Pre-Enlightenment England
While continental European states were developing absolute and centralized monarchies, England,
in a chaotic and violent century, radically reduced the power of the monarch and developed an
alternative state in which the powers of the monarch became subsidiary to the power of the
branches of government. The political experiments of England would be dramatic, from absolutist
tendencies at the beginning of the century, to the overthrow of the monarch in the middle of the
century and the development of an English Republic, and finally to the restoration of the monarch
and the severe limitation of monarchical powers. These titanic changes were largely driven by
religious concerns as the issues of monarchy in England collided with the concerns and complaints
of an increasingly large and increasingly radical Protestant minority.
James I
When James I (1603-1625) succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603 he became the first foreign monarch
of modern England. He was the king of Scotland, James VI, and was the son of Mary, the Queen
of Scots; he was, therefore, the next in line to be king when Elizabeth died.
James became king at an especially difficult time to become King of England. The government
was deeply in debt, the English Church was divided while a radical Protestant minority was
growing, and the Parliament was not happy with the power that had been accruing to the monarch
over the past several decades.
James's problem was that he could not pay his bills without the approval of Parliament, for
English law forbade the king from raising revenues independently of the consent of Parliament.
James, however, had debts to pay and an extravagant lifestyle to keep up. So he argued that he
had some privileges to raise money through customs duties; these duties, called impositions, lit the
fire beneath Parliament's feet and the subsequent history of James's reign is a long, protracted
battle with Parliament over the powers of the king.
The church was an even bigger mess. The English church was dividing into a conservative camp
that wanted to retain the religious ceremonies and the hierarchy of the church and a radical,
Calvinist camp called Puritans who wanted to "purify" the church of everything not contained in the
Old and New Testaments. The Puritans demanded that the English church abandon the elaborate
ceremonies and flatten the hierarchy of the church into something more closely resembling the
voluntary associations of the Calvinist church. James, however, would have none of the Puritan
argument and declared, in 1604, that he was fully in the camp of the religious conservatives. This
division between the monarch and the Puritans, which would be continued by his son, Charles I, lit
the fire that ignited the English Civil War.
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:
No funds could be borrowed or raised through taxes and tariffs without the explicit approval of
Parliament;
No free person (Britain had slavery at the time) could be imprisoned without a reason;
No troops could be garrisoned in a private home without permission.
(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 since, after all,
peace is cheaper than war; he downsized the government administration, and he became
extremely innovative in the raising of taxes. He did this by enforcing laws that had fused 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 bureaucracy were
abolished; and finally, Parliament passed a law that allowed Parliament and Parliament alone to
dismiss itself 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 aristocracy, 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.
Charles, however, was an Anglican in appearance but Catholic in sympathies, for he had spent a
large part of his life living in France. His brother James, the next in line to the throne of England,
had converted openly to Catholicism and the English deeply distrusted Charles' intentions. No
matter what Charles' intentions, he believed ardently in religious tolerance for both Catholics and
Protestant minorities. In 1672, he issued the Declaration of Indulgence, which granted religious
freedom to all Catholics and all Protestants. He did this in part to convince Louis XIV to agree to an
alliance with him against the Dutch, but Parliament, made up mostly of Anglicans, refused to
finance the war unless Charles revoked the Declaration, which he did. Parliament followed this
victory by issuing the Test Act. This law required all military and civil officials to renounce the
doctrine of transubstantiation (a doctrine that is fundamental to the Catholic Eucharist); in part, this
law was meant to prevent the accession of the Catholic James to the throne.
James II
It didn't work. When Charles died in 1685, James became king and ruled until 1688. As a
Catholic, his first action was to insist that the Test Act be revoked. Parliament refused and James,
like Charles I before him, dissolved Parliament when he couldn't get his way. He then displayed his
opposition to the Test Act by appointing openly Catholic civil and military officials and in 1687; he
declared all religious tests to be null and void. Years ahead of his time, he declared religious
tolerance to be national policy and, in an affront that few could bear, he arrested Anglican bishops
who refused to spread the news about the new religious policies.
While the English were stewing in their juices over all these changes, no one really did anything
about it. They were hoping that James would die and the throne would revert to his sister Mary,
who was Protestant. However, in 1688, James and his Catholic wife had a son. The heir to the
English throne, then, was Catholic, and this dashed everyone's hopes. England, it appeared, would
soon revert to a Catholic state.
The Glorious Revolution (1688)
The major parties that made up Parliament flew into action. Both the supporters of Parliament
(Whigs) and the supporters of the monarch (Tories) agreed that a Catholic line of kings was
intolerable, so they voted to ask William of Orange, the duke who was married to James's sister
Mary, to invade England. This was a bizarre turn of events. Essentially, Parliament was voting out
one king and voting in another; this was a dramatically different way of doing state business.
William of Orange raised an army and landed on English soil in November of 1688. Not only did
no one oppose him, the English welcomed him with open arms. He had, after all, been invited to
invade England and assume the monarchy. James, seeing that he had no support, quickly fled to
France and the protection of Louis XIV. With the king having hightailed it out of England,
Parliament declared the throne vacant and declared William and Mary to be the sovereigns of
England in 1689. Because the king had been deposed by an act of Parliament without any
bloodshed whatsoever, the English called this the "Glorious Revolution."
Parliament drew up a Bill of Rights, which William and Mary agreed to. This Bill of Rights
severely restricted the power of the monarch over Parliament and over individuals and would
become the fundamental basis of the American Bill of Rights over a century later. Included in the
English Bill of Rights were many elements of the early Petition of Right with some notable
additions:
No monarch could assume the throne without the express approval of Parliament;
The monarch would be subject to all the laws of the realm;
No Catholic could assume the English throne.
The Glorious Revolution and the English Bill of Rights are two of the most astonishing and farreaching events of the modern period. From them were planted the seeds of the American
Revolution and the American constitution and ultimately, the fundamental structure of all modern
government: representation and checks and balances.
For the government that the English slowly forged after the Glorious Revolution was one in which
the branches of government were independent of one another. The executive branch, headed by
the monarch, was subject to the authority of the legislative branch, the Parliament, which was
dependent on the executive power of the monarch. The judiciary functioned independently of both
Parliament and the king. After a century of uncertainty and violence, the English solution was to
limit the powers of all branches of government to prevent any one branch from exerting excessive
influence.
The news wasn't all bad for religious minorities, though. In 1689, Parliament passed the
Toleration Act, which allowed Catholics and minority Protestants to freely practice their religion.