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Despite hostile contemporary comment, these were not the actions of a mindless mob. It was an organized, targeted protest which had a clear (if not necessarily sophisticated) political agenda.44 In the following days, anxious authorities responded edgily to reports of a gathering of thousands of armed men on Blackheath. In fact it was local people being summoned to work on the roads by the beat of a drum. But this was symptomatic of an atmosphere in which rumours circulated freely, threatening more drastic action. Armed watches were set in the city and the suburbs, and guards placed outside St James’s Palace and Whitehall. The militia was augmented by men drawn from the surrounding counties and a Provost Marshal with a company of horse and foot was appointed to keep order on the South Bank. St James’s was home to actual Catholics, possibly agents of international Catholicism. It was the residence of the French Queen Mother, Marie de Medici, who had arrived in mid-October 1638. Another Catholic chapel had been opened there, served by a Jesuit confessor, and she was a strong presence at the court. The rioters reportedly said that the guard there was for the ‘defence of the French’. The Queen Mother ignored advice to move out, fearing that if she left she would never come back.45

The attack on Lambeth Palace, May 1640

It may have been the threat to his family, or memories of anti-Buckingham disturbances in the late 1620s, that prompted Charles to particularly stern measures. A royal proclamation declared these events to be rebellious and called for the apprehension of three ringleaders. Two of the rioters were brought to trial in Southwark on 21 May at a special session of Oyer and Terminer (a court empanelled by a specific writ to investigate particular crimes). A man called Archer, who had beaten a drum to summon the crowd, was put on the rack to discover whether he had been put up to it. This was the last use of judicial torture in English history, and the warrant for it is in Charles’s hand throughout. The eventual victim was Thomas Bensted, probably a mariner but described in some sources as a tailor from Lambeth or a cobbler. Bensted had been the only casualty of the initial riot, when he sustained relatively minor injuries. Having been injured, however, he said, ‘come follow me, seeing I am hurt I will be your captain’. It was enough to get him a death sentence. He was kept in Newgate prison prior to his execution in the early hours of the morning in Southwark. He met his end on gallows constructed overnight under guard of the militia. His head was displayed on London Bridge and the rest of his body, cut into quarters, at four of the city gates.46

Parliaments coincided with meetings of the clergy of the diocese of Canterbury in Convocation to discuss ecclesiastical matters and to provide clerical taxation. Convocation’s important decisions were ratified in Parliament: those who believed that the Royal Supremacy in the church resided in Parliament (by no means all of them Calvinists) were very hostile to the view that a Convocation could issue canons on its own authority. Customarily, Convocation dissolved with Parliament, but on this occasion it continued to sit and, moreover, produced controversial new canons. This was highly unusual, and was clearly Charles’s personal decision – the Council minute expressing support was intended as a statement about whose idea this was. Charles claimed that the new canons would reassure opinion about the future of the faith, a prominent concern in the just-dissolved parliament, but it is more likely that he hoped by these means to flush out those of his subjects who were supporting the Covenanters. The canons therefore represented a characteristically forthright statement of royal intent – they defended the Laudian policies from the charge of innovation. The chief controversy arose from the disastrous ‘etc oath’, however. Clergy were required to swear never to alter