Terra Incognita

It was damned confusing, after all: seventeenth century England opened with the death of Elizabeth I and the arrival of the Scottish boy, who was light in the loafers; it moved through the English Civil War and Cromwell, whom we think of as Puritan and boring; and then somehow we pop out the back end with Germans on the English throne.

Go figure.

To do the figuring, we turn today to Mark Kishlansky’s estimable A Monarchy Transformed. The volume is subtitled, “Britian 1603-1714,” which tells us we are considering the Stuart dynasty of England and Scotland. It is an enormously rich era that in addition to political matters takes in everything from Milton and Pepys to Newton and the calculus, to the Great Fire and the plague. It is easy for an historian to get lost in all that material. Kishlansky’s title tips his solution to the complexity: he focuses on the challenges experienced by the institution of monarchy during the period, and he does not allow personalities or interesting events to deflect or delay him. If that sounds boring, fear not: it turns out the author’s approach is a sound one, and there is plenty of “juice” to keep the pages turning.

O.K. (the plucky reader might say), game on: how did a Scotsman wind up on the throne of England?

On one level, that’s easy: Elizabeth I of England (“the Virgin Queen”) died leaving no heir to the throne, and James VI of Scotland was the next guy in the line of succession. That statement elides a number of issues, however. First of all, James’s mother, Mary of Scotland, had been rather famously Catholic and used religion to stir up trouble for the English…you would think religion would be disqualifying. Scotland, however, was deeply Presbyterian and James had been raised since infancy by Presbyterian regents, so at least he was Protestant. Presbyterians, however, do not believe in the episcopy — the bishops, the “princes of the church” — and Anglicans do; in fact, the bishops were members of the House of Lords. Conversely, English Catholics felt themselves oppressed under Elizabeth and hoped that James, of a Catholic mother, might prove more sympathetic, which is just what the rest of the country was afraid of. While James’s religion made his reign possible, there were significant remaining religious differences that later boiled over as part of the English Civil War.

You said something about “light in the loafers”…?

Yep, that one is true: James I is one of the identifiably gay monarchs in history. Or if he wasn’t gay, his own staff sure thought he was and treated him accordingly. James’s first lover was one Esmeralda Stuart, duke of Lennox; yes, Esmeralda was a man, and no, I don’t know if they were related. After his arrival in England, James formed an attachment to a “dashing Scotsman,” Robert Carr, who was injured in a tournament James attended. Carr was straight, but the King seemingly was infatuated, and he lavished lands and titles on Carr, who was elevated to Viscount Rochester in 1611 and then further to Earl of Somerset in 1613. Carr’s rapid rise and the extent of his influence alarmed the courtiers, who sought to displace him. They at least understood the game they were playing, and hit upon one George Villiers of Leicestershire, whom contemporaries described as “the handsomest bodied man in England.” Sir Arthur Ingram loaned him money to buy a good suit, and Queen Anne herself arranged for Villiers to serve as a waiter at the royal table. James was instantly smitten (it’s always a waiter), which at least proves the Queen knew her husband’s taste in men. By 1616 George Villiers, the man who was too broke to buy a suit, was Earl of Buckingham, and Robert Carr was an ex.

James is actually a lesson to us all: he was gay, but he fathered children whom he adored and promoted. Kishlansky comments little on his relationship to the Queen, but they did sustain a life-long marriage…helped, as we’ve seen, by a bit of procuring. And he fulfilled the two requirements of monarchy: he kept peace in his realm, and he arranged an orderly dynastic succession. Place him where you will on the Kinsey scale (you could argue for a 4, although I’m guessing a 5 who faked it a good bit), the man was an example of a good gay monarch, whose homosexuality seemed to surprise no one.

Uplifting. So how on Earth do you get from all of that to Puritans…and Cromwell?

For that you needed the English Civil War, which was an incredibly intricate cocktail of money, religion, and nationalism…you get a sense of it when you realize that the Civil War was part of the larger War of Three Kingdoms (1639-1653) among England, Scotland, and Ireland. One cannot reduce something that complex to a single cause, but in the immediate case, money — not religion — was the prime driver. And it was in no small part a contest over how the monarchy was funded that changed both the monarchy and Parliament.

Through Charles I, English kings ruled under divine right, and they called Parliament only when they needed something…usually money. (The king was asking for “supply.”) Parliament had no means to meet until or unless the king called it, so when it did get the call, Parliament’s members found the event a wonderful opportunity to raise whatever gripes they had with the government. (Parliament was voicing “grievance.”) Parliament could and did hold the king’s supply hostage to resolution of its own grievances. Less than a joy for the king, who therefore tried to call Parliament as infrequently as possible. Charles took the business of ruling without Parliament to extreme: he ordered the adjournment of Parliament in 1629 and did not call it again for eleven years. To support the government without asking for supply, he maximized revenue by collecting every fine, every tax, every assessment on the books. Never popular, and all of this came at a time when the people were already feeling financially strapped from England’s involvement in the Thirty Years’ War. In 1640, Charles finally had to call Parliament, who sensed an opportunity: having sat, Parliament refused to adjourn (earning itself the name the Long Parliament), and ultimately voted to deprive the monarch of his head. When the monarchy was restored at the end of the Protectorate in 1660, it was as an elective monarchy, funded by Parliament’s newly-established civil list. In essence, the monarch became an employee of the state.

What about the Puritans and Cromwell? They do play large roles, of course, just in different parts of this sprawling conflict…for the record, the Puritans weren’t a sect, they were a movement, with members from various denominations; they just wanted things cleaned up. And Cromwell, often associated with Puritanism, was really a military event, making his entrance from Ireland. I did warn you there was a lot going on.

Sheesh. So finally, how did the Germans take over the English throne?

The Restoration brought to the throne Charles I’s son, Charles II, and religion began to reassert itself as the main political driver. Charles II professed Protestantism publicly but there were thoughts that he remained privately Catholic, fears that were confirmed when Charles converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. His brother, James II, was openly Catholic, although married initially to a Protestant, Anne Hyde. Parliament held its breath: the hope was that they could survive a Catholic king if his Protestant children succeeded him. Unfortunately James II and Anne had only two surviving offspring, daughters Mary and Anne. When his wife died James remarried, this time to a Catholic. Worse (from Parliament’s perspective), the new couple produced a healthy, Catholic son, inconveniently the heir apparent. On James II’s death in 1701, Parliament entered into a bizarre negotiation in which they just ignored the existence of the would-be James III, declared the throne vacant, and settled the title on James’s eldest daughter by his first, Protestant marriage, Mary, along with her husband, William of Orange. And when, in the fullness of time, Mary died and William III (who ruled in his own right) failed to produce offspring, the title fell on James’s younger daughter, Anne, who ruled as Queen Anne of Great Britian, the last of the Stuart monarchs.

Despite rumors (one of them contemporary and devious) that Anne was lesbian, she in fact gave it her all to produce heirs, but none survived. On Anne’s death the crown passed to the nearest Protestant relation, Prince George, Elector of Hanover; and the British crown has remained German ever since.

Here’s the kicker: none of that positioning over the succession would have played out the same way had Parliament not taken control. Converting kingship to constitutional monarchy made the institution of monarchy portable and assignable at Parliament’s leisure. If those matters seem remote and of another culture, it’s worth remembering that this period is early American history as much as it is English: by the time of James I’s accession, the American colonies were up and running…James and his brood were our kings and queens. The English Civil War, with its fundamental reshaping of power between monarch and the governed, informed the American Revolution a century later, and by the time Queen Anne and the Stuarts exited the stage, that revolution was only decades away.

There is a slight but delightful play, On the Verge, written by Eric Overmyer. In it, three Victorian lady explorers (yes, they existed) set out on an archaeological expedition to understand the ancient, to find terra incognita. Instead they wind up time traveling: one of them digs up an “I like Ike” lapel button, and by the second act she’s sitting in a cocktail lounge wearing a poodle skirt…the terra incognita the ladies find is, of course, the future. When the seventeenth century English set out to rework their monarchy and government, they were knowingly entering terra incognita. They had no way of knowing where it would lead, the American Revolution and Ike included.

For the record, I still like Ike. Just don’t make me wear the poodle skirt.