James I and Catholicism, on his accession

One the the best-known of Gardiner's assertions about James I is on page 82: that "he was unwilling that the blood of any man should be shed for diversity of opinion in religion." The assertion is very plausible for the period before the Gunpower Treason, but, although we will see echos of the sentiment until James's death, the king was not strongly married to this point of view.

Succession

Picking up around page 78, Gardiner talks about the candidates to succeed Queen Elizabeth. The best discussion of this topic, I think, is in the introduction to The Correspondence of James VI with Robert Cecil.

The law was fairly clear: succession as settled by Henry VIII would be through his male line. When that failed, Mary (originally excluded as illegitimate) and then Elizabeth, his daughters should succeed. The provision for the failing of all three lines was descent to the "rightful heirs" of Henry VIII. Determining the next "rightful heir" was the sticking point. The king tried to help by inserting in his will that if his line should fail, descent would be through his niece, Francis; then his niece Eleanor; then the next "rightful heirs." The possible heirs in these lines were Edward, Lord Beauchamp; and the Earl of Derby.

Hereditary was politically important in European politics. It was the least costly and least violent way of transferring power. The uncertainty of reproduction undoubtedly made Henry VIII make these complicating provisions, but in fact peoples' idea of "right inheritance" would provide strong contradictory arguments. And by the rules recognized at the time, the nearest heir was James, the grandson of Henry VII's eldest daughter, Margaret. The closest descendent who was an English subject was Arbella Stuart, also in Margaret's line.

There were objections against all these candidates, but there were no more descendants of Henry VII. Others were proposed as descending from Edward III or even earlier kings, but these were mainly foreigners. In the end, the choice was left to Queen Elizabeth, as we will learn, and she may or may not have designated King James. The English hierarchy accepted him as the least tainted of the available choices.

Skipping ahead a bit

I apologize for a derth of posting. For reasons unrelated to this blog, I was working on a document related to events 25 years after the current period of the tour.

You may still want to look at it, though. It's at http://bob.fooguru.org/content/herbert/index.html

Asynchronisity again

I've been reading a very dreary, imperfect and badly edited biography of Sir Walter Raleigh--the most recent one, by Raleigh Trevelyan--and came across a reference to the fight of Raleigh's ship Revenge with the Spanish fleet at Flores in the Azores in 1591. The battle is famous--perhaps the best known "against all odds" story in English history--and was documented by Raleigh in what is probably the first printed piece of popular propaganda in English history; but I was totally unaware of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's much later poem on the subject. In a strange way, the poem drives home Raleigh's point better than he did himself.

It seems strange to me that our tour guide didn't mention this incident (although he stressed the defeat of the Armada 3 years before), because this incident--especially as decorated by Raleigh and interpreted by Tennyson--graphically explains the attitude of many Englishmen towards the Spanish. That attitude will come to the fore when reach the 1620s.

The Gowrie Conspiracy

On page 76, our tour guide passes over with no comment the curious affair of the Gowrie Plot. Over the period of several hours on August 5, 1600, the King of Scotland was easily captured by a supposedly rebel lord—the Earl of Gowrie—and just as easily escaped. The events of the day are confusing and several interpretations may be laid on them.
In brief, Alexander Ruthven, the young brother of the Earl of Gowrie, convinced James, who was in the field hunting, to accompany Ruthven to Gowrie House in Perth. The story he is supposed to have given the king is that he had captured a vagrant carrying a pot of gold. When they arrived in Perth, Ruthven conducted the king to a tower room in which was a tall armed man. Ruthven left James there, locking the door behind him; and told the king's party, coming later, that the King had already left Perth. Some time later, the king shouted from a window in his room. His attendants rushed the tower, killing Ruthven, and James was freed unharmed.
There are three broad interpretations of these events:

1. That there was a plot by Ruthven, or Gowrie and Ruthven, to kidnap and/or kill the king.
2. That it was a plot by the king to ruin the Ruthvens, whom he viewed as dangerous to his throne.
3. That it was just a misunderstanding that was blown out of proportion.

There isn't room (an I have no patience) to sift the evidence here. No explanation seems entirely satisfactory. Samuel Cowen, in an entertaining book, takes the position that the king was the conspirator. Andrew Lang, in James VI and the Gowrie Mystery looks at all sides, but concludes that Gowrie and Ruthven were the plotters.
Why is this important (especially given that our tour guide does not find it so)? It is not because if insight it gives us on James's character--clearly the evidence is ambiguous whether the king in this case was

• Greedy and gullible, or
  
• Crafty and vengeful, or
• Careless and ill-tempered

No, the importance, if there is any, lies in the use James made of this incident in later years. He kept it as a personal holiday (and so the court must also) and held it up as a special sign of providence. Unless the third interpretation above is true, this required a certain cynicism, or perhaps self-aggrandizement, hints of which I think we will frequently see in James I of England.

Basilikon Doron

In the paragraph that spans pages 75 and 76, our tour guide gives us a picture of James VI of Scotland that will help us when we meet him later as James I of England.
Strangely, Gardiner gives short shrift to the one document that is probably the most revealing of James's character: a treatise that that king wrote for the instruction of his son, Prince Henry, called Basilikon Doron.
For the most part, this book contains sound, if at times shallow, advice on the right behavior of a king towards God, his state and his people. But when it became known outside the royal family (it was not originally intended for publication, and originally only seven copies were printed), the Doron was criticized on many points by "the Godly sort". The chief problem was that James derived all his views of kingship from one basic principle: That kings derive their authority directly from God. He assumed that this fact gave him broad power, authority, even wisdom, in matters of religion. And this assumption could not go unchallenged by the ministers, who were among the few people in Scotland who could actually read a book.
To blunt the criticism, the king released the Doron for publication in 1599. He included a Preface "To the Reader" in which he tried to justify himself. If you read no other part of the book, read those nine pages because they reveal the internal logic that will govern James's decisions for the next 25 years: that he is "steadfast, true and plain", with a special mandate from God; and that those who oppose him either misunderstand or are driven by personal motives.
The introductory sonnet summarizes Basilikon Doron, and although it is well known, perhaps it will not be out of place here as a reminder:

God gives not kings the style of gods in vain,
For on the throne His sceptre do they sway;
And as their subjects ought them to obey,
So kings should fear and serve their God again.
If, then, ye would enjoy a happy reign,
Observe the statutes of our heavenly king,
And from His law make all your laws to spring.
If His lieutenant here you would remain,
Reward the just, be steadfast, true, and plain;
Repress the proud, maintaining aye the right;
Walk always so as ever in His sight,
Who guards the godly, plaguing the profane;
And so shall you in princely virtues shine,
Resembling right your mighty King divine.

17th-century Equivalant to Las Vegas

I apologize for being a tardy blogger. Last week I was at technology meeting in Las Vegas. It got me thinking what the 17th-century analog of Las Vegas might be. What are the main characteristics of Las Vegas?

1. Large crowds of people aware only of themselves.
2. Prices beyond the reach of most, but so persistent that people pay or go hungry.
3. Temptations so artfully decorated that victims recognize their folly only as it consumes them.

There is only one 17th-century analog: hell.

Most of what is known about the views of the English and Scots on the subject of Hell comes from entertainments--plays like Marlowe's Faust. A study of contemporary ecclesiastical sources on the nature of the "other place" would be rewarding, I think. I admit that the underworld the poets portray does not have the surface attraction of Las Vegas, but the theme of selfish denizens condemned by their own acts to pain and suffering is immediately applicable.

James VI Loses Control of the Church

I'm going to gloss over pages 55 through 75. You should not skip over them: they are important if you are to understand the religious climate when we finally begin our tour. These pages cover in some detail the missteps of the Scottish government which led to the Kirk becoming a potent independent political power. My reasons for not dealing with these transactions in detail are that the mistakes in government are the same we have seen James make in the past and that he will make in the future; that the causes are not nearly as important as the results; and that in hindsight, the results are easy to foresee.

Gardiner comes to three important conclusions about this period, which spans approximately 1594-1601:

1. That the General Assembly of the Kirk was in a way a substitute for the exercise of political influence by the non-titled wealthy classes.
2. That this political influence served as a curb on the tendency of the nobility to preserve their feudal dominance.
3. That liberty of speech from the pulpit was a key factor in the development of a politically sound and unified Scotland.

We will need to keep in mind that these results occurred in spite of King James.

Because this is such a big span of pages, I'll delay the next post to let you digest it. I will be at Microsoft Management Summit next week, anyway, so another blog post in April in unlikely.

The portrait above is of James Beaton, the Archbishop of Glasgow during the period covered by today's post.

Sometimes we're still arguing about the same things

Yesterday's post that touched lightly on church government put me in mind of a statement I made early in this blog: that passions about the controversies of 17th-century Britain are largely exhausted now. That statement does not apply to Ireland, and there are probably broad exceptions in the rest of the English-speaking world.

It was reading reading the tail end of Arthur Bryant's 3-volume biography of Samuel Pepys that provoked me to this entry, though. Bryant, writing about a period 90 years after the era into which we are preparing to dip our toes, naturally took a position in support of his hero, the Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Pepys. In doing so, he re-introduced, in the 1930s, some arguments that have been simmering (sometimes raging) since 1610. Bryant confidently assumes a Tory stance. By doing so, he automatically (and apparently with his eyes open) puts himself into angry disagreement with Whigs like Macaulay; and makes violent accusations against the ebablers of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

There is no doubt that serious charges can be proved against the lords, lawyers and bishops who brought William of Orange to the British crowns. In many ways, they were a scummy lot. But the same can be said for the sycophants and infidels who suppported the rightful king, James Stuart and his foreign-driven religious policy. My point is that we are still not over it. Seventy years ago Bryant could work himself into a (for a Tory) frenzy about some of the same issues that excited the English and Scots in 17th century.
I think that if you turn on AM radio in Central Texas tomorrow you will hear people work themselves into frenzies over very similar arguments.

This brief revery encourages me, because I think our walk in 17th-century Britain may occasionally be topical as well as interesting.

James VI and Andrew Melville

Pages 48 to 56 deserve to be read carefully, if only because they predict many of the problems the Stuart kings will have over the next 90 years. Central in the conflict between King James VI of Scotland--soon to be a focus of our tour in England--and his Scots church is Andrew Melville, the proto-Presbyterian.

It is difficult to reconcile Gardiner's view of Melville as "the Presbyterian leader of the day, with a mind narrower than that of Knox, the champion of a system rather than a spiritual guide"; with the opposite opinion (see the link) that he was far more interested in matters of faith than of government. The conflicting conclusions probably reflect the man's complexity.

There is nothing so prophetic of the Stuarts' fate as Melville telling King James to his face that he was "God's silly vassal." ("Silly" meant weak and foolish.)

James Melville was the most advanced Scots scholar of his time. He was one of a handful of Scotsmen who could read Greek. His reputation as a scholar in France and Switzerland spanned religious boundaries. He is deservedly considered the founder of Scotland's reputation for learning.

Note two links in the linked article on Melville: first the article on his nephew, James Melville, himself a considerable scholar and presbyterian founder; and second the article on Robert Browne, the seperationist who is considered the father of Congregationalism.

Next time we'll take a look at the key weakness of the Scots clergy in the 150s: the political nature of their key grievances. I hope I won't spoil the tour by revealing that this weakness will gradually become at least a temporary strength. If you feel like reading ahead, begin at page 55.

The Character of James I

We now come to a figure whose person or shadow we will encounter at almost every step of our walking tour. James VI of Scotland became King James the first of England on the death of Queen Elizabeth. As king his weaknesses and strengths--for he had both--were multiplied in effect. If, as Heraclitus says, character is destiny, then a king's character is his kingdom's destiny.

Fortunately we know quite a bit about James I, from his own writings and from comments written by observant and probably trustworthy contemporaries. Our tour guide has read it all and digests it beginning at the bottom of page 48.

Gardiner foreshadows here, a technique not always appropriate in a history, but used to good effect here. He shows that the character of the king made it almost impossible for him to deal with the religio-political situation he is inheriting. On plus side, James was intelligent, intellectually curious, and--for a monarch--well-educated. (Most branches of learning were not considered useful to a king.) But he was vane, dogmatic, a poor judge of character, and showed a flaw that Gardiner sometimes shares: a difficulty in judging what is important and what is not. Gardiner shows these defects led to intolerance in government even though James himself was a tolerant man. Expect to see the effects of this blog-by-blog for a considerable time.

Note that this is not a comprehensive assessment of James's character. Gardiner will return to the subject several times. It is enough of an introduction, however, to explain the development of relations betwwen the king and the Scottish clergy (pages 49-51), the Scots feudal nobility (pages 51-53), and the corporate Presbyterian Kirk (pages 53-55).

Next time we will look at a case that shows some of the conflicts exacerbated by James's character: Black's case. If you want to read ahead, it starts at the bottom of page 56.

Before we can get our tour into full swing, our tour guide thinks we need a little more background. In particular, he wants us to keep in mind the fundamental differences in the religious landscapes of England and Scotland, and the inherent inability of the king of both to deal with the consequent political problems of either.

Read the beginning of Chapter 2: pages 44-49. Gardiner succinctly shows us an England where the Church was a fulcrum balancing the challenges posed by Catholics on one side and puritans on the other. He contracts this with Scotland, where, under James VI, the Church quickly became exclusively associated with the equivalent of the puritan party. The Presbyterian Second Book of Discipline, which Gardiner mentions, is a Calvinist constitution.

Why should we tourists care about this? It is because, as Gardiner says, in those days every religious question was also a political one. And as Presbyterian ideas become more visible in the landscape, we will see their effects on the countries through which we tour. After all, the Book of Discipline says

It is proper to kings, princes, and magistrates to be called lords and dominators over their subjects, whom they govern civilly, but it is proper to Christ only to be called Lord and Master in the spiritual government of the kirk....

And if that idea takes hold south of Tweed, it will change the landscape considerabily.

At the end of chapter 1, Gardiner brings us to the death of Queen Elizabeth. He does not spend much time on the controversey of the naming of her successor, James VI of Scotland, which is odd because it is the sort of detail the Gardiner seems to like. In a footnote, he is kind enough to point us to what he considers the most detailed account of the last 2 days of the queen's life, which give me the chance to introduce Isaac Disraeli (1766-1848), the father of the Prime Minister. The elder Disraeli made his living by his pen, and his Curiosities of Literature is a delightful work to browse and a well-researched (in many cases) source of historical anecdote. Gardiner refers us to Disraeli's account of the death of Elizabeth, which I reproduce here:

SECRET HISTORY OF THE DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Source: Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3, pp 328-332.

It is an extraordinary circumstance in our history, that the accession to the English dominion, in two remarkable cases, was never settled by the possessors of the throne themselves during their lifetime; and that there is every reason to believe that this mighty transfer of three kingdoms became the sole act of their ministers, who considered the succession merely as a state expedient. Two of our most able sovereigns found themselves in this predicament: Queen Elizabeth and the Protector Cromwell! Cromwell probably had his reasons not to name his successor; his positive election would have dissatisfied the opposite parties of his government, whom he only ruled while he was able to cajole them. He must have been aware that latterly he had need of conciliating all parties to his usurpation, and was probably as doubtful on his death-bed whom to appoint his successor as at any other period of his reign. Ludlow suspects that Cromwell was so discomposed in body or mind, that he could not attend to that matter; and whether he named any one is to me uncertain. All that we know is the report of the Secretary Thurlow and his chaplains, who, when the protector lay in his last agonies, suggested to him the propriety of choosing his eldest son, and they tell us that he agreed to this choice. Had Cromwell been in his senses, he would have probably fixed on Henry, the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, rather than on Richard, or possibly had not chosen either of his sons!

Elizabeth, from womanish infirmity, or from state-reasons, could not endure the thoughts of her successor; and long threw into jeopardy the politics of all the cabinets of Europe, each of which had its favourite candidate to support. The legitimate heir lo the throne of England was to be the creature of her breath, yet Elizabeth would not speak him into existence! This had, however, often raised the discontents of the nation, and we shall see how it harassed the queen in her dying hours. It is even suspected that the queen still retained so much of the woman, that she could never overcome her perverse dislike to name a successor; so that, according to this opinion, she died and left the crown to the mercy of a party! This would have been acting unworthy of the magnanimity of her great character—and as it is ascertained that the queen was very sensible that she lay in a dying state several days before the natural catastrophe occurred, it is difficult to believe that she totally disregarded so important a circumstance. It is therefore, reasoning à priori, most natural to conclude that the choice of a successor must have occupied her thoughts, as well as the anxieties of her ministers; and that she would not have left the throne in the same unsettled state at her death as she had persevered in during her whole life. How did she express herself when bequeathing the crown to James the First, or did she bequeath it at all?

In the popular pages of her female historian Miss Aikin, it is observed that the closing scene of the long and eventful life of Queen Elizabeth was marked by that peculiarity of character and destiny which attended her from the cradle, and pursued her to the grave. The last days of Elizabeth were indeed most melancholy—she died a victim of the higher passions, and perhaps as much of grief as of age, refusing all remedies and even nourishment. But in all the published accounts, I can nowhere discover how she conducted herself respecting the circumstance of our present inquiry. The most detailed narrative, or as Gray the poet calls it, the Earl of Monmouth's odd account of Queen Elizabeth's death, is the one most deserving notice; and there we find the circumstance of this inquiry introduced. The queen at that moment was reduced to so sad a state, that it is doubtful whether her majesty was at all sensible of the inquiries put to her by her ministers respecting the succession. The Earl of Monmouth says, On Wednesday, the 23rd of March, she grew speechless. That afternoon, by signs, she called for her council, and by putting her hand to her head when the King of Scots was named to succeed her, they all knew he was the man she desired should reign after her. Such a sign as that of a dying woman putting her hand to her head was, to say the least, a very ambiguous acknowledgment of the right of the Scottish monarch to the English throne. The odd but very naive account of Robert Cary, afterwards Earl of Monmouth, is not furnished with dates, nor with the exactness of a diary. Something might have occurred on a preceding day which had not reached him. Camden describes the death-bed scene of Elizabeth; by this authentic writer it appears that she had confided her state-secret of the succession to the lord admiral (the Earl of Nottingham); and when the Earl found the queen almost at her extremity, he communicated her majesty's secret to the council, who commissioned the lord admiral, the lord keeper, and the secretary, to wait on her majesty, and acquaint her that they came in the name of the rest to learn her pleasure in reference to the succession. The queen was then very weak, and answered them with a faint voice, that she had already declared, that as she held a regal sceptre, so she desired no other than a royal successor. When the secretary requested her to explain herself, the queen said, I would have a king succeed me; and who should that be but my nearest kinsman, the King of Scots? Here this state conversation was put an end to by the interference of the archbishop advising her majesty to turn her thoughts to God. Never, she replied, has my mind wandered from him.

An historian of Camden's high integrity would hardly have forged a fiction to please the new monarch: yet Camden has not been referred to on this occasion by the exact Birch, who draws his information from the letters of the French ambassador, Villeroy; information which it appears the English ministers had confided to this ambassador; nor do we get any distinct ideas from Elizabeth's more recent popular historian, who could only transcribe the account of Cary. He had told us a fact which he could not be mistaken in, that the queen fell speechless on Wednesday, 23rd of March, on which day, however, she called her council, and made that sign with her hand, which, as the lords chose to understand, for ever united the two kingdoms. But the noble editor of Cary's Memoirs (the Earl of Cork and Orrery) has observed that the speeches made for Elizabeth on her death-bed are all forged. Echard, Rapin, and a long string of historians, make her say faintly (so faintly indeed that it could not possibly be heard), I will that a king succeed me, and who should that be but my nearest kinsman, the King of Scots? A different account of this matter will be found in the following memoirs. She was speechless, and almost expiring, when the chief councillors of state were called into her bed-chamber. As soon as they were perfectly convinced that she could not utter an articulate word, and scarce could hear or understand one, they named the King of Scots to her, a liberty they dared not to have taken if she had heen able to speak; she put her hand to her head, which was probably at that time in agonising pain. The lords, who interpreted her sign just as they pleased, were immediately convinced that the motion of her hand to her head was a declaration of James the Sixth as her successor. What was this but the unanimous interpretation of persons who were adoring the rising sun?

This is lively and plausible; but the noble editor did not recollect that the speeches made by Elizabeth on her deathbed, which he deems forgeries, in consequence of the circumstance he had found in Cary's Memoirs, originate with Camden, and were only repeated by Rapin and Echard, &c. I am now to confirm the narrative of the elder historian, as well as the circumstance related by Cary, describing the sign of the queen a little differently, which happened on Wednesday, 23rd. A hitherto unnoticed document pretends to give a fuller and more circumstantial account of this affair, which commenced on the preceding day, when the queen retained the power of speech; and it will be confessed that the language here used has all that loftiness and brevity which was the natural style of this queen. I have discovered a curious document in a manuscript volume formerly in the possession of Petyt, and seemingly in his own handwriting. I do not doubt its authenticity, and it could only have come from some of the illustrious personages who were the actors in that sollemn scene, probably from Cecil. This memorandum is entitled

Account of the last words of Queen Elizabeth about her Successor.

On the Tuesday before her death, being the twenty-third of March, the admiral being on the right side of her bed, the lord keeper on the left, and Mr. Secretary Cecil (afterwards Earl of Salisbury) at the bed's feet, all standing, the lord admiral put her in mind of her speech concerning the succession had at Whitehall, and that they, in the name of all the rest of her council, came unto her to know her pleasure who should succeed; whereunto she thus replied:

I told you my seat had been the seat of kings, and I will have no rascal to succeed me. And who should succeed me but a king?

The lords not understanding this dark speech, and looking one on the other; at length Mr. Secretary boldly asked her what she meant by those words, that no rascal should succeed her. Whereto she replied, that her meaning was, that a king should succeed: and who, quoth she, should that be but our cousin of Scotland?

They asked her whether that were her absolute resolution? whereto she answered, I pray you trouhle me no more; for I shall have none but him. With which answer they departed.

Notwithstanding, after again, about four o'clock in the afternoon the next day being Wednesday, after the Archbishop of Canterbury and other divines had been with her, and left her in a manner speechless, the three lords aforesaid repaired unto her again, asking her if she remained in her former resolution, and who should succeed her? but not being able to speak, was asked by Mr. Secretary in this sort, We beseech your majesty, if you remain in your former resolution, and that you would have the King of Scots to succeed you in your kingdom, show some sign unto us: whereat, suddenly heaving herself upwards in her bed, and putting her arms out of bed, she held her hands jointly over her head in manner of a crown; whence as they guessed, she signified that she did not only wish him the kingdom, but desire continuance of his estate: after which they departed, and the next morning she died. Immediately after her death, all the lords, as well of the council as other noblemen that were at the court, came from Richmond to Whitehall by six o'clock in the morning, where other noblemen that were in London met them. Touching the succession, after some speeches of divers competitors and matters of state, at length the admiral rehearsed all the aforesaid premises which the late queen had spoken to him, and to the lord keeper, and Mr. Secretary (Cecil), with the manner thereof; which they, being asked, did affirm to be true upon their HONOUR.

Such is this singular document of secret history, I cannot but value it as authentic, because the one part is evidently alluded to by Camden, and the other is fully confirmed by Cary; and besides this, the remarkable expression of rascal is found in the letter of the French ambassador. There were two interviews with the queen, and Cary appears only to have noticed the last on Wednesday, when the queen lay speechless. Elizabeth all her life had persevered in an obstinate mysteriousness respecting the sccession, and it harassed her latest moments. The second interview of her ministers may seem to us quite supernumerary; but Cary's putting her hand to her head, too meanly describes the joining her hands in manner of a crown.

On pages 40 and 41, our tour guide makes one of those unlikely assertions that give his prose punch. He claims that only in England did the spirit of modernism meld with the spirit of the renaissance. His illustrations are three of the best-known works of literature from the period immediately before the one we will be touring.

Gardiner starts with Orlando Furioso, and the idea that Italians of Elizabeth's time probably connected with it only as a tale of long lost time. Then Don Quixote, in which he claims the Spanish could find ample support for rejecting the medieval ethos. And finally Spenser's Faery Queene, which provides a perfect synthesis of medieval and Elizabethan sensibilities.

I don't know that there is any value in all this, and I doubt Gardiner did. But it's interesting to think about. And if you haven't read one or more of these pieces of the common experience, maybe this will be an opportunity for you to at least dip into them.

Richard Hooker and a Blog Dilemma

On page 39, our guide makes a casual reference to the "great work of Hooker". Do you know who Richard Hooker was? Almost everyone we will encounter in the 17th century knew, and had read, or read in, Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker's "great work."

I can point you to Hooker's works:

• Volume 1.
• Volume 2.
• Volume 3.

But I haven't read much in them myself. And this is a fundamental dilemma in my plan for this blog. My inclination is to put other work on hold and read these three volumes. What with work, family and other reading, that would probably take me 9 months. By Christmas, I would have a very good background in the doctrine, politics and history of the Church of England as Queen Elizabeth left it.

Will I do it? Almost certainly not. I don't have enough years left to follow that kind of rabbit hole. The loss is mine and yours. If I had a deeper knowledge of the thought that fed the Church of England, I could write a better blog. (On the other hand, we might never get to 1603.)

For the most part we'll have to rely on Professor Gardiner (who I'm sure read Hooker) to dole out the knowledge we need when we need it.
But Hooker is hardly the only rock on which we may flounder. There are Ralegh's works. Bacon's. Laud's. The Strafford Letters. D'Ewes's diaries. Cromwell's letters and speeches. Milton's political works. Prynne's diatribes. The Parliamentary History. The Anglo-Catholic Library. At every turn there is more material than I have the years or you the patience to read, let alone report.

Brownism

One of the shadows over the landscape we will explore is that of a man about whom almost nothing is known: Robert Brown. He was a Cambridge man who adopted (he certainly did not invent) a most perverse concept of religiosity: that a congregation was a Church, self-contained with respect to doctrine and government. This idea was so at odds with prevailing opinion about religion and religious government that it was condemned by almost everyone: the court, the Catholics, the Church and the puritans.

You can read what Gardiner has to say about Brownism on pages 36 and 37.

It's interesting that we know almost nothing about Robert Brown, even though the views he published become the prevailing opinion in the army in the late 1640s. He was born in Rulandshire and may have been related to Lord Burleigh. He was active in teaching his ideas around 1581. He may have led a small congregation in Middleburg in Zealand. He later reconciled to the Church of England and accepted a living in Northamptonshire. He is said to have boasted of being committed to 32 separate prison cells. His undisputed writings, if any there were, have disappeared.
Brown himself is of almost no importance to our story, but the allure of the theories he preached proved strong among common people.

Slightly more that what is actually known about Brown can be found in The Rise of Modern Democracy in Old and New England, by Charles Borgeaud, translated by Mrs Hill, pp. 32-34:

Robert Brown had once been a pupil of Cartwright,
at Cambridge; he had developed and carried to
their extreme limit the opinions of his teacher. At
first he settled at Norwich, and organized there a
Church according to his views, but the interference of
the Bishop soon forced him to leave the country.
He took refuge in Holland, followed by part of his
congregation, and settled himself at Middleburg.
There he published, in 1582, the first systematic
statement of the congregational theory, A Booke
Which Sheweth the Life and Manners of all true 
Christians [Brit. Mus. c. 37, E. 57.] 'True Christians are united into a
companie or number of believers who by a willing
covenant made with their God, place themselves
under the government of God and of Christ, keeping the Divine law in a holy Communion.'

It is this particular definition of Brown's which is
new, for the other principles which he maintains, the
election of ministers solely by the congregations, and
the actual sovereignty of the assembly of the faithful,
were already to be found in the writings of Cartwright.
But the one new thing was of grave importance, not only because it destroyed the notion of
the system of National Churches, but because it
necessarily involved a complete separation between
the domains of religion and politics. Robert Brown
declared that the State had no right to interfere with
the internal affairs of the Church; only such things as
affected public order, and the outward manifestations
of religion, were within its province. It has no power
whatsoever 'to compel religion, to plant Churches
by power, and to force a submission to ecclesiastical
government.'

The founder of Congregationalism has gained a
definite place among the first defenders of religious
liberty. And yet it is quite clear that he did not
himself see the full significance of his arguments.
Though he denies the right of a civil magistrate to
interfere in purely religious questions, by a curious
inconsistency frequent in the writers of the age, he
cannot get rid of the prevalent notion which confused
religious society with political society. He believed
that the truths which he proclaimed concerning religious
matters ought to be equally applied to civil
affairs. 'We give these definitions so generall,'
says the author of A Booke concerning Trne Christians 
in so many words, 'that they may be applied also to
the civill State.' He ends by declaring that civil
magistrates, like religious functionaries, ought to be
chosen with the consent of the people.

The harsh measures taken to put down Congregationalism by Elizabeth's government sufficiently
attest the importance which was attached to the
movement. Ministers were even hanged for the
sole crime of having spread the writings of Brown.
The author of the incriminated writings had by this
time made his submission and returned to his
country. He owed his pardon to the protection of
persons in authority. But his disciples did not
follow him in his return to the State Church.
Though imprisoned, banished, and even executed
as felons, they persisted in their schism, and new
congregations under other leaders were founded in
Holland. One of these, that of which John Robinson
was the minister, set sail in 1620 for America.
These were the first colonists of New England, the
famous Pilgrim Fathers.

The Oath "Ex officio" and its consequences

It is a principal of the law which we inherit from 16th-century England that a witness must testify to the truth—all the truth—but he must not lie. The first part of that stricture does not, however, oblige the witness to testify against himself.
This principle, as Gardiner points out in pages 34-37, was respected to some degree in the King's courts. It was not observed, however, in the new Court of High Commission, where the oath ex officio required all men, on the fate of their souls, to say true about their actions and the actions of their friends.
A court may be established to dispense justice, or to punish the guilty. Superficially, these may seem to be the same thing. As a practical matter, justice depends on finding the approximate truth; punishment consists in establishing blame.
Gardiner states that Englishmen could not stomach the presumption of the Court of High Commission, because it insisted that a man must convict himself. Gardiner is wrong. Many an Elizabethan could easily stomach the high church court, and those that could not were more concerned with who was convicted than why.
What is true is that Englishmen considered freedom from self-incrimination to be one of their basic rights. The idea that such right could be abrogated by a Church court established at the whim of the Governor of the Church—the king—was frightening. Here, long before any overt hostility between the people and the Crown, is a seed (perhaps a root) of the troubles that will follow.

A very short apostrophe on our tour guide

We must not mistake the very learned and fully informed Samuel Rawson Gardiner, a tour guide without equal, for a disinterested observer in matters of religion. On page 34 he observes of the new (in 1584) Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, that He was unable to comprehend the scruples felt by sincere and pious men. It was a sincere and pious man with scruples that Gardiner held himself to be—he was a deacon in a church splintered from the Presbyterians. We will need to keep this in mind.

The Role of Government (and a little more historiography)

Perhaps without intending to, Gardiner (on page 33) proposes a role of government that certainly was not contemplated in the first Elizabeth's reign, and was scarcely supposed in Gardiner's own time:

If the liberty which the Commons required for the clergy had been granted, it would have been necessary to devise new guarantees, in order that the incumbent of a parish should not abuse his position by performing the duties of his office in such a manner as to offend his parishioners. In proportion as the checks imposed by the government were diminished, it would have been necessary to devise fresh checks, to proceed from the congregation, whilst the Government retained in its hands that general supervision which would effectually hinder the oppression of individuals by a minister supported by a majority of his parishioners.

In other words, the government's role, in addition to enabling local control, was to make sure that the local majority did not oppress the local minority.

Despite Gardiner's claim that he does not judge the past by the conditions of the present, I think he is clearly guilty of that here. Certainly the 17th century would have been a happier time if Elizabeth's government had adopted such an enlightened approach. But as Gardiner himself admits, it could not even have been considered. A fundamental feature of the landscape we will be visiting was that almost everyone (Francis Bacon being a notable exception) believed the uniformity was the essential quality that led to peace, prosperity and true religion. The oppression of a dissenting minority was a moral imperative.

One of the terrain-altering circumstances that we will encounter on our tour is that the minority occasionally will become a sufficient majority, and the same principles which supported Elizabeth's successful suppression of dissent will be used to promote the suppressed views themselves.

Page 33 is worth re-reading.

The Court of High Commission

If we were to go on a tour of Morocco or the Sudan, our guides would certainly warn us against things the law might punish. We would not, for instance, expect to drink alcohol in public; nor would the women in our group go bareheaded.

But our tour of England in the 17th century should be subject to far fewer restrictions, right? Well, if Gardiner is right (please review pages 34-37), perhaps the answer is unclear. The establishment of the Court of High Commission was a major change in the way that moral crime was prosecuted in England. Certainly religious crimes were prosecuted in earlier times—read Foxe's Book of Martyrs or any account of the 40 Catholic Martyrs for examples. What the High Commission court added was a way to enforce moral and doctrinal standards outside the framework of the Common Law. Perhaps the strangest thing about the establishment of the Court was how little stir it originally caused. Gardiner suggests that because it coincided with the surge of national goodwill that accompanied the defeat of the Armada, it was overlooked. That may be, but by the time our tour starts, we will see a growing conflict between the ecclesiastical courts and the Common Law, and that conflict will shape much of the landscape we will see.

Theologial rancor and sectarian hatred

Gardner (page 33) accuses Queen Elizabeth of bequeathing her successors a nation filled with "theological rancor and sectarian hatred." The accusation begs two questions: was England in 1603 filled with such rancor and hatred? and if so, was it Elizabeth who caused it to be that way?


If the rancor and hatred is supposed to be between Protestants and the remaining Catholics, there is no doubt it existed. Within 12 months of the queen's death occurred the Main Plot and the Bye Plot (which we will discuss in some detail), and within 20 months the Gunpowder Plot. Reciprocal judicial murders in the reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth could hardly have led to any other condition.

Can we detect such feelings between Protestants? It isn't clear to me. Gardiner tells us that it was all simmering immediately below the surface; that Protestant unity was an illusion waiting merely for the veil to fall. Certainly the Hampton Court conference in 1604 (which we will see up-close and personal) showed significant cracks the Protestant facade. But I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of English Protestants had no qualms of attending Church of England services, however eager they may also have been for less-sanctioned meetings. And the few incidents of disrespect towards the Church of England hierarchy seem to have been handled without controversy in the church courts.

There is no doubt that theological rancor was very evident from 1620 or so. And sectarian hatred—though whether it was political or religious in nature I am not sure—was certainly apparent by 1636 in Scotland and by 1639 in England. But can we point the finger directly at Queen Elizabeth for these unfortunate turns? Perhaps not. We will certainly see other possible causes over the next 30-odd years.

The root of conflict

If you skip any of Chapter 1, I recommend that you still read pages 30-32. It's here that Gardiner lays out his view of how the State religion—and by extension the system of episcopacy—became divorced from the national or popular religion of England.

I'll try to paraphrase, but Gardner is very clear on these points.

The spirit of Calvinism—remember that Calvinism was a movement of the clergy—was closely tied to preaching and teaching. The thing most appealing about Calvinism to the non-clergy was that that its tenets explained things around them. The laity could not understand how well current events were explained without being shown, and that's where preaching came in.

The State (or the Queen herself if we follow Gardiner) didn't want doctrinal light shown on current events, at least not very often. In England the two strongest constitutional entities were the Crown and the Church, and no monarch could fail to see the danger of allowing the Church to reassert itself in the realm of state policy.

The government's reaction was to ban religious teaching outside the context of the church hierarchy. Teachers in schools and preaching clergy must be licensed. There numbers would be held to a minimum, and their actions closely monitored. Except in a few cases, topical sermons were replaced with the reading of approved homilies, which were more than enough edification for the laity. (If you have not read those excellent pieces of conventional wisdom known as the Homilies, browse them at the Anglican Library.)

The impulse of Calvinism towards freer speech and action was unstoppable. The position of the government was irreversible. The conflict was inevitable.

The religious establishement under Queen Elizabeth

The landscape we will view at the beginning of the 17th century, with the accession of James I, owes many of its features to the way that religion was settled--and allowed to remain unsettled--in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. There is a very cogent summary of that settlement in Gardiner's history starting at page 26.

An important point, and one so obvious to Gardiner that he doesn't bother to emphasize it, is that the parish clergy of England were a politically potent force, and this for several reasons. First, as poorly prepared as many of them were, they were among the most educated of common people, Second, they had the attention of the entire population at least twice a week, and in many cases three times. Third, they were viewed as men involved in the most important work imaginable: the maintenance of the true religion in England.

Such a force could not be allowed to exist undisciplined, and Elizabeth's councillors realized that there were two essential elements to the necessary discipline:

• It must be ultimately be directed by the central government; and
• It must be administered by fellow clergy.

The doctrine and the ceremonies of the Church of England were secondary considerations. The ideas of the 16th century assumed that order and discipline required hierarchy, and in the Church, hierarchy meant Bishops. So the establishment and maintenance of episcopacy became the political doctrine of England.

This forced submission of religion to practicality could not last. It rankled both the preaching clergy and a small but growing class of laymen for whom religion was an intellectual passion. We will pick up with some of the early cracks in the foundations of the English Church next time, around page 30.

Whitgift

I've finally finished what I think are adequate notes on the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift. The link is in the "Episcopacy" post below, or you can find it here.

Take a look at the links to references and works, particularly in the last half of the Athenæ Cantabrienses article. These links are time-consuming to find and insert, but are also (I hope) extremely valuable. If you find them useful, let me know.

More on the Spanish Invasion

In making some notes on Archbishop Whitgift, I came across a prayer, apparently written by him, which was to be read or sung in churches to celebrate the defeat of the Armada. The cadences will be familiar to all who have heard sermons in a protestant church. The sentiments support Gardiner's view of how the Armada shaped English opinion:

0 Come hither, and hearken, all ye that fear God, and we will tell you what he hath done for our souls.

For we may not hide his benefits from our children, and to the generation to come, and to all people we will shew the praises of the Lord, his power also, and his wonderful works, that he hath done for us.

When the Kings and Rulers of the earth, and Nations round about us, furiously raged, and took counsel together against God, and against his anointed.

When men of another devotion than we be, (men bewitched by the Romish Antichrist,) men drowned in idolatries and superstitions, hated us deadly, and were maliciously set against us, for our profession of the word of God, and the blessed Gospel of our Saviour Christ

They cast their heads together with one consent, they took their common counsel, and were confederate, and imagined mischief, against thy people, 0 Lord God.

They secretly laid wait, they privily set snares and nets, they digged pits for our souls, thinking that no man should see them.

They communed of peace, and prepared for most cruel war; for they think that no faith nor truth is to be kept with us, but that they may feign, dissemble, break promise, swear, and forswear, so they may deceive us and take us unwares, and oppress us suddenly.

And indeed innumerable multitudes of these most subtle and cruel enemies, and too mighty for us, came suddenly upon us, by sea and by land, when we looked not for them.

They came furiously upon us, as it were roaring and ramping Lions, purposing to devour us, and to swallow us up: they approached near unto us, even to eat up our flesh.

They said in their hearts, Let us make havoc of them altogether, let us root them out that they be no more a people, and that the name of England may be no more had in remembrance.

And surely their coming was so sudden, their multitude, power, and cruelty so great, that had we not believed verily to see the goodness of God, and put our trust in his defence and protection, they might have utterly destroyed us.

But though we had great cause to be afraid, yet we put our whole trust in God : we cried unto the Lord in our trouble and distress; we said, Help us, O Lord our God, for vain is the help of man.

We said, We commit ourselves wholly unto thee; according to the greatness of thy power, preserve us, O Lord. who are appointed to die.

And the Lord inclined his ear and heard us, and gave courage to the hearts, and strength to the hands, of our captains and soldiers, and put the enemies in fear.

The Lord arose, and took the cause (which indeed mas his own) into his own hands, and fought against them, that fought against us.

The Lord scattered them with his winds, he confounded and disappointed their devices and purposes of joining their powers together against us.

The Angel of the Lord persecuted them, brought them into dangerous, dark, and slippery places, where they wandering long to and fro were consumed with hunger, thirst, cold, and sickness: the sea swallowed the greatest part of them.

And so the Lord repressed the rage and fury of our cruel enemies, intending nothing but bloodshed and murther, and turned the mischief which they purposed against us upon their own heads; and delivered and saved us, who were as sheep appointed to the shambles and slaughter.

This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our and in our enemies' sight, and in the eyes of all people; and all that see it shall say, This is the Lord's work.

God is our king of old: the help that is done by sea and by land, is his.

It is God that giveth deliverance unto Princes, and that rescueth our QUEEN from the hurtful sword, and saveth her from all dangers and perils.

We will therefore give thanks, whom the Lord hath redeemed, and delivered from the hand of the enemy.

We will confess before the Lord, and praise him for his goodness: and declare the wonders that he doth for the children of men.

We will offer unto him the sacrifice of thanksgiving: and tell out his works with gladness.

We will exalt him also in the Congregation of the people, and praise him in the presence of the Elders.

0 sing unto the Lord a new song: for he hath done marvellous things.

With his own right hand, and with his holy arm: hath he gotten himself the victory.

O give thanks unto the Lord, and call upon his name: tell the people what things he hath done.

O let your songs be of him, and praise him: and let your talking be of all his wondrous works.

Rejoice in his holy name: let the hearts of them rejoice that seek the Lord.

And thou, my soul, be joyful in the Lord: let it rejoice in his salvation.

All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee, which deliverest the oppressed from them that be too strong for them: yea, and them that are in distress from them that seek to spoil them?

Blessed be the Lord God, even the God of Israel: which only doth wondrous things.

And blessed be the name of his majesty for ever and ever: and all the earth shall be filled with the glory of his majesty. Amen. Amen.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

An Index to Athenae Oxonienses

While working on improvements to the Episcopacy post, I ran into trouble finding some information in Anthony a Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, which is one of the earliest biographical and bibliographical dictionaries. The most common modern edition, published by Philip Bliss in the early 19th century, is a great improvement over previous editions, but is still poorly organized and difficult to use. The index of all four volumes is stuck in the middle of Volume 4.
So I decided to create an online index. You can find it here.
The links in the index won't work in this copy. The only copies of the volumes available on the network are too big -- they take minutes to transfer even over a fast link. To get good use out of the index, you need to create a local setup. Find instructions for doing so in README.WoodIndex.
Now I can get back to making some better annotations for the previous post, and eventually get us back on track around page 26.

Episcopacy

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, around page 26 we first set eyes on sights that will remain in view for a good part of our tour. I know it's a horrible metaphor, but I mean the Bishops of the Church of England.

Several of the main conflicts in 17th century England involve the role of the bishops. It may help to get an idea of who they were at the accession of James I in 1603. There were (and are) two ecclesiastical provinces in England: that of York and of Canterbury. The Archbishop of Canterbury had precedence, but each was a metropolitan bishop. The bishops who were subordinate to them were among the most educated men in England. They came out of the Universities where, almost to a man, they had excelled in learning and leadership. Their knowledge tended to be confined to divinity, but, besides the law, there was no other field of advanced study. In their day-to-day duties, bishops were required to be pastors, preachers, administrators and judges. Several bishops had palaces in London, and most spent more time in London than in their dioceses. The bishops were

• Matthew Hutton, Archbishop of York. He had been Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge; and Master of Pembroke Hall. A bit of a maverick in his younger days, he was about 74 when King James came in, and we won't hear much of him. He will be succeeded by Tobias Matthew in 1606.
• Henry Robinson, Bishop of Carlisle, who was learned both in theology and law. We will see him at the Hampton Court conference in 1603.
  
• Tobias Matthew. Bishop of Durham, and, although he was not always a firm supporter of the king's secular policies, as Archbishop of York we will see his anti-Catholic side
• Richard Vaughan, Bishop of Chester, who will be translated to London in 1604. [When a Bishop is moved to another diocese, he is said to be been "translated."] Vaughan did not have a distinguished academic career and rose through the ranks of the ministering clergy.
• George Lloyd, Bishop of Sodor and Man, was a Welshman, later to be Bishop of Chester.
  
• John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury. He was Elizabeth's great support, as political as ever a bishop was. He will survive Elizabeth by less than a year and be replaced by Richard Bancroft.
• John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells, had been Master of Trinity College and vice-chancellor of Cambridge.
  
• Anthony Rudd, Bishop of St David's, is probably best known for preaching a sermon before Queen Elizabeth in which he repeatedly referred to her old age (she was then 63). We will see Rudd at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604.
  
• Anthony Watson, Bishop of Chichester, rose through court influence. He will also be at Hampton Court.
  
• William Cotton, a strong anti-Puritan, was Bishop of Exeter.
• Martin Heton, Bishop of Ely, had been vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford.
  
• The bishopric of Bristol was vacant until later in 1603, when John Thornborough, who would be a bishop for the next 38 years, assumed it.
  
• Godfrey Goldsborough, a Yorkshireman, was Bishop of Gloucester.
• Robert Bennet was Bishop of Hereford
• William Overton, who came up through the ministering clerty, was Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry.
  
• The Bishop of London, for a few more months, was Richard Bancroft who will soon succeed Whitgift as Archbishop of Canterbury.
  
• John Jegon, Bishop of Norwich, had been Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge.
  
• There had been a vacancy in the see of Oxford since 1592.
  
• Thomas Dove, Bishop of Peterborough, had gained preferment as a preacher.
  
• The Bishop of Rochester at this time was Richard Neile, the patron of William Laud. He was thought to be an Arminian (a term we will probably not get around to defining for a while.)
  
• Richard Parry, the translator of the Bible into Welsh, became Bishop of St Asaph in 1603.
  
• Henry Rowlands, about whom little is known, was Bishop of Bangor.
• William Cotton, a former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, was Bishop of Salisbury.
• Thomas Bilson, who gave the coronation sermon for King James, was Bishop of Winchester. He will play an important role at the Hampton Court Conference.
  
• Gervase Babbington was Bishop of Worcester.
• The Bishop of Llandaff was Fraser Godwin, whose father was also a bishop.

For more information on these bishops, refer to Francis Overend White's Lives of the Elizabethan Bishops.

I was going to summarize the 3 important points that Gardiner makes in pages 26-28, but this has gone on far enough already. We'll talk about that next time.

Super Bowl or Presbyterianism?

(The image is of John Knox.)

Should I blog about Presbyterianism this evening, or watch the Super Bowl? Duh. Obviously I'll do both.

Our tour guide, Samuel Gardiner, believed in a religious system that took many of its precepts from Presbyterianism. It may surprise you to find that he retained a clear view of the subject. Pick up your reading of the History of England at page 22.

Presbyterianism, in the 16th century was Calvinism as practiced in Geneva, transposed to a national scale. It was practiced in Scotland and elsewhere, but in Scotland it found its most fertile ground. The central ideas were the same as those embraced by the Genevans, the Dutch and the more precise English:

-- Salvation by faith
-- Predestination
-- The importance of a preaching ministry
-- Church government by presbyters, lay-elders, and deacons.

It seems surprising to us now that this system was viewed, by both sides, as antithetical to the protestantism of the Church of England. In fact, the Presbyterians and the Anglicans disagreed in only a few articles.
In terms of dogma, they disgreed mainly on which of them was most anti-Papist.

Gardiner does a good job of explaining the nature of Presbyterianism: it was a movement of the clergy. That it had a hold on the populace is probably because the only literate man were those clergy. The few Scots nobles who took an interest in abstract matters tended to Catholicism; the rest embraced Presbyterian government as the weakest competition to their own power. The result was that Calvinism, in itself a system very amenable to personal liberty, became itself somewhat oppressive. Gardiner's explanation of this beginning on page 24 is very convincing.

After the Super Bowl, we'll pick up on page 26.

By the way, I heard this joke today: The devil was inspecting his domains and came upon a damned soul who had a smile on his face. "Why," asked the devil, "are you smiling while toiling in this infernal heat?" "I'm from Phoenix, " said the man. "I like it hot." The devil would have none of this and immediately dropped the temperature of Hell to near zero Kelvin. The next day, he visited the soul and still found him smiling. "Why are you smiling now?" he asked. "I've frozen everything.". "Yes," answered the soul: "I figure that means the Cardinals are in the Super Bowl."

The flavours of English protestantism

(Today's entry covers pages 16-21 of Gardiner's History. The picture to the left is of a young John Calvin.)

We're taking a tour here. It's not a bad thing to consider Big Ideas when our attention is not distracted elsewhere, but we shouldn't get stuck on them, should we?

Unfortunately, there are some huge (and vague) Big Ideas strewn like boulders in our way through the 17th century, and some of the biggest have to do with the beliefs--and the ceremonies that reflect them--of varieties of English Protestants.

Why should I emphasize Protestant Big Ideas rather than Catholic ones? Well, for one thing, I can hardly discuss protestant ideas without discussing catholic ones: they can best be understood in contrast to what was believed before. And by the time of Charles I, more than 90% of Englishmen paid at least lip service to some variety of Protestant belief. The big rocks are all protestant.

The central idea of protestantism is salvation by faith. Protestants aren't opposed to good works; they just don't think you can save your soul by them. Martin Luther was the first teacher to give this idea wide currency in the modern age. The idea is important in terms of ceremony, more so in terms of doctrine, but very important in terms of church government. Gardiner tries to summarize the importance in these areas in a very few paragraphs. He doesn't try very hard, and comes far short of succeeding. I can recommend a few books on the subject, such as Protestant Thought Before Kant, but I don't recommend you bring any of them along on the tour.

Because salvation by faith is least important in terms of ceremony, the forms of worship in early protestant churches were not wildly different than in catholic ones. More of the service was in the worshippers' tongue; some prayers were omitted; some homilies diverged. This allowed the English church to become protestant almost underhandedly, with the same ministers using largely the same liturgy as they had before.
Gardiner does do a good job of explaining this, and why a growing trend in protestantism, Calvinism, which adds several Big Ideas of its own, had to be resisted during the reign of Elizabeth.

As we know, Elizabethan resistance had little long-term effect on the spread of Calvinism, due, as Gardiner points out, "to its logical completeness, and to the direct antagonism in which it stood to the doctrines of the Roman Church."

A form of Calvinism was allowed to take hold in Scotland, however. We'll talk about Presbyterianism when we pick up on page 22.

The Spanish Armada, again

Gardiner's treatment of the Armada is too brief to be called dry, but it doesn't give an idea of the effect the victory had on Englishmen. For that, I can't think of a better source that the reminiscences of Captain John Smith (yes, the same that will colonize Virginia in 20 years' time.) The following is from The Adventures and Discourses of Captain John Smith, sometime President of Virginia and Admiral of New England, Newly Ordered by John Ashton:

I was born in the year 1579; that year when Jack Spaniard invaded Ireland, bringing with him a holy banner blessed by the Pope. Much blood and time it took before the rebellion was put down, and the Dons were all either killed, or put in ward. But the work was done thoroughly, and with a good heart, so that none, methinks, ever went back home to tell the tale. Ha! but we paid them out well, and made them dance a Coranto to a pretty tune when they tried the same sport, on a larger scale, with their Invincible Armada. Invincible, quatha! my Lord Howard and his old sea-dogs found joints enow in their harness, I trow; and Ireland proved even more unkind to them than before, for seventeen of their ships were taken or destroyed, and much over 5,000 men were killed or taken prisoners on that coast which, I warrant me, they love not now.

I mind the time well, though I was but a youngster of nine years old, for the whole land was drunk with joy, and of course my native village must be a piece with the rest of the world. My Lord Willoughby did give two great oxen to be roasted, and also good strong October; both of which were given without stint to all comers. Ay and he provided also a bull to be baited, which was the first I had ever seen of that rare sport. I remember it so well, more by token that our dog Tyke must needs be very valiant and join in the fray, but he limped on three legs ever after, and it had nigh cost him his life but for the great care and good nursing he received.

There was dancing round the May-pole, too, and it would have been kept up till night, but old Jack the crowder [fiddler] got overcome early in the afternoon with too much October, which he kept pouring down to make his arm lissome, for he said it ached with constant work; so many of us betook ourselves to Alford, to see the two Frenchmen with their bear and monkey.

The Spanish Armada

It is curious that Gardiner disposes of the proposed Spanish invasion of England—the dispatch of the Armada—in a slender paragraph.

True, the Spanish attack was poorly planned, weakly co-ordinated, long anticipated, and extremely unlucky. But it is still a grand story. Gardiner admits that the prospects of an invasion were terrifying to the English. A ballad of the time began

From merciless invaders, from wicked men's device,
O God, arise and help us to quell our enemies!

Gardiner emphasizes the polarization that Spanish hostility cemented in England. The majority Protestants found in their religion a political ground more powerful than the philosophical and doctrinal differences they recognized with the Roman church. The polarization was strong and long lasting. It was possible 300 years later for an English clergyman to slaver at the mouth over the threatened religious invasion.

There is one result of the English victory that is perhaps so obvious that it has gradually been forgotten: the effect it had on English nationalism. Englishmen could feel that they were not only just the match, but the superior of men from anywhere in Christendom. Forget the Spanish grandee: the English gentleman drank his beer while the Spaniard drowned in the North Sea. As Gardiner says, the disintegration of the Armada instilled in the English the illusion of discipline, an illusion that both fed and fed on the discipline inherent in Calvinist theology. At the bottom of page 17, Gardiner sums it up with this observation:

Anchored on the Rock of Ages, they could safely bid defiance to all the menaces of the Pope and to all the armies of the mightiest potentates of Europe.

We'll pick it up next time on page 18.

Mary Stuart

Picking up on page 14...

Gardiner gives short shrift to Mary Queen of Scots. He mentions a few important facts—that she came into England looking for a way back to her throne; that her story generated Catholic buzz; and that the inevitable result of the decision to imprison her in England was that England must kill her.

Of the popular histories of Mary, I prefer the one by Antonia Fraser, which you can find on Amazon or in almost any used-book shop. Frasier is sympathetic but realistic and cuts neither Mary nor Elizabeth any slack. A far more romanticized story, but a very popular one, is the History of Mary Queen of Scots by Jacob Abbot, which you can read online.

I think the circumstance that strikes most modern readers is that Mary was the mother of James VI, the reigning king of Scotland at the time of her death, and who will be king of England, as James I, when we get to the start of our tour. As we will learn in Chapter 2, James did not lightly pass over the murder of his mother, but he didn't let it become a political issue, either. What does that say about James and about Mary and about their relationship?

If you want more about Mary Stuart, refer to the colorful EnglishHistory.net site, which has plenty of links and pictures.

What we should learn from the brief discission on pages 14 and 15 is that—to the English government—Mary Stuart's life was less important than her religion, and her religion important only for its political implications. She had to go, and that was just the way things worked in late Tudor England.

"Miss Porter" in the DNB

This afternoon I transcribed the article on Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester, in the Dictionary of National Biography. He was born a year or so before the period we are slowly building up to. My problem is not with Manchester, though: it is with the author of the article, which is signed "B. P.".

The contributor list for volume 38 shows "B. P." to be a "Miss Porter". So who is Miss Porter? I find her Christian name was Bertha. A little more research finds this article, which says she live 1852-1941, was an
employee of the DNB, was a "professional bibliographer" and edited the Topographical Bibliography of
ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings. More looking about indicates that she became an expert on the antiquities of Egyptian Thebes. I must look for her obituary, which was published in The Times, January 22, 1941.

(Update: the obit is available in the Times archives, but their rates are a bit steep -- $130 per year. If you already have a subscription, and you happen to go to the Times Archive search page and search for Bertha Porter on January 22, 1941, I'd appreciate a report.)

It is strange where Saturday-night recreational reading can take you.

Picking up again on page 12

Picking up again with the brief overview of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, at page 12 of Gardiner's History of England…

(By the way, if you want to direct your browser to a particular page in Volume 1 of Gardiner's History, copy this into your browser's address window:

http://bob.fooguru.org/content/gardiner/hist10/HistV1.html#pagexx

and change xx to the page number you want. The string for page 12 will be http://bob.fooguru.org/content/gardiner/hist10/HistV1.html#page12.)

It's an important aspect of the international political landscape of the early 17th century that Spain was greatly over-estimated in its wealth and military strength. The English government, and probably most governments in Europe, thought Spain to be invincible and in possession of almost unlimited resources. In fact, Spain was already over-extended. Even the wealth of the Indies—which itself did not come without great expense—could not sustain perpetual standing armies in the Low Lands and Italy, and military adventures elsewhere. Still, knowing the outcome, I think we underestimate Spain at this time, and Gardiner makes the point very well.

Gardiner mentions Lepanto, the 1571 sea battle in which a combined Imperial, Spanish and Venician fleet defeated a Turkish flotilla in the Adriatic. It is one of the reasons that we will be talking much more about Christian-versus-Christian conflict in the 17th century than about Christian-versus-Musselman. It is the subject of what some consider the best poem of the 20th century, and I bring it up because (saving the unflattering reference to The cold queen of England in the first stanza), it might almost be an Elizabethan poem, in sentiment if not language. The English of that time, and we today, liked their enemies well-caricatured and their heroes too. Don John's subsequent history in the Netherlands would, of course, have dampened any English enthusiasm that might have existed for him after Lepanto. (See this blog for more information about the Battle of Lepanto, including a photo of a reproduction of Don John's flagship.)

The important take-away from this part of the first chapter is that protestantism and its attendant anti-catholicism were political as well as religious issues to the English ruling classes. Elizabeth and her council put a lid on the emotional aspects of doctrinal difference by making outward conformance to a compromise doctrine a requirement of the law. That a large part of the Catholics were practically excluded from the compromise was considered an acceptable political trade-off. In the short and the long term, this approach was sufficient; but in the middle—the period we are concerned with—the lid would not stay on.

We'll pick up next time on 14, with mention of Mary, Queen of Scots, and of the Armada.

Aside on Bacon's view of Queen Elizabeth

I mentioned Bacon's In Felicem Memoriam Elizabethæ, a short memorial/apology/analysis of the Queen's life by one of the most intelligent men of the age, written in 1609, six years after her death. On first reading, I did not realize how remarkable a document it is.

Part of the problem is that most of us are reduced to reading James Spedding's English translation (the linked document). Spedding does not quite capture the force of Bacon's Latin.

In Felicem is a tour-de-force, an extended conceit that casts Elizabeth's life and successes as felicitous—that is to say, both happy and lucky.

Bacon is not skimping in his praise of the queen's wisdom and temperance. Even for her persecution of papists he finds politic reasons. But at root, he says that Elizabeth was fortunate.

One has to think that this is a rationalization. A woman, even an exceptional woman, can not be expected to rule well, but Elizabeth (for the most part) did. How can this be explained? It must have been good fortune. That it was the good fortune of England as well as of the Queen, Bacon does not doubt; but the aberration, he implies, is merely happy chance.

Putting the boat in the water.

Just as you can't start a journey at its destination, you can't start reading history at the period that interests you. All the great histories of the 17th century provide examples of this. Rushworth, who wanted to write about the Civil War, found that he had to go back to 1618—and spend most of two volumes—to provide the necessary background.

But where to start? The problem is like floating a river: you want to put in far enough upstream that you explore it all, but at some point you must choose an arbitrary, convenient access point, put the boat in the water, and try to pick up the flow.

The first 49 pages—Chapter 1—of Gardiner's History of England give a very brief view of the headwaters of the stream of history we will tour. His choice of incidents is arbitrary, and one might say quirky, but it scarcely matters because he consciously decided to leave so much of it out.

I recommend that you read the entire chapter, but if you don't have time for that much, start around page 29, where we see some of the structural changes in English religion that will have great importance later on.

Think of this part of the tour as a bullet train ride to the country we will tour. I remember riding the fast train from Frankfurt airport to Köln in Germany. At Bonn, where the train slowed, I saw an elegant building which I told myself must have been the Poppelsdorf, the palace of the Prince-Elector. In fact, all I know is that such a building does exist in Bonn (it is the main building of the University), but not whether it is the building I saw. That is the level of understanding you should expect to get from Chapter 1.

We will pick up at page 42—the death of Elizabeth—next time.

At the bottom of page 2, Gardiner comments that it would be more appropriate to have a statue of Edward I in front of Parliament than that of Richard Lion-Heart. I had not known that this statue was move to Palace Yard only in 1860 (it was in Hyde Park before), and therefore would have been fresh in Gardiner's mind.

On page 7, Gardiner mentions two statutes that greatly affected the relations of the English state with Rome. The Statute of Provisors, in the reign of Edward I, dealt with nominations to church positions by the Pope; it said, in essence, that if someone other than the Pope has the right of a nomination, the pontiff may not usurp it. The Statute of Præmunire, in the reign of Richard II, forbade the appeal of judicial decisions outside the realm of England—and specifically appeals to Rome. (Gardiner assumes you knew this; pardon me if you did.)

At the top of page 8 is the first of 633 footnote references, and the note itself is a good example of what to expect from Gardiner's asides. Many are citations, of course; some give critical background on sources; and some, like this one, are just remarks: "Chaucer not being a medieval poet at all, except in point of time, but standing in the same relation to Shakspere as that in which Wycliffe stands to Luther." The poet he is discussing in the text is of course Dante.

The Colet mentioned in conjunction with Sir Thomas More on page 9 is an interesting figure, John Colet, the founder of St. Paul's School.

I'm going to break off at page 12 because there Gardiner mentions Francis Bacon's defense of Elizabeth, and I believe there is no easily accessible English translation of it on the web. I'll take a few hours to put one together [Done.] and then add some more random observations on the first chapter.

A little historiography

Before we set out on a walk with Samuel R. Gardiner, I want to spend a few minutes discussing his views on how we should understand the landscape.

Take a look at Gardiner's Preface to Volume 1 of his revised history. It is an unusual preface, short and succinct. In it, he makes some important points about the writing of history. First, he acknowledges that his own interests drove the attention he paid to various subjects, and that, on the basis of experience and reflection, he found many things to correct and re-proportion. Would that we all had the chance to do so.

Second, he discusses the practical usefulness of studying a period that was, even in the 19th century, antique. In fact, he concludes, there is very little direct light that past events can cast on current problems. The value of studying the problems of the past lies not in the nature of the problems but in the way men and societies and governments and religions tried to solve them. Writing history from that perspective does have value. As Gardiner sums it up,

He ... who studies the society of the past will be of the greater service to the society of the present in proportion as he leaves it out of account. If the exceptional statesman can get on without much help from the historian, the historian can contribute much to the arousing of a statesmanlike temper in the happily increasing mass of educated persons without whose support the statesman is powerless. He can teach them to regard society as ever evolving new wants and new diseases, and therefore requiring new remedies. He can teach them that true tolerance of mistakes and follies which is perfectly consistent with an ardent love of truth and wisdom. He can teach them to be hopeful of the future, because the evil of the present evolves a demand for a remedy which sooner or later is discovered by the intelligence of mankind, though it may sometimes happen that the whole existing organisation of society is overthrown in the process. He can teach them also not to be too sanguine of the future, because each remedy brings with it fresh evils which have in their turn to be faced. These, it may be said, are old and commonplace lessons enough. It may be so, but the world has not yet become so wise as to be able to dispense with them.

I can't fully support Gardiner's disapproval of Thomas Babbington Macaulay, the author of the most popular history of 17th century Britain, and of John Forster, the biographer of John Eliot. It is certainly true, as Gardiner points out, that they saw history, at least in some ways, as a justification of the politics of their own time; and that view colored the story they told. But that view also added life and relevance to those stories. The high sales of Macaulay's multiple volumes were due at least as much to the topical relevance of the author's asides as to his lively and lucid writing. And in the long run, what impressions a student (or a tourist) retains of Buckingham's impeachment or Hambden's trial, has less to do with the author's politics than the student's.

But that's it from me on the subject of historiography. We have too many exciting things to see to spend time on meta-discussion.

More on Fairholt's book

The introduction of Fairholt's collection of poems on Buckingham and his execution (23 years in the future, in terms of this blog), is interesting for more than including the schedule of Buckingham's gifts from the crown. It also explains most of what is known about "Doctor" John Lambe, the quack and astrologer whom Buckingham seems to have occasionally consulted.

I'm working on a web edition of Fairholt's book. It should be ready this week.

One couplet in an epitaph on Buckingham struck me this evening. It is

Live ever, Felton, thou hast turn'd to dust
Treason, ambition, murther, pride and lust.

(Felton, of course, was the assassin of the Duke of Buckingham.)

However unfair that may be to the memory of George Villiers (as Gardiner will show us six volumes from
now), it is as comprehensive a condemnation as can be.

I beg pardon for these consecutive interruptions of a tour that has yet to begin. I still intend a short historiographical comment, and then to commence the walks that Samuel Gardiner has laid out.

Another asynchronous question

We have yet to commence 1603, but I have a question concerning the Duke of Buckingham's impeachment 25 years later. The 12th article of the impeachment refers to an attached schedule that details the monies accumulated by Buckingham since his introduction to the Court--amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds. In his defence, Buckingham refers to another schedule that gives a "truer" accounting.

Where are these schedules to be found?

Update: I found the schedule from the charge in, of all places, Fairholt's "Poems and Songs Relating to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham", pp. x-xiii. No luck yet on the counter-schedule, though.

A TOC

The chief guide book we'll be using to start is Samuel Gardiner's 10-volume History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War. The edition is that of 1900, as digitized by Microsoft, rendered as text by The Internet Archive, and formatted in html (XHTML 1.0 Transitional) by me. The Gardiner text, and much of the other material that will be linked from this blog, are stored at fooguru.org .

I will be proofing the History and other texts as we go along, so you may see some typos if you get too far ahead. Feel free to report them as you find them.

I don't intend to follow Gardiner down all the paths he knows, but many of the choices are tempting. Take a look at this Table of Contents for the first two volumes. If there are any tours that are particularly appealing to you, let me know. Otherwise, I'll be following the paths that most appeal to me.

Next post: A very little bit of historiography.