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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
ANY attempt to apply the same approach in the case of Cavaliers as I did with Puritans last year may seem doomed to inevitable failure. It will be considered futile to search for particular varieties of human temperament which inclined individuals towards adopting particular ideas and beliefs of a broadly conservative persuasion. Left-wing intellectuals, historians included, have sometimes been reluctant to admit that instinctive, emotional conservatism can be held to constitute a system of ideas at all, as opposed to a welter of prejudices and vested interests. Correspondingly, for many people of conservative views, acceptance of the world of order, hierarchy and inequality broadly as they find it—not necessarily as the best of all possible worlds but as the least bad of all realisable ones—is so obviously sensible as to need no intellectual defence or justification. None the less, not all the royalists of 1641–2 and after were unthinking conservatives, with the smallest of small ‘c’s, or at any rate not in the same sense. Not all professed the same religious tenets; not all adhered to the same constitutional principles; not all came to be royalists in the same way and at the same time. So some modest analysis of the Cavalier party in terms of what may be called ideological temperament is, I hope, worth undertaking. Not that the royalist cause has lacked its apologists, from the greatest of seventeenth-century historians to our own day. Few, however, have paused to consider the kind of people who became Cavaliers and their probable motivation.
1 I am grateful, far beyond the normal indebtedness of authors to librarians, to the staff of the Bodleian for all their help, during what has been for them an exceptionally difficult year.
2 On the composition of the History, the best authority is still Firth's, C. H. article in EHR, xix (1904CrossRefGoogle Scholar); see also Wormald, B. H. G., Clarendon: politics, history and religion 1640–1660 (Cambridge, 1951Google Scholar), which unfortunately stops short of the writings during his second exile (1667–74).
3 Professor Conrad Russell has reminded me that Hyde recorded being introduced to the King injune or July 1641 The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon…written by himself (Oxford, 1759), folio edn. 42, octavo edn. 82–4Google Scholar). Gardiner, S. R., however, pointed out that, if the meeting did take place then, the intermediary could not, as Hyde says it was, have been Henry Percy who was in hiding throughout the summer (History of England…1603–1642 (10 vols. 1883–1884), ix, 387–8Google Scholar).
4 B.L., Additional MS 31954, 18th-century transcripts and abstracts of papers then in the Evelyn collection.
5 Clarendon, , Life, folio edn. 69Google Scholar, octavo edn. 134–6.
6 Memoirs of the Verney Family during the 17th century…, ed. Verney, Frances Parthenope and Verney, Margaret N. (2nd edn. 2 vols. 1907), I, 282–3Google Scholar.
7 The Diary of Sir Henry Slingsby of Scriven, Bart.…, ed. Parsons, D. (1836), 66–9Google Scholar.
8 The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. de Beer, E. S. (6 vols. Oxford, 1955), i, 53–5Google Scholar, ii, 79–80, 81, 81–2.
9 Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) His Autobiographical and Historical Notes…, ed. Josten, C. H. (5 vols. Oxford, 1966), 18–20Google Scholar, 29–31, 339–58.
10 The Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, K.B.…, ed. Braybrooke, Lord P. (Camden Soc., xxxii, 1845), 103–4Google Scholar, 107.
11 Autobiography of Thomas Raymond and Memoirs of the Family of Guise of Elmore, Glos., ed. Davies, G. (Camden 3rd ser., xxviii, 1917), 123–32Google Scholar.
12 The Earl of Derby's justification for his having withdrawn to the Isle of Man in 1643 or 4, leaving his wife to defend Lathom House, is perhaps rather different; even so he felt it necessary to defend himself from the charge of having become ‘a neuter’ (The Stanley Papers, Part III (Chetham Soc, 70, 1867), 6–10Google Scholar).
13 The Autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton of East Newton, co. York (Surtees Soc, lxii 1875), 40Google Scholar, 57–68.
14 B. L., Harleian MS 454, fols. 4–107. See Ralph, Philip Lee, Sir Humphrey Mildmay Royalist Gentleman: Glimpses of the English Scene 1633–1652 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1947Google Scholar).
15 Memorials of the Holies Family 1493–1656 by Gervase Holies, ed. Wood, A. C. (Camden 3rd ser., lv, 1937), vii–xiGoogle Scholar, 186–8.
16 See Allen, J. W., English Political Thought 1603–1660, vol. i, 1603–1644Google Scholar(1938; no other volume was ever published); Judson, Margaret Atwood, The Crisis of the Constitution, An essay in constitutional and political thought in England 1603–1645 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1949Google Scholar); Zagorin, Perez, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (1954Google Scholar), which brilliant as it is devotes only 13 out of 200 pages to the Royalists apart from Hobbes; Sharp, Andrew (ed.), Political Ideas of the English Civil Wars 1641–1649 A Collection of representative texts with commentary (1983Google Scholar) is an excellent anthology, doing justice to Royalists and neutrals; and, since this paper was written, see alsoWootton, David (ed.), Divine Right and Democracy (Harmondsworth, 1986Google Scholar), which while covering the whole century is valuable for 1640–60.
17 See More, P. E. and Cross, F. L., Anglicanism: the thought and practice of the Church of England, illustratedfrom the religious literature of the lyth century (1935Google Scholar); Addleshaw, G. W. O., The High Church Tradition: A study in the liturgical thought of the lyth century (1941Google Scholar); Bosher, R.S., The Making of the Restoration Settlement, The influence of the Laudians 1649–1662 (1951Google Scholar); McAdoo, H.R., The Spirit of Anglicanism (1965Google Scholar). I have deliberately excluded titles primarily to do with the Restoration church settlement of 1660–62.
18 Besides the standard bibliographical aids, I have been particularly dependent onMadan, F., Oxford Books, vol. 2, Oxford Literature 1450–1640, and 1641–1650 (Oxford, 1912Google Scholar).
19 Allen, 404; Judson, 393–6; Zagorin, 74–5, 195.
20 Bramhall, John, The Serpent Salve… (1643), 116Google Scholar, 126.
21 [ SirSpelman, John] A View… (Oxford, 1642), 5–6Google Scholar, 10, 20, 28–9, [34–5, 37]. On this theme see Hill, C., ‘The Many-headed Monster’, in Change and Continuity in lyth-century England (1974Google Scholar). For other responses to Parker, see various works by Henry Ferne, Griffith Williams, John Maxwell, John Bramhall, and the anonymous Christus Dei, Or, A Theologicall Discourse, Wherein is proved, that Regall or Monarchicall Power is not ofHumaine but of Divine Right… (Oxford, 1642Google Scholar).
22 Speeches against the judges by all three were printed during the first session of the Long Parliament, before their breach with the radical leadership. For the quotation, seeFalkland, , A Speech…Concerning Episcopacy (2nd edn.Oxford, 1644), Sig. xxx 2Google Scholar.
23 SirCary, Lucius, later Lord Viscount Falkland, A Discourse of Infallibillitie was written by 1635Google Scholar, Wat Montague's Letter in reply to it being dated from Paris 21 November (1660 edn. p. 278). For polemical purposes, dangerously much is conceded, both to Rome and to reason; the Discourse certainly provides support for the concept of Great Tew as a staging-post between Erasmian humanism and the Enlightenment (seeTrevor-Roper, H. R., ‘The Origins of the Enlightenment’ in Religion, The Reformation and Social Change (1967Google Scholar). I hope to return to this theme in my fourth address.
24 SirCotton, Robert, Knight, and Baronet, , A Treatise, shewing That the Soveraignes Person is required in the great Councells or Assemblies of the State, as well at the Consultations as at the Conclusions (1641Google Scholar).
25 No Parliament without a King… (Oxford, 1642Google Scholar) is a different imprint of the same work. See also A Vindication of the King. With some Observations upon the Two Houses… (1642), p. 6.
26 Warmestry, Thomas, Pax Vobis Or A Charme for Tumultuous Spirits… (London, printed for George Thompson, 1641), p. 41Google Scholar[sic. = p. 31 ]; he was also the author of An Answer to Certaine Observations of W. Bridges, concerning the present Wane against his Majestie… (1643). For his career, see alsoMatthews, A. G., Walker Revised being a revision of John Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy during the Grand Rebellion 1642–60 (Oxford, 1948), 178Google Scholar.
27 The contrary view is persuasively put by Lindley, K. in ‘Lay Catholics during the reign of Charles I’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 22 (1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholarand in ‘The Part played by the Catholics’, inManning, Brian (ed.), Politics, Religion and the English Civil War (1973Google Scholar). I am here followingNewman, P. R., ‘Catholic Royalist Activists in the North 1642–46’, Recusant History, 14 (1977–1978), 26–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and‘Catholic Royalists of Northern England’, Northern History, 15 (1979), 88–95Google Scholar.
28 I am grateful to my colleague Dr Henry Mayr-Harting for help on this question.
29 , N.R., Englands Petition to the Two Houses Assembled in Parliament (London and Oxford, 1643), 7–8Google Scholar.
30 For example Generosus, I.S. whose abode is in the King's Army, The Publique Confider (Oxford, 1643Google Scholar); see also Bernard, Nathaniel, Ezoptron The Antimaxias, Or A Looking-Glasse for Rebellion, a sermon preached before the members of the two Houses in St Mary's Church, Oxford, 16 June 1644 (Oxford, 1644), p. 1Google Scholar, on the text 1 Samuel, XV, 23.
31 A Dialogue or Discourse Between a Parliament-man And a Roman Catholick, Touching the present State of Recusants in England (1641), 22. Other works categorizing Catholics in this way include Warmestry's Ramus Olivi, and , D.O., A Persuasion to Loyalty… (1642Google Scholar), see Table of Contents, ‘Puritan-Jesuitisme’.
32 A Discourse…(Oxford, 1645), especially pp. 3Google Scholar, 19–20, 34, 38–42.
33 Stampe, William, A Sermon… (Oxford, 1643), 9Google Scholar.
34 x‘A Person of Honour’ [Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine], The Catholique Apology with a Reply to the Answer… (3rd edn. 1674): for Ireland see esp. pp. 52–65. Only in the P.S., p. 531 etseq., does he get into theology. The earliest part of the text, dated 11 Nov. 1666, entitled ‘To All the Royalists that suffered for His Majesty… The Humble Apologie of the English Catholicks’ comprises only pp. 22–37, and the next earliest section only pp. 1–22, of what had by 1674 become a duodecimo volume of over 600 pages in all.
35 Fletcher, A., The Outbreak of the English Civil War (1981Google Scholar), and Morrill, J.S., ‘The Religious Context of the English Civil War’, TRHS, 5th ser. 34 (1984), 155–78Google Scholar, and ‘The Attack on the Church of England in the Long Parliament’ inHistory, Society and the Churches, ed. Beales, D. and Best, G. (Cambridge, 1985), 105–24Google Scholar.
36 Note-Book kept by Thomas Lechford, Esquire, Lawyer, in Boston, Massachusetts Bay From June 2y, 1638, to July 2g, 1641, ed. Hale, E. E. and Trumbull, J. Hammond (Archaeologia Americana. Trans. & Colls, of the Am. Antiq. Soc, vii, Cambridge, Mass., 1885Google Scholar); Lechford, Thomas, of Clement's Inne in the county of Middlesex, Gent., Plain Dealing: Or, Newes from New England…A Short View of New Englands present Government, both Ecclesiasticall and Civil… (1642Google Scholar). The best modern account is Barnes, T. G., ‘Thomas Lechford and the Earliest Lawyering in Massachusetts, 1638–1641’, Colonial Soc. of Mass., 62 (1984), 3–38Google Scholar.
37 A Collection of Speeches made by Sir Edward Dering knight and Baronet, in Matter of Religion. Some formerly printed, and divers more now added: All of them raised … (1642), 2–4, 26–7, 27–35, 71–88, 89–94, 94–6. It is clear from the text that not all the speeches were ever delivered in the House.
38 Edward Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England begun in the year 1641, ed.Macray, W. D. (6 vols. Oxford, 1888), I, 565–8Google Scholar(Book IV, paras. 297–304); contrast with Clarendon, , Life, folio edn. 50–2Google Scholar, octavo 98–102.
39 On this compare Weston, Corinne C. and Greenberg, Janelle R., Subjects and Sovereigns. The Grand Controversy over Legal Sovereignty in Stuart England (Cambridge, 1981CrossRefGoogle Scholar) and Mendle, M., Dangerous Positions. Mixed Government, the Estates of the Realm, and the Making of the Answer to the xix Propositions (Alabama, 1985Google Scholar).
40 [Digges, D.] An Answer to a Printed Book Intituled, Observations… (Oxford, 1642), 41Google Scholar; [?MrDoughty, of Merton College] The Kings Cause Rationally, briefly, and plainly debated… (1644), 4,Google Scholar6.
41 The Generall Complaint of the most oppressed, distressed commons of England. Complaining to, and Crying out upon the Tyranny of the perpetuall Parliament at Westminster (n.d. ? 1645), Sig. A2V.
42 See Bate, George, Elenchus Motuum Xuperorum in Anglia (Paris, 1649Google Scholar; London, 1661; 1st English translation, 1652), as well as the better known works by Sir Edward Walker, Sir William Dugdale, and Sir Philip Warwick, besides Hobbes's Behemoth and Clarendon's Rebellion.
43 Eikon Basilike. The Portraiture of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Suffering (1649), ed. Knachel, P. A. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966), 41–2Google Scholar, 101, 186 on the bishops, and 7–9 on Strafford.
44 , T.R., A Honest Letter to a Doubtfull Friend, addressed to his friend and kinsman, Sir H.W., at Westminster, dated 28 12 1642Google Scholar.
45 The author is well informed about happenings inside Parliament, and gives political considerations priority over religious.
46 Quarles, Francis, The Loyall Convert (1644)Google Scholar describes him as ‘that profest Defacer of Churches… and Rifler of Monuments of the Dead…’; this is echoed in Mercurius Aulicus for 16 September 1644; [Cleaveland, John] The Character of a London Diurnall (1644), 5–6Google Scholar. As early as 1643 he had been quoted in Sober Sadnes, 35, to illustrate what the sub-title callsThe Proceedings, Pretensions, and Designes of a prevailing party in both Houses of Parliament; in 1644 he was also included in some execrable verse on various parliamentarian leaders both living and recently dead: [? Hausted] Ad Populum: Or, A Lecture to the People.
47 See Bramhall, John, Bishop of Deny, A Sermon Preached in Torke Minster… January 28, 1643 (York, 1643/1644Google Scholar); England and Scotland, Or, The Proceedings of the Parliament of England, The Confession of the Church of Scotland… (Oxford, 1644Google Scholar); [DrLang-baine, Gerard] The Anti-Confederacy, Or, A Discovery of the iniquity and hypocrisie of the Solemne League and Covenant, as Concerne the Law: Proving it to be destructive of the Lawes of England both ancient and moderne (Oxford, 1644Google Scholar); The Anti-Confederacie: Or, An Extract of certaine Quaeres… (Oxford, 1644Google Scholar).
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49 Or The Peoples War (Oxford, 1647Google Scholar). It is interesting that such a work could still be published in Oxford a year after the surrender of the city.
50 Gardiner, S. R. (ed.), ‘Collections by Isack [sic] Walton for his Life of John Hales of Eton’, EHR, ii (1887), 751CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 Hammond, Henry, Tracts (Oxford, 1645), no. 5Google Scholar (1st published Oxford, 1644); also availabl e i nThe Workes of the Reverend and Learned Henry Hammond D.D.… (4 vols. folio, 1659–84), i, 53–70.
52 The Works of Robert Sanderson, D.D., Sometime Bishop of Lincoln, now first collected by William Jacobson, D.D. (6 vols. Oxford, 1854), viGoogle Scholar, Appendix v, 368–71; see also nos. xi and xiii, 381–3, 386–9. Sanderson at first tried to avoid getting involved in the dispute with Taylor, pretending not to know what Socinianism was about. His Lectures on Conscience and Human Law, ed. Wordsworth, C. (Lincoln, London, Oxford, Cambridge, 1877Google Scholar) are more to the point, especially nos. 5–10, but they were delivered as a lecture course in Latin and were not published in English until the 18th century.
53 (n.d. [1642]), signed R.K.
54 Trescot, John, The jealous Magistrate… (Oxford [sic], 1642), Sig. C2 [ = p. 11Google Scholar].
55 Griffith, M., Rector of St Mary Magdalens, near Old Fish Street, London, A Patheticall Perswasion… (1642Google Scholar), especially 24, 28; see also DNB, and Matthews, Walker Revised, 49.
56 Heylin, Peter, Examen Historicum:… (1659Google Scholar), Part I, Containing Necessary Animadversions on the Church-History of Britain. And the History of Cambridge. Publisht by Thomas Fuller For Vindication of the Truth, the Church and the injured Clergy, parts of which read like a 17th-century anticipation of a deliberately unfair book review in a 19th or 20th-century literary journal. Heylin's own interpretation can be seen to best advantage in his Observations on the Historic of the Reigne of King Charles: Published by Esq., H.L. [ = Hamon L'Estrange]… (1656Google Scholar), rather than in his Short View of the Life and Reign of King Charles…(1658).
57 Symmons, Edward, Chaplain to the Lifeguard of the Prince of Wales, A Militarie Sermon… (Oxford, 1644), esp. 3Google Scholar, 12–13, 16, 18–19, 25, 28–9, 32. His other principal publication was the re-issue in 1642 of four sermons from the years 1632–41, when he was a minister in Essex. For the passage quoted, see Warburton, B. E. G., Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers… (3 vols. 1849), IGoogle Scholar, 414; Hardacre, P. H., The Royalists during the Puritan Revolution (The Hague, 1956), p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 13.
58 James, Mervyn, English Politics and the Concept of Honour 1485–1642 (Past & Present Supplement, no. 3, 1978Google Scholar); Marston, Jerrilyn Greene, ‘Gentry Honour and Royalism in Early Stuart England’, Jnl. of British Studies, xiii (1973–1974), 21–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where another work by Symmons is quoted but not this one (p. 37, n. 58).
59 On popular royalism in the south-western counties (excluding Cornwall) see now Underdown, David, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985Google Scholar), and for popular Anglicanism Morrill, J. S., ‘The Church in England, 1642–9’, in Morrill, (ed.), Reactions of the English Civil War 1642–1649 (1982)Google Scholar.
60 The Nicholas Papers. Correspondence of Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State, vol. I, 1641–1652 (Camden Soc, new ser. 40, 1886), 138–47Google Scholar.
61 I am grateful to Professor Gwyn A. Williams for a timely reminder of this when we were colleagues in the 1960s.
62 Eikon Basilike, ed. Knachel, , 88–9Google Scholar.
63 Iniunctions… (Oxford, 1645. 5Google Scholar pp.).
64 Hutton, R., ‘The Structure of the Royalist Party, 1642–6’ Histl. Jnl., 24 (1981Google Scholar), and subsequent articles by P. R. Newman, ‘The Royalist Officer Corps, 1642–60’, ibid., 26 (1983), by J. Daly, ‘The implications of Royalist politics, 1642–6’, ibid., 27 (1984), and since this paper was written—P. R. Newman, ‘The Royalist Party in arms: the Peerage and Army Command 1642–1646’, ch. 5 in Jones, C., Newitt, M. and Roberts, S. (eds.), Politics and People in Revolutionary England Essays in honour of Ivan Roots (Oxford, 1986Google Scholar).
65 Tixall Letters…, ed. Clifford, A. (2 vols. 1815), iiGoogle Scholar, 115–22.
66 Crosby Records: A Cavalier's Mote Book Being Motes, Anecdotes and Observations of William Blundell of Crosby, Lanes, Esquire…, ed. Gibson, T. Ellison (1880), 264Google Scholar. Charles Gerrard, later 1st Earl of Macclesfield, was born c 1618, and so can be counted a contemporary witness.
67 Prior, Mary (ed.), Women in English Society 1500–1800 (1985Google Scholar), chs.6 and 7 and Appendices.
68 Margaret Duchess of Newcastle, The Life of William Cavendish Duke of Newcastle…, ed. Firth, C.H. (2nd edn n.d. [c. 1900Google Scholar]).
69 The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe, ed. Loftis, J. (Oxford, 1979Google Scholar).
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71 Autobiography of Mrs Alice Thornton, 78–9, note.
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73 Memoirs,passim, esp. p. 82.
74 Sir John, later 1st Lord Colepepper born 1600; Henry Jermyn 1600s; Sir Christopher Hatton 1605; the 4th Earl of Southampton 1607; George Goring junior 1608; Edward Hyde 1609; Arthur Lord Capel c. 1610; Lord Falkland c. 1610; George Lord Digby, later 2nd Earl of Bristol, 1612.
75 Rupert born 1619; Maurice 1620.
