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Charles I pp 14–33Cite as

Prior Commitments

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Part of the book series: British History in Perspective ((BHP))

Abstract

King Charles I did not begin his reign with a clean slate. When he ascended to the throne in 1625, he was already saddled with two huge liabilities — the Duke of Buckingham and war — and these liabilities bedevilled him for the next four years. The first step toward putting Charles into perspective is to understand how he had acquired these liabilities, and more especially to consider how far they were liabilities of his own making.

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Notes and References

  1. Kevin Sharpe, ‘The Image of Virtue: The Court and Household of Charles I, 1625–1642’, in David Starkey (ed.), The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London, 1987), p. 227;

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  2. Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 62.

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  3. Maurice Ashley, The House of Stuart: Its Rise and Fall (London, 1980), p. 116.

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  4. Similarly, see David Willson, King James VI and I (Oxford, 1956), p. 95.

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  5. A welcome corrective to this standard view is provided by Leeds Barroll, ‘The Court of the First Stuart Queen’, in The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Linda Levy Peck (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 191–208.

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  6. This is one of the points emphasised by David M. Bergeron, who examines the royal family with insight and sympathy, though traditional historians have been unimpressed. See his Shakespeare’s Romances and the Royal Family (Lawrence, KA, 1985)

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  9. Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hardwicke (ed.), Miscellaneous State Papers from 1501 to 1726 (London, 1778), I, 461–2.

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  10. Ibid., I, 460.

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  11. Carlton further speculated that Charles ‘employed a substitute elder brother to resolve an oedipal conflict’. Carlton, Royal Childhoods (London, 1986), pp. 82, 90;

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  12. Carlton, Charles I: The Personal Monarch, 2nd edn (London, 1995), pp. 12, 14, 29.

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  14. Roger Lockyer, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham 1592–1628 (London, 1981), p. 34.

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  15. Carlton, Royal Childhoods, p. 78, citing William Laud, Works, ed. W. Scot and J. Bliss (Oxford, 1847–60), III, 147.

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  18. Maija Jansson and William B. Bidwell (eds), Proceedings in Parliament 1625 (New Haven, CT, 1987), p. 219.

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  19. Charles Petrie (ed.), The Letters, Speeches, and Proclamations of King Charles I (London, 1968), p. 6.

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  20. The questionable dating of this letter makes it impossible to know for certain which events in the Commons were referred to by Charles. See Robert E. Ruigh, The Parliament of 1624 (Cambridge, MA, 1971), p. 12 n. 18

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  21. and Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), p. 137 n. 2.

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  22. Charles was one of the less forgiving persons in the House of Lords regarding the Commons’ conduct in the case of Edward Floyd. Robert Zaller, The Parliament of 1621: A Study in Constitutional Conflict (Berkeley, CA, 197l), p. 112.

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  23. Petrie, Letters, p. 6.

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  25. Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 66–76.

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  26. In Simon Adams’s words: ‘Hostilities with Spain and a new bride for Charles were, therefore, essential; only when war was declared and Charles married would he be really safe.’ Simon Adams, ‘Foreign Policy and the Parliaments of 1621 and 1624’, in Faction and Parliament: Essays on Early Stuart History, ed. Kevin Sharpe (Oxford, 1978), p. 155.

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  27. Cabala Sive Scrinia Sacra (London, 1654), I, 289. I have modernised spelling.

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  30. CSPV, XVIII, 134.

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  34. Kevin Sharpe, ‘The Personal Rule of Charles I’, in Tomlinson, Before the English Civil War, pp. 54–5.

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  35. Tomlinson, Before the English Civil War, p. 2.

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  36. John Morrill, ‘The Stuarts (1603–1688)’, in Kenneth O. Morgan (ed.), The Oxford History of Britain (Oxford, 1988), p. 354.

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  37. The enthusiasm of the Lords for war can be seen running throughout S. R. Gardiner (ed.), Notes of the Debates in the House of Lords … 1624 and 1626 (London, 1879).

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  38. Russell, Parliaments, pp. 164, 172, 174, 190, 78, 82.

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  40. Russell made a brief rebuttal to Cogswell in ‘Issues in the House of Commons, 1621–1629: Predictors of Civil War Allegiance’, Albion, 23 (Spring 1991), 31–4.

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  41. Other treatments of the Parliament of 1624 are Robert E. Ruigh’s Parliament of 1624, cited above, and

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  42. Mark E. Kennedy, ‘Legislation, Foreign Policy, and the “Proper Business” of the Parliament of 1624’, Albion, 23 (Spring 1991), 41–60.

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  43. Robert Zaller, ‘Edward Alford and the Making of Country Radicalism’, Journal of British Studies, 22, no. 2 (Spring 1983), 63.

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  44. My quotations from the parliamentary diaries of 1624 are taken from the transcripts at the Yale Center for Parliamentary History. This quote comes from the Nicholas diary, fol. 69v. When these diaries are eventually published, readers will be in a better position to judge for themselves whether Russell or Cogswell has interpreted them more correctly.

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  45. Norman McClure (ed.), The Letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia, 1939), II, 548–9.

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  46. Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p. 191. Cogswell observes that ‘Sandys’s volte-face was almost total’.

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  47. Journals of the House of Commons [CJ], I, 682, 733; Spring diary, p. 144.

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  48. Spring diary, p. 88.

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  49. Journals of the House of Lords [LJ], III, 275.

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  51. London, Public Record Office, State Papers Domestic, Charles I, SP 16/1/58. Thomas Rymer, Foedera, 3rd edn (10 vols, London, 1737–45), VIII, pt. 1, pp.18–19.

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  52. Spring diary, p. 142.

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  53. The text of the subsidy act is readily accessible in J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution 1603–1688: Documents and Commentary, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 64–7.

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  54. The four points were framed by Sir Benjamin Rudyerd. Since he was one of the most ardent advocates of war in the Commons, he presumably construed them as a mandate for war; and he did indeed tell later Parliaments that they were obligated to finance the Crown’s military enterprises because of the promise in the 1624 Subsidy Act. However, Rudyerd conveniently ignored all the surrounding language regarding the contingency of war. In later Parliaments, Rudyerd found himself in a quickly shrinking minority. Most other MPs who sat in later Parliaments did not think they had voted for what they got. Historians do not agree on whether Rudyerd was part of the coalition put together by Charles and Buckingham. Compare Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 154–6; Russell, ‘Parliamentary History in Perspective, 1604–1629’, History, 61 (1977), 8; and Adams, ‘Foreign Policy’, pp. 143, 156, 165–6.

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  55. Russell belittles the constitutional significance of this concession. Cogswell supports the traditional view that this was a significant constitutional innovation. On this point Cogswell is right. Russell, Parliaments, pp. 177–8; Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 221–2.

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  56. LJ III, 283.

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  57. Earle diary, fol. 95v.

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  58. Adams, ‘Spain or the Netherlands?’ p. 99.

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  59. Pym diary, fol. 34. Seymour’s speech apparently touched a responsive chord with the parliamentary diarists of the time, nearly everyone of whom recorded it. Earle diary, fol. 95v: ‘His Majesty hath told us plainly that it is the Palatinate the war shall be for, which if it be so, the difficulties will be so great as it will not be unworthy the consideration of this House.’ Nicholas diary, fol. 91v: ‘He would be glad to know where and with whom the war shall be. That he thinketh a war in the Palatinate is not worthy our consideration.’ Spring diary, p. 128: ‘War is spoken of and an army, but where and against whom is fit to be known; if in the Palatinate (as the King seems to imply) the charge is too great, and it hath been far from our thoughts, but we must leave that to the King.’

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  60. Spring diary, p. 141.

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  61. LJ III, 283.

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  62. Earle diary, fols. 184–184v.

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  63. London, Public Record Office, State Papers Domestic, James I. SP 14/164/91, 92; 14/167/10.

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  64. Gardiner, History, V, 235. John Chamberlain similarly recorded at the close of Parliament: ‘The parting were with no more contentment than needed on either side.’ Thomas Birch (ed.), The Court and Times of James the First (London, 1849), II, 457; McClure, Chamberlain Letters, II, 561.

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  65. Lockyer, Buckingham, p. 183.

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  66. Adams, ‘Foreign Policy’, pp. 157–9. Adams does allow that the French alliance and marriage may have been insisted upon by James. In another work, Adams was more inclined to excuse Buckingham and attribute this policy to James. See Adams, ‘Spain or the Netherlands?’, pp. 97–8. It is debatable whether Mansfeld’s army was an improper use of the subsidy money. I agree with Simon Adams that it was. See Michael B. Young, ‘Revisionism and the Council of War, 1624–1626’, Parliamentary History, 8, pt. 1 (1989), 1–27. Cogswell disagrees. See his Blessed Revolution, p. 223.

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  67. Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 69–76.

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  68. Russell, Parliaments, p. 422.

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  69. Most of this fascinating correspondence among the Harleian MSS in the British Library was printed in Hardwicke, Miscellaneous State Papers, I, 399–472 and James Orchard Halliwell (ed.), Letters of the Kings of England (London, 1848), II, 162–229.

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  70. Ibid., I, 410.

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  71. Ibid., I, 420.

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  72. See, for example, Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 148, 194, 197–8.

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  73. Earle diary, fol. 33v.

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  74. Birch, Court and Times, II, 450, 453; McClure, Chamberlain Letters, II, 546, 550.

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  75. Earle’s diary, fol. 43v. In the words of the Commons Journal (1:725), Charles ‘bid him (James] think no more of him (for he lost) but desire him to reflect his Royal Thoughts on his Sister, and her Children’. See also SP 14/160/33.

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  76. Nicholas diary, fols. 72–72v.

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  77. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W. Dunn Macray (Oxford, 1888), I, 28.

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  78. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Supplementary Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Mar & Kellie (London, 1930), pp. 200–3. I have modernised the spelling.

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  79. Lockyer, Buckingham, p. 188.

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  80. Birch, Court and Times, II, 464, 482–3; McClure, Chamberlain Letters, II, 568, 584.

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  1. Michael B. Young
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© 1997 Michael B. Young

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Young, M.B. (1997). Prior Commitments. In: Charles I. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25309-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25309-8_2

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