D.L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism 1640–1649
Introduction, themes, debates, and sources [10 mins.]
Michael curates today’s Social Science Files selection:
In his book Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, published in 1994, David L. Smith wrote:
BOOK COVER
'Constitutional Royalism' is one of the most familiar yet least often examined of all the political labels found in the historiography of the English Revolution. This book fills a gap by investigating the leading Constitutional Royalists who rallied to King Charles I in 1642 while consistently urging him to reach an 'accommodation' with Parliament. These Royalists' early careers reveal that a commitment to the rule of law and a relative lack of 'godly' zeal were the characteristic predictors of Constitutional Royalism in the Civil War. Such attitudes explain why many of them criticised the policies of the King's personal rule, but also why they joined the King in 1642 and tried to achieve a negotiated settlement thereafter. The central chapters examine their role in the peace talks of the 1640s and assess why those talks broke down. The final part of the book traces the Constitutional Royalists through the Interregnum - during which they consciously withdrew from public life - to the Restoration, when many of them returned to prominence and saw their ideas vindicated. A concluding chapter reviews the long-term legacy of Constitutional Royalism and its specific contribution to the politics of the English Revolution. Throughout, the story of the Constitutional Royalists is set within the wider context of seventeenth-century English political history and thought.
Chapter 1
Introduction: themes, debates, sources
Section 1
'Constitutional Royalism' is one of the most familiar yet least often examined of all the political labels found in the historiography and literary criticism of the English Revolution. The term is most commonly used to describe a group of moderate Royalists who became prominent among Charles I’s advisers in 1641-2. The leading exponents are usually identified as Edward Hyde, Viscount Falkland and Sir John Culpepper; and their ideas are thought to revolve around a concept of limited monarchy which ruled under the law, and a wish to preserve the existing structures of the Church of England. These were the people who guided Charles I's more conciliatory actions in 1641-2, and whose political attitudes found their classic expression in the King's Answer to the XIX Propositions. Neither historical nor literary scholars appear to doubt the existence of Constitutional Royalism as a phenomenon during the twelve months before the outbreak of the English Civil War.
But all this in turn prompts two further questions. First, how numerous and how coordinated were the Constitutional Royalists in 1641-2? We as yet know very little about whether there were other figures of similar outlook beyond the three leading characters, or about the extent to which they operated as a coherent political grouping. Did they rally behind a firm set of policies and propositions, or do their contrasting emphases make it inappropriate to lump them together into a single group? Second, whatever became of these people after 1642? How far were their attitudes applicable to the politics of the Civil War period, and what was their role in successive peace negotiations? Was there such a thing as Constitutional Royalism during the remainder of the 1640s, or was it purely a transient product of 1641-2? None of these questions has so far been addressed by historians, and the aim of this monograph is to offer some answers to them. …
… I have used two rules of thumb for including an individual in this study. Both of these are as close to objective tests as I can devise. They seem to me to minimise the role of the observer — which inevitably distorts the view of the past under observation — and to work with the grain of the surviving evidence. The first criterion is prominence in royal counsels during the twelve months before the Answer to the XIX Propositions, and especially between January and August 1642. …
… My second criterion has been a frequent and prominent involvement on the King's behalf in successive peace negotiations throughout the period 1642—8. …
… Between them, these two criteria give us a sample of ten figures who may tentatively be classed as Constitutional Royalists: Hyde, Falkland, Culpepper, Seymour, Strangways, Hertford, Richmond, Southampton, Dorset and Lindsey. I make no claim that this list includes all those who could possibly be classified as Constitutional Royalists, or even that it represents a distinct and self-contained group. But I do think it comprises the leading exponents of an identifiable set of attitudes and priorities.
We will see throughout this book that the activities and alignments of these people fluctuated enormously during the decade of the Civil Wars. Nothing could indicate more clearly that we are examining political processes before 'the age of parties'. For much of the time, they were, so to speak, aligned but not coordinated. They shared extensive areas of common ground, while retaining considerable differences of emphasis. The constellations of people who worked closely together mutated constantly over time. Yet these ten figures retained a similar outlook throughout this period, a fact which is underlined by the appointment of all those who survived to senior public office in 1660. To take either a narrower or a broader sample of individuals would tend to obscure this very important element of continuity within royal counsels.
Section 2
The classification of individuals is not the only problem we face. The name 'Constitutional Royalism' itself requires some further exploration and justification. At first sight, it looks like a contradiction in terms. Is it possible to be loyal to both a monarch and a constitution? Do not the ideas of monarchy - which emphasise the rule of an individual - and of constitutionalism - with their emphasis on political and legal norms which transcend the individual - naturally pull in opposite directions? Logically, this may well be true; but two points should immediately be made to set this paradox in its proper historical perspective.
First, the notion of 'constitutional monarchy' has been a recurrent theme in England's political development. Even today, this remains England's official form of government. The monarchy, though bound by constitutional conventions, retains surprising importance, and it has been convincingly argued that its contemporary political strength 'does not lie in the power it has, but in the power that it denies to others'. Historically, the really remarkable feature of the English monarchy has been its ability to adapt to changing political contexts, and to play convincing roles within wholly contrasted constitutional frameworks. Since the high Middle Ages, it has displayed a versatility of monarchical form in a way which is almost unique. This exceptionally long and distinctive pattern of development demonstrates the viability of ideas of 'constitutional monarchy' and gives them a compelling claim to be studied. The resilience of such ideas is shown particularly vividly by their survival during the years of the English Revolution, and their resurgence after the Restoration.
This leads us neatly into the second point. The belief that royal and constitutional patterns of government are logically opposed is very much a modern one. It is one aspect of the ideas of the Enlightenment, and was reinforced in the later eighteenth century by the American and French Revolutions. However, I shall argue in this book that this belief was virtually unknown in early seventeenth-century England. Indeed, it was axiomatic for most people in the decades before the Civil Wars that the monarch and the constitution were integrally and symbiotically bound together. The famous commonplace of the 'body politic', with the monarch as head and the nation as body and members, illustrates this perfectly. Today, we instinctively analyse politics in terms of checks and balances, in terms of one authority limiting another. It takes a real effort of imagination to empathise with people who assumed that politics was an harmonious process in which different sources of authority complemented and reinforced each other. This outlook was among the principal hallmarks of the Constitutional Royalists of the 1640s, and meant that they never found their beliefs self-contradictory.
Although many of its underlying assumptions had long-established antecedents, the emergence of Constitutional Royalism took place within a very specific political and ideological context. It was designed to answer a particular problem posed by a particular king: Charles I. Chapter 2 will analyse the early Stuart constitution and the contrasting ways in which James I and Charles I managed it. It will argue that Charles I's personality and political style were peculiarly likely to expose the latent tensions within the constitution and to upset the delicate balance of the Church. His passion for order and definition proved disastrous in a system which depended on the maintenance of grey areas, and caused serious divisions within the political nation by the end of the 1630s. In particular, they raised the question of whether the constitution needed to be defined in order to protect it from a monarch like Charles I, or whether such definition would alter its fundamental nature.
Constitutional Royalism emerged during 1641—2 as one of several possible answers to that question. Its basic premises were that royal powers and constitutional government were inherently compatible; that Charles I could be trusted to rule legally and to abide by the safeguards against non-parliamentary government erected in 1640-1; that limitations on his power to choose advisers and military commanders were antithetical to monarchy; and that the existing structures of the Church of England were an intrinsic part of the constitution which should be preserved from 'root- and-branch' reform. Chapter 3 examines the early careers of our sample of ten Constitutional Royalists. It traces their activities during the 1620s and 1630s, and explores whether we can pinpoint any activities and beliefs which serve as predictors of their Constitutional Royalism. Chapter 4 then charts how they emerged as Royalists during the early 1640s. This chapter stresses the importance of attitudes towards the rule of law and the future of the Church in persuading these people to rally behind the King. It concludes with a discussion of why moderate Royalists and moderate Parliamentarians were unable to coalesce and form a united middle ground during the summer of 1642.
After the outbreak of the Civil War, the Constitutional Royalists are best defined as those among the King's followers who consistently sought to further peace negotiations with Parliament. This was not necessarily incompatible with senior military command; nor did it ever entail a preference for unconditional surrender; it primarily involved a readiness to keep talking. The core of this book consists of a detailed analysis of the role of Constitutional Royalists in these successive negotiations. Chapter 5 provides a chronological outline of the talks, and looks at both the formal treaties at Oxford (1643), Uxbridge (1645), Newcastle (1646), over the Heads of the Proposals (1647), and at Newport (1648), and also at the various informal contacts between the King's followers and Parliament during the years of Civil War. Chapter 6 then identifies seven crucial issues which impeded the progress of these negotiations: the nature of religion and church government; the command of the militia; the powers and privileges of Parliament; the relationship between royal authority and the common law; the choice of royal advisers and the composition of the Privy Council; the fate of Royalist 'delinquents'; and the question of the King's 'honour and conscience'. It will look at each sticking-point in turn, discussing whether there was a Constitutional Royalist position on it, and trying to explain why agreement with Parliamentary negotiators proved so elusive. Part Two of the book concludes with an examination of eight writers whose publications during the 1640s offered a theoretical justification for the political activities of the Constitutional Royalists. Their ideas will be contrasted with those of other writers who defended the concept of absolute monarchy.
Part Three seeks to locate Constitutional Royalism within a longer timeframe. It begins by telling the story of what happened to the various Constitutional Royalists during the Interregnum. I shall suggest that the dominant note — expressed in poetry as well as in political practice — was one of quiescence and withdrawal rather than any attempt to subvert the republican regimes. In the following chapter I draw the camera lens out to an even wider angle, and examine the legacy of Constitutional Royalism after 1660. This is inevitably a broader, more speculative section, and argues that Constitutional Royalism was a crucial influence upon the Restoration settlement. It shaped the government's policies during the 1660s, and made an important contribution to the outcome of both the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution. In a looser sense, the values and attitudes characteristic of Constitutional Royalism may be traced well into the eighteenth century, and they thus assisted the gradual evolution of England's modern constitutional monarchy. The final chapter draws together the threads of the argument and summarises the significance of Constitutional Royalism for our view of the English Civil Wars, and of English political history in general. …
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The Source has been:
David L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c.1640–1649, Cambridge University Press 1994
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