Charles I: the Personal Rule (2)

Laudianism and the Church

It was probably the king’s religious policy that contributed most to his unpopularity. In Church as in State, Charles I pursued a vigorous and authoritarian programme of reform and centralization. 

The key figure in implementing his religious policies was William Laud, bishop of London (1628) and archbishop of Canterbury (1633), a man whose ‘restless spirit’ had been noted by the shrewd James I. We know from Laud’s diary that in 1626 he had been promised the succession to Canterbury, and from this date he came into prominence as the chief religious spokesman of the government.

William Laud by
Sir Anthony van Dyck
Public domain

Laud made no secret of his hostility to Calvinism declaring that the doctrine of predestination ‘makes the God of all mercies to be the most fierce and unreasonable tyrant in the world’.  His views represented a strain of Anglicanism that had existed since the 1590s, which stressed the historic ‘catholic’ nature of the Church of England and put great store by dignified ritual.  He played down the significance of the sermon and advocated instead a greater influence on the sacraments and an enhancement of the status of the clergy. 

By the mid 1630s the Laudians had acquired a virtual monopoly over senior Church offices.

The restoration of altars 

What convinced many people that Laud was a revolutionary was his attempt to move the communion table from its accustomed position in the nave to the east end of the church and to surround it with rails. Yet the Elizabethan injunctions had permitted the Eucharist to be celebrated round a plain ‘communion table’ set in the middle of the church, and this was the arrangement of most parishes until the 1630s.

In November 1633, three months after Laud became archbishop, an act of the privy council established the precedent that all parochial churches should move the altar to the east end. This of course is the usual position in modern Anglican churches, but in the early seventeenth century it seemed disturbingly 'popish'.

The Book of Sports 

Laud’s accession as archbishop coincided with the re-publication in October 1633 of James I’s Book of Sports, listing the secular activities such as archery and dancing, permitted on the Sabbath. It was accompanied by a campaign against unlicensed preaching. An order was sent out that only those who read the prayer book in a surplice and hood could deliver the sermon. The thinking behind this was that it people indulged in recreation, this was harmless, but if they listened instead to unlicensed preachers, they might be imbibing all sorts of subversive ideas.

High Commission 

In his capacity as archbishop, Laud presided over the Court of High Commission, a prerogative court outside the common law, set up in Elizabeth’s reign. It dealt with the ownership of tithes, probate of wills, payment of alimony, sexual offences, drunkenness, swearing. It represented the growing interference of clerics in secular affairs and was deeply resented. 

Star Chamber 

The 1630s saw a series of show-trials in the Court of Star Chamber (the other major prerogative court; it was the Privy Council sitting as a court) of those whom he regarded as seditious.  

The most spectacular of those trials was that of the authors of three anti-episcopal pamphlets, William Prynne, a lawyer, Henry Burton, a clergyman, and John Bastwick, a doctor. They were fined £5,000 each, imprisoned for life and condemned to be branded in the cheeks and to have their ears cropped - an unheard of punishment for professional men. (Prynne had already received a similar punishment in 1634 for his Histriomastix (1632), an attack on professional actors, and widely seen as including the queen for acting in court masques.

The title page of Histriomastix
Public domain

In 1638 John Lilburne was sentenced to be whipped through the streets of London for circulating Puritan literature.

Fear of Catholicism 

In the charged atmosphere of the 1630s, with the Catholic powers winning victory after victory on the Continent, Laudianism seemed frighteningly close to popery. 

This seemed to be confirmed by the open practice of Catholicism at the court. Henrietta Maria had her own chapel at St James’s, presided over by Capuchin friars. She gained the reputation of an evil counsellor, seducing her husband away from Protestantism. Even the classical architecture of Inigo Jones’s Queen’s House at Greenwich, begun for Anne of Denmark and completed for Henrietta Maria in 1636, seemed popish. By the clauses of her marriage treaty, Catholic chapels were set up at St James’s and elsewhere. From 1634 there was a papal agent at court for the first time since 1558, and the court witnessed some high profile conversions.

The restoration and beautification of church fabric, epitomized by the refurbishment of St Paul’s Cathedral, caused widespread dismay. Church music at court, performed in the Chapel Royal, developed the polyphonic forms widely associated with Catholicism.

Outward compliance with Laudianism concealed many bitter feelings. Perhaps 15,000 emigrated to New England. The fact that he operated with the active support of the king was politically dangerous for Charles.

Wentworth in Ireland

In 1632 Thomas Wentworth was appointed Lord Deputy in Ireland. A former MP for Yorkshire, Wentworth had initially supported the ‘popular party’ in parliament and had been imprisoned for non-payment of the forced loan, but in 1628 he had switched to support the court. In July 1633 he arrived in Dublin.

Thomas Wentworth, later 1st earl of
Strafford (1639)
Anthony van Dyck
Public domain

He was a man of great ambition and commanding personality, described by the historian Clarendon as 

‘the greatest subject in power, and little inferior to any in fortune that was at that time in any of the three kingdoms’. 

He and Laud shared a common policy that they called ‘Thorough’, by which they meant making government more efficient and increasing royal control. His rule in Ireland brought him into conflict with the English landowning class. A new Irish Court of High Commission was established by royal prerogative to enforce compliance. Even the powerful Richard Boyle, earl of Cork, was forced to disgorge his ex-ecclesiastical property to its former owner and to pay a fine of £15,000. His enormous family monument was moved from the east wall of St Patrick’s Cathedral in order to make way for a railed-in altar.

This was watched with apprehension in England. If 'Black Tom Tyrant', as he was known to his enemies, could treat a great Irish peer in this way, what would happen if he ever got his way in England?

By the late 1630s Wentworth had doubled the revenues of the Irish administration and rid the Irish church of many abuses, but only at the cost of uniting all sections of Irish society against him - in itself a remarkable feat. The king’s backing made it difficult for the Irish to appeal over his head and, as in Charles’s other kingdoms, it became difficult to voice opposition legitimately. 

Conclusion

1. The Personal Rule came to be viewed variously as the 'Eleven Years' Tyranny' or a time of peace and prosperity in contrast to the mayhem and Europe and the turmoil of the 1640s and 1650s.
2. Charles's chief counsellors, Laud and Wentworth, had a policy of extending royal control and reforming the church. This led to some spectacular court cases and aroused enormous opposition.
3. However, the Crown was breaking even, and the Personal Rule might have continued indefinitely if Charles had not brought about a quarrel with the Scots.