Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- A note on quotations, sources, dates and terminology
- PART I THE ORIGINS OF CONSTITUTIONAL ROYALISM
- PART II CONSTITUTIONAL ROYALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, 1642–1649
- 5 Chronological outline: negotiations formal and informal
- 6 Issues and sticking-points
- 7 The theory of Constitutional Royalism
- PART III CONSTITUTIONAL ROYALISM IN PERSPECTIVE
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History
6 - Issues and sticking-points
from PART II - CONSTITUTIONAL ROYALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, 1642–1649
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- A note on quotations, sources, dates and terminology
- PART I THE ORIGINS OF CONSTITUTIONAL ROYALISM
- PART II CONSTITUTIONAL ROYALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, 1642–1649
- 5 Chronological outline: negotiations formal and informal
- 6 Issues and sticking-points
- 7 The theory of Constitutional Royalism
- PART III CONSTITUTIONAL ROYALISM IN PERSPECTIVE
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History
Summary
RELIGION AND CHURCH GOVERNMENT
I argued in chapter 4 that loyalty to the Church 'by law established' and horror of root-and-branch reform were crucial in driving people towards the King during 1641–2. There was a direct correlation between commitment to the institution of episcopacy and commitment to Charles I. The Constitutional Royalists maintained this position throughout the peace negotiations of the 1640s. They abhorred Parliament's abolition of bishops, the alienation of episcopal lands, and the proscription of the Prayer Book. A willingness to treat with the Houses did not imply a readiness to surrender the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In the later 1640s, however, the Constitutional Royalists began to differ over whether the King should make a tactical retreat over episcopacy – whether he should surrender them now the better to preserve them later. After 1646 the Constitutional Royalists no longer presented a united front on the issue of Church government. But until then, this question had proved one of the primary – perhaps the primary – sticking-point in their negotiations with the Houses.
In the Answer to the XIX Propositions, Falkland and Culpepper had this to say on the King's behalf about the Church of England:
No Church could be found upon the earth, that professeth the true religion with more purity of doctrine than the Church of England doth, nor where the government and discipline are jointly more beautified, and free from superstition, than as they are here established by law;which we will with constancy maintain in their purity and glory, not only against all invasions of popery, but also from the irreverence of those many schismaticks and separatists wherewith of late this kingdom and our City of London abounds.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994