2312.Three.Absolutism.Constitutionalism.Damerow

2312 Topic Three: Absolutism vs. Constitutionalism
England and Constitutionalism
SUMMARY
During the course of the 17th century, the political system of England changed from the Absolute
Monarchy of the Tudors to Constitutional Monarchy and the rule of Parliament.
Constitutional Monarchy is a system of government where the power of the ruler is limited. It is limited
by law, limited by a Parliament or legislative branch; and limited, ultimately, by the people. Government
depends on the consent of the people. This is a revolutionary principle. It fundamentally challenges the
idea that the rulers derive their authority directly from God. Absolute monarchs claim to be unlimited in
power and authority. They claim not to be accountable to anyone but themselves, their conscience, and
their God.
In France during the 17th century, absolutism prevailed and was symbolized by King Louis XIV. In
England, constitutionalism limited the powers of the king and governments.
1. The end of Tudor Absolutism.
Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603. Like her father, she was an absolute monarch. But the Tudors ruled
with the support of Parliament.
In England, Parliament was made up of two houses: the House of Lords, representing the hereditary
nobility, and the House of Commons, representing the merchants from the towns and the lesser
landowners (squires) from the shires of England. Parliament dated back to the Middle Ages when kings
were limited in their powers. On the continent, the equivalents of the English Parliament (the Estates
General in France, the Cortez in Spain, and the Diet in Germany) were no longer convened as the powers
of the kings increased. In England, the Tudors found Parliament useful and kept it. There is no question
that Parliament was subservient to the kings under the Tudors.
2. The Early Stuarts: James I and Charles I: Conflict between King and Parliament: 1603 - 1649
She was succeeded by James I of the House of Stuart. James was the first king of England with that
name, but he was also the sixth James of Scotland. Under James I, the kingdoms of England and
Scotland were dynastically united by having the same king.
James was viewed as a "foreigner" from the English perspective. He did not understand the way
Elizabeth had governed her kingdom, in what is called the "Elizabethan Compromise."
Under his rule and that of his son, the traditional relationships between king and parliament broke
down. Both the king and parliament made new claims of power that were unprecedented. The kings
wanted to raise taxes on their own authority and parliament claimed that no new taxes could be levied
without parliamentary approval. There were also growing religious tensions in the kingdom between
Anglicans, Puritans, and Scottish Presbyterians.
These tensions lead to Civil War under Charles I. This Civil War is a power struggle between the
supporters of the King, the Cavaliers, and the supporters of Parliament, the Roundheads. Parliament's
support came from the townspeople many of whom where radical Protestants or Puritans.

3. Civil War: 1642 - 1649
In the person of Oliver Cromwell, the Parliamentary forces found a remarkable leader. Charles I was
defeated militarily, tried by Parliament for treason, and executed. It was the first regicide (killing of a
king) in modern history.
4. A Puritan Republic, the Commonwealth, and the Protectorate: 1649 - 1660
For eleven years from the execution of Charles I in 1649 to the restoration of his son Charles II in 1660,
England and Scotland were republics. Under the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, Great Britain
was governed by Oliver Cromwell. The Puritans pioneered many principles of government that were
later copied in Massachusetts and the New England colonies. Many ideas, that we now call democratic,
derive from these rigidly moralistic fundamentalists. A majority of the English people, however, were
not Puritans. They did not like the Puritan laws against the theater, dancing, drinking, and
gambling. After Oliver Cromwell died, there was a general groundswell for a restoration of the
legitimate king, Charles II.
5. Restoration: 1660 - 1688
The Restored Stuarts governed from 1660 to 1688. Charles II (1660 -1685), a fat self-indulgent man,
managed to get on with Parliament, but his younger brother, James II (1685 -1688), once again ran into
conflict with Parliament and the influential personages of his kingdom. Religion was, again, one of the
root causes of disagreement. James II had married, a second time while in exile during the Cromwell
years, a French princess, who was Catholic. It was widely believed that James II was himself a
Catholic. When this long-barren marriage produced unexpectedly a son, who was christened as a
Catholic, the country rebelled against the king. It was feared that a Catholic monarchy would try to re-
establish Catholicism as the official religion of England. Remember, in the 17th century, all European
countries had an official religion and dissenters were not tolerated. Since the Restoration, the official
religion of England had been Anglicanism; in Scotland, it remained Presbyterianism. It is difficult to
explain to modern students the degree of fear and animosity that religious differences produced at this
time. A Catholic king who might restore Catholicism as the official religion of England was simply
intolerable to England. The result was the Glorious Revolution.
6. The Glorious Revolution: 1688 - 1689
Between 1688 and 1689, Parliament engineered the ouster of the legitimate male line of Stuart kings
and imported a new Protestant king and queen: William III and Mary II. Mary II was the Protestant
daughter of James II from his first wife. William was her husband. William of Orange was the
Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic and the primary opponent of the French Catholic king Louis XIV.
William managed to take a small fleet from the Netherlands to England and marched on London to the
cheers of the crowds who welcomed him. James II and his family fled London to seek refuge, once
again, at the court of Louis XIV. James II fled because he remembered the fate of his father, The ouster
of James II and the victory of William and Mary was largely bloodless. Parliament had engineered a
change of government. Parliament had proven its ultimate superiority to the king. This was the
Glorious Revolution.

The Glorious Revolution established the victory of Parliament over the King. Various contested issues of
power were resolved in favor of Parliament. Parliament had to be convened regularly. All new taxes
had to be approved by Parliament. The king and his family had to belong to the Anglican religion. New
political arrangements were made with Scotland.
7. The Later Protestant Stuarts: 1689 - 1714
William and Mary did not have any children. After both monarchs had died, the crown went to Anne,
another of James II's Protestant daughters. When Anne died, the next Protestant heirs of the Stuarts
were the rulers of the German state of Hanover.
8. The Hanovarian Kings and the Development of the Parliamentary System
George I (1714-1727) was the first of the Hanovarian line of English kings. It should be noted that the
male line of the Catholic Stuarts continued to live in France and periodically fomented rebellion to make
themselves kings, unsuccessfully.
Neither King George I nor George II (1727 - 1660) were fluent in English. They were absolute rulers in
their German territories in Hanover and did not understand nor care much about England. They did not
preside over the regular meetings of the Cabinet. In their absence, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
became the first minister, the Prime Minister. Sir Robert Walpole performed this function from 1721 to
1742. He was responsible to both the king and to a majority of the House of Commons. When he lost
his parliamentary majority, he resigned his position even though he still had the confidence of the
king. He provided a model for others to follow.
Below is an outline followed by a more detailed narrative of these events from 1603 to 1658.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND RELIGIOUS STRUGGLE BETWEEN KING AND PARLIAMENT IN ENGLAND
DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
1. THE TUDOR DYNASTY.
2. THE STUART DYNASTY: JAMES I AND CHARLES I.
3. THE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS: FINANCES, FOREIGN POLICY, AND EMPIRE.
4. CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS: THE RELIGIOUS DIMENSION.
5. PETITION OF RIGHTS, 1628
6. PERSONAL RULE BY THE KING, 1629 - 1640
7. THE RECONVENING AND VICTORY OF PARLIAMENT
8. REBELLION IN IRELAND
9. THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE
10. ROUNDHEADS AND CAVALIERS
11. CIVIL WAR, CROMWELL, AND RESTORATION
12. THE PURITANS
1. THE TUDOR DYNASTY

The establishment of the British North American colonies occurred during the seventeenth
century and is directly linked to the political developments in England. In 1603, Queen Elizabeth I (1558
- 1603) finally died. She was the second daughter of Henry VIII (1509 - 1547), who had broken with
Rome in order to marry her mother, Anne Boleyn, and thereby brought the Protestant Revolution to
England. She was also the last of the Tudor monarchs, a dynasty begun by her grandfather Henry VII
(1485 - 1509). The Tudors created and practiced absolute monarchy in England. While they found the
medieval institution of Parliament a useful tool, and kept it, there is no question that Parliament was a
subordinate body under the Tudors.
During Elizabeth's rule, the English version of Protestantism, known today as Anglicanism or
the Church of England and as the Episcopal Church in the United States, became firmly established.
Both English Catholics and more radical Protestants known as Puritans, because they sought to purify
the Church of England from its close linkages to Catholic traditions, challenged Queen Elizabeth's Church
and were persecuted by her. These religious tensions increased under Elizabeth's successors. Elizabeth
had never married and no other direct Tudor descendants existed. Through a collateral line of family
relationships, the daughter of Henry VII, the succession went to James Stuart, King of Scotland and son
of Mary Queen of Scots. Mary, who was Catholic, had intrigued against Elizabeth, challenging
Elizabeth's right to the throne, and had eventually been executed for treason by Elizabeth. Mary
Stuart's son, ironically, became King James I. James began the process whereby England and Scotland
came to be united as Great Britain. Of the two, England was by far the more populous and more
prosperous and James ruled from London.
2. THE STUART DYNASTY: JAMES I AND CHARLES I
From the English perspective, James was a foreigner. He never quite understood the pattern
of Tudor governance and gradually came to alienate most sectors of English society. James fancied
himself to be an absolute monarch and wrote a book on The Trew Law of Free Monarchies. In practice,
he was much more tolerant and practical. If anything his abhorrence of conflict and desire to maintain
peace among contending factions made him an indecisive ruler. He had learned the art of politics in
Scotland. Scotland had become a largely Presbyterian country and was a violently fractious state.
Contending Scottish clans and Presbyterian ministers of local churches often resorted to violence to
resolve never-ending disputes among themselves. Most of his royal ancestors had died violently. James
had become quite successful in keeping his opponents divided, brokering compromises among rival
factions, maintaining his own position as king, and generally pursuing a policy of peace. He applied the
same tactics to England, where, to a degree, they continued to work. But compromise and moderation
are often viewed as indecisiveness and tend to please no one.
When James I died on March 27, 1625, the royal prerogatives of an absolute monarchy
remained in place. The crisis of English government which had been building since the days of Elizabeth
erupted during the rule of James' son Charles I (1625 - 1649). Charles policies ultimately led to a Civil
War in England which the king lost. He literally paid for this defeat with his head: the first regicide in
modern European history. Charles' failures are often attributed to his father and it is with hindsight that
James is blamed for them.
3. THE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS: FINANCES, FOREIGN POLICY, AND EMPIRE.

The constitutional crisis which developed in England during the seventeenth century may be linked
to four interlocking elements: 1) the emergence of Great Britain as a Great Power; 2) the growing
demands placed on the central government which was poorly organized to meet them; 3) religious
divisions; and 4) conflicts over foreign policy.
During Queen Elizabeth I, the seeds of the British Empire were being germinated. The conflict
with Spain and the English victory over the Spanish Armada made England a naval power in the world
and broke the Spanish monopoly over trade with the New World. The war with the Spaniards was not
only an economic and colonial conflict, but also a religious crusade of Protestant England against
Catholic Spain. Religious beliefs and economic opportunities went hand in hand, an unbeatable political
combination. Britain's economic and political greatness clearly required opposition to the existing
colonial empires
In the game of international and dynastic politics, the two remained interrelated until the
twentieth century, James was more inclined to ally England with Catholic Spain rather than with the
Protestants on the continent. In 1604, he signed a peace treaty with the traditional enemy, Spain, who
had sought to invade England in 1588. This policy of peace was not popular, but James carried it out till
nearly the end of his rule.
It was the impulsive Charles who set off on an unplanned voyage to Madrid to cement the
Spanish relationship by seeking to marry the Spanish infanta. When humiliated and rebuffed by the
Spanish court, Charles returned to England violently anti-Spanish. James wanted peace, not an active
alliance with Spain. But the aging king was reluctantly persuaded by his son and Parliament, for entirely
different reasons, to declare war on Spain.
In 1618 what is known as the Thirty Years War had broken out in Germany. It was to be the
last great war of religion. Once again the Catholic Hapsburg family sought to unify Germany, and
perhaps Europe, as a single Catholic state. Protestant England loudly supported the Protestant cause of
the Winter King, who happened to be James I's son-in-law. James had resisted these pressures for some
time, but now, after the fiasco of his son's marriage plans, he agreed to go to war.
War is always expensive. It tests the fabric of a country not only in its army and navy, but also
in its finances. Long-term budget deficits are almost as corrosive of governmental stability as defeat at
war. The English taxing system was antiquated even in 1603. James had not reformed the system,
preferring to manage on what the traditional system produced for him, which was so much more than
what the Scottish monarchy ever had. In England, it produced many valid grievances which were
expressed in Parliament throughout King James I's rule. The king had preserved his prerogatives, but
war could not be financed within the old system.
It was the financial crisis which brought to a head the constitutional crisis between king and
parliament. The king would not respond to the grievances of his subjects and parliament would not
provide the king with the steady flow of money needed to run the government. The king's efforts to
raise the royal revenue on his own authority threatened the very existence of Parliament. A cycle of
mutual distrust and recrimination developed. Where was the power of the purse located?
Under James I and Charles I, Parliament began to make claims of constitutional power
unthinkable in the days of the Tudors. If James I had decided to act like an absolute monarch, rather