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Last week, I posted the first part of my defence of a constitutional monarchy.
Today’s post concludes that defence of the UK’s system of government, the Queen being our Head of State.
Longest reigning monarch?
Since I wrote the first part of this series, the Queen became one of the world’s longest-serving monarchs.
On June 12, 2022, the Mail on Sunday reported (emphases mine):
The Queen has reached an incredible new milestone after becoming the world’s second longest reigning monarch.
Her Majesty, 96, will overtake Thailand‘s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who reigned for 70 years and 126 days between 1946 and 2016, from today.
Earlier this month, the Queen surpassed Johan II of Liechtenstein, who reigned for 70 years and 91 days, until his death in February 1929.
Louis XIV of France remains the longest-reigning monarch, with a 72-year and 110-day reign from 1643 until 1715, while the Queen’s stint on the throne now stands at 70 years and 126 days, equal to King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s.
The milestone comes as Her Majesty celebrated her Platinum Jubilee last week, with four days of parades, street parties, and other events, after officially reaching the milestone on February 6 this year.
But — and it’s a BIG BUT — two days later, on June 14, the Daily Mail posted an article proclaiming, ‘Queen is the world’s longest actively reigning monarch, royal expert claims’:
Although it’s widely reported she holds little interest in breaking records, her astonishing reign would only be beaten in length by King Louis XIV of France.
Known as Louis the Great, the French ruler became king at the tender age of four following the death of his father Louis XIII, and he ruled from 14 May 1643 to 1 September 1715.
According to the record books, only Louis XIV, or ‘The Sun King’, ruled for longer than the Queen.
But royal biographer Hugo Vickers says Her Majesty may be able to lay claim to being the world’s longest actively serving monarch by virtue of the fact the French monarch did not fully ascend the throne when he was aged four.
Although he was crowned King Louis XIV from May 1643, he technically served under his mother Queen Anne’s regency for eight years, owing to his tender age.
In a letter sent to the Times, Mr Vickers writes: ‘In Louis XIV’s reign, there was a regency between May 14, 1643, and September 7, 1651, until he reached the age of 13.
‘Hence, while he may have been king the longest, our Queen is unquestionably the longest actively reigning monarch in the world.’
Sour republicanism
Republicans, i.e. anti-monarchists, are a dour lot.
Cromwell had Charles I beheaded and banned Christmas celebrations, so it was a relief when, after England’s Civil War, Charles II ascended the throne in 1660. That period in British history is called the Restoration.
The anniversary of the Restoration is on May 29:
Maypoles, music and gaiety were also banned. The Calvinistic Puritans were the Taliban of their time.
Like the Taliban, they ruled for the people’s ‘own good’:
The article that barrister Francis Hoar cites says, in part:
The seventeenth century Puritans did not impose their austere rules purely for the sake of it … Their banning of Maypoles and Christmas and football was ultimately about top-down, rationalistic social control to the end of spiritual and ethical purity, an attempt to eliminate anything untidy, spontaneous, and in particular to impose their own (extremely unpopular) ideas within the cultural and social vacuum thereby created.
Moving to the present day, in 1977, pundits predicted that few in Britain cared about the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, especially with the Sex Pistols’ caustic God Save the Queen being banned from the airwaves but purchased in record stores such that the single sold out.
Columnist Rod Liddle remembered the mood well. That year, he, too, was caught up in punk and republicanism. On June 5, 2022, he wrote an article for The Sunday Times: ‘As a teenage punk, I sneered at the Queen. Sadly, the music is almost over’:
I enjoyed the Queen’s Silver Jubilee immensely, shouting out horrible things about our monarch on stage with my punk band at a “Stuff the Jubilee” gig in a pleasant suburb of Middlesbrough. We were in a tent, erected with great magnanimity by the organisers slap bang in the middle of the proper, official Silver Jubilee celebration, with its stalls of cakes and beer wagons and plates bearing pictures of her Maj.
It may have been HM’s Silver Jubilee, but 1977 was also the year of punk, even if its impact on the charts was marginal. It is often suggested that punk was a left-wing phenomenon, but in truth it was far from it — even if one or two of the bands, such as the Clash, later proclaimed their left-wing credentials for the benefit of the very liberal hippy music press. In truth, punk at its core was energetically poujadist. It was lower-middle-class kids who were tired of, or bored with, the sclerotic institutions in our country — the big record companies, the civil service, the BBC, the aristocracy and so on.
It was individualistic, not communitarian. It had no great quarrel with capitalism, only with capitalism done badly. It saw Great Britain as stagnating and it wanted change. It had no time for the unions either — it was the unions that boycotted the pressing of the Sex Pistols’ second single, God Save the Queen.
The Queen represented continuity, much as did Jim Callaghan’s hobbled government. We didn’t want that and nor did the newish leader of the opposition [Margaret Thatcher], who was also lower middle class, despised outdated institutions such as the trade unions and the BBC, and was for individualism …
As for 2022, with age, Liddle has had a change of heart:
This weekend’s celebrations are very different. Never before have we craved continuity quite as much as we do now, faced with an array of existential threats from which you can take your pick as to which is the most pressing: newly belligerent Russia, China’s quest for world domination, radical Islam, climate change, weird viruses …
Under a lesser monarch our disaffection with the royal institution — and, as a corollary, with our own history as a nation — might have spilt over long before. But she ruled with a dignity, duty and dexterity that precluded such an eventuality.
I wish I’d remembered, while standing on stage in that tent 45 years ago, the words of an old hippy: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”
Returning to 1977, in a retrospective for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, The Telegraph pointed out that people turned out in the millions to celebrate her Silver Jubilee, proving that republicanism was as unpopular then as it is now:
Elizabeth II has demonstrated that, in fact, the monarchs do possess a power: an unactivated power, one that a partisan, career-politician president would hastily trigger – and divide us – but which the Queen handles judiciously. She uses the authority of her office to carry out and promote public duty. And, refreshingly, she simply gets on with things – no grumbling, no complaint.
When the country celebrated her Silver Jubilee, in 1977, the cynics predicted a washout: what was the relevance of royalty in an age of strikes and national decline, they asked? In the end, one republican rally, on Blackheath, attracted just five people and was cancelled. Millions turned out to celebrate the Queen, with such passion that it surprised even her: I had “no idea”, she told a lady in waiting, that the people valued her so much.
On May 30, 2022, the left-wing New Statesman tried to rally its readers around republicanism, but the magazine’s Twitter thread was unimpressive:
The magazine suggests eco-warrior David Attenborough as someone around whom we could all rally — heaven forfend! Ugh!
There can never be a charismatic republican leader, because that is an oxymoron.
And, no, we can’t have Boris, either. Although he’s probably not much of a republican, when he was a boy, he announced to his family:
he would be “world king” one day.
On Friday, June 3, some broadcasters picked up booing outside of St Paul’s Cathedral as he and his wife arrived for the Queen’s Service of Thanksgiving:
Boris was booed only on one side of the cathedral’s exterior. This is why the BBC did not pick up the sound on the day, whereas some other networks did. It depended on where their film and sound crews were located:
The culprit was a Frenchman:
I do hope that M. Jacquemin did not have the bad grace to take advantage of Boris’s Special Status scheme, granting — to as many EU citizens as cared to apply — official leave to remain in the United Kingdom post-Brexit.
Finally, let none of us think that doing away with the British monarchy will resolve child poverty — or even pay for the NHS:
All we would get would be President Blair — UGH:
How awful that would be.
Ireland loves our Queen
Given Britain’s fractious relationship over the centuries which caused the Emerald Isle to achieve independence in 1921, one would expect that the Irish would want no further reminders of the monarch.
In another retrospective for the Platinum Jubilee, The Times published a series of historic milestones about the Queen.
Regarding an independent Ireland, the article says:
Northern Ireland has been a key feature of her reign, during which the Troubles have erupted, calmed and simmered. This conflict hit close to home in 1979 with the IRA’s murder of her cousin, Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Time heals many wounds but forgiveness is a choice. So it was, in 2012, she shook the hand of Martin McGuinness, the former IRA man who was then deputy first minister in the province. Queen or not, it was an act of which many would not have been capable.
It came as a direct consequence of her successful state visit to Ireland the year before, the first by a reigning British monarch since independence. The events were examples of where she has perhaps done her greatest work: as a stateswoman.
The Irish were indeed delighted to have the Queen visit in 2011. A 2010 article from the Irish Independent reported that many towns and villages requested that she pay them a visit:
THE British Ambassador to Ireland has revealed he has received dozens of letters from towns and villages across the country inviting Queen Elizabeth to various events.
As speculation grows over a visit by the British monarch, the ambassador Julian King said his government was committed to a visit.
He said he was encouraged by the response among Irish people. Mr King was speaking to reporters in Muckross House during a visit to Killarney, Co Kerry, after accepting an invitation from the chairman of the board of trustees, Marcus Treacy.
Her popularity in Ireland continues. On her Platinum Jubilee weekend, an Irish poll showed that the Queen was more popular than past or present Irish presidents. The Queen scored a 50% approval rating compared to everyone else who scored 40+ per cent or lower.
Unfortunately, this clip from Mark Steyn’s GB News show doesn’t show the poll graphic, but the aforementioned Royal expert Hugo Vickers explained the Queen’s enduring popularity and the hope he has for her successor:
The enduring Commonwealth
The Queen is credited for creating the Commonwealth of Nations affiliated with Britain and/or the Crown.
Any of these nations can pull out of the Commonwealth voluntarily. Neither the Queen nor the British Government can forbid them from doing so.
Australia is once again considering renouncing the Queen as their Head of State. However, we must remember that they have important ties with China that might be persuading them in that direction. The same is happening in the West Indies. Money talks.
Similarly, a nation that has not been part of the British Empire may apply successfully to become a member of the Commonwealth. Rwanda is one such country. It was originally a Belgian trust territory that had been a German colony until the First World War.
A nation can also leave the Commonwealth and rejoin at a later date. The Gambia left in 2013 and rejoined in 2018.
In November 2021, Barbados removed the Queen as its head of state but remains a Commonwealth member.
A Forbes article from December 2021 explains the permutations of this group of nations:
… Queen Elizabeth II currently serves as the Head of State of Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
These Queen-led nations are known as “Commonwealth Realms,” which are distinct from the broader 54-nation Commonwealth of nations that have some connection to Great Britain, but do not necessarily have the Queen as Head of State.
The Queen’s role as Head of State is largely ceremonial, and she is represented in each country by a governor-general who carries out the Queen’s day-to-day duties.
In addition to Barbados:
The last country to remove the Queen as Head of State was Mauritius in 1992, and other Caribbean countries that have removed the Queen are Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica, which all removed the Queen in the 1970s.
Participation in the Commonwealth is voluntary, and in response to Barbados’s decision to remove the Queen, Buckingham Palace said in a statement: “This is a matter for the government and people of Barbados.”
Monarchy — an eminently sensible way forward
The Revd Marcus Walker, whose thoughts have graced my ‘What’s on Anglican priests’ minds’ series, wrote a thoughtful piece for The Critic this month.
In it, he points to the great strengths of the British monarchy:
He begins by giving us the sour republican narrative:
The State Opening of Parliament last month saw three narratives promulgated at the same time by very different people, all of which (deliberately or not) betray a fundamental lack of understanding of monarchy.
The first, by the Left, saw an attempt to heap ridicule on the rituals of the ceremony: of the procession of the Imperial State Crown, of the uniforms worn by those involved.
The second, by a more centrist kind of commentator, asked whether it was fair or just to have as our Head of State a woman of 96 who is no longer able physically to take part in major ceremonies.
The third, by the pro-Putin end of the Right, saw continued attacks on Prince Charles, whom they seem to have anathematised because he likes the environment. The political categorisation is a tad crude, and I’m sure you’ve seen overt and covert republicans using all of these lines over the last few years.
He explains why those narratives are so misguided:
What’s interesting about these attacks is that they unintentionally highlight the strength of monarchy, not its weakness. The ritual is not meaningless; it unveils layers of history. The Commons slamming the door in the face of Black Rod tells of the struggles between Parliament and the King which have been settled in our constitutional framework of the Crown in Parliament.
The Crown has the history of the nation woven into it, bearing within its frame St Edward the Confessor’s sapphire, the Black Prince’s ruby, the Stuart sapphire, and the Cullinan diamond.
Each tells a little bit of the past that brought us to today. In the chamber we have elected parliamentarians, peers, senior judges, bishops: an interweaving of the different perspectives and professions which collectively set the political culture. This will change over the years as the nation changes, and this too will be good.
Ritual is not empty; it tells a story, and all nations have their rituals and their stories. If you are embarrassed by monarchical ritual, I caution you not to cross the Channel and find yourself in Paris for Bastille Day or Moscow for Victory Day. Losing your monarch does not remove your need for ritual and story. What you lose, though, is an embodiment of that story.
He asks us to consider the life cycle that the monarchy represents. A life cycle is something all of us can understand and appreciate:
The human realities of life, death, love, marriage, childbirth (and betrayal, hurt, and divorce) are at the core of the strength of monarchy. They are experiences we all share.
Monarchy, no matter how set-up in trappings of ritual, is a profoundly human institution. Its rhythms are human, as are its failings …
So why not be rid of the Crown and its rituals? Because they hold the space at the centre of our national life, preventing it from being held by a politician. No Trumps for us, no preening Macrons, no sour-faced Putins, no German Steinmeier with his terrible legacy of appeasing Russia. The centre holds, while the political world swirls around it.
Over this month we will be celebrating the Queen’s personal achievements across her 70-year reign, but we will also be celebrating the institution which she has embodied these many years, and doing so by marking in great state that most natural and human of all things: the passing of time.
I will have more on how society has changed over the past 70 years next week and how the Queen has adapted to those changes during her marvellous reign.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
Percy Dearmer blamed Calvinists for sucking the life-blood out of Anglicanism
Percy Dearmer on the Fourth Prayer Book and the King James Version of the Bible
Percy Dearmer on historical background to the Fifth Prayer Book, 1662
In that last post about the tumultuous events leading to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Percy Dearmer emphasised the joy that Anglicans felt on being able to use their once-forbidden Prayer Book again. In fact, demand was so great that it was reprinted five times that year.
Consensus was that a new Prayer Book was needed. The one in use dated from 1604.
Atmosphere during the Restoration
Even after the Restoration, memories of Charles I’s beheading and the oppressive Puritan Interregnum were still fresh in the minds of the English people.
The new Parliament passed laws ensuring that Puritans and other non-Conformists — called Dissenters during that new era — and Catholics were prohibited from holding public office and more.
In Chapter 10, Dearmer explains (emphases mine):
their worship forbidden by the Conventicle Act of 1664 under a final penalty of transportation, their extremer ministers refused permission to come within five miles of a town by the Five Mile Act of 1665, and their conscientious members debarred, in common with Papists, from all civil, military and naval office by the Test Act of 1673.
This was because many new Parliamentarians had returned:
to their native villages at the Restoration, to find the church smashed, the trees felled, and the home of their ancestors destroyed.
Although Dearmer, who wrote in 1912, was appalled by these draconian laws, he did acknowledge that:
The Puritan ministers also, who were ejected, were, after all, themselves intruders; for there had been a worse ejectment of Anglicans before. Above all this, there loomed in men’s minds the indelible memory of the martyrdom of King Charles.
Continued Puritan interference
The Puritans were not going to give up easily, however.
Before Charles II set sail for England in May 1660 — he had been in exile in the Spanish Netherlands — a delegation of Presbyterian divines (learned and pious theologians) went to meet with him at The Hague:
and asked that, as the Prayer Book had long been discontinued, the King should not use it when he landed. They also asked that his chaplains should give up using the surplice.
The new king replied:
with his usual keenness of wit, that he would not be restrained himself when others had so much indulgence.
Once Charles II was in England, the Puritans continued putting pressure on him and Anglican bishops, asking:
that the Prayer Book might be made like the liturgies of the Reformed Churches.
The nine surviving Anglican bishops replied that maintaining the status quo — holding on to existing elements of ancient Greek and Latin Liturgy — would give the Catholics less cause for complaint. (The Puritans had moved far away from ancient liturgy, parts of which were in the Anglican Prayer Book.)
In October 1660, King Charles declared that a conference would take place the following year to discuss a new Prayer Book.
The Savoy Conference
The Savoy Conference convened on April 15, 1661. It lasted over two months.
It was so called because the Bishop of London, Gilbert Sheldon, lived at the Savoy Hospital and held the conference in his lodgings there. (Today, the Savoy Hotel and Savoy Theatre stand on the site.)
In attendance were 12 Anglican bishops and 12 Presbyterian divines. Each side also had nine assistants, called coadjutors.
The Puritans expressed their usual complaints about the use of the word ‘priest’, the frequent participation of the congregation in prayers, kneeling for Communion, the use of wedding bands in the marriage ceremony, commemorating saints’ feast days, the Catholic nature of vestments and even the use of the word ‘Sunday’.
The Anglicans were not having any of it:
The Bishops replied to such criticisms as these by referring to Catholic usage, and to a Custom of the Churches of God, agreeable to the Scripture and ancient, and to the Catholic Consent of antiquity.
Dearmer gives us summary statements from both sides.
The Puritans said:
To load our public forms with the private fancies upon which we differ, is the most sovereign way to perpetuate schism to the world’s end. Prayer, confession, thanksgiving, reading of the Scriptures, and administration of the Sacraments in the plainest, and simplest manner, were matter enough to furnish out a sufficient Liturgy, though nothing either of private opinion, or of church pomp, of garments, or prescribed gestures, of imagery, of musick, of matter concerning the dead, of many superfluities which creep into the Church under the name of order and decency, did interpose itself. To charge Churches and Liturgies with things unnecessary, was the first beginning of all superstition.
If the special guides and fathers of the Church would be a little sparing of encumbering churches with superfluities, or not over-rigid, either in reviving obsolete customs, or imposing new, there would be far less cause of schism, or superstition.
The Anglicans said:
It was the wisdom of our Reformers to draw up such a Liturgy as neither Romanist nor Protestant could justly except against. For preserving of the Churches’ peace we know no better nor more efficacious way than our set Liturgy; there being no such way to keep us from schism, as to speak all the same thing, according to the Apostle. This experience of former and latter times hath taught us; when the Liturgy was duly observed we lived in peace; since that was laid aside there bath been as many modes and fashions of public worship as fancies.
If we do not observe that golden rule of the venerable Council of Nice, ‘Let ancient customs prevail,’ till reason plainly requires the contrary, we shall give offence to sober Christians by a causeless departure from Catholic usage, and a greater advantage to enemies of our Church, than our brethren, I hope, would willingly grant.
The Anglicans won.
The one thing both sides did agree on was including Scripture readings from the Authorised — King James — Version of the Bible.
The Savoy Conference ended on July 24, 1661.
Fifth Prayer Book, 1662
On November 20, 1661, a committee of Anglican bishops was appointed to revise the Prayer Book.
They completed their work on December 20. The Convocations of the Archbishops of York and Canterbury approved the Fifth Prayer Book.
On February 25, 1662, the new Prayer Book was annexed to the Bill of Uniformity.
After passing both Houses of Parliament, the Bill of Uniformity received royal assent on May 19.
The legislation then became the Act of Uniformity, and the Fifth Prayer Book — the Book of Common Prayer — was made mandatory for public worship in the Church of England. And so it remained until 1984.
Dearmer concludes:
It is sometimes said as a jibe against the Prayer Book that it is part of an Act of Parliament.
Yet:
our present Prayer Book was not one whit less the work of the Church, whose rights and liberties were most carefully safeguarded at every stage. The troublous century which we call the Reformation Period began with tyranny and oppression, but it ended with the establishment of constitutionalism in 1662; and the royalist Parliament which enforced the settlement, did at least represent the people.
The next entry will concern the 1662 Book of Common Prayer itself.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
Percy Dearmer blamed Calvinists for sucking the life-blood out of Anglicanism
Percy Dearmer on the Fourth Prayer Book and the King James Version of the Bible
Percy Dearmer wisely skipped over the turmoil that was going on not only in England but in Europe during King James I’s (James VI of Scotland) and Charles I’s respective reigns.
However, some historical notes need to be added to understand the civil and religious strife during this time. The two intermingled, causing much violence and uncertainty.
Before getting to Chapter 10 of Dearmer’s book, I shall try to sum this up as briefly as possible.
James I was Charles I’s father. When the latter was of marriageable age, the Continent was experiencing political struggles between Catholic and Protestant royal houses and emperors. Spain was a powerful player at this time. People today would find it amazing to know that Spain ruled the Low Countries, but the Spanish Netherlands did indeed exist between 1581 to 1714.
James hoped to broker peace with Spain by marrying Charles off to Princess Maria Anna. However, as the Wikipedia account of Charles I‘s life and death tells us (emphases mine):
Unfortunately for James, negotiation with Spain proved generally unpopular, both with the public and with James’s court.[19] The English Parliament was actively hostile towards Spain and Catholicism, and thus, when called by James in 1621, the members hoped for an enforcement of recusancy laws, a naval campaign against Spain, and a Protestant marriage for the Prince of Wales.[20]
The Spanish Court — including Princess Maria Anna — opposed the match, and it never took place.
However, Charles did marry a Catholic, France’s Princess Henrietta Maria, in 1625, which did not stand him in good stead in England. He had succeeded his father as king in 1624 and was crowned formally on February 2, 1626. Tensions ran high:
Many members of the Commons were opposed to the king’s marriage to a Roman Catholic, fearing that Charles would lift restrictions on Catholic recusants and undermine the official establishment of the reformed Church of England. Although he told Parliament that he would not relax religious restrictions, he promised to do exactly that in a secret marriage treaty with his brother-in-law Louis XIII of France.[41]
Things were not well in the royal household at that time:
Disputes over her jointure, appointments to her household, and the practice of her religion culminated in the king expelling the vast majority of her French attendants in August 1626.[58]
However, not long afterwards, diplomacy with Spain ensued and his marital problems were resolved. In fact, Charles and his Queen consort:
embodied an image of virtue and family life, and their court became a model of formality and morality.[73]
That said, the religious issue of Henrietta Maria’s Catholicism did not disappear.
Taxes were high so that Charles could finance war. He also granted monopolies, which companies paid for. One of them was for soap:
pejoratively referred to as “popish soap” because some of its backers were Catholics.[108]
Another religious issue was the determination of Calvinists — Puritans — to become the dominant religious force. Yet another — on the opposite side of the aisle — was the popularity of Arminianism, which posits that man can accept or reject salvation. In addition, Charles’s diplomacy with Spain was viewed with suspicion, as a way of bringing in Catholicism via the back door.
Charles was concerned about the direction the Reformation was taking in England. The action he took proved to be unpopular:
In 1633, Charles appointed William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury.[118] Together, they began a series of anti-Calvinist reforms that attempted to ensure religious uniformity by restricting non-conformist preachers, insisting that the liturgy be celebrated as prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, organising the internal architecture of English churches so as to emphasise the sacrament of the altar, and re-issuing King James’s Declaration of Sports, which permitted secular activities on the sabbath.[119] The Feoffees for Impropriations, an organisation that bought benefices and advowsons so that Puritans could be appointed to them, was dissolved.[120] To prosecute those who opposed his reforms, Laud used the two most powerful courts in the land, the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber.[121] The courts became feared for their censorship of opposing religious views, and became unpopular among the propertied classes for inflicting degrading punishments on gentlemen.[122]
Conflicts arose in Scotland and Ireland. Parliamentarians in England were also furious with Charles. They impeached Archbishop Laud in 1640 and accused the king of tyranny.
On January 3, 1642, Charles entered the House of Commons to have five members of Parliament arrested on charges of treason. (Word had reached the men, who escaped by boat.) When Charles made his demand, Parliament refused to comply.
It should be noted that the monarch never enters the House of Commons. That Charles did so sealed his fate.
The result was the English Civil War which lasted from 1642 to 1651. It was fought between the Roundheads (Parliamentarians) and Cavaliers (Royalists):
The overall outcome of the war was threefold: the trial and execution of Charles I (1649); the exile of his son, Charles II (1651); and the replacement of English monarchy with, at first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then the Protectorate under the personal rules of Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658) and his son Richard (1658–1659). The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England ended with the victors’ consolidating the established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament‘s consent, although the idea of Parliament as the ruling power of England was only legally established as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688.[2]
The period between Charles I’s death and Charles II’s accession to the throne is called the Interregnum, which had strong religious overtones:
The Interregnum was a relatively short but important period in the history of the British Isles. It saw a number of political experiments without any stable form of government emerging, largely due to the wide diversity in religious and political groups that had been allowed to flourish after the regicide of Charles I.
The Puritan movement had evolved as a rejection of both real and perceived “Catholicisation” of the Church of England. When the Church of England was quickly disestablished by the Commonwealth Government, the question of what church to establish became a hotly debated subject. In the end, it was impossible to make all the political factions happy. During the Interregnum, Oliver Cromwell lost much of the support he had gained during the Civil War.
Puritans dominated the landscape:
After the Parliamentarian victory in the Civil War, the Puritan views of the majority of Parliament and its supporters began to be imposed on the rest of the country. The Puritans advocated an austere lifestyle and restricted what they saw as the excesses of the previous regime. Most prominently, holidays such as Christmas and Easter were suppressed.[2] Pastimes such as the theatre and gambling were also banned. However, some forms of art that were thought to be “virtuous”, such as opera, were encouraged. These changes are often credited to Oliver Cromwell, though they were introduced by the Commonwealth Parliament; and Cromwell, when he came to power, was a liberalising influence.[3]
Interestingly, independent Protestant churches flourished during this time:
The breakdown of religious uniformity and incomplete Presbyterian Settlement of 1646 enabled independent churches to flourish. The main sects (see also English Dissenters) were Baptists, who advocated adult rebaptism; Ranters, who claimed that sin did not exist for the “chosen ones”; and Fifth Monarchy Men, who opposed all “earthly” governments, believing they must prepare for God’s kingdom on earth by establishing a “government of saints”.
Despite greater toleration, extreme sects were opposed by the upper classes as they were seen as a threat to social order and property rights. Catholics were also excluded from the toleration applied to the other groups.
When Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, his son Richard succeeded him. However, Richard lacked authority and his rule was brief, 264 days:
The Protectorate came to an end in May 1659 when the Grandees recalled the Rump Parliament, which authorised a Committee of Safety to replace Richard’s Council of State. This ushered in a period of unstable government, which did not come to an end until February 1660 when General George Monck, the English military governor of Scotland, marched to London at the head of his troops, and oversaw the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II.
Understandably, no one in Britain wants a repeat of this, including the religious restrictions that took place during these years.
History lesson concluded, let us turn to Percy Dearmer.
He informs us that the Book of Common Prayer was abolished in 1645:
and its use made penal.
With Charles II’s accession to the throne, there was much rejoicing:
ENGLAND turned with shouts of joy from the rancour and violence of the Commonwealth, from the spiritual despotism of the Presbyterians and of the Independents who ousted them, and from the resulting distraction and impiety, to the Restoration of Church and King, and of free Parliamentary institutions …
However, the mood turned against non-Conformists, who were persecuted.
With the Church of England re-established, there was great hunger for the previously banned Prayer Book:
So great was the demand for Prayer Books that, before 1660 had reached its close, five editions of the old Book were printed.
But the Prayer Book had not been revised since 1604, and many agreed at least in this — that a new revision was needed.
This brings us to the theological background of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the subject of the next post in this series.
This year — 2010 — marks the 350th anniversary of the Restoration of the Crown in England. Charles II restored the monarchy in England after Cromwell’s oppressive Interregnum.
Allow me to interject at this point that I found out about this grand anniversary only because of a limited edition coin commercial I saw on television recently. This is certainly nothing that the BBC or our government is pontificating about. In fact, very few people in England are even aware of this.
The reason why Puritanism is unlikely to gain a foothold in our green and pleasant land — for the foreseeable future, anyway — is that too many Englishmen have studied the Cromwell years at school. It was a dire time and represented a most ugly side of Calvinism as influenced by John Knox, a Scot. Knox’s Reformation preceded the Interregnum, to be sure, but the English Puritans took up all his worst ideas with a vengeance. Knox went considerably beyond where John Calvin’s teachings ended, but that’s a subject for another time. Needless to say, England has no appetite for any whiff of extra-strong Calvinism in its established Church or in its government. Having said that, you may be excused for thinking that the Labour Party has been a pretty good representation of Cromwellian government, minus the religion, from 1997-2010. It seems apposite then that we now have a coalition government and many of us hope that the oppressive 4,289 new laws over the past 13 years will begin to be repealed soon.
In any event, discussion of the Restoration generally brings up the subject of opportunism. Then, as now, those with degrees from Oxford and Cambridge (known as ‘Oxbridge’) were Cromwell’s biggest supporters. However, once Charles II assumed the throne, vacated by his father (Charles I whom Cromwell had beheaded), these same people changed their allegiances overnight. The most famous example is the diarist Samuel Pepys (Cambridge), who ended up becoming a Royalist in 1660 and worked in the Admiralty on a continuous career trajectory throughout his adult life. The same was true of his friends from university. To Spouse Mouse and me, these chaps were opportunists. How can someone sincerely shift their loyalties so quickly?
This brings us to the attitudes of Puritan clergymen. Certainly, some of them must have been opportunists, too, one would think. Sometimes, however, we encounter the biographies of men who had principles and a conscience. J C Ryle, before he became the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, wrote a biography of the Rev’d Thomas Manton (1620-1677), a Puritan minister in England (pictured at right). Excerpts of Ryle’s ‘Estimate of Manton’ follow.
Ryle wrote his essay in 1870, when Modernism was taking hold in our churches, not only in Europe but in the United States. (See the final four paragraphs here.) He laments that teachings are falling by the wayside and that, as a result, so is a lively faith among church members:
We have fallen upon evil days both for thinking and reading. Sermons which contain thought and matter are increasingly rare. The inexpressible shallownesss, thinness, and superficiality of many popular sermons in this day is something lamentable and appalling. Readers of real books appear to become fewer and fewer every year. Newspapers, and magazines, and periodicals seem to absorb the whole reading powers of the rising generation. What it will all end in God only knows. The prospect before us is sorrowful and humiliating.
True then, true now — 140 years later.
However, in Manton’s time:
… vague, indistinct, and indefinite statements of doctrine were not tolerated. The Christian Church was not regarded by any school as a kind of Pantheon, in which a man might believe and teach anything, everything, or nothing, so long as he was a clever and earnest man. Such views were reserved for our modern times. In the seventeenth century they were scorned and repudiated by every Church and sect in Christendom. In the seventeenth century, every divine who would achieve a reputation and obtain influence, was obliged to hold distinct and sharply cut opinions. Earnestness alone was not thought sufficient to make a creed. Whether Episcopalian or Presbyterian, whether Conformist or Nonconformist, whether an admirer of Luther, or Calvin, or Arminius, every divine held certain distinct theological views. A vague, colourless, boneless, undogmatic Christianity, supplying no clear comfort in life, and no clear hope in death, was a Christianity which found favour with none.
Ryle defies suggestions that Manton (Oxford) was an opportunist, supporting Cromwell, then becoming the King’s Chaplain:
Some one may perhaps imagine that Manton was a prudent, “canny ” man, who avoided doing anything to give offence, and had a keen eye to his own interests. There is not an atom of foundation for such a theory. When it was first proposed to bring to trial and execute Charles I., Manton was one of fifty-seven divines who signed and published a bold protest against the design. When Christopher Love was beheaded by Oliver Cromwell on a charge of treason, Manton accompanied him to the scaffold, and afterwards preached his funeral sermon at St. Lawrence Jewry, though the soldiers threatened to shoot him. As to minding his own interests, no man perhaps ever thought less of them than Manton. The mere fact that he refused the Deanery of Rochester, when offered to him by Charles II., and afterwards resigned St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, for conscience sake, is plain evidence that he never shrank from giving offence if Christ’s truth, in his judgment, seemed to make it necessary.
Of the Puritans in general, Ryle sets us straight (emphases in the original):
For Dr. Manton’s sake, and for the honour of a cruelly misrepresented body of men, let me try to explain to the reader what the Puritans really were. He that supposes they were ignorant, fanatical sectaries, haters of the Crown and Church of England – men alike destitute of learning, holiness, or loyalty – has got a great deal to learn. Let him hear some plain facts, which I will venture to copy from a work written by myself in 1868 (” Bishops and Clergy of other Days “).
“The Puritans were not enemies to the monarchy. It is simply false to say that they were. The great majority of them protested strongly against the execution of Charles I., and were active agents in bringing back Charles II. to England, and placing the crown on his head after Oliver Cromwell’s death. The base ingratitude with which they were afterwards treated, in 1662, by the very monarch whom they helped to restore, is one of the most shameful pages in the history of the Stuarts.”
“The Puritans were not enemies to the Church of England. They would gladly have had her government and ceremonial improved, and more liberty allowed in the conduct of public worship. And they were quite right! The very things which they desired to see, but never saw, are actually recommended at this day as worthy of adoption by Churchmen in every part of the land! The great majority of them were originally ordained by bishops, and had no abstract objection to Episcopacy. The great majority of them had no special dislike to liturgies, but only to certain details in the Book of Common Prayer …”
“The Puritans were not unlearned and ignorant men. The great majority of them were Oxford and Cambridge graduates – many of them fellows of colleges, and some of them heads or principals of the best colleges in the two Universities. In knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in power as preachers, expositors, writers, and critics, the Puritans in their day were second to none. Their works still speak for them on the shelves of every well-furnished theological library. Their commentaries, their expositions, their treatises on practical, casuistical, and experimental divinity, are immeasurably superior to those of their adversaries in the seventeenth century. In short, those who hold up the Puritans to scorn as shallow, illiterate men, are only exposing their own lamentable shallowness, their own ignorance of historical facts, and the extremely superficial character of their own reading.”
“The Puritans, as a body, have done more to elevate the national character than any class of Englishmen that ever lived. Ardent lovers of civil liberty, and ready to die in its defence – mighty at the council board, and no less mighty in the battlefield – feared abroad throughout Europe, and invincible at home while united, great with their pens, and no less great with their swords – fearing God very much, and fearing man very little, – they were a generation of men who have never received from their country the honour that they deserve … Unhappily, when they passed away, they were followed by a generation of profligates, triflers, and sceptics; and their reputation has suffered accordingly in passing through prejudiced hands. But, ‘judged with righteous judgment,’ they will be found men of whom the world was not worthy. The more they are really known, the more they will be esteemed.”
Yet, many of us have a distrust of Puritans for the above reasons, which we learned at school. In the United States, the sentiments are probably somewhat more nuanced, although, there, too, is an ambivalence towards their theology and way of life, the latter probably common amongst many people of the day with regard to home life, Puritan or not.
In many ways, people carry the same sentiments over to today’s Calvinists, even the Young, Restless and Reformed types. Not a good idea to mention Reformed theology, Puritanism or John Calvin in polite company, certainly here in England, at least. In order to appreciate the forensic characteristics of the Reformed Church, one must read about it in depth. No slouches, these chaps.
Ryle commends Manton’s sermons to us. Whilst conceding that Manton lacks the emotional power of other ministers and theologians, he held:
… the same views which were held by nine-tenths of the English Reformers, and four-fifths of all the leading divines of the Church of England down to the accession of James I. He maintained and taught personal election, the perseverance of the saints, the absolute necessity of a regeneration evidenced by its fruits, as well as salvation by free grace, justification by faith alone, and the uselessness of ceremonial observances without true and vital religion. In all this, there was nothing remarkable. He was only one among hundreds of good men in England who taught all these truths. But in Manton’s Calvinism there was a curiously happy attention to the proportion of truth. He never exalts one doctrine at the expense of another. He gives to each doctrine that place and rank given to it in Scripture, neither more nor less, with a wisdom and felicity which I miss in some of the Puritan divines.
Nonetheless Manton:
… in a day of hard-and-fast systems could dare to be apparently inconsistent, in order to “declare all the counsel of God.” I firmly believe that this is the test of theology, which does good in the Church of Christ. The man who is not tied hand and foot by systems, and does not pretend to reconcile what our imperfect eyesight cannot reconcile in this dispensation, he is the man whom God will bless. Manton was such a man …
At the time Ryle wrote this essay, Manton’s works were to soon be republished, hence the endorsement at that time.
Manton, as Ryle alludes above, was removed of his Royal Chaplaincy in Charles II’s Great Ejection. He was sent to prison, although he was allowed to preach from there. He died in October 1677 and is buried in the parish church of Stoke Newington (a rural area then but, now, for over a century, a very urban borough of London).
Sometimes, as with the Puritans and Thomas Manton, things are not all they seem, so before we pass judgment, it is worthwhile doing a bit of research and reading.
If you would like to follow Ryle’s recommendation to read Manton’s sermons and other treatises, please visit his home page (see Resources, left-hand column of this blog) which has a complete set of his many works.
Churchmouse Campanologist 