Britain 1625-1701

• Structure of government and society in England, 1625


  • King
  • Privy Council
  • Parliament (House of Lords, House of Commons)
  • Common Law Courts
  • Local government in counties and boroughs
  • Prerogative Courts
  • The Church
• Royal Court


  Consisted of the king's friends, servants chosen advisers and office-holders, and the greater nobility
• What was the Privy Council

  Included the king's chosen advisers and heads of major departments, their function was to advise the king and supervise government departments (Treasury, Chancery, Exchequer) as well as local government
• Parliament


  House of Lords (including 26 bishops) and House of Commons (2 MPs from each county and borough called and dismissed by the king), able to pass statute laws to add to the common law (custom, precedent and royal proclamations)
• Common Law Courts


  Exchequer, King's Bench and Common Pleas in London, judges appointed by the king
• Local government in counties and boroughs

  Lords Lieutenant in charge of militia, Sheriffs in charge of gaols and elections, Judges on circuit held County Assizes, Justices of the Peace met in Petty and Quarter Sessions, sent serious cases to the Assizes, administered law and supervised parish officials (constables, Overseers of the poor, churchwardens)
• Prerogative Courts


  Chancery and Star Chamber in London, Court of High Commission dealing with Church affairs, Regional Councils of the North and Welsh Marches, run by Privy Councillors representing the king's direct authority
• The Church


  Governed by archbishops and bishops chosen by the king, lower clergy supported by churchwardens
• Electorate consisting mainly of gentry and merchant elite but with some of the middling sort-yeomen and master craftsmen, these also provided local government personnel at appropriate levels
• The people-tenant farmers, craftsman, labourers and paupers, without any means of expressing their concerns other than to sympathetic local gentry, their tendency had been to resort to riot and disorder, including attacks on the property (and occasionally the persons) of the betters, they were therefore regarded as a danger to society, in need of control stability was to be assured
• Why did monarchical government fail in the years 1625-49?

  1. Charles I and parliament, 1625-29

  2. Confrontation and dissolution, 1629

  3. Personal rule and its failure, 1629-40
• When Charles succeeded to the throne in March 1625 he found an empty Treasury and dwindling credit
• The actions of MPs, and the few Lords who worked with them in 1625-29, were mainly focused on the recognised parliamentary functions of taxation, defence of the common law and the occasional attempt to bring 'evil counsellors' to book through the process of impeachment
• The meeting of parliament in June 1625

  Initiated a sequence of quarrels that destroyed any co-operation between king and parliament and led Charles to embark on a period of personal rule in 1629
• The Commons refused to grant Charles the right to collect an excise tax, Tonnage and Poundage, for life, in response to the disastrous Mansfeld campaign
• Instead, the MPs suggested that a grant should be made for a year so he would be forced to call a parliament regularly
• Five Knights case

  A major controversy in 1628, when Charles summoned another parliament to provide funds for the war, the attack followed up by a further determination to worsen relations with the other Catholic powers
• Buckingham's belligerent foreign policy


  Led to war with both France and Spain, Charles had no choice but to seek further subsidies
• Aware that outright confrontation could lead to another dissolution, Charles abandoned Buckingham in favour of a more conciliatory strategy
• On the one hand, the Commons voted a subsidy of the nobility in taxation
• At the same time, they prepared a carefully worded document, the Petition of Right, and offered it to the king asking him to reverse the decision made in the Five Knights case
• parliament also demanded that in future, citizens would not be asked to pay forced loans, subjected to martial law or forced to provide free lodgings for soldiers
• Angered by the dissolution of parliament because of continuing complaints about Buckingham and the promotion of Arminians in the Church, Charles published a revised version of the Petition that asserted his right to continue collecting Tonnage and Poundage without a parliamentary grant
• Using the same justification of emergency powers in the national interest, he also imprisoned any merchants who refused
• When one of them, Richard Chambers, was granted bail by the common law courts, Charles had him imprisoned by the Prerogative Court of the Star Chamber on direct royal authority
• Meantime, he also appointed William Laud, a noted Arminian cleric, as Bishop of London
• The Petition of Right had briefly offered the opportunity for reconciliation between Charles and parliament, but the damage of this diminished rapidly as a result of his actions
• On top of this, angered by a drunken attack on the Speaker while reviewing the Statute Book, Charles grieved the public, celebrated with bonfires and, when parliament reassembled in January 1629, the news was further celebrated by MPs
• When the reassembled parliament began to impeach those involved in the Petition, and the treatment of merchants who had refused to pay Tonnage and Poundage, Charles ordered parliament to adjourn
• On the day of the adjournment, a group of MPs led by Denzil Holles and Sir John Eliot demanded the passing of three formal resolutions against the growth of Arminianism, the levying of Tonnage and Poundage, and the actions of those who paid it
• When the Speaker refused to delay the vote, they held him in his chair until the resolutions passed, amid shouting and confusion
• With hindsight, it is possible to see that the events of 1629 had significant effects on the quest for stable government in England; it is considered by some historians to mark a turning point in the development of the conflict that led eventually to civil war
• Following the views of those who opposed Charles in these years, a number of historians writing in the 19th and early 20th centuries argued that Charles was seeking to create an absolute monarchy, similar to those that existed in Spain and, later in France under Louis XIV
• In their view, the dissolution of 1629 and the personal rule that followed constituted a deliberate attempt to destroy parliament as an institution and govern entirely by the authority of a divine right monarch, responsible only to God
• Parliamentary opponents were imprisoned, most notably John Eliot, who died in the Tower of London in 1632
• Personal rule


  The term used by some historians for the period of Charles I's rule without parliament from 1629 to 1640, also known as the 'Eleven Years Tyranny'
• More recent historians have challenged this argument and concluded that what Charles intended in these years was to create an efficient and stable system of government, based on his own political and religious beliefs
• From The Declaration of Charles I, published 10 March 1629: 'Howsoever princes are not bound to give an account of their actions but to God alone.. we have thought good to set thus much down by way of declaration, that we may appear to the world in the truth and sincerity of our actions. As we have been careful for the settling of religion and quieting the church, so we were not unmindful of the preservation of the just and ancient liberties of our subjects... [but] the House (or Commons] hath of late years endeavoured to extend their privileges by setting up general committees for grievances and the like, Spas where in former times the Knights and Burgesses of the counties and boroughs were wont to attend upon the service of the House in person.'
• Charles was starting to show an acute and conscious sense of the need to assert his authority, the decision to dissolve parliament in 1629 being part of this
• The personal rule that followed was an attempt to create a new order in Church and state, based on the king's own religious and political beliefs