9) RELIGION, REBELLION AND WAR (1637-1640)
All the weight of tradition, custom, inertia, laziness, communal village life, the influence of many powerful landlords, helped to prolong the old way of thought and behavior. From Elizabeth’s reign onwards they were abetted by courageous and skillful Jesuit propaganda, with powerful lay backing. On a world scale two ideologies were in conflict, and it was by no means clear that Protestantism was not going to be driven under, as so many heresies had been before.
~Christopher Hill1
As the Atlantic merchants were making their fortunes and founding Puritan colonies, the crisis of the ancien régime was proceeding apace. From the time of Henry’s Reformation, the Church of England had been subordinate to the monarchical state. Licensing of preachers was reinstated under Edward VI. Those who preached without licenses were persecuted under Elizabeth, and those who obtained them had to swear to “only read that which is appointed by public authority…”2 Her government regularly interfered with preachers and sermons, the latter often widely distributed, at the preeminent St. Paul’s Cross Church in London. In 1622, James I attempted to micromanage what church officials of different ranks could say in public, specifying sources and topics by time of day. This followed the 1614 torture and trial of one Edmond Peacham for merely possessing a sermon the government considered seditious. Censorship of sermons, like the press, only increased under Charles I. In 1640, the divine right of kings was ordered to be preached in every church four times a year.3
Charles was unwisely determined that his three kingdoms must all follow a single religion: his. To this end he had the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer rewritten to make it more Catholic.4 In 1637 he ordered its use in Presbyterian Scotland in place of John Knox’s liturgy. This followed several other steps to reintroduce Catholicized practices there, and to centralize power in the Kirk (church) under the bishops and the crown.5 Such steps threatened to reduce Scotland, like Wales, to the status of a province of England, or a colony like Ireland.6 The first reading of the Book in Edinburgh caused violent rioting. A significant faction of Scottish aristocrats were, unlike most of their English counterparts, orthodox Calvinists; they organized popular opposition at all levels of the Kirk based on the 1596 Confession of Faith. A new document, the National Covenant, was written and submitted for approval by parishes across Scotland in early 1638. In November, a National Assembly was held in Glasgow from which bishops were excluded. The National Assembly
pushed new reforms to the Kirk without Royal approval. In the first week of December, the Assembly moved into legislative overdrive, removing the contentious prayer book, abolishing the office of archbishop and bishop and punishing those who refused to accept the National Covenant.7
At the same time, military preparations were made and an army to defend the Covenant was organized; strategic ports and arsenals around Scotland were seized, as well as Edinburgh Castle.8 In the less developed realm of Scotland the aristocracy still retained its military function.9
Despite negotiations, Charles was intent on raising an army to subdue the Scots. His severe lack of funds, however, caused the government to make fresh demands on the City municipality. In an attempt to shore up his position, the king made concessions to the City and its merchants: he renewed London’s charter which restored some of its privileges, and backtracked on decisions that had harmed various merchant companies’ interests.10 The London Board of Aldermen had agreed to raise money and supply 3,000 soldiers for the war, but instead, in March 1639 the Common Council drew up a petition of grievances, an unprecedented step known to be opposed by the king.
It complained of the “extreme dearness of all things in so much that the poor householder had much ado to subsist,” of the multitude of patents and monopolies, and of the infringement of the City charters in requiring that citizens should be compelled to march out and fight other than in the defense of London.11
It also protested “the decay of navigation, and clothing, and the manufactures of this kingdom;” arrests for nonpayment of ship money; and asked for a new parliament.12 The aldermen refused to take the petition and the measly £5,000 raised to the king. The councillors resolved to do it themselves, but were prevented by the king’s own command.13
The king went to York the same month in what became known as the First Bishops’ War. The army he assembled was the largest military mobilization in England since the Spanish conflict in 1588. It was also a motley, ill-equipped, untrained, and resentful force, largely unpaid, led by inept noble commanders pessimistic about their chances of success. After a few skirmishes on the border, the English retired to Berwick in disarray, and an interim truce and inconclusive treaty were negotiated. The army was largely disbanded.14
The war against Scotland was unpopular in England, in part due to the economic cost during a downturn in trade, but also because of considerable sympathy for the Presbyterians in Puritan circles. “…opposition groups in England and Scotland now began to enter into active collaboration.”15 At least five unlicensed pro-Scottish pamphlets were surreptitiously printed and circulated in London during 1640.16
The commercial depression and Scottish events caused “a crisis of business confidence which had provoked a rapid flow of capital from the country.” Charles’ own record as a debtor was dismal for he rarely repaid his creditors.17 Foreign merchants and banks, particularly the Dutch, were calling in their loans, and credit dried up except for the wealthiest. Customs farmers, who owed their positions to the king, did raise huge sums for the crown during 1639-1640; one farmer alone was reported to have made a loan of £100,000 in April 1639. But in June, the Privy Council was obliged to command the Lord Mayor and 24 aldermen to appear before it. The Council demanded they raise £30,000 within one month. By order of Charles, they were forbidden from submitting the loan to the Common Council for approval. The Lord Mayor and 15 aldermen refused (the only time they did so) in no small part because the securities offered by the crown were dubious. Four of these aldermen became staunch Parliamentarians.18 The war and the economy inflamed the opposition and alarmed the highest levels of the bourgeois class. A few days later, John Lilburne distributed petitions against his imprisonment at an outdoor meeting of unemployed cloth workers, which turned into a demonstration against Archbishop Laud.19
Charles returned to London in July. By January 1640 he was ready to try again. He sent for his governor general of Ireland, Sir Thomas Wentworth, whom he made Earl of Strafford. The new earl then returned to Dublin where he forced the Irish Parliament to appropriate funds for an Irish army against the Scots. Once transported across the sea, there was nothing to prevent Charles from using it against English dissenters. Yet the situation was pressing.
English soldiers moving northward had already terrified the areas they passed through. If they were kept idle much longer, or disbanded without pay, there would be mutiny and plundering. Uncontrolled armies might associate with popular risings.20
Still unable to raise new loans for the English army, Charles reluctantly called Parliament. Elections for the House of Commons were held, and Parliament duly convened on 13 April 1640 for the first time since 1629. Oliver Cromwell, now the owner of a small estate inherited from a maternal uncle, was elected for the borough of Cambridge. John Pym, influential leader of the opposition to the king, immediately called for reformation of church and state, a reduction on taxes in the colonial trade, and an anti-Spanish foreign policy before authorizing any funds.21 Three weeks after Parliament opened, on 5 May, Charles dismissed it; hence it became known as the Short Parliament.
The king immediately attempted to again force loans from the City by demanding that London aldermen draw up lists of the richest men in their wards. Seven aldermen publicly refused in court to submit the names of wealthy commoners in their wards to the king. “Strafford, in exasperation, told Charles that he should make an example of some of the Aldermen and hang them for their refusal. The prosecution was to remind him of this ill-advised remark at his trial.”22 The king settled for imprisoning the four most senior alderman who had refused.
A few days after Parliament was dismissed a riot against Archbishop Laud broke out in London. “By 1640, London was a hotbed of discontent.” Laud’s persecution of Puritans caused him to be blamed for the war on Scotland. In addition, the economic depression was causing widespread unemployment, and there was plague in the city. Puritans made common cause with the Scots Covenanters whom Charles was fighting. There were fears of French invasion. Teenage apprentices, always volatile, were being drawn into political action. Following the quick dismissal of the Short Parliament “placards suddenly appeared throughout the City urging the apprentices to rise and free the land from the rule of Bishops.”23
At a great public meeting on St. George’s Fields, Southwark, the City apprentices, and the glovers and tanners of Bermondsey and Southwark on holiday for the May Day celebrations, joined up with the sailors and dockhands, now idle through lack of trade, to hunt, as they put it, “Laud, the fox.” The Trained Bands…could not prevent five hundred citizens from marching on [Laud’s] Lambeth Palace…24
Laud, who had to row himself to Whitehall to escape, provided the figure of 5oo. A newswriter, John Castle, estimated the “‘unruly multitude’” carrying clubs and drums at 1,200. “The majority of the crowd may have been apprentices, but most of those identified as ringleaders were established tradesmen and craftsmen.”25 A few nights later the apprentices attacked the prisons, freeing those arrested at Lambeth Palace, and also a popular alderman, Thomas Atkins, one of the four Charles was holding for refusal to provide lists of wealthy men. Alderman Atkins addressed the crowd and declined to leave prison, but all four were released next day.26
In response to the anti-Laud disorders, the Privy Council brought in 6,000 men of the Trained Bands from outlying counties. A Southwark glover, John Archer, “said on the flimsiest evidence to be the ringleader, was brutally tortured” on the rack and executed. On 23 May, a wounded apprentice, Thomas Bensted, was hung and quartered for treason.27 However new placards were posted calling for “the citizens to kill Rossetti, the Papal Ambassador, and defend the true faith.” Two Puritan merchants, Richard Chambers and the recent MP Samuel Vassall, were arrested in June for “‘seducing the King’s people’” by circulating a petition to the king for the return of Parliament. A well-known Puritan clergyman was also arrested, and some Puritan leaders had their homes searched and papers confiscated. The arrests only provoked more resistance.28 On 11 June the Common Council refused Charles’ request for 4,000 troops.29
To get financing, in June the king seized £130,000 from the mint in the Tower. This seriously added to England’s economic woes:
Credit had been shaken by the breach with Scotland, and foreign merchants had been steadily reducing their commitments in England. The sudden diversion of this bullion prevented many, engaged in commerce abroad, from meeting bills of exchange they had accepted. The protestation of these bills led to a cessation of shipments of coin to London. This reacted on the exchange — “the only sinews and livelihood of all trade.” The disorder of trade abroad affected the home market. The crisis was followed by failures, and the purchases of cloth and other goods for exportation were greatly reduced. Bankruptcies became numerous; and, with the suspension of credit, the amount of losses multiplied.30
The deteriorating economic picture added to discontent. During June and July mutinies broke out among the men conscripted to fight in Scotland. Several officers were beaten and at least two, both Catholics, killed.31 Others were abandoned or driven off, and the number of desertions and refusals to march were high. “From south to north, in an unofficial crusade of reformation, they taunted conformist clerics, tore up surplices, ripped Books of Common Prayer, and pulled down communion rails.” The recruits were often supported by local citizens.32
The lower classes among the population were beginning to test their strength amid the breakdown of governmental authority.
But it was a mark of a changing world that “persons of quality” no longer monopolized the political arena. The events of May 1640 demonstrated that the political domain now encompassed the streets of the metropolis, suburban taverns, country churchyards, toll booths, and markets, where commoners took issue with the affairs of the kingdom.33
In August, the Scots army invaded England. To raise money for troops, the Pepper Loan, a financial scheme involving the crown’s purchase from, and resale to, the same merchants, was forced through the East India Company general court by its leadership.34 Charles’ excuse for an army was routed in the Second Bishops’ War, and he again went north to negotiate an interim treaty. It resulted in the Scots’ Covenanter army remaining on English soil at England’s expense. On 28 August, twelve peers petitioned the king for the recall of Parliament (written by Pym and Oliver St. John).35 The Earl of Manchester, who was Lord Privy Seal and father of the later parliamentarian general, made a counterproposal in the Privy Council advising the king to call a Great Council of peers instead of a Parliament, which passed.36 But in the cover letter sent to the king it became apparent just how much sympathy for the aristocratic “rebels” there was:
…that the ground and motive of it [the Council’s advice] hath been the uniting of your Majesty and your subjects together, the want whereof the Lords conceive is the source of all the present troubles; …if your Majesty should receive a blow…monies and forces will be raised very coldly and slowly…37
Indeed, “Every day more nobles were arriving in London to give their support to the petition.”38
Beginning on 10 September, a mass petition was also circulated in London with similar but more extensive demands against ship money, impositions, monopoly patents, innovations in religion (i.e., Arminianism), the war on the Scots, and the “sudden calling and dissolving of Parliaments without the redress of grievances.”39
A movement of these proportions could not fail to cause alarm in the Privy Council. In spite of repeated promptings from the Council, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen were unable to suppress the petition. … On September 22nd, the Court of Aldermen officially disowned it. The Privy Council still had cause for alarm. Although only four Aldermen had signed, the manner of its circulation among the citizens and its wide support revealed the strength of popular feeling. The Council’s fears were justified…40
As a result, the Privy Council changed its recommendation to the king for the calling of Parliament; even the queen was persuaded.41 “…the aristocracy had virtually taken power out of the king’s hands…”42 The 10,000 signatures on the London petition were presented to Charles at York by the Atlantic merchant Maurice Thomson and his close associate, Richard Shute. Both men were to become leading figures in the radical parliamentary movement and London Common Council.43 Charles, having lost the confidence and support of a large section of the peerage as well as the gentry, in the financial, political, and military crisis, was forced to call a new Parliament.
Opposition to the government by now also included well-off artisans and business men of the livery companies as well as those without property (such as wage workers and apprentices).44 In September 1640, the annual election for Lord Mayor was held in Common Hall. Normally the most senior alderman acceded to the post, but this time the candidate, a close supporter of the royal court, was rejected. Instead, the two nominations were for aldermen who had been imprisoned by Charles for refusing to provide lists of citizens for the forced loan.45
This was a radical democratic break with feudal tradition, evidenced by the Secretary of State’s panicked letter to the king. The Lord Mayor consulted the Privy Council about the unprecedented action, and a second, more controlled meeting was held a week later where a compromise candidate was chosen. “…the Privy Council thought it wise to accept this election…”46 The parliamentary Puritan citizenry on the other hand was enraged, and retaliated by electing their preferred candidate, Alderman Thomas Soames, along with three other oppositional Puritan merchants, again including Samuel Vassall, as MPs to the new Parliament.47 The most important of these, however, was the Independent Puritan Alderman Isaac Pennington, owner of two breweries, and formerly a modest overseas merchant. Pennington was one of those who had refused the king a list of wealthy men in his ward. The new MPs were immediately presented by the citizens with their same petition of grievances to be submitted to the House of Commons. This was in violation of the tradition that petitions be approved by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, who had only recently rejected it. In the debate that followed it was agreed to have the petition read in the House of Commons instead of Common Hall, which was done just a few days after Parliament opened. These merchant MPs would soon become the critical link between the citizens of London, and, as its left wing, the overall parliamentary opposition in the Commons, tying the two together.48
1 Society and Puritanism in Pre-revolutionary England, 33
2 Hill, Society, 19
3 Hill, Society, 20-23.
4 MacCulloch, “Mumpsimus, Sumpsimus”
5 Green, History of the English People Vol. 5, 141-142. Charles simultaneously issued a manifesto appointing a general governor to take control of government and church in New England. Tyacke, “Revolutionary Puritanism,” 758-759, 760-761
6 Manning, Aristocrats, Plebeians, 16-17
7 “The National Covenant, 1637-60,” The Scottish History Society, https://scottishhistorysociety.com/learning-resources/the-national-covenant-1637-60/ Accessed 10 June 2016
8 “The First Bishops’ War, 1639,” BCW Project, http://bcw-project.org/military/bishops-wars/first-bishops-war Accessed 10 June 2016
9 Anderson, Absolutist State, 142
10 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 283-286, 288-290; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 86-88; Ashton, “Three Phases in the Role of the City,” 48, 50
11 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 95
12 John Noorthouck, A New History of London Including Westminster and Southwark (London: R. Baldwin, 1773), Chapter 11 fn. 27, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/new-history-london/pp154-174#p32 Accessed 7 June 2017
13 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 95
14 David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 70, https://oxford-universitypressscholarship-com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199237630.001.0001/acprof-9780199237630 Accessed 5 December 2020; Manning, Aristocrats, Plebeians, 23; “The First Bishops’ War, 1639,” BCW Project
15 Tyacke, “Revolutionary Puritanism,” 762
16 Como, “Secret Printing,” 41
17 Russell, “Parliament and the King’s Finances,” 110; Hill, Century, 46-47; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 98; C. H. Firth, “London During the Civil War,” History 11, no. 41 (April 1926): 25, http://www.jstor.com/stable/24399633 Accessed 29 December 2018
18 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 96-98
19 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 107
20 Pennington, “The Making of the War,” 162; Cressy, England on Edge, 82-86
21 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 308-309
22 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 100
23 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 107
24 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 107-108
25 Cressy, England on Edge, 117-118
26 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 108; Samuel R. Gardiner, History of England Vol. IX 1639-1641 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1884), 135, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/historyofengland017044mbp/mode/2up Accessed 5 November 2018
27 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 108 and fn. 7; Lindley, Civil War London, 8; Cressy, England on Edge, 122
28 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 108-109; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 311
29 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 102
30 William Robert Scott, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720 Vol. 1 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 224, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/constitutionfina01scotuoft Accessed 21 October 2016; Hill, Century, 91
31 Cressy, England on Edge, 87-88; Robin Clifton, “The Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution,” Past & Present, no. 52 (August 1971): 26, https://www.jstor.org/stable/650394 Accessed 13 February 2019; Gardiner, History of England Vol. IX, 160
32 Cressy, England on Edge, 92, 155; Manning, Aristocrats, Plebeians, 18-19
33 Cressy, England on Edge, 126
34 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 311-312
35 Hexter, King Pym, 78; Gardiner, History of England Vol. IX, 199
36 Brian Manning, “The Aristocracy and the Downfall of Charles I,” in Politics, Religion and the English Civil War, ed. Brian Manning (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), 43-44
37 Manning, “The Aristocracy and the Downfall of Charles I,” 44-45; Manning, Aristocrats, Plebeians, 23-25
38 Manning, “The Aristocracy and the Downfall of Charles I,” 43
39 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 175; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 312-313
40 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 174
41 Manning, “The Aristocracy and the Downfall of Charles I,” 46
42 Manning, Aristocrats, Plebeians, 25
43 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 313
44 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 109
45 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 110-111
46 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 111-112
47 For biographies of these men see Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 176-193
48 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 112-113