ENGLAND
in the
th
17 Century
The Early 17th Century:
1603-1660
Absolutism, Civil Wars and
Interregnum
Penshurst Place, Kent
The Stuarts
The
Stuarts
Mary, Queen
of Scotland
Lord Darnley and Mary
James VI of Scotland
James I of England
1603-1612
James I
1603-25
 Profound cultural shift from
Elizabethan style
 James I styled himself as
absolute monarch and God’s
appointed deputy
 Roman style– “new
Augustus”
 Rising religious conflict
James I by Paul van Somer (c.15761621/2)
The Royal Collection © 2001, Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II
Church of England vs.
Puritans
• Doctrine: predestination
• Worship: emphasis on
preaching and simple
rituals
• Structure: Episcopalian • Structure: Presbyterian
synods and ministers
bishops and priests
• Sabbath: folk customs • Sabbath: strict observance
of “holy day”
and games
• Rituals: “high church”: • Rituals: “reformed” or
“low church”: Puritans saw
liturgy, ceremony, art
liturgy, altars, religious
works, robes
icons as idolatrous
• Doctrine: free will
• Worship: Book of
Common Prayer
Jacobean Religious
Prose
• 1611: King James Version of the
Bible
• Graceful, highly influential
rendering
• Translation supported
ceremony and hierarchy
• Meant to be understood and
read by commoners, so the
style was simple and direct:
“the common reader”
• Sermons: varied styles from
highly rhetorical to plain spoken
• Guides to devotion and meditation
• Tracts: “cases of conscience”
Frontispiece to the Authorized Version of the
Bible (the King James version) (1611).
Jacobean Secular Prose
Izaak Walton
Francis Bacon
• Essays
• Invented by French writer
Montaigne
• First English essays by
Francis Bacon
• Scientific treatises
• Speculative and imaginative
literature
• Robert Burton: Anatomy of
Melancholy
• Izaak Walton: The Compleat
Angler
• Francis Bacon: The New
Atlantis (scientific utopia)
• Lady Mary Wroth: Urania
(prose romance)
Robert Burton
Lady
Mary
Wroth
Jacobean Poetic Modes
• Classical Modes
• Epigram: short witty poem that compresses wit and insight
• Ode: lyric poem addressed to a person, natural force or
abstraction – written in elevated style – often a poem of praise
• Satire: Complaint on the ills of society
• Love Elegy: Meditation on trials of erotic desire written in
couplets (aabbcc, etc)
• Country House Poem: compliment to a wealthy patron or friend
through a description of his country house
• Verse Epistle: Letter written in poetic verse
• Meditative Religious Lyric
• Occasional Poem: poem written to commemorate a particular
occasion or event.
Aemilia Lanyer
1569-1645
First Englishwoman to
publish a book of poetry:
Salve Deus Rex
Judaeorum, 1611
• Feminist bent --“Eve’s
Apology in Defense of
Women”
• First published country
house poem – “The
Description of Cookham”
Ben
Jonson
1572-1637
• Poet and Playwright
• England’s first Poet
Laureate (King’s pension)
• 1616: Works
• Classicist: influenced by
Roman genres and ideals
• Epigrams
• Odes
• Satire
• “Tribe of Ben” – younger
poets who emulated Jonson and are
often classified as Cavalier poets –
Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew,
Edmund Waller, Sir John Suckling
Ben Jonson by Abraham Blyenberch, ca 1617
• Poet and Preacher
• Startling images that range
from the exquisite to the
grotesque
• Wit and allusion
• Satires
• Elegies
• Occasional poems
Dr. Donne
• Songs and Sonnets
Dean of St. Paul’s
• Holy Sonnets
• Critics describe Donne as
the foremost Metaphysical
poet influencing Herbert,
Vaughan, Crashaw,
Marvell, Traherne and
Crowley
John
Donne
1572-1631
Jack Donne
“the Rake”
Lady Mary Wroth
1587-1651?
• Niece of Sir Philip Sidney and
Countess Mary Sidney Herbert
• Lived and educated at Penshurst
• 1621 published:
• The Countess of
Montgomery’s Urania – prose
romance with poems
• Pamphilia and Amphilanthus:
poem sequence with 103
sonnets and songs –female
voice and perspective
• Love’s Victory: pastoral drama
• Patroness to poets, including
Ben Jonson
 Insisted on his absolute
prerogatives as a monarch
and governed without
Parliament for eleven
years.
Married to French
Catholic sister of Louis
XIV
 Patron of the Arts:
invited Van Dyck and
Rubens to work in England
and bought a great
collection of paintings by
Raphael and Titian
Expenditures on his
court and his art collection
greatly increased the
crown's debts.
Charles I
1625-49
Charles I in three positions - multiple portrait
by Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641)
The Royal Collection © 2001, Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II
Portrait of King Charles I, Queen Henrietta Maria ,
Charles and James
The Royal Collection © 2001, Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II
• 1637: Revolt in Edinburgh over
imposition of High Church liturgy
and prayer book throughout
Scotland
• 1640: Short Parliament refused to
grant Charles’ request for funds
to make war against the Scots
• 1640: Long Parliament
• Impeached Charles’ main
advisors
• Abolished the King’s Council
(Star Chamber)
• The King agreed that
Parliament could not be
dissolved without its own
consent and that no more than
three years could elapse
between Parliaments.
Civil Wars
• 1641: Irish uprising resulted in a
Militia Bill allowing troops to be
raised only by Parliament’s approval
• 1642: Charles raised the Royal
Standard calling for loyal subjects to
support him and set up court and an
alternative government in Oxford
• 1643: Parliament entered an armed
alliance with the predominant
Scottish Presbyterian group under
the Solemn League and Covenant of
1643
• 1646-47: Charles negotiated with
Scotland and Parliament while in
captivity at Hampton Court and the
Isle of Wight
• 1648: Second Civil War ended with
Oliver Cromwell’s victory at Preston
The New Model Army
• The first mass, democratic army: to fight the king,
Parliament needed its own army
• A break in tradition of linking the English crown with the
army.
• Men who fought not for money but for service and belief:
"We were not a mercenary Army, hired to serve any Arbitrary
power of a state, but called forth and conjured by the several
Declarations of Parliament, to the defense of our own land
and the people's just rights and liberties."
• Divided on the question of what form of government
England should have.
• Cromwell and the officers: government for the people
but not by the people
• The common soldiers: manhood suffrage, equal electoral
divisions, biennial Parliaments, and freedom of religion
and equality before the law
Regicide
• The Army, concluding that
permanent peace was impossible
while Charles lived, decided that
the King must be put on trial
and executed.
• 1649: A purged Rump
Parliament (no Royalists or
Presbyterians)established a
High Court of Justice. Charles
was charged with high treason
'against the realm of England. '
• Charles refused to plead, saying
that he did not recognize the
legality of the High Court
From John Nalson, A True Copy of the Journal of the
High Court of Justice for the Tryal of K. Charles I
(London, 1684).
Regicide
Charles I walking to his execution
• The King was sentenced to death
on 27 January. Three days later,
Charles was beheaded on a
scaffold outside the Banqueting
House in Whitehall, London.
• His last words, printed and sold on
that very day, were: "I have
delivered my conscience; I pray God
you do take those courses that are
best for the good of the kingdom
and your own salvation."
• To avoid the automatic succession
of Charles I's son Prince Charles,
an Act was passed on 30 January
forbidding the proclaiming of
another monarch. On 7 February
1649, the office of King was
formally abolished.
From a contemporary Dutch
print by F.van Beusekom.
Regicide
Regicide
John Milton
Thomas Hobbes
defended the regicide in The
Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates (February 1649)
• A Commonwealth "without
King or House of Lords"
• He set forth a radical
contract theory of
government: sovereignty
always resides in the people,
who merely delegate power
to, and can always revoke it
from, any ruler or any
government system.
condemned the regicide
in Leviathan (1651)
• He advocated a theory of
absolutism based on
irreversible compact: the
people give over all their
power and right to a
sovereign, whether a
king or some other
ruling entity, who
incorporates and acts for
them all.
Interregnum
1649-1660
• 1649-53 Republic/
Commonwealth
• 1653: Parliament
dissolved
• 1653-58 Protectorate
under Oliver Cromwell
• 1658-60 Protectorate
under Richard Cromwell
(resigned)
When the Scots and Irish proclaimed Prince Charles as king –
Cromwell suppressed rebellions in Scotland and Ireland
Cromwell at Dunbar, Andrew Carrick Gow.
John Milton
1608-1674
• Radical political and
philosophical thinker-advocated and supported:
• Companionate marriage
and defended divorce
• The new science and
astronomy
• Freedom of the press:
Areopagitica
• Religious liberty and
toleration
• Republicanism
• Puritan apologist and
defender
• The Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates
• Latin Secretary to
Cromwell
John Milton
1608-1674
• Poet
• “On the Morning of
Christ’s Nativity”
• “L’Allegro” and “Il
Penseroso” – celebrations
of Mirth and Melancholy
• Comus -- mythological
masque
• “Lycidas” – pastoral elegy
• Sonnets
• Paradise Lost
• Paradise Regained
• Samson Agonistes
Culture Wars
•
•
•
•
•
•
Puritans
1642: closed the theatres
1643: Toleration
Controversy
Rump Parliament
proclaimed “a republic
without king or house of
lords”
Disagreement over
suffrage
Emphasis on “inner
light” as truth
Flourishing debates in
journals and tracts:
freedom of the press
•
•
•
•
•
•
Royalists
Loyal to king and Anglican
Church
Fled into exile
Disruption of manuscript
circulation led to printed
volumes of poetry
Valued pleasure as the social
cement uniting all elements of
society: carpe diem theme
Cultivated ease of expression
and self-deprecation
1660: Re-opened the theatres
Metaphysical Poetry
Metaphysics: the branch of philosophy that systematically investigates the
nature of first principles and the problems of ultimate reality:
• Startling rhythm and diction
• Variety of tone
• Poets speak in their own persona or create dramatically different
characters: self-dramatization more than self-expression, internal
dramatic conflict
• Meter and stanzas are used to enact emotion -- emphasis on action,
tension, conflict
• Use of argumentation, logic, dialectical expression
• Original and startling metaphors and similes, often extended into
metaphysical conceits
• Content is often religious
• Sensuousness, directness, immediacy
Metaphysical Poets from Luminarium
Vanitas
by Antonio de Pereda
Cavalier Poetry
Cavalier : courtly, off-hand, loyal to the monarchy
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Graceful, melodious, polished diction and meter
Elegant display of Latin classical influences
Themes of love and honor, loyalty and friendship
Carpe diem a frequent theme
Sometimes licentious and cynical
Often epigrammatic and witty
Persona often in guise of military swashbuckler or
aristocratic courtier
• Poems are often occasional -- i.e. written for a particular
occasion
Cavalier Poets from Luminarium
Antony van Dyck
The Restoration
• 1660: Elections held for “a
full and free Parliament”
• Recalled Prince Charles from
exile and proclaimed him
King on May 8, 1660
• Parliament retained
legislative supremacy, control
over taxation and some
control over court
appointments
• Open press flourished
• Development of modern
political parties
Charles II
r. 1660-1685
Charles II in
Coronation robes
by Wright
© Royal
Collection
“Bonnie Prince
Charlie”
House of
Hanover