• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1183 0

Other members, however, merely laughed at the panic and remained in the House. Arthur Haselrig, a notoriously hot Protestant who had clutched hold of an image in his alarm, was jeered for flying to the horns of the altar. Anti-popery, in other words, was extremely powerful, but its more extreme manifestations were not universally persuasive. It is significant both that there were parliamentary proposals in the summer of 1641 to geld Jesuits and that they were not accepted.64 Those anxious about legal propriety or political decency could take little comfort from Strafford’s trial or the crowds that (successfully) bayed for his blood during the passage of the attainder.

In May, seven months after the assembly of the parliament, some progress was finally being made but the principal achievement, the execution of Strafford, left a legacy of division and bitterness which further undermined attempts at settlement. Certainly, these proceedings against Strafford were a final nail in the coffin of the Pym-Bedford plans: their association with these events is unclear, but they finally ended their hopes of retaining the King’s favour. Equally, the army plot to seize Strafford increased fears that Charles might employ a military coup against the troublesome parliament. Committed to the abolition of episcopacy by their alliance with the Covenanters, and now tarred with the brush of populism, these were people with whom Charles would not deal. Bedford was in any case dying – he caught smallpox in the first week of May and died on 9 May.65 Strafford’s end was in some ways a consummation of the politics of 1640: opposition to royal policies was most powerful as a movement of redress rather than rebuilding, and drew considerable strength from opinion outside Whitehall and Westminster. But these events also accelerated some of the divisive political trends that had emerged since November 1640: rebuilding would be difficult in the atmosphere of distrust and mutual recrimination which now reigned.

In particular Parliament’s search for security for the future led it onto new constitutional ground, fuelling fears of a Puritan populist conspiracy against the monarchy. On the day of the attainder of Strafford, Parliament had passed an Act against its own dissolution. If the Triennial Act had tiptoed awkwardly round the implications of such measures for the prerogative, there was no such hesitation after the army plot. At this point over half of the members of Charles’s Privy Council in November 1640 were dead, under arrest or in exile, but further safeguards seemed to be necessary to some MPs.66 The political context for this was clear: the revelation of the army plot and the fear that all the talking about grievances would come to nothing because of the King’s advisers.

Immediately, however, the prospects looked good as a constructive legislative programme finally materialized. Revenue measures were not necessarily far-sighted, although they had far-reaching implications. On 12 May the Houses voted on a bill based on Pym’s earlier proposal for grants of a fixed sum, in this case the £400,000 subsidy. The bill was not treated with urgency until December, but it is a sign of the growing seriousness of measures to settle the financial question.67 In the meantime, a poll tax was granted in June 1641, with high hopes. It passed from first reading to royal assent in only eleven days and in some places appears to have captured a large slice of the population, but the yield was disappointing (£250,000 compared with the £1m some had hoped for). This reflected widespread evasion, and there was also a problem of slow payment.68 Its failure made the adoption of the £400,000 subsidy more or less inevitable. A Tonnage and Poundage Act was finally passed on 22 June. This was in one sense a tactical measure, since it granted the duties for less than two months, starting retrospectively on 25 May, and there were frequent subsequent renewals as negotiations continued. But the effect of the Act was to transform the customs into parliamentary taxes. It abolished