By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor
“So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, ‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots.
And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants.
He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work.
He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’” – 1 Samuel 8:10-18
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Charles I may be seen as the wanna-be paradigm of the divine right of Kings, a Kingship justified by God himself, empowered by God to assert his kingdom on men by means of the magistrate’s sword. He was heavily influenced by the Catholic Kings of France who held, or sought to hold, unchecked absolute power in the land. I say wanna-be because he never attained the absolute power that he died believing he was entitled to.
The land he inherited had mostly chosen the Protestant path. While Catholicism was still strong in parts of England, most of the people had chosen some form of Protestantism. The Anglican Church, the official state church of England to this day, was the symbol of England’s rejection of papal authority over the land.
In many ways, Protestantism was a symbol of English defiance of mainland Europe. John Wycliffe was echoing Protestant values about 150 years before Martin Luther. His Lollards, men who read scripture in the English tongue rather than from the Latin Vulgate, could be seen as the forefathers of the Levellers we will see under Cromwell later.
The Levellers all knew the phrase “When Adam delved and Eve spanned, who was first the gentleman?” This phrase came from John Ball, in 1381, who rallied the people to oppose the monarchy in the failed Peasants’ Revolt (which was not so much a peasant revolt as much as it was a merchant class revolt).
John Ball was one of the fruits of John Wycliffe’s ministry.
These were men who held that all people, from the highest to the lowest, are called to learn scripture for themselves, so they printed illegal English translations of the Latin Vulgate New Testament. Wycliffe claimed his scripturally literate plowmen knew scripture better than the priests, and that, thanks to scriptural literacy, they had more wisdom than the nobles.
He was right, at least about his plowmen knowing scripture much better than not only the nobles, but also most of the priests of that time.
By Charles I’s time, the notion of a Catholic King was so anathema to the English, they passed laws expressly forbidding it. This protestant state was decidedly justified by the divine right of Kings, a rulership justified by God himself.
But unlike the Catholic Kings, this Protestant King was bounded by the parliament, not assumed to be infallible. Rather, he was assumed to be a sinner, even as a King, in need of checks and balances on his power.
This is the world Charles inherited with his crown. As a secret Catholic, who only became more zealous as he reigned, he found himself at odds with the very people he ruled. Yet, he pressed forward in his attempt to use the state to eventually return the Pope back to power in England, all in the name of giving himself the same absolute power the Catholic Kings of France possessed.
Charles’ reign would end in his beheading and the eventual reign of another religious zealot, Oliver Cromwell. This man rose to power promising to end the divine right of Kings and create a republic still in possession of an official state church. What he created instead was a Kingship called a protectorate that failed to break the divine right of Kings paradigm. That paradigm would be broken by the turbulent reign of James II.
During his reign, the Puritans sought to use the state to make the people good Christians. While Cromwell died of natural causes as the Protectorate, his son would not long hold on to power before a new King was crowned, Charles II. In the beginning of his reign, Charles II would be more pragmatic than his father, willing to live in the Protestant paradigm.
The pragmatism wouldn’t last, however. Charles would pass off to his brother James a Kingdom riled up against Catholicism, triggered mostly by Charles’ own action.
The Restoration brought with it a very French-like King who would end his reign by dying of natural causes. His brother, James II, would follow the path of the father of both men, Charles I, seeking to use the state to force Catholicism on a Protestant people.
He would end his reign after only three years. He would die in exile, in France, 13 years after being deposed.
With the glorious revolution, William and Mary would take the crown, but their reign was not based on the divine right of Kings, it was based on popular sovereignty. Royal blood justifies candidacy for the crown, but the crown’s power is not justified by it.
The power of the state was legitimized by popular sovereignty, the Will of the People, whose King was bounded by that will as well. The King was the final magisterial authority, but only within the bounds of the will of the people, as reflected through parliament.
The King can no longer use the state to make good Christians, but he is expected to defend the Anglican church. The church’s membership, though, is no longer mandatory, but it is important nonetheless, for its existence gives the state its other justification for existence, a nation whose God is the Lord.
This is why the monarch’s first duty is to defend the church, for the state church justifies the state without forcing itself on its citizens. The church itself, then, becomes subject to popular sovereignty, for, consensually, the church could die by non-participation.
There is no divine right of Kings, there is only Popular Sovereignty. Only for a Christian people is it important for the state to declare God is the Lord. Through popular sovereignty, that god can change, or be removed altogether. Thus, the real power behind the British state is popular sovereignty, not the nation whose God is the Lord.
Even to this day, the British state’s ultimate authority is the King, without which the state would theoretically dissolve, but that King’s authority is now so muted the moment the King asserts real power he is most likely going to lose it.
He is a vestige of the Popular Sovereignty Monarchy that replaced the Divine Right of Kings. Now, England stands on the precipice of civilizational change again, their King no longer even declaring to be the protector of the Anglican church.
The English Civil War began as a rebellion against the infallibility of Kings, but not against the divine right of the magistrate itself (as opposed to the King). It was not a rebellion against a nation whose God is the Lord, it was a rebellion against a state whose God was not their God.
Cromwell would quickly prove he was no less inclined to use the state to force people to believe in his God than Charles I was. While Charles II did not press the theological issue through the state, James II did, and, as a result, what began as an argument about which God the state forces on others ended with a de facto secular state.
The death of the Divine Right of Kings civilization would be replaced by the Popular Sovereignty state. The latter would exapt many features from the former and create new features itself. Some features would not survive. The nature of the English state had fundamentally changed.
The birth of the “modern” state of England had occurred, just in time for it to begin to build its global Empire. It is this state that birthed America. It is this state’s birth we will witness, from the beheading of Charles I to the ascension of William and Mary.
What follows is first the Summary of the key events from 1629 to 1689, then the Analysis of the transition. This report will end with a Final Assessment.
- THE REGICIDE OF CHARLES I
The end of the Divine Right of Kings begins with a man who wanted to Make England Catholic Again. That King was Charles I. His struggle for absolute power would trigger what I am calling the third major civil war of England.
The first civil war was in the 12th century, during the tumultuous reign of Stephen I. This period is called The Anarchy. The second civil war was in the 15th century, 200 years before Charles I’s reign. These ongoing struggles between the House of Lancaster and the House of York came to be called the Wars of the Roses.
Two civil wars will be fought under Charles, leading to his eventual execution and the creation of a Cromwell-led Puritan state.
The beginning of the end for Charles began when he tried to rebel against the Protestant shackles placed upon him by the Parliament. This was only 4 years into his reign.
- THE PERSONAL RULE – 1629-1640 – In March of 1629, Charles I made the decisive move to dissolve the pesky parliament. This began the period called either “The Personal Rule” of Charles or “Eleven Years’ Tyranny.”
The dissolution came as the parliament was becoming less inclined to give Charles the funds he requested, but more significantly, the parliament was becoming increasing suspicious of Charles’ stealth Catholicism.
Charles raised funds as he needed them, using “creative solutions,” including extending “ship money” inland in 1635. This was a de facto tax to be paid either with ships or the money to build the ships.
In addition to pressing the nation for revenue, Charles also continued to attempt to slowly nudge England back into the Catholic orbit. He continued to make “reforms” under Archbishop William Laud that triggered an act of defiance by Scotland and the emergence of the heart of the resistance to come, the Puritans.
In 1638, Scotland signed “The National Covenant,” which was a formal rebuke of Charles’ “reforms.”
By 1640, Charles would run out of revenue-raising gimmicks, in large part thanks to what has come to be known as “The Bishops Wars.” Due to these wars, Charles needed to recall the parliament to get revenue.
- THE BISHOP’S WARS – 1639-1640 – After Scotland passed the National Convention in defiance of Charles’ religious reforms, Charles chose to double down and attempt to force the Scottish church to become Episcopal, or Bishop-run, as opposed to Presbyterian, or elder-run. In addition to this dramatic “reform,” he also required the church to use the English Prayer Book.
Scotland revolted from English rule, forcing the English to retreat. Now, Charles had to return to London, hat in hand, asking the parliament he ignored for 11 years to fund his religious war, a war most of Protestant England would have opposed.
In April 1640, Charles recalled the parliament to get funds for the war; however, he failed to make a deal, refusing mostly to compromise on the parliament’s religious demands. Three weeks later, the parliament would earn its name, the Short Parliament, when Charles dissolved it once again.
Without more funds, Charles yet pressed on to invade Scotland, only to be rebuffed soundly. After the Scottish army occupied Newcastle, Charles was forced to negotiate, returning to London once again, hat in hand, recalling Parliament to get revenue to fight the Scottish in a religious war few Protestant English would have supported.
- THE LONG PARLIAMENT – 1640-1641 – In November 1640 Charles I would once again convene Parliament. What he could not know is that this parliament would last longer than he would live. The Long Parliament, as it has become to be known, would exist, with a few interruptions, until 1660.
This time, the Parliamentarians were ready. They began by securing the right to dissolve themselves by simply refusing to be dismissed by the King. They would immediately pass the Triennial Act, which required Parliament to be recalled minimally every three years.
Then, they moved against Charles’ closest advisors, seeking to destroy Charles’ power structure during his Personal Rule. Their top target was Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, Charles’ closet advisor, and the one most blamed for advising Charles to push so aggressively to force the English back into the Catholic Church.
In May of 1641, Wentworth was impeached by the Long Parliament. He was shortly then executed. Upon news of his execution, the Irish Catholics rebelled. The question looming was this, who should be trusted to lead the armies to quell the rebellion? The Parliamentarians didn’t want that leader to be the King.
On October 23, 1641, the Irish Catholic Rebellion began in Ulster. It spread fast, and it spread far and wide. News publishing was becoming more widespread during this time. Much of it was sensational, mostly produced by partisans using news to support their faction. These publishers were called pamphleteers, for they printed pamphlets.
The relaxation of printer regulations and licensing, along with increased literacy, and the increasingly lowering cost of printing due to evolving technologies created the perfect environment for the creation of the news industry we mostly have today.
The news coming out of Ireland was of slaughter. The English read stories of brutal slayings of their fellow countrymen, which inflamed the Protestant English against the Irish Catholics.
- THE FIRST CIVIL WAR – 1641-1646 – Rather than hand over the army to Charles, the Long Parliament passed a “Grand Remonstrance,” which effectively hamstrung Charles’ ability to both raise funds and take the head of the army.
In January of 1642, Charles attempted to quell the Long Parliament revolt by arresting five key members of the group. He entered the House of Commons with armed guards, seeking to arrest the “Five Members,” but failed to do so. He hastily left London, but he was already plotting his next move.
Charles would gather his wits in Nottingham, assessing his power. By August of that same year, Charles was ready to move. He raised the Royal Standard in Nottingham, declaring war on the Long Parliament.
Both sides had early victories, but the successful siege of the naval stronghold of Portsmouth by the Parliamentarians was the more impressive victory. The first major battle, however, the Battle of Edgehill in October 1642, would prove to be indecisive.
The Parliamentarians became known as the “Roundheads,” while the Royalists became known as the Cavaliers.
The war was largely indecisive throughout 1643, but it took a decisive turn on September 1643 when the Parliamentarians signed the Solemn League and Covenant with the Scottish Covenanters. During this time, a Parliamentarian named Oliver Cromwell was rising in the ranks, proving himself again and again on the battlefield.
In 1644, the Parliamentarians would win a decisive battle at Marsdon Moor. Cromwell would play a pivotal role in the battle, earning himself a promotion to Lieutenant General of Horse as a result.
It was this promotion that would enable Cromwell to lead the Parliamentarians to another decisive victory at the Battle of Naseby. That victory would come only after the formation of the New Model Army in February 1645. Cromwell was a significant contributor to that new formation. The army would be led by Sir Thomas Fairfax, with Cromwell serving as second in command.
Four months later, Cromwell would lead the New Model Army to the great victory at Naseby, where the strength of the Royalists was broken.
The rest of the First Civil War was largely a retreat by the Royalists, leading to Charles fleeing as an exiled King to Cornwall, the Royalists’ last stronghold. In May 1646, Charles surrendered to Scottish forces, effectively ending the First Civil War.
- SECOND CIVIL WAR – 1647-1649 – About eight months after Charles surrendered to the Scots, efforts at negotiations broke down. This led the Scots to turn Charles over to Parliament on January 30, 1647. Parliament put him on house arrest at the Holdenby House in Northamptonshire.
Charles would catch a potential lucky break when the presbyterian branch of the coalition grew to distrust the New Model Army, dominated as it was the Puritans. In March 1647, Presbyterian MPs lead a vote to dismantle the New Model Army. The New Model Army politely declined the request.
In June of 1647, Cornet George Joyce would go to Holdenby to secure the great prize, Charles, for the Parliamentarians. The King was taken by force from Holdenby and sent, eventually, to Hampton Court. The Army issued two official documents, The Solemn Engagement and the Heads of Proposals. The later would have kept Charles as King, but with less power.
Presbyterian mobs intimidated Parliament to vote their way, which led to the New Model Army taking London, and restoring Independent MPs by force. Charles considered the Heads of the Proposals, but ultimately, he would reject it in August 1647.
From October to early November, a schism formed within the New Model Army between the army officers and the rank and file that came to be called The Levellers. These men wanted the complete dissolution of the monarchy. They still repeated John Ball’s famous Peasants’ War cry, “When Adam dwelled and Eve spanned, who was first the gentleman?”
The officers wanted to preserve the monarchy while the Levellers wanted a clean break, and the creation of a new Constitution (the Agreement of the People). A series of debates happened, some of which involved Cromwell, called the Putney Debates. They were interrupted when King Charles escaped Hampton Court on November 11, 1647.
Charles settled into a new exile on the Isle of Wight. He holed himself up in Carlsbrooke Castle, under the care and protection of Colonel Robert Hammond.
Parliament passed a series of proposals aimed at preserving Charles’ crown, but Charles rejected them all. They were called The Four Bills.
While Parliament was negotiating with Charles, he was also signing secret deals with a faction within the Scottish Covenanters (aka the Engagers). The plan was to restore Charles in exchange for Charles establishing a Presbyterian model for the Church of England.
In January 1648, Parliament passed the Vote of No Address, which formally ended all negotiations with the King. They also dissolved the army’s General Council, leaving the Parliamentarians in a limbo state.
While Charles continued to muster resources for the planned war, the Parliamentarians were dealing with turmoil from within. Some soldiers even declared for the King. There was unrest in multiple Parliamentarian towns, with the Royalists successfully taking Berwick and Carlisle in April 1648.
In May of that same year, the New Model Army decisively beat a much larger Royalist Army at the Battle of St. Fagans. This broke the Royalist Army in South Wales.
In June, Royalists would gain Kent and significant castles. Part of the fleet also mutinied, declaring for the King.
The war turned in August 1648 when Cromwell led an assault on Royalist forces at the Battle of Preston. Over the course of three days, the Royalists were effectively broken,
On September 15, 1649, the Treaty of Newport was signed by the parliament and the King. The parliament was still dominated by Presbyterians, who began renegotiating terms with King Charles. The army responded in November of the same year, declaring Charles must be brought to justice as a “man of blood.” They issue the “Remonstrance of the Army.”
- CHARLES EXECUTED – 1649 – On December 1, 1648, the army moved decisively once again to take the prize, Charles, removing him from Carlsbrooke and taking him to Hurst Castle. Five days later, the Commons voted to approve the King’s concessions in the parliament negotiations, saying his concessions were enough for a settlement.
The next day, the army arrived, with Colonel Thomas Pride and his soldiers, who barred presbyterian MPs from entering the House of Commons. They also arrested 45 MPs. After they were done with their purges, all that was left was the Rump Parliament, which was dominated by Independents, all willing, able, and ready to put the King on trial. This event would come to be called “Pride’s Purge.”
From January 20-27 the trial of King Charles I was held. The King spent the majority of the trial refusing to acknowledge the authority of the court. At the end, Charles was convicted for being “a tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy.”
59 commissioners signed the death warrant. One of those signatures was a late edition, Oliver Cromwell. He had already become one of the core leaders. He was also already recognized as being their best orator. He was not an early supporter of the trial, let alone the death sentence, but eventually he chose to sign the warrant.
On January 30, 1649, Charles I of England was executed at Whitehall. Immediately after the execution, the Rump Parliament outlawed any declarations of kingship to any would-be successor.
From February to March 1649, the Rump Parliament passed a series of bills that abolished the monarchy, ordered executions of two key royalists, and created the Commonwealth of England.
- CROMWELL AND THE PROTECTORATE
- THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE THIRD CIVIL WAR – 1649-1651 – The Commonwealth period was dominated by two wars, both led by Cromwell. After the declaration of the Commonwealth, Cromwell took the head of the New Model Army and sailed to Ireland, where he would subdue the Irish, while becoming one of the most hated men to Irish Catholics to this day.
His brutal treatment of civilians during sieges is where the brunt of the critique hits. Historians are debating to this day whether that reputation was earned or not.
Cromwell returned, victorious, only to have to fight Charles I’s son, Charles II. He invaded Scotland in May 1650, scoring an early victory over the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar. On January 1, 1651, Charles II was declared King of Scotland. On September 3, 1651, Charles II met Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester. He was soundly defeated and sent into exile.
This marks the end of the Third Civil War.
- THE RUMP PARLIAMENT – 1652-1654 – On October 9, 1651, the Rump Parliament passed the Navigation Act, which was aimed at its main trade rivals, the Dutch. This will trigger a naval war with the Dutch. By late 1651, there were no wars or upheavals, though the nature of the Commonwealth remained undefined.
That peace would end on May 19, 1652, with a clash between English and Dutch ships at the Battle of Goodwin Sands. On July 10, the English completed their declaration of war against the Dutch.
In August of that same year, Army officers lobbied for new representation to the Rump Parliament. They respond by passing the Settlement of Ireland Act, which confiscated land and property from Catholics. Scotland also recognized the authority of the Commonwealth.
While the war went badly for the English, at home, the Rump Parliament was debating what form of government they should have; this also included debates on what kind of state church and religious rules the new government should have. The debates proffered nothing final, so the Commonwealth entered 1653 still at war with the Dutch, who briefly controlled the English Channel. The Commonwealth itself was still an unformed government.
The Battle of Portland in February 1653 would turn the tide in the first Anglo-Dutch War. This was followed up with another victory at Gabbard. The English then blockaded Dutch ports.
On April 20, 1653, Oliver Cromwell had run out of patience with the indecisive Rump Parliament. He brought an armed guard with him to the House of Commons. He declared to the MPs, “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing.” He promptly dissolved the Rump Parliament.
In July of that same year, the First Anglo-Dutch War saw its last major military engagement, and peace talks started.
Cromwell did not trust a general election, so he kept a Nominated Assembly, the Barebones Parliament, none of which were elected. They were 140 nominated MPs. The Barebones Parliament represented the Long Parliament, so no elections were required to be called. It was named after Praise-God Barebone, one of the nominated members.
Cromwell hoped this parliament would form a constitution, but it quickly splintered into major groups, the moderates and the radicals. The radicals were the Puritans, who wanted to radically restrict catholic religious practice, and any practice associated with it.
Moderates feared what the radicals might do, so on December 12, 1653, they dissolved the parliament. On December 13, 1653, John Lambert wrote the “Instrument of Government,” which is England’s first written constitution. Cromwell added some amendments, but ultimately accepted the constitution.
- THE PROTECTORATE – 1654-1658 – From January to February 1654, the Protectorate was established throughout the land, including in Scotland and Ireland. Oliver Cromwell was declared the Lord Protector. The protectorate issued an ordinance that made criticizing the government potentially treasonous. The Engagement Oath, an oath to the Commonwealth that was required of all citizens, was also repealed via ordinance.
The Protectorate created the Commission of Triers, which was a national religious regulating body that selected clergy. This institution was mostly Puritan. They had zero tolerance for Bishops and other “extreme” sects, but otherwise practiced protestant, non-episcopal, tolerance.
On April 5, 1654, the First Anglo-Dutch War ended. A key part of the treaty was a secret agreement between the Dutch and the Protectorate to assure a young Prince of Orange would not attain any meaningful office.
By the end of 1654, the Protectorate had put down a rebellion in Scotland, avoided an assassination attempt on Cromwell, but settled with its first written constitution. There was scarcely a person satisfied with it, though.
It had also ended a successful war with the Dutch, one that established England as a world naval power, which would be the source of its Empire to come.
For the next two years, the Protectorate fought a war with the Spanish in the Americas, numerous Royalists uprisings, and the onslaught of Puritan religious rules that included blasphemy acts, acts against drinking, alehouse prohibitions, shutting down race meetings, and more.
It was empowered during this time by the Rule of the Major Generals. Cromwell divided the country up into five military districts, assigning army officers to govern the land. These were the men willing to enforce the largely unpopular laws.
In January 1657 an attempt to make the Rule of the Major Generals permanent failed, and the experiment itself was ended when the Parliament refused to fund the Major Generals.
By May 1657, Oliver Cromwell had already lost much of his vitality, yet the Parliament would offer Cromwell the Crown. He would decline, but he accepted a revised constitution that expanded his executive powers.
1657 would see the parliament pass numerous religious laws, restricting everything from how you travel to what kinds of clothing can be worn. They passed laws criminalizing speech that MIGHT seem “popish” in nature.
On June 26, 1657, Parliament passed an “Act for the better observation of the Lord’s Day.”
The act included a list of activities and establishments that had to be shut down and banned on the Lord’s Day. This included banning “keepers leaving doors ordinarily opened,” shutting down using boats, horses, or sedans, except to worship, and even prohibiting having wakes.
On that same day, they passed an “Act for punishing persons who live at high rates with no visible estate, profession, or calling.”
The Anglo-Spanish War ended in June 1658, with the Battle of Dunes. It would result in England being given Dunkirk. This would be the last good news Cromwell would hear. On September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died, having handed over his office to his son, Richard, who would not hold on to the Protectorate for long.
- THE FALL OF THE PROTECTORATE – 1658-1660 – Oliver Cromwell left his 31-year-old son, Richard, a Protectorate facing a debt of more than 2 million pounds, along with a disgruntled army. He was entering into military culture, having not led troops into battle and existing mostly as a country gentleman until his appointment.
While the ceremony looked smooth, the knives were out for Cromwell the moment he took the office of Protectorate. On November 23, 1658, the Protectorate held a state funeral for Oliver Cromwell. The funeral was similar to the one held for Kings. It became apparent that it also added significantly to the debt. Six days later, Parliament was recalled to raise funds to pay the debt.
On January 27, 1659, the Third Protectorate Parliament met. The new parliament had a second House just called The House, or The Other House, which has a mix of adversaries to the Protectorate, including crypto-Royalists.
The rivalry between the two houses became apparent almost immediately, with indecision and lack of a clear winner continuing as weeks turned into months. It was during this period of time that Richard’s hold on power waned, as he demonstrated over and over an unwillingness to move decisively while the power against him and the Protectorate grew.
By May 1659, Richard could see the writing on the wall. He agreed to dissolve the Protectorate and hand over power to the army. The Rump Parliament was recalled. They declared the government to be a Commonwealth without a King, single person, or House of Lords. Thus, the protectorate was no more. Richard would leave England near the end of 1660, living in Europe until his return in 1680; he did so under an assumed name, John Clarke. He would die in Hertfordshire in 1712, having lived the quiet life of a country gentleman the last 32 years of his life.
- THE RESTORATION TO THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION – 1660-1689
On May 8, 1660, Charles II landed on English soil at Dover. 21 days later he arrived in London, where he was crowned King of England. The Commonwealth and The Protectorate were over, but parts of them would survive in the new iteration of monarchy.
- CHARLES II – THE WARRING YEARS – 1661-1677 – Charles began his reign by having the corpse of Oliver Cromwell dug up so they could “execute” him for the crime of regicide. The new parliament, called The Cavalier Parliament, was dominated by Royalists. They passed a series of laws over the next four years called the Clarendon Code, which aimed at keeping “Nonconformists” (such as the Puritans) out of power.
In 1665, Charles found himself at war with the Dutch. The Second Anglo-Dutch War was fought mostly for the same reasons as the last, over trade and prestige, but this time a third element was a factor, colonies in the New World.
The war ended in 1667 with the Treaty of Breda. The English won a major concession, New Amsterdam, which would later become New York City. But the cost of the war was high, and near the end of the war the Dutch managed to raid the river Thames on English soil. They captured major English ships of war in the Chatham docks in what has come to be called the Raid on the Medway.
In 1670, Charles made a series of secret treaties with France that committed England to fight the Dutch again; in exchange, Charles would get financial and military support. Included in that agreement was a pledge by Charles to convert to Roman Catholicism. Charles was moving towards becoming a crypto-catholic.
In 1672, the Third Anglo-Dutch War began. This time, the English were fighting the Dutch to support the French Catholic cause. The people did not support the war, nor, even, did the pro-Royalist, but decidedly Anglican parliament.
The move by Charles triggered the Cavalier parliament to pass the Test Act in March 1673. This act required all civil and military officeholders to essentially publicly rebuke Catholicism and take the Anglican pledge. The parliament also demanded Charles end the war, which happened in 1674 through the Treaty of Westminster.
- CHARLES II – THE EXCLUSION CRISIS – 1678-1685 – Charles was, by now, a crypto-Catholic. He tipped his hand by going to war with the Dutch in support of the Catholic cause. His brother, James, was a Catholic. The pamphleteers, the newspapers of their day, ran with a story told by Titus Oates.
He told the story of a plot by Catholics to assassinate Charles and put his younger brother, the Catholic James, on the throne. It quickly became the hottest read in the country. It triggered an anti-Catholic hysteria that led to the executions of 20-35 people. The story was completely made up.
While the story was made up, James was a real Catholic who could really succeed Charles to throne.
In May 1679, Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act, intended to prevent arbitrary arrest and unlawful imprisonment. It was an attempt to curtail Charles’ arresting powers before he ever used them, and many were sure he would.
From 1679-1681, three parliaments in a row attempted to use legislative power to prevent Catholic James from succeeding Charles. Each time, Charles dissolved the parliament. This has come to be called “The Exclusion Crisis.”
During this period of time, political parties began to emerge. On one side were the Whigs, and on the other sides were the Torries. The Whigs are gone, but the Tory Party still exists (though it’s now on what looks like its last legs).
The Whigs were the exclusionists. Their name came from a Sottish word used for “rebels” or “cattle drivers.” It was an unflattering term, but it stuck. The Torries were opposed to excluding James. They were originally called Abhorrers, but soon came to be called the Tories, which was an Irish word meaning Catholic outlaw or bandit. It was an unflattering term, but it stuck.
Charles dissolved the Oxford Parliament in April 1681. It would be the last time he called parliament. He was subsidized by the French King, Louis XIV. Two years later, a plot would be uncovered to assassinate both Charles and James. This time the story was real. The plotters were Whigs. This is called “The Rye House Plot.”
The plotters intended on killing Charles and James together on their way to see the horse races coming from Westminster to Newmarket. The plan was thwarted by a major fire in Newmarket that decimated half the town, cancelling the horse races.
Scores of Whig leaders were executed, with a few hanged, drawn and quartered. The highest-ranking person executed was Sir Thomas Armstrong, who was also a member of Parliament. Another member of parliament, Lord William Russell, was beheaded.
Other members of parliament were arrested. The 1st Earl of Essex, Arthor Capell, cut his throat, committing suicide while on trial in the Tower of London.
Charles had many health issues throughout his adult life, but they began to worsen towards the end of 1684. On February 6, 1685, Charles died, just five days after he had taken another turn for the worst.
Despite every effort to stop it, including a plot to murder both Charles and James, the younger Catholic brother would take the crown. James II became the English Catholic King. Let the reader note Charles converted to Catholicism on his death bed, though he was, indeed, a practicing crypto-Catholic.
- JAMES II – 1685-1689 – The reign of James II began with a rebellion, the Monmouth Rebellion. It would last for 3 months, from May to July of 1685. It was led by the illegitimate, but Protestant, son of Charles II, James Scott. He was the Duke of Monmouth. The rebellion ended at the Battle of Sedgemoor. This would be the last major battle on English soil up to present time.
After the battle, Monmouth was executed. What followed was called “The Bloody Assizes.” Hundreds of rebels were executed, others were deported to the Caribbean, where they would be pressed into hard labor.
James’ reading of the room was not good, as can be seen by his decision in 1686 to essentially veto the Test Act. He not only vetoed the Test Act, but he also appointed Catholics as officers in the army and as royal administrators. He followed this up with the Declaration of Indulgence in 1687, removing all restrictions on Catholics.
This Declaration of Indulgence required the Anglican Bishops to read the Declaration out loud to their congregations. In June of 1688, two things happened that sealed James’ fate, one was the birth of a son, an heir to the Catholic crown, and the other was the trial of the seven bishops.
The birth of his son, James Francis Edward, coincided with seven bishops openly refusing to read the Declaration of Indulgence to their congregations. James had them arrested and charged, but the jury failed to convict them. The seven bishops went free, and this emboldened the rebels plotting against James.
- THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION – Do you remember the secret deal Charles I made with the Dutch at the end of the First Anglo-Dutch War? The deal Charles made in secret was that the Dutch would stop a certain young man from gaining prominent office.
That young man was William of Orange; he would lead a Dutch fleet and army to invade England and depose the Catholic King. He had ships and 15,000 soldiers. It was November of 1688, the Glorious Revolution had begun.
William brought along with him his wife, Mary II. She was the real prize, for she was the King’s estranged daughter. William and Mary were invited by seven powerful English politicians, known as “The Immortal Seven.” They sent a secret message to William, promising him support from the English people should he depose James.
When James heard of William’s landing at Devon, he eventually escaped to France, but only after being briefly captured. On February 1689, the newly convened Parliament offered William III and Mary II the crown of England. In April of that same year they were crowned. They were not formally decreed by Parliament as King and Queen until February 1689.
There is a cost for the crown, and that cost is real power. William and Mary accepted the Declaration of Rights, a precursor to the American constitution. It gives the parliament supreme power, and it also excludes Catholics from the crown.
Blood would be shed, through the Williamite War and the Jacobite Rising, but all rebellions would be effectively ended within a few months. On December 16, 1689, the Constitutional Monarchy was established, with Parliament also issuing the Bill of Rights, which was a precursor to our American Bill of Rights.
The 1689 Tolerance Act was also passed. This allowed religious freedom, but only to those who pledged allegiance to the crown.
William and Mary were the constitutional protestant monarchs of England, Scotland and Ireland. The Protestant Constitutional Monarchy became the model of government that would eventually conquer the world, or nearly 1/3 of it. Less than 20 years after the Glorious Revolution, the fruit of the transition would bear the nation’s new name, Great Britian.
- ANALYSIS
This is a comparison of the state of England’s major institutions at the start of our 60-year survey, 1629, and 1689, at the end of it.
- EDUCATION – The basic education structures of 1629 continued to exist in 1689. Education was tailored around serving two classes, the landed gentry and the clergy. There were two Universities, Oxford and Cambridge, both of which were tied to the Oxford Church. There were two main public schools, Eton and Westminster. The few small public schools outside of Eton and Westminster were not part of the gentry-clergy pipeline, which was controlled by the Anglican Church.
While the bones of the system hadn’t changed, the center of education had. While study in Latin and classical rhetoric continued to be the backbone of the institution, Aristotle and Scholasticism was replaced with Empiricism.
The world in natural philosophy had to conform to scripture, where now the world had to conform to scientific inquiry. In 1620, Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum was published. The book began the process of institutionalizing the scientific method as the primary source for understanding the world.
While this may have not been Bacon’s intent (it wasn’t), it’s where his revolutionary articulation of the use of inductive reasoning (discovering high principles through particular investigations) in a truth verifying process (the scientific method) ended.
Bacon wanted to show how the discovery of materiality would affirm Romans 1:20. He didn’t want to transfer the source of wisdom from God to the ground.
This process began in the Education institutions before 1629, but it was dramatically accelerated with the creation of the Royal Society in 1660. This society became the arbiter of education, and it brought with it Empiricism as its standard bearer.
At the end of 1689, another change happened because of the Glorious Revolution that would further transfer the foundation for wisdom from the revelatory, God’s Word, to materiality, Empiricism. These education “reforms” put even more of an emphasis on “practical”, scientific, and “modern subjects,” driving classical studies further into the background.
The transition not only produced substantive change in and of itself, but it also set the groundwork for even more substantive change just through following the empirical direction the transition had created.
- CULTURE – The two dominant influences on English culture both in 1629 and 1689 were the King James Bible and William Shakespeare’s plays. The expression of English culture was increasingly through the pamphleteers and print in general. High culture flowed through London, and it served the landed gentry and the aristocracy.
Another key similarity, which was not shaken, even during Charles II’s and James II’s reigns, was the dominance of Protestant culture in 1629 through to 1689. Outside of these similarities, culture took a wild ride during this period. It started off dominated by high culture.
Under the Puritans, it became austere, with much of it going underground to avoid a fine, or worse. Under Charles II, culture became libertine, almost vulgar. William and Mary would restore sobriety, without becoming austere, or returning to high culture dominance.
One key difference in Protestant culture from Catholic culture is the presumption of both the right and the responsibility of the individual to account for his own belief and understanding of the gospel.
The Catholic presumed that this responsibility laid with the governing body of the church. Theirs was but to follow what the church leaders instructed them to do. The Protestant presumed the individual had a responsibility, and a right, to account for his own understanding of the gospel, though not to do so outside of church guidance.
Another key difference between the Catholic and the Protestant was the notion of collective salvation versus individual salvation. This is a complex divide, and I won’t attempt to badly explain it through brevity. While it is not as cut and dried as “collective salvation versus individual salvation,” the difference tends to create a sense of more collective imperative in the Catholic mindset versus a more individual imperative in the Protestant mindset.
The 99 saved sheep are not fully saved without the one lost sheep in the Catholic system (sort of). The 99 sheep are fully saved without the one lost sheep in the Protestant system. It is perhaps this presumed fact that prevented the Catholic Kings from transforming England to a Catholic nation. They underestimated how “Protestant” the English had become in only one century.
One trend that started before 1629, but became dominant by Cromwell’s Protectorate, was the development of what has become our modern political discourse (thought the French Revolution was to calcify it).
In much the same way we now struggle to adjust to the parameters that social media places on human being, so too did the English struggle to adjust to the parameters set by having near-daily paper production of content based on events as recent as a day ago.
This is what some experienced who lived in big cities where pamphleteers were printing their news daily to an audience they could reach in public markets.
Villages and rural farms could get news within a week of it happening from as far away as two or three counties. If the news was hot enough, they could get it sometimes as far away as the other side of the country.
- PHILOSOPHY – When evaluating the philosophy institution, I am assessing it based on the prevailing and applied schools of thought, not the schools of thought we look back at as the most advanced philosophical thought (unless that “advanced” thought rapidly becomes prevalent as well).
In 1620, Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum was published. This work becomes the standard, the orthodoxy, by 1689. In 1629, Bacon was changing the most elite classrooms. In 1689, Bacon was in the bones of the children before they ever sat down to learn.
Around this time, Thomas Hobbes showed up in the historical record, most notably for an English translation of Thucydides where he shared governing concepts through the introduction that would come to fruition in his Leviathan. This treatise on political theory both contributed to creating the paradigms for such discourse and setting the groundwork for the emergence of a truly “secular state.”
By 1689, Hobbes was feted in the elite classrooms, but no-one in 1689 was calling for the creation of a secular state. After all, England’s justification for rule comes first through being a nation whose God is the Lord, reflected in the state church.
Unlike the past state church, however, this church allowed for the people to reject it by removing compulsory membership in the church. However, the state must have a church, for a state must be one whose God is the Lord; therefore, the King must be Anglican, for the King’s primary job is to defend the state church, which is now the People’s church.
The year of the Glorious Revolution marked the debut of John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. This book is the fruit of Bacon and Hobbes, but goes further than both. Yet Locke’s government model still rests its assumption that “natural rights” are only rights if they are given to us by God, and that God would be Protestant.
Locke grounds the rational in a presumption of God as the source for rationality itself. Without God, the justification for rational thought dies. Yet, in Locke’s model, government is driven primarily by rational thought framed within the boundaries of the agency given to every human by God, which is the capacity to choose, which is free will.
In this writer’s opinion, philosophy as the head of human understanding becomes a semantic justification for rulership. Well before 1629, philosophy had gone from serving the lesser science to becoming a leading science itself. Philosophy was more of a tool within theology, for instance, than a tool to question theology itself (unless it was being done dialectically, which it was commonly done, even up to 1629).
In 1629, philosophy as a justification for rule was hedged by this underlying assumption, the Divine Right of Kings. The arguments concerned the degree to which the King should have power and the degree the church should have power (in addition to which church).
The argument didn’t shift, materially, noticeably, until Charles I lost his head. Then suddenly, the English were adrift in a new paradigm. Cromwell and his parliaments struggled to come up with an answer, but they were so far outside their element, they had no clear response.
So England stumbled back to the King, and still barely holds on to him today (though not for the same reason).
William and Mary, though, were not coming back by divine right. They were invited by the people, through the “Immortal Seven.” Their primary task was to defend the church, which sustains a nation whose God is the Lord, but whom itself is accountable to the people, who can freely choose not to participate in it.
The justification for English Rule is the will of the people. The main calibrator of governance understanding is empirical natural law. God still justifies that natural law, but that natural law itself allows open defiance of God.
- WORLD POLICY – The differences in England’s world policy between 1629 and 1689 may not seem all that much, but the groundwork that had been laid in those 60 years was about to change everything about it.
Technically, when William and Mary took the crown, the policy was already radically different, though immediately, before policy makes institutions, no one would have noticed.
England’s standing on the world stage was already on the ascendancy, thanks in large part to its wars with the Dutch. But the difference in status between 1629 and 1689 was not profound. After all, England had beaten the Dutch twice, withdrew the third time, but had won concessions every single time. Yet the Dutch, through William, just invaded England and installed a Protestant Queen, Mary II.
After Charles II turned England into a Catholic ally with the French, the Dutch had now turned a powerful French ally into what would become a powerful enemy of France. But again, in 1689, this wasn’t so apparent, not even in the court.
William would take with him a new approach to continental (western Europe) diplomacy. He relied on having continental projection of military power. In the Anglo-Dutch wars, the English Navy had more than proven itself, and showed England how valuable naval power was, especially with the discovery of the New World.
William was colonial-minded when he took the helm of England, but in 1689, William was busy quelling internal upheaval. By 1690, the wheels were put in motion that would transform England to Great Britain. No one saw it in 1689, but the transition from 1629 to 1689 had already made that reality a near inevitability.
William and Mary may have taken the crown in 1689 with a foreign policy mostly like what it was in 1629, but in point of fact it was already radically changed. Now, Catholic France would have a Protestant rival to the title of world’s greatest empire. It was a battle the Protestants would win.
England as the primary identity of the Kingdom would change on May 1, 1707, under the Acts of Union, just 18 years after William and Mary became the sovereigns of a Protestant Constitutional Monarchy whose God is the Lord.
They would become the Kingdom of Great Britain, bringing the Scots, the Irish, and the Welsh into a world empire-building identity. The British men and women were born, and in the hearts and minds of William and Mary, in 1689, that fact was practically already accomplished.
- ECONOMY – The underlying economic philosophy of England would not change from 1629 to 1689. That change was a hundred or so years ahead. For now, mercantilism began this transition, and mercantilism ended this transition.
The key principles of mercantilism (which is not an economic school of thought itself) is that the market’s primary purpose is to serve the state, and all trade must be zero-sum, meaning the only good trading is one where you export more than your rivals import.
Import is a form of colonialism, or at least an advanced guard for your rivals into your sacred spaces, your life-giving markets, the lifeblood of the state.
Agrarian production was the primary driver of revenue in 1629, and it continued to be in 1689.
But in 1629, agrarian production was mostly domestic. By 1689, it still was, but now, a significant minority of production was from the colonies abroad, and even more was coming from the opening of trade with Asia.
England’s lessons about naval power translated to trade. A series of laws called the Navigation Acts (between 1651 and 1663) assured that England MUST rely on English sailors for its trade goods, both sending out and bringing in. These laws alone did much to transition England to a world naval power by 1689.
In 1629, the medieval monopolies with their guild and apprentice system were largely still in place. People were mostly born into their occupations. By 1689, that had largely changed
Again, some of the difference were not seen yet, but underneath, even more radical differences were coming, just through the expansion of colonies and other trade, all accompanied by powerful English ships to protect them.
One of those changes coming would be the Bank of England, created in 1694, which would offer financial stability for a growing colonial Empire.
While the cities hadn’t exploded in population, the increase was significant, including in London, which nearly doubled in size. Overall, the urban population of England doubled during this time-period, making occupational mobility more feasible to a growing number of people, breaking the medieval monopolies.
The percentage of people living in cities in 1629 was probably around 7%; by 1689 it had grown to perhaps as high as 15%. The total population went from roughly 4.5 million in 1629 to 5.3 million in 1689. This means a lot of that urban growth was coming from people moving into cities, not overall population increase.
- GOVERNANCE – In 1629, the government of England had the monarch at the head. During the early reign of Charles I, he ruled with no Parliament for 11 years. He was following the French Catholic model of governance, which emerged from the Catholic assumptions regarding the nature of stewarding belief and the nature of salvation.
That assumption was that the church is the steward of your belief, and salvation is a collective process that cannot afford to leave one sheep behind. It makes sense, then, that the divinely assigned King should also have the same authority over belief and collective salvation in the non-sacred as the church does in the sacred. As the defender of the church, it is the King that enforces church decrees.
The King is only answerable to the Pope.
Charles inherited a Kingship that had been gradually losing power to the Parliament. Henry VIII may have chosen the Protestant Church to escape the authority of the Pope, but that decision became the authentic spirit of the English people.
Perhaps it is their island occupation that made the English predisposed to a Faith that either entrusts or burdens (depending on your perspective) the individual with the responsibility of stewarding their own beliefs (with righteous church guidance). This ideology legitimizes island dependence that could not be achieved were England to have stayed in the Catholic fold.
From Rome, the Pope could push European politics into the English court, whether it wanted it or not.
The Constitutional monarchy William and Mary inherited had key limits on their power. They could not issue laws; they could only introduce them. They could not levy taxes without consent of the parliament. They could not maintain a standing army in peacetime without parliament consent.
The biggest change might have been that the Parliament was semi-permanent. No King could easily dismiss it.
There was religious freedom for all, but not the freedom to be King. No Catholics, no non-Anglicans could be the monarch, for the King’s primary justification for rule was two-fold, his royal blood (Stuart in 1629 and Stuart in 1689, through Mary) and his ability to protect the church, which made the nation a nation whose God is the Lord.
Up to present day, no 60-year period in English history has so transformed English government like this period did. The modern British state we see today is still, essentially, based on the model that began in 1689.
- NATIONAL STORY – By 1629, England had two strong national stories, one was its righteous status as a nation with a God-anointed King whose God is the Lord, and the other was its defense of liberty as a check against the power of the King. Liberty, at first, was for the most powerful, but the concept continually trickled down.
During this 60-year period, the concept of liberty reached the peasants once again, as they did in 1381 (only to be crushed by the divine right of King Richard II).
In 1629, the national story placed the individual as a servant who pledged his loyalty to the King. This made the national story a personal story connected to a real, living individual, the King.
In 1689, the individual’s national story was being both blessed by liberty and compelled to respect the liberty of your neighbor. Liberty as an ideal replaced the face of the individual. The national story shifted from the personal to the ideal, from the material to the metaphysical.
As culture moved from the ideal to the material, the national story moved from the material to the ideal, brought about by the shift from natural philosophy to empiricism.
This is where politics comes into being, with the dissolution of the self as the national story. While politics creates its own charismatic “heroes,” these heroes are either bounded by the ideal (such as liberty) or they break the ideal and return governance back to the personal, ending political debate altogether (see Hitler, Stalin, Mao for examples).
In 1629, England’s story was sovereignty that glorified God. It was rooted in the island. It did not look far beyond its own shores.
In 1689, England’s story was the protector of liberty and the defender against Catholic tyranny, worldwide. These two outward thinking narratives gave justification to the expansions ahead, especially because the main threat to England’s defense of liberty and Protestant freedom was its greatest trade and colonial rival, Catholic France.
England and France were about to test Protestant and Catholic being as it applied to building a naval-based world trade power that would eventually become a world colonial power.
Had England been on the continent, naval power might not have been as determining a factor as it would prove to be. France’s continued necessity for sustaining greater land power for defense of its borders compared to what had become a mostly settled, peaceful realm of England (soon to be Great Britain), also had a factor in determining the outcome of this contest.
Still, this writer suspects the ideology that allowed greater truth claim discourse than the other was better suited to manage the increasingly technologically dependent shifts in realities of power the near future would become. Stewards of their own belief, yet guided by the church, were still more free to explore material reality than those who were told what their beliefs were, according to the church.
Religion, for both England and France, was the center of the national story, both in 1629 and 1689. For England, that religion was Protestant, even when Catholics ruled. It hadn’t changed from 1629 to 1689.
It is not unreasonable to surmise the preservation of the Protestant story over the Catholic story during this transition best equipped England for the unique opportunities that began to unfold with the discovery of the New World, though a more thorough study would be required to make a surer justification of that claim.
- RELIGION – In 1629, the Church of England was still fighting to assure the unity of the State church for the English people. Not only did it have to fight the heart of the people, but it also had to fight its own Kings as well. Even when the Kings were removed, it found itself at odds with the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.
The faiths of the Catholic and crypto-catholic Kings bore little reflection of the heart of the English people, but even in 1629 there were plenty of Protestant “dissenters.” In 1629, they were just as much of a threat to the state church as the Catholics were. In 1689, if the will of the people whose God is the Lord was going to be the justification for rulership, the Protestant dissenters had to be free.
The dream of the united church was officially dead.
What remained the same was that the English were overwhelmingly Christian and overwhelmingly Protestant. They would tolerate protestant liberty, but they still had a fundamental mistrust of Catholicism.
I suspect that mistrust was borne more from the differences in political assumptions the two ideologies led to than the differences in theological belief; one’s rulership was still top-down verified and one’s rulership was bottom-up verified.
Had neither been entangled in state power, the differences might have been tolerable, though only if one or the other dominated, leaving the lesser outside the real halls of power, but still able to freely live out their theology’s institutional potential.
Catholic and Protestant theologies build radically different justifications for rulership, with the key difference being justification through the approval of the people versus justification through God’s anointed leaders. This is why, in large part, America mistrusted Catholic politicians for so long.
These differences persist to this day, but not so distinctly, for Catholic dissenter groups have their own bottom-up verification process, and Protestant dissenter groups have their own top-down verification process. In other words, some Catholics have become more like traditional Protestants, and some Protestants have become more like traditional Catholics.
In England today, Catholics and Protestants are largely cultural believers with little understanding about their church doctrines, their sacred writings, or the history of their church. But wherever there are strongly convicted “traditional” Catholics and “traditional” Protestants, those frictions will become more obvious, especially where one or the other is not overwhelmingly dominant (but still tolerant).
In 1689, those differences were like oil and vinegar. It consolidated the English against the Catholics so much; they welcomed a Dutch invasion.
The invasion of England by a Dutch Prince became the heroic rescue of the Protestant Kingdom by the Protestant King and Queen. The bloodless revolution (which was not bloodless, though the bloodshed would happen immediately AFTER they were coronated) was a testimony to the righteousness of the action.
The invasion of England became a symbol of English defiance against Catholic tyranny. The submission of the King and Queen to the new constitution became a symbol of England’s defence of liberty itself (though not quite yet “liberty for all,” even though John Locke said it in 1689).
The story of liberty, though, was nested in the Protestant story, which is really in Luke 14, where Christ warns his followers (Luke 14:25-33), “Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
‘For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?
‘And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.’”
A man cannot count the cost if he is not free to do so.
FINAL ASSESSMENT
This report was created right around the time the United States of America commemorated the terrorist attacks on New York City, the Capital, and Pennsylvania, on September 11, 2001.
That event began a transition in this country that has yet to be concluded (as of the writing of this report). The act itself was the application of a theological principle that those who defy God are marked for death. In 1629, that principle was shared by the English, who weren’t too shy about executing those who openly defied God.
By 1689, the “right” to murder the infidel was no longer recognized. The Islamists who killed for Allah, however, weren’t killing heretics that had gone through a trial. They weren’t even targeting people in their jurisdiction. They were targeting random people not only for death, but as a warning to those in the future who might defy their God.
By the standards of 1629, this version of Islam would be more unaligned politically with the politics of the Anglican Protestants than Catholicism was, for not even Catholicism countenanced random attacks on strangers to bring the fear of their God on their offending neighbors.
What the Islamists have in common with the Christians of 1629 was the notion that politics and the sacred are one. Political discourse is theological, not philosophical. By 1689, a nation must still be a nation whose God is the Lord, but it must be so consensually, for God loves a cheerful giver.
This assumption of consensual rule is the fruit of Protestant, not Catholic, Christianity. It comes from the notion that a man must count the cost himself of his own belief, not trusting it to authority. Although that man should not steward his own beliefs without a church structure to guide him.
The Islamists that executed the 9/11 attack share in that Catholic belief, that counting the cost of belief is the sacred authority’s job, not the individual. This is where the similarity between the two ends, at least in 1629 (and even 1689).
The Islamist god is very different than the Catholic and Protestant God. The Islamist god calls for the non-believers to be killed, the enemy to be vanquished. The Christian God calls on His followers to love your enemy and not meet evil with evil.
Christians must defy Scripture to do these things (and they did). Islamists’ scriptures plainly command it.
The Islamist can send you to Hell, the Christian is warned not to take God’s vengeance for yourself, to let the chaff grow with the wheat until God’s appointed time, when HE will separate the chaff from the wheat, gathering the wheat into his barn and setting the chaff on fire.
There are many beliefs that prevent their followers from assuming the role of God’s executioner on earth. There are many non-deistic political theories that not only allow this, but they also compel their followers to be their Ideal’s executioner on earth.
Progressives, for instance, come from such a political school of thought. “Punch a Nazi” was how they announced their plan to use violence to change America to their image.
This, in large part, is why Islamists and Progressives ally together whenever they have a common enemy, especially Christians, especially Protestant Christians, especially Americans.
Progressives justify killing the infidel not for their beliefs alone, but because they are part of a class of generational sinners, and thus must bend the knee to their betters or die. For most (not all) Islamists, a repentant sinner can become a Muslim. Sin is individual, not social.
For the progressive, repentance offers certain generational sinners only perpetual payment for those generational sins. For the progressive, sin is social, not individual.
Americanism comes from the nation created in 1689, which itself comes from Protestant assumptions about the rights of individuals to rule over others. Sin is individual. Sin is forgivable. The sinner can be returned to good standing.
Historians often look at this period covered in this report as evidence for why we must remove religion from politics, for it produces such violence as we’ve seen here. But religion itself never produces wars. It is always the ambitions of men and women that produce wars. Religion is just a vehicle of power to galvanize your side into effective, focused cooperative action.
Secular religions have risen where Deistic religions fade. The Age of Enlightenment gave birth to most of them. One of these secular religions is progressivism, the belief that man can understand the good finitely and assure that good vanquishes a clearly definable evil, bringing an end to history, which is heaven on earth.
Progressivism without state power is one thing, progressivism with state power is a threat to self-stewardship, is a threat to the Protestant assumption regarding man’s right to rule over others. Progressives take far more authority over the lives of others than Protestantism does, even when Protestantism is entangled in the state.
Even by 1629 standards, Progressivism and Islam would assume far more authority over the English than even the Catholic state would.
In 1629, a man with a virus held the throne of England. That virus was a governance standard that was anathema to a Protestant mindset, which had sort of emerged in less than a century from the founding of the English Protestant Church.
- NOTE: The history of the island of Britian, from the Celts to the Romans, from the Angles to the Stuarts, along with its geopolitical reality as an island near a hostile and dangerous landmass, contributed to its natural predilection for a “Protestant” theology long before Protestantism had its name.
Try as he might, none of Charles I’s decrees touched the people. Rather, they caused the people to grow even more suspicious of Catholics because of his efforts. His two sons, Charles II and James II, would have even less luck attempting to assert a theology that would change England’s governance standards so radically.
The 60-year-period was not about the differences in theology between Catholics, Protestants, and even the assemblers versus the bishops, it was more about the governance differences these theologies produced.
Presbyterians tended to favor more direct Democratic governance, while Episcopalians tended to favor governance with more checks and balances. Catholics would favor more absolute authority.
Democracy for the Presbyterians, Republic for the Episcopalians, Absolute Authority for the Catholics, at least in 1689.
It is the very existence of the state that makes any colonizing ideology, regardless of its central ideal (be it a god or a principle), either compatible or incompatible with the governance standards of the prevailing culture.
The two Charles’ and James attempted to impose their colonizing ideology, Catholicism, on a people whose governance standards were formed by their whole being, with liberty as the ground and God as the heavens. Had there been no state, their beliefs would not be a threat to their Protestant neighbors. Their “virus” would rise or fall on its own “merits.”
That the state exists, the notion of a class of people having a monopoly on violence, is what makes every ideological system potentially dangerous. Without God, men will still go to war. Without the state?
Yet for we Christians we clearly see God has ordained the existence of the state and called us to be good stewards of the states we find ourselves in.
I believe that the godly men and women of this 60-year period were struggling to sustain statehood whose God is the Lord without becoming madmen who advance the Kingdom of God with earthly, rather than spiritual, power.
For Christians, this remains a challenge, how do we sustain the “righteous” state without making it our Kingdom maker?
Many of those struggling beside these Christians, however, were struggling for advantaged power. They knew God no more than the Muslims did. But they knew the shibboleths of “Christian” power and used that language to “justify” earthly power for themselves.
England had already established some checks on Royal power long before the Catholic Kings arrived. Had they not, perhaps the Catholic Kings could have succeeded in brutalizing their god onto the English people. But that habit of checking Royal power created in the English a sense of entitlement to do so.
Even when Cromwell’s Major Generals and mad parliaments attempted to impose their god on the English people, they failed to change the fundamental protestant culture of the English, who continued to chafe at the bit of a hard master, be he Catholic or Puritan.
I see in the factions unclean hands, men and women who perverted their own gods to serve expediency and satiate fear. Yet somehow, the now-British would find themselves with more liberties than ever, far more, I would surmise, than anyone in 1650 would have wanted.
This is because, I theorize, amongst the killers and the self-servers were true men and women of God wrestling with His will for their state, their nation, and their own personal lives. This is the story of the state throughout history, a battle between servants and masters, both using the same vehicle of power, but for radically different ends.
The plumbline for servant and master is imprecise, and thus no guaranteed filter can be applied that can keep the master out of the state.
For America, the heart of the people is not Christ, and Protestantism has become, in many denominations, more like Islam, Catholicism, and Progressivism. It is difficult to tell how many God-fearing Protestant Americans are left in this country. I fear that number is far less than even 50% today.
Protestantism’s vestigial hold on institutions long taken over by progressives is nearly gone. Large percentages of today’s youth may be completely outside even the cultural Protestantism that allowed non-Protestants to “inherit” these values, individual sinner, repentance that leads to full restoration, and individual self-stewardship of one’s beliefs.
America has been going through a top-down imposition by a colonizer virus, progressivism, and it brought Islamism with it. Without a “Protestant” spirit consensually in the hearts of the people now attempting to govern this land, we cannot hope to do what England did.
They withstood a 60-year assault by a colonizing virus that was anathema to their governing standards. They not only withstood it, but they also came out stronger than they were when they started.
We can only hope for such an outcome.
I do believe there are significant territories within these lands that hold a majority of people with this “Protestant” sprit, and that alone will prevent the Progressives from doing anything more than balkanizing this land. But I do not believe we are equipped to repel our colonizing virus, the one that has been infesting this land for more than 100 years. Yet with God, all things are possible.
Only prayer can save us now.
1689 England had created a new model to allow for cheerful givers that yet assured their nation was one whose God is the Lord. Whether they were right or wrong, the prevailing spirit that created this new state was genuinely wresting with God, not seeking to impose their customized god on others.
I believe even if the ones in power, William and Mary, were masters and not servants, the prevailing spirit of the land was such that even the masters dared not use state power to impose on the people that which they did not want. This is how America came into being as well.
The masters were satisfied to have their limited power, which was better than no power at all.
So, England began the 18th century with a new model for righteous state governance whose God is the Lord, and I believe that this was despite the masters who inevitably head the state, not because of them. The “Protestant” spirit had compelled the state to conform with their reality of power, despite the state’s wishes for more (always more).
Now, the engine being built through this “Protestant” spirit was about to colonize the world, and through that it would ultimately lose the spirit that gave it that power in the first place.
But that’s another story…
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