The 17th century began with a new dynasty in England, the Stuarts. It was new in England but old in Scotland. Stuart monarchs had occupied the Scottish throne since the late 14th century. Most of them had been called James, five in all.
In 1603, James VI of Scotland became James I of England. He had been king of Scotland since 1567. His 57-year reign was the longest in Scottish history. [Image: James VI and I.]
James inherited the Scottish throne as an infant after the forced abdication of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots. During his minority, the government was controlled by a regency. His personal rule in Scotland began in the early 1580s and he ruled effectively there.
In 1603, James made history as the first monarch to rule the entire British Isles, including Ireland. He styled himself "King of Great Britain and Ireland," although officially no such kingdom existed.
James promoted a union between England and Scotland, but the idea was unpopular in both countries. He designed a flag for "Great Britain" similar to the one that came into use after the Act of Union in 1707. It incorporated the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George
A more immediate issue for James was religious division in England. Not only division between Catholics and Protestants, but also among different kinds of Protestants.
Because James was raised a Calvinist in Scotland, English "Puritans" hoped he would "purify" the Church of England of remaining Catholic doctrines, ritual, and structure.
James disappointed them. He insisted on keeping the Church of England as established under Elizabeth I, with its bishops, vestments, and Book of Common Prayer.
He is perhaps most famous for promoting a new English translation of the Bible, immortalizing himself through the resulting "King James Bible." Few publications in history have ever attained such success.
In the long run, Puritans would prove a more serious threat to the monarchy than Catholics. In the short run, a Catholic conspiracy nearly ended James's reign soon after he became king of England.
The Gunpowder Plot, as it is known to history, was designed to blow up Parliament during its opening session on November 5, 1605, when the king and all the members were present. Fortunately for them, the barrels of gunpowder and one of the plotters were discovered in the cellars the evening before.
Guy Fawkes was the plotter arrested red-handed. He was an explosives expert who had been fighting for Spain and his faith against England and Protestantism. He was executed for treason, along with several others involved in the plot. The rest were killed in a shootout.
The foiling of the Gunpowder Plot became a cause for national celebration. Guy Fawkes Night, November 5, was henceforth marked by the burning of "The Guy" in effigy. It still is, although it has been stripped of its sectarian religious trappings and renamed "Bonfire Night."
King and Parliament were united in the response to the Gunpowder Plot, but they soon came into regular conflict, a pattern that would be repeated under his son and grandsons. Religion, taxation, war, and arbitrary actions all played a part in the conflict. James' proclivity to lavish honors, gifts, and power on his close male friends (lovers?) increased resentment.
A contemporary critic once called James the "the wisest fool in Christendom." Historians used to place the emphasis on fool. More recently, they have been inclined to view him more seriously, particularly his foreign policy.
He was strongly in favor of peace in Europe. He resisted demands of parliamentary hawks to renew war with Spain or enter the devastating Thirty Years' War in Central Europe (1618-1648). In the first, he failed, but in the second, he succeeded.
He was moderate for his time in religious matters. Like Elizabeth, he preferred to turn a blind eye to people's private religious practices as long as they conformed outwardly. Yet in hindsight he laid the seeds of the current division of Ireland by encouraging Scots and English Protestants to settle in Ulster (Northern Ireland).
James suffered from various ailments in his last years, especially arthritis and gout. He died in 1625, probably of dysentery. He was sincerely mourned by many of his subjects. Despite some conflicts, they had enjoyed peace and low taxation for much of his reign, and in 17th century Europe that was rare.
His son and successor Charles I was not so fortunate. During his reign, simmering conflicts between the Crown and the English Parliament came to a head. Charles initially pursued an anti-Spanish policy, which grew out of personal humiliation when he tried unsuccessfully to woo a Spanish princess. He also went to war briefly with France. [Image: Charles I by Van Dyck]
Charles' anti-Spanish foreign policy was broadly popular in England, but he became angry when he could not get Parliament to vote the taxes to support it. His attempts to raise revenue without parliamentary consent and arrest non-payers aroused powerful opposition. In 1628, Parliament presented the king with The Petition of Right, which condemned his arbitrary actions.
The following year, 1629, Charles dissolved Parliament and vowed to rule without it. He managed to do it for eleven years, the "Personal "Rule" or "Eleven Years Tyranny." During that time, opposition to Charles' rule festered without an outlet.
The anger was not limited to Charles' arbitrary methods and taxes. Various strands of Radical Protestantism rooted in Calvinist and Anabaptist traditions gained strength during these years.
The "Puritans" represented an existential threat to the Church of England established by Elizabeth I and supported by James I. They opposed his efforts to enforce conformity to Anglicanism. His marriage to a French Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, increased suspicions that he was a crypto Catholic.
That was not true, but Charles was a staunch defender of the Anglican Church and promoted "popish" ritualism the Puritans opposed. During the 1630s, he tried to weaken Puritanism through prosecutions, sometimes in arbitrary courts.
His biggest mistake was his attempt to force the Church of Scotland to adopt the Anglican model. In 1637, without consulting the Scottish parliament or kirk (church), he authorized the use of a version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in Scottish churches.
By this time, most Scots had embraced a strict Calvinist form of worship. They rejected Anglican religious ritual as "popish," and wanted to eliminate bishops. Their views united them to some extent with English Puritans.
When the Book of Common Prayer was introduced in Scotland, it provoked riots. Legend has it that an Edinburgh woman, Jenny Geddes, started it all by denouncing the new book and throwing her stool at a preacher in St. Giles Cathedral.
The reality was more complex, but the riots expanded into a full-blown rebellion, the "Bishops Wars." Charles raised an army to enforce his will, but he was unable to pay for it.
Reluctantly, he called Parliament in the spring of 1640. The members refused to fund his army unless he recognized their power to approve all new taxes. Furious, he dissolved the body after a few weeks. It became known as the "Short Parliament."
Meanwhile, the Scots' army had invaded northern England and occupied Newcastle and Durham. Faced with opposition within and without, Charles made concessions to the Scots and agreed to elections to a new English parliament.
The elections went badly for Charles. A huge majority of the new MPs opposed his policies. The "Long Parliament," as it later became known, convened in November 1640.
Its members immediately began the impeachment of the king's leading councillors for high treason. During the next year, they passed a series of acts restricting royal power and increasing that of Parliament.
A rebellion in Ireland in 1641 sparked anti-Catholic hysteria in England. Pamphlets were published charging that Queen Henrietta Maria was behind the rising and demanding her impeachment.
The extreme measures of the most radical MPs gradually increased support for the king in Parliament. Charles alienated much of this sympathy when he tried to arrest five leading members of the opposition as they sat in Parliament. He faced humiliation when he burst into the chamber with soldiers to find that the five had been alerted and fled. No king had ever entered Parliament uninvited.
Soon after, Charles fled London. He began to assemble an army often referred to as the "Cavaliers" for their fancy clothes and long-flowing hair. Parliament also began to raise an army, eventually dubbed "Roundheads" for their closely cropped hair and plain clothes. (These distinctions were not as clear cut as the terms imply.)
Civil War in England began in the middle of 1642. Historians today see the English Civil War as part of a wider conflict they call the "Wars of the Three Kingdoms." Scotland and Ireland were also involved. It was the bloodiest war ever fought on British soil.
The war started badly for the parliamentary side at first. It seemed the king would prevail. But by 1644 men like Lord Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell rose to command and reorganized the army. A key reform was selecting officers based on ability rather than birth. The "New Model Army" defeated and captured the king in 1646.
For more than two years the victors tried to negotiate a settlement with Charles, without success. In 1648, royalists began a second civil war designed to free the king. They were quickly defeated, but Cromwell and his allies decided the monarchy must be abolished.
In January 1649, a parliamentary tribunal tried Charles for treason against his people. This was an astonishing reversal of the meaning of the act. In law, treason meant an act against the king.
Charles mounted a vigorous defense, but the outcome was inevitable. On January 30, 1649, he was led out to scaffold in front of Inigo Jones' Banqueting Hall on Whitehall and beheaded. The assembled crowd let forth a loud moan. Many of them dipped handkerchiefs in Charles' blood as a memento. Charles was soon celebrated as a martyr.
[Image: Execution of Charles I]
For the next eleven years, the British Isles was governed as a republic. For much of that time Oliver Cromwell ruled the three kingdoms , essentially as a military dictator.
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