Episode 462: Brave New World

things back into gear. The King himself had now become almost in irrelevance in the business of renovating this kingdom. The familiar grant of tonnage and poundage was made to him, but only on the understanding that all his previous extractions had been illegal. The old centers of royal authority were simply swept away the Star Chamber, that old tutor innovation was abolished, ship money was condemned as contrary to the law.

The limits of royal forests were declared to be those that have been obtained in the twentieth year of King James the First. Now, all the while there was still the war of propaganda going on. The leading members of the Commons published their speeches, which, according to the Puritan Richard Baxter in his autobiography, were quote greedily bought up throughout the land, which greatly increased the people's apprehension of their danger end quote. Of course, by their danger, they

meant danger from the king. The sermons of the principal preachers were also printed and distributed. Yet the pamphlets were not simply directed against one or the other of the factions then gaining ground. They were part of a vigorous debate that was first forming about the ideals of public and English religious life. Questions for the first time were being posed. What were the grounds of a just monarchy?

Was there, in truth an ancient English constitution? Were the King, Parliament and people uniquely joined in some way now to all of these questions. The royalists were not silent and fought back with pamphlets of their own. It was a world of change. As the King would say to Parliament earlier in the year, quote you have taken the government all in pieces. In the weeks after Stafford's death, the King seems to have become resigned to his loss of power.

He signed the bill for the abolishment of tonnage and poundage, telling both houses of Parliament that quote. I had never had other design but to win the affections of my people end quote. He made a leading Puritan, the Earl of Essex, his Lord Chamberlain. Now all of this seemed to suggest that Charles had simply become resigned to the new state of being, that he was going to be fine with being a figurehead, and that the world would

simply move on without the English monarchy. Now that's how it looked on the surface, but none of that was true. In fact, beneath the surface, Charles was just playing for time and waiting for his opportunity to strike. They were already the makings of a king's party. From those outraged at the pretensions of parliament in assuming executive powers. Others weren't happy about the idea of a Puritan state church controlled by parliamentary lay commissioners in place of episcopal bishops.

Those who were moderate or orthodox in religion and government policy were starting steadily but surely to take the side of the king, And of course it was also possible that Charles might be able to divide the lords from the commons. In June of sixteen forty one, the lords threw out a bill excluding bishops from their numbers. They

said they weren't prepared to consider further reformation. At the same time, Member of Parliament John Pim, who was very much in control of the parliamentary faction at this point, put forth a series of measures called the Ten Propositions. These were all designed to increase parliamentary control of the King's Court and Council. The first characteristic of these was aimed at Catholics. All Jesuits and Catholic priests were to

be banned from court from here on out. And I want to be clear, they were never allowed to hold an official position. This is simply banning them from the court altogether. There was more to the Ten Propositions. The armies of Scotland and England were to be disbanded as quickly as possible. But what was most notable about them was the complete and total absence of even a reference to the King. He didn't talk about the need to eliminate royal authority, he just didn't talk about that authority

at all. Now, the Ten Propositions had been in part prompted by the King's recent and carefully resolved decision to travel to Scotland. It was feared by parliamentarians that in fact his destination would be York rather than Edinburgh, where he might take control of the English army garrison. There. Hence the call that the English and Scottish armies should stand down, because if the English and Scottish armies were joined together under the command of the King, then Charles

would have an almost irresistible force behind him. John Pim and his supporters were now seized with both anxiety and alarm, and decided that they would seize on the people's anxiety and alarm. They even convened Parliament on a Sunday morning at the beginning of August to debate the nature of the threat. They begged for a delay to the King's journey, but he would only consent to a pause of one

single day. Now, as the King prepared to go on his journey, a crowd gathered in Westminster and tried to block his exits. It may be that his presence in London acted as a form of reassurance at a time of great disorder, or it may be that some in the crowd suspected his intentions of trying to take control of the army. Either way, he went to Parliament on that morning, in a mood of I'd say, sort of

not very well concealed hostility. He named a commission of twenty two men who would administer affairs in his absence. Among them was the Earl of Newcastle, a notable enemy of the parliamentary cause. So the comments immediately responded to this by retiring to their chamber and debating the means of trying to raise some form of defense. Just to be on the safe side, an ordinance was passed, the first of its kind, appointing several key parliamentarians to attend

the King in Scotland. They were, of course not travel companions. These were very much spies and babysitters. They were hoping to supervise Charles's actions. It seemed another confrontation had become inevitable. Now Charles went to Edinburgh. He did not stop in York, as was suspected, and he was greeted in Edinburgh with

every sign of acclamation. He had once proceeded to gain the approval of the Scots, hoping to play his one's enemies against his new enemies, He attended the services of the Scottish Church with an outward display of piety, and agreed to the demand of the Scottish Covenanters that the bishops would be excluded from their reformed church. He attended the sessions of the Scottish Parliament and agreed to the terms of an Anglo Scottish Union, whereby his powers over

Parliament and the army would be cut dramatically. Now back in England, at the same time, Parliament had, for the first time in its history, begun to govern on its own. It paid the army, and it issued orders to royal officials, such as the Lieutenant of the Tower. It made decrees about liturgy and forms of religious worship. Most importantly, perhaps the Parliament decreed that this present Parliament could not be

closed without its own consent. It was in effect declaring that Parliament from now on was a permanent British political and governmental institution. Parliament reassembled on the twentieth of October in sixteen forty one, this time determined to ring from the King the same concessions the Scottish Parliament had already obtained from him. Now at this point John Pim was truly the leader of the Parliamentary Party and the orchestrator

of all parliamentary affairs. He had control over all all the factions, it seems, and could direct them to will wherever he needed them. Him and his colleagues were now intent upon stripping Charles of his prerogative powers, namely his ability to appoint his officers and counselors with no reference to Parliament whatsoever. Yet to do this they had to first deprive the upper house, the House of Lords, of

its majority in favor of the King. And so again Parliament, that is, the House of Commons, moved to expel thirteen bishops who sat in the House of Lords. A bill was passed by the Commons to disqualify clerics from accepting secular office, but of course, naturally enough, it was delayed in the House of Lords. Him tried to raise the temperature of the debate with the news of fresh army

plots and the ongoings in Edinburgh. Whether all of these rumors were true or not wasn't the point, because all they did was deep in the alarm within Parliament about the King's intentions, and it simply confirmed a fact that seemed to be known by everyone at this point that Charles the First simply could not be trusted. And it was just at that moment at the very beginning of November that news reached Parliament a rebellion had broken out

in Ireland. This immediately changed the game. Honestly, it's one of those turning points in history that you probably wonder what would have happened if the rebellion wouldn't have broken out, because I could see a scenario where somehow everyone steps back from the brink. But this is the catalyst that's going to push everything over the top, because immediately an Irish rebellion aroused the fears of all Protestants throughout England.

The rebellion, though it came as a had eclismic shock to those in England, honestly had been brewing for a really long time. And so here we need to just back up and explore the origins for a moment of the Irish Rebellion of sixteen forty one. Now, there were three defined elements in Irish society. The New English were Protestant settlers who had established themselves after the Reformation. They controlled the Parliament in Dublin and were intent upon imposing

English ways and standards upon the natives. I know that Ireland and England are right next to each other, but to them this was sort of an early form of imperialism or colonization. The Old English were different. They had arrived before the Reformation, some as early as the twelfth century, and had become as acclimatized that they identified themselves with Ireland rather than England. Many of them were Catholic, while some merely conformed in public to the Protestant Church of Ireland.

They owned about one third of the best land. The third group, known by the two former groups as the quote unquote mirror Irish, made up the largest part of the population, but like most downtrodden groups throughout history, they have left little record of their loyalties or beliefs. But those last two groups, the Irish and the Old English,

had a lot of grievances. The Crown had in previous years confiscated one quarter of the land that had been held by the Anglo Irish gentry and by the native Irish. It had already been decided in the reign of King James the First that no landowner could have the title to his lands unless he could prove he held proper feudal tenure. If he could not provide these credentials, then his lands would be confiscated and taken over by New

English or sometimes Scottish settlers. Thus James had resented the citizens of London with forty thousand acres in County Derry, the territory that is today still known as Londonderry. The six counties of Ulster had also dramatically fallen into the hands of the Scottish Presbyterians, hence the division nowadays between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The dismal state of the Church of Ireland and the zealous work of

Jesuit missionaries had also emboldened the Catholic cause. The Catholics had good reason for resentment. They were unable to educate their children, and their priests, with no benefices, were required to rely on the charity of their parishioners. Fines could also be imposed upon those who did not attend Protestant services.

Many forces were therefore at work in the revolt. The Irish Catholic leaders, who included the Old English, drew up a remonstrance in which they claimed to be rising up for the safety of their religion and for the defense of their lives and the states. They were aware of the proceedings of the English Parliament and of the concessions made by the King to the Scottish Presbyterians, and so felt all the more keenly the injustice to their native religion.

They feared also that the reformers or Puritans in England had so deep a hatred of Catholicism that they would force even more restraints upon them. And while they're doing that, exact new duties and taxes from them, they might even

go further. And in a statement of Irish grievances, it was suggested that the Scots and the English combined might quote come into Ireland with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other, for to plant their puritan and narchical religion among us, otherwise to utterly destroy us end quote. Honestly, the message went around, why shouldn't the Irish rise up in their own defense before it was simply too late? This was a grand irony of

the period. The negotiations between England and Scotland had the result of forcing Ireland into revolt. Charles had found it impossible in practice to administer three kingdoms when one had each pleased its loyalty to a separate religion, as honestly was truly the case. At this point. You have Scotland Presbyterian, you have England Protestant kind of Puritan, and the ne of Ireland Catholic. On the twenty third of October sixteen forty one, the rebellion began and the old English and

Irish rose up against their new English masters. A rebellion in Dublin on the previous day had been partially discovered and quelled, but the insurrection almost immediately spread throughout the countryside. Parties of armed men would ravage an English own plantation and then retire to their own territory. Others would actively supplant the English owners and replace them with their former owners. The English fugitives saw huge in the nearest army garrison,

where they remained in fear but bottled up. It was stated that many thousands of Protestants had been killed, that women had been raped and mutilated, and that babies had

been burned. A letter read out to the House of Commons alleged that the Irish rebels in Munster were engaged in quote exercising all manners of cruelties and striving who can be the most barbarously exquisite in tormenting the poor Protestants wheresoever they come, cutting off the privy members ears, fingers and hands, plucking out their eyes, boiling the heads of little children before their mother's faces, and then ripping out their mother's bowels, stripping women naked and standing by

them naked. Willis they are in travail. That means labor, killing the children as soon as they're born, ripping up their mother's bellies as they are delivered. End quote. Now, Okay, a lot of that was hyperbole and quite frankly wasn't happening. The real truth was that there was about five thousand English Protestants who were killed and about an equal number of Irish Catholics had fallen in the course of the

English counterattack. But all of this hyperbole and misinformation is going to sow the seeds of what's going to happen when Oliver Cromwell comes to power. Now November the fifth, John pam rose from his seat in Parliament to pledge his life and a state to the cause of suppressing

the Irish rebellion. Parliament at this point decided it not the King would be in charge of organizing and directing a Protestant army that might be employed in its own cause and its own defense if needed, but for now it could be used to suppress the rebellion in Ireland.

Now this was the occasion for the debate in a document that would later become known in the history of the English Civil War as the Grand Remonstrance, which just about two hundred and four clauses length and really sets out the basis for parliamentary rule of the Kingdom from

there on out. He needed this, Pim decided because he sensed that a Royalist party was starting to acquire more and more support, and he put everything out in writing, but at the same time issued a statement that certain clauses could be up for negotiation and amended as needed. This was sort of an olive branch to the Royalists to try to bring them into the fold, or I suppose keep them on Parliament's side. Is increasingly members, especially

of the House of Lords, started to waiver. The significance of this occasion is marked by Oliver Cromwell, who said, on leaving the chamber that quote, if the Remonstrance had been rejected, I would have sold all I had next morning and never have seen England more end quote. So it was a line in the sand that was being drawn at this point over which side you were on

and what you believed in. Edward Nichols wrote to the King while this was being debated all the way back on the eighth of November, writing quote it the remonstrance relates all the misgovernment and unpleasing things that have been done by ill counsuls, as they call it. If your Majesty come not instantly away from Edinburgh to London, I trouble to think what will be the issue of it?

End quote. So, hearing the news, Charles does decide to return to London from Edinburgh seventeen days later, and on his entrance into the city he was met by a cavalcade. He told those who assembled to greet him that he would maintain the old laws and the Protestant faith, and it's likely, honestly that the welcome from the Londoners was genuine.

The Venetian ambassador had already reported that anonymous placards had been posted in the streets naming the lords of Puritans as traders and authors of all the sedition, and just before the King had left Scotland, he too had received news that the Irish had erupted in rebellion. Now Pim and his colleagues were inclined to blame Charles for the rebellion.

In a more direct sense, some of the Irish rebels claimed that they had a commission from the King under the Great Seal, to arrest and seize goods, estates and persons of all the English Protestants. This claim, like many of the other ones that I've read, was not true by any sense, but it persuaded Pim and his followers that the King had actually intentionally started the revolt, the idea being that that would give him an excuse to raise an army, which he could actually then just turn

against Parliament before using it in Ireland. And so there was a bitter controversy over the size and direction of the military campaign in Ireland. The King said that one man, rather than four hundred, was best to direct a campaign. The parliamentarians naturally disagreed, claiming that Charles could not raise an army that the express approval of Parliament. In the last two months of the year, the Earl of Warwick

set about creating what was essentially a parliamentary force. Charles wanted a holly volunteer force composed of his supporters, while the parliamentarians insisted upon pressing men into service at every stage in the process. The Commons, with a small majority against the King, was opposed by the lords. In the event, only one regiment was ultimately sent to Ireland in sixteen forty one. A further force would arrive about five months

later in sixteen forty two. Of about five thousand Menlish garrisons in Ireland were for the moment essentially left on their own to fight their own battles. It's probably fair to assume that Pim and his fellows wish to continue to gather their resources for a conflict that they believed was coming much closer to home.