bring the Scottish Church more into line with the English by
introducing bishops and a
Scottish Prayer Book modeled on the English Book of Common Prayer. |
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Tradition
holds that the "Prayer Book riots" were started by a woman,
Janet Geddes, who on Sunday, 23 July 1637 threw her stool at the
Dean of Saint Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh in spontaneous outrage
at him "saying Mass in her ear". |
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In 1638, the
Scottish rebelled. Charles finances were insufficient to put down the
rebellion, and he was forced in Spring 1640 to call the Short
Parliament (April 13th to May 5th). It was highly uncooperative
and Charles dissolved it. |
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The Scots invaded
Northern England, taking Newcastle and Durham and defeating Charles
army in August 1640. Charles was forced to come to terms with the
Scots and agree to pay the wages of the army that had just defeated
him. |
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Since he lacked
the money to do this, the Long Parliament was summoned 3
November 1640. |
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Over the next two years, England drifted
into Civil War. |
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Charles resented the Commons, and made
promises with every intention of breaking them as soon as he could
obtain military support from Ireland or the Continent. |
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The leaders of the Parliamentary
opposition knew that Charles was not to be trusted, and tried to
neutralize him by attacking his trusted agents, Thomas Wentworth, Earl
of Strafford and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.
An Act was passed by Parliament in 1641 declaring Strafford a traitor.
Laud was imprisoned.
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Parliament also forced through
legislation to assure its own permanence, to declare illegal Charles
I's new forms of taxation, and to reverse his changes in the Church. |
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Almost everyone agreed that Charles had
acted badly, but the king's moderate critics began to alienated by the
actions of his more radical opponents. In particular, the use of the
London mob to stop the Bishops taking their seats in the House of
Lords raised fears of social upheaval. Furthermore, many gentry had
deep misgivings about the attempts to abolish Bishops altogether and
reform the English church "root and branch". |
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During 1641, the King gradually
accumulated more support. The Irish revolt of October 1641
forced the question of who should control the army needed to suppress
the uprising - King or Parliament. The issue could not be resolved
peacefully; in Summer 1642, the English Civil War began. |
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