The seventeenth and eighteenth century
| Charles I |
James was followed by his son Charles I, who ruled
England from 1625 until his execution in 1649. Like James, Charles was chronically short
of money. While James lived extravagantly, the extravagance of Charles put his father to
shame. In addition, Charles was prosecuting a war against France and bungling it, but he
still needed money. Since Parliament would not increase his funds through taxation and
tariffs, Charles went about creatively raising money of his own. In 1628, Parliament met
and drafted the Petition of Right in which it declared several important rights of
individuals and Parliament that severely curtailed the power of the monarch:
(This petition of right would later become the basis of both the English Constitution and the American Revolution). Parliament voted funds for Charles to prosecute his war with France under one condition: he had to sign the Petition of Right and so agree to its terms. This he did, but he probably never intended to keep his word. In fact, Charles immediately broke his promise and, to avoid confrontation with Parliament, he dissolved it and refused to call it again until 1640. Now he had to make his way alone, without funds from Parliament. So Charles instituted the first major budget cuts in the history of the modern state: he made peace with his enemies&emdash;since, after all, peace is cheaper than war&emdash;he downsized the government administration, and he became extremely innovative in the raising of taxes. He did this by enforcing laws that had fusted unused for decades or centuries and he applied existing tax laws to areas that were never covered by them. Charles had one and only one goal: to rule England without Parliament, in other words, to rule England as an absolute monarch. |
| And, in the words of Guido da Montefeltro, it almost
worked. Charles, however, did not have a large or strong standing army that was
centralized and loyal to the king, nor did he have a civil bureaucracy trained or
efficient in centralized government. Still, however, he might have made it work if it
weren't for religion. Like his father, Charles sided with the religious conservatives against the more radical Puritans. The archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, was particularly hostile to the Puritans' complaints and Charles allowed him to freely take any measures to stifle their dissent. In 1633, Charles forbade Puritans from publishing or preaching, and in 1637, they tried to bring Scotland under the fold of the English church. The Scots had, for a long time, a Calvinist church based on a flattened hierarchy and the purification of the religion of all non-Biblical practices. The imposition of the English church--which included the English prayerbook, church hierarchy, and rituals and sacraments that were derived from Catholic ceremony--was too much for the Scots to take. So they rebelled. War, as you remember, is not cheap, and Charles was forced to reconvene Parliament in 1640 in order to fund the repression of the Scots. During the twelve years that Parliament did not meet, its members had been stewing in their juices and were loaded for bear. When they met in April of 1640, they refused to grant Charles any money at all until he had adequately redressed the long, long list of complaints that they brought with them. Charles, naturally, refused and dismissed them in May of 1640; hence the title, "The Short Parliament." This, however, was not a working strategy, so he reconvened Parliament and finally agreed to their terms. The Parliament set to work with ruthless efficiency when it reconvened in November. Raising taxes without Parliament approval was made illegal; William Laud, the archbishop of Canterbury, was impeached and executed; the primary instruments of Charles' centralized burueacracy were abolished; and finally, Parliament passed a law that allowed Parliament and Parliament alone to dismiss itself&emdash;in addition, it made it law that Parliament had to meet at least every three years. Charles went along with these measures, but when rebellion broke out in Ireland, radicals in Parliament proposed a bold move. Charles was asking for troops to send to Ireland, but the radicals didn't believe that Charles could be trusted with an army. So they proposed that the army be directly under Parliament's control. This, however, was too much for Charles to bear, so he invaded Parliament with his army. This move, bold and foolish at the same time, inspired Parliament to issue the Militia Ordinance, which declared the army under Parliamentary control. Thus began the English Civil War. |
| The English Civil War (1642-1646) | The English Civil War started as a conflict between
Parliament and Charles over constitutional issues; it fired its way to its conclusion
through the growing religious division in England. The monarch was supported by the
aristocracy, landowners, and by the adherents of the Anglican "high church,"
which retained the ceremonies and hierarchy so despised by the Puritans. The Parliamentary
cause was supported by the middle class, the Puritans, and the radical Protestants. The
king's forces roundly beat the Parliamentary forces for almost two years and the
Parliamentary cause seemed all but lost. In 1642, however, Parliament reorganized its army under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, who was a landowner and, in religious matters, an Independent. The Independents believed that each congregation and each region should be free to decide what ecclesiastical structure it would adhere to. If a congregation wished to be Puritan, so be it; if it wished to be Anglican, that's fine, too. Cromwell called his army "The New Model Army, " and in 1644, he turned the tide of the war. In 1645, the Parliamentary Army thoroughly defeated the royal army and in 1646, Charles surrendered. He did not, however, lose his crown. Parliament was now calling all the shots, but Charles, in name at least, was still king of England. He did not, however, wish to maintain this situation. After several years of trying to recapture power, Charles was finally arrested by Parliament, tried for treason, and executed. It's impossible to describe how revolutionary this action was. Parliament had declared itself supreme over the king, who, in European political theory, ruled by the election of God. If something or someone is supreme over the king, why should a people need a king? This was frightening new territory. When Charles was publicly executed, the gathered masses remained absolutely mute. Executions were normally raucous and festive affairs, full of shouting and laughing and whooping, but the execution of the king was too hard to take. No one said a word and many wept openly. They were experiencing the first great shock of a brave new world. |
| The Puritan Republic | Before the execution of the king, Parliament dissolved the institution of the English monarchy, the aristocracy, and the Anglican church. They were led in this revolution by Cromwell himself. When the king had been defeated, Parliament was largely made up of Calvinist Presbyterians. The Presbyterians wanted to abolish certain rituals and the current church hierarchy, but they also wanted to set up a new hierarchy of church officials called "presbyters." At the conclusion of the civil war, this Parliament wanted to abolish the Anglican church and impose Calvinist Presbyterianism on all of England and Scotland. Both the Puritan and Independent minorities balked at this suggestion and demanded a religious tolerance of all forms of Protestantism; when they were rebuked, Cromwell and the Puritans ejected all the Presbyterians by force and took over Parliament. It was Cromwell's new parliament that executed the king and formed a new, republican government. |
| They now called England, which had previously been a kingdom, a "commonwealth." It was to be run by Parliament, which would not only legislate and raise taxes, but would also perform the duties traditionally reserved for the monarch, such as running the judiciary and heading the army. The real power, however, was Oliver Cromwell. He had the army. He eventually tired of the arguments and the corruption in Parliament, and dispersed it by force in 1653. Thus ended the English commonwealth. |
| The new state Cromwell set up he called the "Protectorate," and
the officers of his army drafted a new constitution for this unique institution. Cromwell,
as "Lord Protector," served as a dictator. The Lord Protectorship was made a
hereditary office, and in 1655, Cromwell dismissed Parliament permanently. For all
practical purposes, Cromwell had made himself absolute monarch over England, an
achievement that James I and Charles I could only dream of. Cromwell was above everything else a brilliant and determined general. During the period of his rule, he conquered both Ireland and Scotland. England thus became an empire: Great Britain. But life in the new Puritan Republic was hard. The Puritans set about reforming the entire moral life of the English. They abolished any public recreation on Sunday, which was the only day off anyone ever got, and they passed restrictive laws on English behavior. For all practical purposes, the English were living under a Puritan king. Life under a monarch was a living memory, and when Cromwell died in 1658, he was succeeded by his weak and less brilliant son. Faced with a Puritan dictator or an Anglican king, the English opted for the latter. In 1660, a dissenting general reconvened Parliament, which then restored the English king, the aristorcracy, and the Anglican church. The grand experiment in republicanism had failed in the most tawdry autocracy. |
| Charles II | Charles II, the son of Charles I, was restored to the monarchy in 1660 and ruled until 1685; this period in English history is called, logically enough, the "Restoration." On the surface, at least, the restoration meant a return to the England of 1642. |
The eighteenth century was a century of mind-boggling change; when Europeans entered
the nineteenth century, they lived in a world that barely resembled the beginning of the
eighteenth century. In the one hundred years in between, European thought became
overwhelmingly mechanistic as the natural philosophy of Isaac Newton was applied to
individual, social, political, and economic life. The century saw the development of the philosophe
movement,which articulated the full values of the European Enlightenment, including
deism, religious tolerance, and political and economic theories that would dramatically
change the face of European society. Europe itself changed from a household economy to an
industrial economy. This change, perhaps one of the most earth-shattering transitions in
human history, permanently altered the face of European society and the family. Finally,
the century ended in revolution. The ideas of the philosophes were translated into
new governments--one in France and one in America--that shook the old order down to its
very roots.
On continental Europe, the monarchy slowly developed into more
absolutist forms following the theories of Bossuet and applying the enlightened ideas of
the philosophe movement, which argued that a monarch's job is to see to the rights
and welfare of the governed. States that had been only loosely centralized, such as
Austria and Russia, became powerfully centralized states, while states such as Prussia and
France further tightened the centralized control of the monarch. This centralized,
absolutist power of the monarch was used to effect profound reforms in the structure of
justice, government and economic life. Judicial torture gradually disappeared from the
face of Europe, and the death penalty was radically curtailed. Government was slowly
turned over to the hands of a civil bureaucracy, and serfs and peasants saw their economic
liberties greatly expanded. The exercise of absolutism, however, would produce a fiery
revolution in France, a revolution that would forever make the absolute monarchy an
obsolescence.
The century saw the decline of monarchical power in England. At the
beginning of the century, power was divided between the monarch and the Parliament, but
Parliament refused to engage in any of the reforms going on in the rest of Europe. Because
these reforms were associated with absolute monarchies, the English refused to participate
in any kind of national legislation. Instead the English government was run on
"interest"; coalitions were built in Parliament by making promises to varying
groups. These promises were knit together into powerful factions whose primary job was
simply to deliver on the promises. Needless to say, parliamentary politics was incredibly
corrupt. Members of Parliament secured votes mainly by paying for them, and the temptation
to corruption increased as the power of the institution increased. This came to a head in
the latter part of the century when George III began to assert his own prerogatives and
replaced parliament ministers with his own. This crisis, the "battle over
prerogative," eventually was won by Parliament at the end of the century. This was
the last gasp of monarchical power in England; from this point on, the nation was, for the
most part, run by Parliament.
Finally, a new European nation was established in America. This nation
was forged in a revolution and built almost entirely upon Enlightenment ideas. Practically
speaking, the final legacy of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century would be the
establishment of a fully functioning Enlightenment government based, theoretically at
least, on secular values and the notions of right and equality. But that, as they say, is
a story for another day.