My purpose in writing this Protest & Progress blog post, is to explore for myself the history of English Protest Movements. What effect they had, and the changes they may ( or may not ) have instigated. Today, it's the period before, during and after the Civil Wars.
The middling compromise that Elizabeth 1st's religious settlement of 1559 made, between old and new religious traditions, superficially stabilised the country. But that settlement entailed a huge degree of ostracizing of Catholics from high public office and influence. Anti-Catholic suspicion, derision and outright hatred, that still persists in the UK's collective psyche to this day, has its cultural foundations in this period. As her reign neared it's end, Catholic plots concerning Elizabeth's successor circled around Mary Queen of Scots, who, though deeply flawed as a monarch, was the best Catholic option available. Eventually, with some ministerial pressure and her own reluctance overcome, Elizabeth removed the problem by executing her.
The only realistic claimant left was James 6th of Scotland, ironically Mary's estranged son, deliberately brought up to be a Protestant. Though she never clearly stated this preference, Elizabeth was canny enough to know full well that James was the obvious candidate. Her apparent dithering may simply have been tactical, to prevent any premature opposition to her successor developing.
An undertow of Catholic resistance, however, would quickly resurface in James 1st's reign, with the infamous plot to explode Parliament and kill King James. That the removal of Parliament was part of the objective, recognised how much the levers of power was shifting towards it. Increasingly split religiously between Catholic and Protestant sympathisers, Parliament was becoming noticeably less willing to genuflect to the kings will. James, though prone to paranoia, did at least manage to hold the ship of monarchy steady. On the succession in 1625 of his son Charles 1st, things took a rockier, more combative turn. Charles was flamboyant, an aesthete, married to a Catholic, he also took worryingly long trips to Catholic European countries, ostensibly to buy the latest fashions in baroque art. He was the last inflexible flush of a monarchy for whom the medieval concept of 'the divine right of kings', was an ardently held reality. That his wishes and demands should prevail over those of Parliament.
Parliament's religious and political divisiveness had its echoes across the country. The Protestant philosophy of 'salvation by faith alone' had introduced a new radical individualism into the country's religious practice. One which Elizabeth 1st's father Henry 8th, had himself demonstrated. Once you broke from adherence to Rome and the Pope, you could turn yourself into the leader of your own church or sect.
One's faith was becoming increasingly a matter of personal choice, rather than requiring adherence to a collectively imposed belief system. And some truly radical sects were popping up all over the fertile soil of England's ferment. Charles's alleged Catholic sympathies served only to amplify a strong vein of 'republican' revolt amongst his own citizens, already opposed to the whole idea of a hereditary monarchy and ' Popery'. Disquiet undoubtedly was present, with a huge plethora of uncivil religious and political dissenting groups emerging before, during and after the Civil War's turmoil broke out.
These groups further exemplify how political and religious allegiances were becoming inseparable, centering on ideas for how a new fairer more equitable society could be created. And if this was not to happen in England, from The Mayflower in 1620 onwards, these groups could emigrate, taking there religious convictions to America. Most dissenters had some religious theory or view point, which had specific political or social implications. Even the most basic list of them is long - Anabaptists, Baptists, Barrowists, Behemenists, Brownies, Diggers, Enthusiasts, Familists, Fifth Monarchists, Grindletonians, Levellers, Muggeltonians, Philodelphians, Puritans, Quakers, Ranters, Sabbatarians, Seekers, Socinians. Here are details of three, to give you a flavour of them.
The Levellers
Originally a term to describe rural peasants who levelled illegal enclosure walls and hedges. The Levellers were a political movement active between the 1st and 2nd Civil Wars. Essentially campaigning for equality and widening the vote as a natural right, and electing a sovereign by popular vote. They were the first political dissenting group to disseminate their ideas through the distribution of pamphlets, petitions and vox box populism. Though their ideas were widely held within the New Model Army, they were very effectively sidelined by Parliament and Cromwell's Republic.
The Diggers
Originally a disgruntled offspring from the above, who called themselves The True Levellers. They were more radical as an organisation, their political and religious philosophy would these days be called 'agrarian socialism'. Demanding common ownership of land and property in line with what was outlined in The Acts of the Apostles. They were non-conformists who wanted reform of the social order and created small communities based on egalitarian principles. They tried to re-establish farming on common land. This led to them being called 'diggers', and they were constantly being violently removed by local authorities and landowners.
The Grindletonians
Once you feel able to question the authority of the king, it becomes feasible to extend that questioning to all external authority, whether that be religious or political. The Grindletonians were a short lived phenomena in 17th Century England, exhibiting an extreme antinomian tendency. Emerging first in London in a sermon preached in 1627. The central belief of Grindletonian Familists, to give them their full name, was that salvation by faith and divine grace were one's sole binding moral authority, and no other law or power could take precedence over them. Obedience to any common law, became dependent upon whether it conformed to your Christian belief or not. No other external authority would be recognised, whether that was King or Parliament.
This tendency the Grindletonians represented was vehemently opposed, even by the father of the Reformation, Martin Luther. Their leadership came mostly from local clerics. So it was primarily an internal Church of England matter to police, and several vicars were hauled before church courts to answer for their antinomian sentiments, The last know English Grindletonian died in 1680. Though this antinomian notion did spread, influencing other dissenting groups such as the Ranters and Quakers. The growth of Presbyterianism to America, means to this day it still manifests this antinomian tendency in Evangelical groups there.
Throw a defiant vain Catholic monarch into this simmering, growing pool of dissent and watch it transform rebellious uncivil behaviour into a civil war, and ultimately regicide. Even after two bouts of Civil War, nothing from a dissenting point of view was to them fully settled. Why accept a compromise when you could achieve a perfection unsullied by practicalities. Cromwell, may have started as a staunch Parliamentarian and anti monarchist, but soon found keeping the lid on a wide range of unreasonable demands from Protestant dissenters, was as much of an issue as containing Catholic and monarchist insurgency. His role as Protector of the Realm, soon became a king by another name, equally as ruthless, and ideologically proved to be more tyrannical. Though the Republic was short lived, it did firmly establish Parliament as the primary governing authority in England. When the monarchy was restored with Charles 2nd in 1660, this was came with Parliaments full approval. Though the Civil Wars were one long rebellious fight for this supremacy, there were a couple of other 17th century rebellions of significance.
THE WESTERN RISING 1627-1632
In the run up to the Civil Wars, the most significant rebellion was The Western Rising. This erupted across the West Country, spread sporadically east into the Midlands over a five year period. This was yet another protest about illegal enclosure, which arose from a different direction than before. Across England were numerous royal forests, such as the Forest of Dean. By adjusting the legal status of these royal forests as crown property, bits of them could now be sold off to the highest bidder. This was done to increase the royal coffers, to service Charles 1st's notably expensive tastes. Once this land was purchased by new owners they would enclose it, local rights would be removed, and access actively prohibited. These forest enclosures during the uprising were being regularly breached or dismantled, the age of defiant trespass of privately owned land had arrived. Local councils started to complain of the increased burden upon them, when an influx of impoverished peasantry moved into the wealthier towns and cities. Once again the consequences and effect on the poor of such egregious enclosure was never accounted for, at all.
THE MONMOUTH REBELLION 1685
Primarily this rebellion, led by the Duke of Monmouth, one of Charles 2nd's bastard sons, was an attempt to overthrow James 2nd. A monarch who was crassly and openly exposing Catholic sympathies, barely twenty five years after the end of the Civil War. Underneath this challenge to the succession, were festering wounds and grievances from those wars still not fully healed to many people's minds. The Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, had been, for many Protestants, a gross betrayal of what the Civil War had supposedly been fought for. And now James 2nd was trying to reverse the Reformation and restore the primacy of the Pope too. Monmouth attempted to hitch his claim to the throne alongside these still simmering resentments. But despite pre-arranging a simultaneous rising in Scotland, and provocatively crowning himself in Taunton, the appetite for further conflict just was not there to be stoked. Monmouth failed to attract and build the sort of ardent following you would need to ensure a rebellion would succeed.
Eventually on his defeat at The Battle of Sedgemoor on the 6th of July, he was captured and speedily executed a week later in the Tower of London. The battle had a huge rebel death toll of nearly 3,000, compared to the 27 royalists. James, nonetheless, set up The Bloody Assises, where Judge Jeffries tried and executed some of the remaining rebel leaders. Though mostly rebel sympathisers were sent to serve their sentence out working in England's relatively new colony of the West Indies. James clung on a further three years as monarch, vainly trying to restore Catholic fortunes in the face of widespread opposition. Only to be deposed by another cousin William Duke of Orange in 1688, in what became known as the Glorious Revolution. This anachronistically was neither glorious nor revolutionary, but merely a peaceful, cleanly executed transition of monarchical power, which Parliament had actively instigated. James's subsequent exile to Europe meant his Stuart descendents, fifty years later, would return to re-state their claim.
For all the upheaval, huge loss of life and political turbulence that broke out in the middle decades of Seventeenth Century England, very little was actually achieved beyond the execution of a king and establishing the primacy of Parliament. You might say social mobility improved, but then it had been doing so for at least two centuries already. Little of direct benefit to the everyday lives of ordinary lower class English citizens was felt. Parliament may have become stronger as an executive, but it still only represented the nobility and politically wealthy landowning elites. The Restoration of the monarchy appeared to return England to business as usual, as though the Civil Wars and The Republic, were an aberration that had never really happened.
The protests and rebellions over the next few centuries became multi faceted ones, fighting cronyism, corruption, that old nemesis the enclosures, technological revolutions, and the expansion of Parliamentary representation. These were to be long hard fought for battles, and you could argue, ones that still have some road left to be travelled, even today. When democracy itself appears to have forgotten why and how it came into being in the first place.
Next Episode - Unsettling Revolutions
No comments:
Post a Comment