God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [165]
Husbands offered no editorial comment, but the scope of the collection is revealing. It opens not with the first ordinances (of the summer of 1641), nor with the opening of the parliamentary session in October 1641, but with the King’s first speech to Parliament following his return from Scotland, on 2 December 1641. It ends with the Assessment Ordinance and related measures in late February and early March 1643. The King’s speech had expressed disappointment that the legislation of the previous summer had not achieved settlement and attributed that to fears and jealousies about his government. There then follows an escalating dispute about the King’s interference with parliamentary privilege – he had given an opinion on a measure in Parliament before it was presented to him, something which breached the privilege of free speech. From December 1641 onwards, of course, it was easy to make a case that the privileges of Parliament were increasingly threatened by violent intervention, culminating in the attempt on the Five Members. This selection seems therefore to have silently narrated a history, in which the fears and jealousies identified by the King as the cause of the trouble were shown to be justified by the actions of those around the King. It culminates in the military measures necessary to open a new military campaign in the spring of 1643. The preamble of the Assessment Ordinance, which is reproduced in full, depends on such a history:
The Lords and Commons now assembled in Parliament, being fully satisfied and resolved in their consciences, that they have lawfully taken up arms: and may and ought to continue the same for the necessary defence of themselves and the Parliament from violence and destruction, and of this Kingdom from foreign invasion, and for the bringing of notorious offenders to condign punishment, which are the only causes for which they have raised and do continue an army and forces.26
They were forced to raise an assessment as the fairest way to support this necessary effort. It is difficult not to see this as a propaganda exercise, an attempt to define the cause which was about to make renewed financial and administrative demands. Of course, as propaganda, it was aimed at the very committed reader: perhaps those local officeholders on whom the administrative burden of the war was falling. One such committed reader was John Lilburne, who was later to use it to hold Parliament to account.27
Defence of Parliament had been closely linked to the defence of reformation, and here we come to the demise of Cheapside Cross. On 30 March, three days after the Sequestration Ordinance and two days after the proposed excise, a committee was despatched from the Houses to arrest the Capuchins, a calculated insult to Henrietta Maria, and her chapel at Somerset House was purged of images and idols. Among them was a painting by Rubens, valued at £500, which was thrown into the Thames.28 Like Cheapside this had been the focus of hostility for a long time, in this case restrained by diplomatic pressure from the French ambassador and by deference to the King. Inhibitions were lifting, however. The previous week a group of London ministers had been asked to view the windows of the Guildhall chapel, and their hostile report went further, expressing concerns about Cheapside Cross and other images in the City. On 24 April a committee was appointed under Sir Robert Harley to ‘receive information, from time to time, of any monuments of superstition or idolatry in the Abbey Church at Westminster, or the windows thereof, or in any other Church or Chapel, in or about London: and they have power to demolish the same, where any such superstitious or idolatrous monuments are informed to be’. All churchwardens and other officers were required to help in this work and the committee was to meet at 2 p.m. that day.29
Henrietta Maria charged with treason and royal houses