Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [467]
First, he had insulted the Scots. For in 1638, Laud contemptuously told the formidable Presbyterians of Scotland, whose church effectively controlled the northern land, that they must abandon their Puritan ways, submit to rule by his bishops and follow the Anglican rites of the English Prayer Book – which did not, after all, vary so greatly from the original Roman Use of Sarum from which Cranmer had derived it. Scotland had risen, signed the Covenant to preserve its own Presbyterian rule and marched into England.
Charles was helpless. Like the medieval kings before him, each time he overreached himself, he found he had no money.
He tried every means to raise it, and failed. The troops he called for did not materialise. In Wiltshire, when they found they were not to be paid, they rioted and it was all Lord Pembroke could do to quieten them.
Since he needed money, Charles had to call a Parliament.
He was in a trap. Parliament voted him no funds; its Presbyterian members sympathised with the Scots anyway; the Scots, cannily, stayed camped in the north.
Then the great Parliament of 1640, known in British history as the Long Parliament, struck. It demanded the impeachment of the king’s most trusted councillors. Soon Strafford had been executed at the Tower of London in front of a cheering crowd and Archbishop Laud was in prison. It was humiliation for the king. The Irish rose in revolt. Still Parliament voted no money but passed the Grand Remonstrance – a massive indictment of his rule.
The proud Stuart king then made the mistake that ended medieval monarchy in England for ever.
He came to the House of Commons in person, to arrest Pym, Hampden and three other members. It was the final provocation. To cries of “Privilege and Parliament”, London went into revolt, Charles was forced to flee: and the country was ready for civil war.
Was there still hope of reconciliation now? Some said there was. The eminent lawyer Hyde had been writing brilliant pamphlets for his royal master, showing that a settlement was possible. In return, Parliament had set conditions that would put the king entirely under their control. They no longer trusted him.
MARGARET: So why, Nathaniel, do you support the king? Is not Parliament a better ruler than a tyrant king with a papist army under his control?
How could he explain? For many, the ties to the king were simple – the personal ties of a great nobleman whose family had been advanced by the Stuarts, or the natural conservatism of a country peasant who supported the old ways.
And a young man with no great noble connections, from Sarum?
Nathaniel’s feelings for the monarchy ran deep. Of course, there was the style of the king’s court. He had caught some of the flavour of it when, two years before, he had spent six months at the Inns of Court while he was trying, without much application, to make himself a lawyer. Charles I, great collector of art, patron of men like Inigo Jones the architect and great painters like Van Dyck; Charles, with his cosmopolitan court; Charles, whose wife was half a Medici; Charles who had already erected small but brilliant classical buildings in London. How could an imaginative, light-hearted young student from Sarum not be dazzled by the outward trappings of these sophisticated European wonders?
But more important, the monarchy had always been there. Whether or not the notion of divine right was a Stuart invention, kingship was certainly sacred: it was part of the natural order, the divine hierarchy. It went back into the mists of time. Why, was not the English king descended from the old Anglo-Saxon royal house that produced Edward the Confessor? Did not, even nowadays, the king touch men and cure them of the King’s Evil – scrofula?
The king was a brilliant man. A good man – he was even faithful to his wife.
It must be wrong, therefore, for Parliament men, mere factions, to set themselves up against the ancient and lawful authority of kings. Destroy the sanctity of kingly rule and you are on the road to chaos.
He could