Reflection on A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603-1714 by Mark Kishlansky

Why did Parliament and King Charles I conflict in the English Civil War?

               Charles’ troubles with Parliament began with his father, James I, who was forced to call Parliament over his desperate finances, requesting more money so that he could enter into the conflict that would become known as the Thirty Years’ War. James inherited debt from Queen Elizabeth and did not do much to reduce it in his first years in office, spending without much control. At this point, Parliament was more of an advisory council of wealthy elites who met to give the king money when he asked for it in exchange for some concessions from him. The institution was established by the Magna Carta in 1215, which declared that no King would impose taxes without the advice of this new group. They rarely met. However, in 1621, they gave King James two subsidies (grants of money) and passed no bills, essentially giving him everything he wanted for nothing in return so that he could prosecute war with Spain. Instead, the King sought to arrange a marriage of his son, Charles, to a Spanish princess, which must have been quite the waffling to explain to Parliament.

               The real troubles began after James’ death in 1625. Parliament was to meet all four years from 1625-1628 due to the new King Charles I’s inherited debts and it became a magnet for grievances from all over the country. In 1628, Charles feared that holding another Parliament would cause the House of Commons to openly question his authority and so he dissolved Parliament. The members commanded the Speaker of Parliament to continue the session and the King’s representatives commanded him to end it as he wept in his chair. Eventually the session was ended and Charles would not dare to call Parliament for another eleven years. The fundamental weakness of the monarchy was its finances and the need to raise money somewhere. Bound by the Magna Carta to consult Parliament, they would have to call the body, which had now become more aggressive, demanding more concessions in return for their money.

               Charles I was forced to call Parliament in 1640 due to a Scottish invasion of England. After eleven years without Parliament, this one would sit for the rest of his life. He found that Parliament would not grant him his subsidy without first the presentation of grievances that had built up or over a decade. The old relationship was dead and now there was great distrust. This distrust would be a major element in the conflict between Parliament and the King. Eventually it led to Parliament (barely) passing a bill called the “Grand Remonstrance,” which was an angry resolution detailing all the failings of the king and successes of Parliament. Parliament demanded to approve the King’s counselors, reform religion, and oversee the military expedition to Ireland (which was now also in rebellion). Charles attempted to arrest Parliamentary leaders and entered Westminster Abbey himself (never before done by him) to do so. He found that they were hidden around the city and sensing the situation, fled London with his family. He and Parliament both decided to raise armies and war was begun.

Who was Oliver Cromwell and what makes him so special?

               As the war between Parliament and the King went on without a decisive battle, each side sieged and sacked the other’s cities. Parliament lost its leader, John Pym, to sickness in the winter of 1643-4. Finally, a decisive battle came at Marston Moor in July 1644 and for the first time, a Parliamentary cavalry force (led by a man named Oliver Cromwell) turned back a Royalist wing. This was decisive in weakening Royalist morale, winning the battle, and turning the tide of the war. Thanks in large part to Cromwell, who never lost a battle, Parliament was victorious in the war, though King Charles would flee to Scotland, where he thought he would be treated as a guest but was instead held for ransom as a hostage. He was sold back to Parliament but would escape to start a war again in 1648. In this Second Civil war, a crucial break occurred in which Parliamentarians’ hearts softened but the hearts of their generals, led by Cromwell, hardened towards the King. Parliament offered better and better deals to the King that he would not accept while the Army grew more and more indignant as they were the ones whose lives were sacrificed. Meanwhile, Charles I kept swinging between supreme confidence in his victory and a desire to become a martyr. A martyr he would become, and his head was separated from his body on January 30^th, 1649. While others demurred, Cromwell was the first man to sign the order.

               Cromwell ruled until his death in 1658 and was very effective as a ruler, maintaining order in the new Commonwealth, later the Protectorate. In essence, he was the result of a conflict in which neither Parliament nor the King came out on top, but rather the military that Parliament had created became a “monster” outside of Parliament’s control and took over the whole country. Cromwell was hardly a monster though and helped to restore and rebalance the Isles after an incredibly destructive war. Upon his death, Parliament would reconsider whether or not to reinstate the line of Kings. In the end they would bring in Charles II, son of Charles I, who had been in exile.

Why did Scotland and England unite in 1707 and not when James I, a Scotsman, became King of England approximately 100 years earlier?

               When James inherited the “three crowns” on England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1603, he declared himself the King of all three, but instability prevented him from integrating them all together. Each had different laws, customs and religions, and the English King (and his successors) would be too weak to bring them all together under one rule. The major obstacle to the union was religion, as English church and state became united during the 17^th century under Anglicanism, yet Scotland remained Presbyterian. However, the benefits of union were eventually seen to outweigh the costs.

               For England, it was important to remove the enemy from their backdoor. Scotland invaded England multiple times in the 17^th century and often allied with France against England. It was crucial to integrate this “frenemy.” For Scotland, the considerations were largely economic as England had much greater access to colonial markets and Scotland had just met with a tremendous failure in the “Darien Scheme” to control the Isthmus of Panama and therefore control trade between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It came to nothing when superior Spanish forces took back their land. With the economy wrecked, Scotland needed to be absorbed into Great Britain to save its financial situation.

What were the major changes to English and British government over the course of the book’s timetable?

               First off, the conflicts mentioned assured that Britain would never again have a Catholic monarch after the crypto-Catholic James II, who took orders from French king Louis XIV. IT was also assured that Parliament would meet annually instead of at the pleasure of the King, a serious erosion of kingly powers. There was also the creation of the national debt as a result of the wars of King William, which transformed military expenditure from a rare, extraordinary cost into a regular cost, central to the workings of the royal budget. Britain emerged from this maelstrom stronger than ever, with a more stable government based on sound finance rather than the whims of a king or queen. Thanks to a better foreign policy that came with William and Mary as well as Queen Anne, Britain obtained Gibraltar and other Mediterranean bases and strengthened their hold on North American colonies. The threat of invasion from Europe was passed and by the time the Hanoverian dynasty came to the throne, Great Britain was on the cusp of becoming a truly global power, stable and prosperous. As the author writes, “There could be no better measure of their accomplishments than the fact that eighteenth-century Frenchmen came to envy the achievements of seventeenth-century Britain.”

How did Britain transform from an absolute monarchy where Parliament rarely met to a constitutional monarchy where Parliament meets every year?

               Much of this transformation can be summed up by the role of the court, which at the start of the century merged both the King’s public and private interests, though by the end of the century was solely representative of the King’s private household. By the end of the century, these great influencers were in Parliament. It happened due to England’s increased role in European affairs, draining the royal treasury and forcing the king to bow to the people, as the French King Louis XVI would do at the end of the 18^th century. In sum, the king ran out of money and it allowed for the gentry and aristocracy to assert greater control over the nation as no new, stronger potentate emerged.

Conclusion

               The author writes that, “In large part the English Revolution resulted from the inability of the consensual political system to accommodate principled dissension. Personal honour could not be detached from social standing, and social standing could not be confirmed without office.” It was this political system that failed, as it could not accommodate nor could it crush principled dissension. In the end, it was far better for England to end with the system, as it would stabilize the politics of the country until the modern day, some 400 years after the rule of James I.

               I really liked this book. It was reasonably short at just under 350 pages and covers everything I felt that was of substance, a very good introduction to the time period. I would maybe like to read a more intellectual history of the time if I decide to pursue the topic further, as the events described in the book were the backdrop to the treatises of thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Bacon.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• In 1666, the Great Fire of London destroyed 80 percent of the old city. 13,000 buildings burnt along with 87 churches and four bridges, leaving 100,000 homeless and a cost of 10 million pounds to rebuild, eight times the annual revenue of the monarch.
• Some important differences between New England and Chesapeake colonies:
• In New England, there was little disease and infant mortality was lower and life expectancy higher than at any point before modern medicine. Twenty percent of the first generation of New Englanders lived to 80 years old.
• In the Chesapeake, swamps, a bad climate, and many diseases wreaked havoc on the population and two-thirds of those who arrived in Virginia between 1619 and 1622 were dead by 1623. More than three-quarters of the white men arriving in the Chesapeake were indentured servants, creating a huge gender imbalance.
• Between 1500 and 1600, London quintupled in size from just 40,000 people to over 200,000, tripling again in the next century to be over 600,000 by 1700. Dublin, on the other hand, reached 10,000 in the middle of the 17^th century and Edinburgh, the second largest urban center in Britain in 1700, had just 40,000 people, ten times smaller than London at the same time and the same size as London was 200 years earlier.
• By the mid-17^th century, cloth accounted for 80 percent of goods exported.
• Oliver Cromwell allowed the Jews to return to England, though he did so hoping that their eventual conversion to Christianity would hasten the second coming. He also banned Christmas because it was too “pagan” for his liking.
• Queen Anne had 17 pregnancies and all 17 would die within days, weeks, months or a few years after.