Charles I and His Public: Religious Ideology, Political Discourse, and Ceremony, 1625-1633 
 
by 
 
Joseph Nicholas Faucett 
 
 
 
 
A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of 
Auburn University 
in partial fulfillment of the 
requirements for the Degree of 
Master of Arts 
 
Auburn, Alabama 
 August 9, 2010 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright 2010 by Joseph Nicholas Faucett 
 
 
Approved by 
 
 Donna Bohanan, Chair, Professor of History 
 Abigail Swingen, Assistant Professor of History 
 Ralph Kingston, Assistant Professor of History 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Abstract 
 
 
 This thesis looks at public debate and ceremony in the early reign of Charles I from 1625 
to 1633.  It analyzes the various uses of the language of ?public? and ?private? in the publically 
aired religious and political debates of the period in order to explore the nature of authority and 
kingship at the time. By examining the debates that surrounded the religious writings of Richard 
Montagu and the parliamentary debates and sermons that accompanied the ?Forced Loans,? it 
argues that the contemporary notions of ?public? and ?private? were part of an increasingly 
common method of questioning the authority and intent of those who held power. Charles?s 
attempts to combat these efforts eventually led to a direct confrontation over the ?public? and 
?private? nature of the king himself, which questioned the exact nature and limits of monarchical 
authority. It then compares Charles?s English coronation in 1626 to his Scottish coronation in 
1633 as attempts to partially resolve this conflict by reverting to more orderly public ceremonies. 
In contrast to a number of historians who find meaningful parallels between the abbreviated 
nature of the king?s 1626 ceremony and his later public policies, this thesis argues that the 1633 
Scottish coronation was actually more representative of the king?s public persona throughout the 
reign. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ii 
 
 
 
 
Acknowledgments 
 
 
 This work would not have been possible without the help of a number of amazing people. 
Academically, I have been lucky enough to work with three extraordinary professors, and would 
like to thank each of them for the time and thought they have selflessly given to this project. First 
and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Donna Bohanan for her tireless enthusiasm and 
unfaltering patience. They, along with squiggled blows of her editing pencil, deserve much of the 
credit for any moments of quality found within the following pages. I am also forever indebted to 
Dr. Abigail Swingen, who has thoughtfully challenged and encouraged me from the very start of 
my graduate career. She helped me formulate the questions and ideas that became the foundation 
of this work, and later sacrificed her personal time to offer invaluable insight throughout the 
writing process. I also want to thank Dr. Ralph Kingston, partially for providing pointed 
commentary on several drafts, but mostly for his constant willingness to listen to ideas and 
attempt answer questions no matter how muddled. I cannot forget my fellow graduate students in 
the department. I could not have hoped for better friends and colleagues. I especially want to 
thank Josh ?Lord? Barronton and abby Sayers who have shared this experience with me from the 
very beginning. Thank you. 
 Finally, I want to thank my family for their constant love and support. None of this would 
have been possible without you. First, I want to thank my brother Chris. He read and questioned 
every word of every full draft, and deserves more than I am able to give him for his efforts. 
Thank you for always being there. I would like to thank my father for all the times he answered 
the phone in the middle of the night just to talk, as well as Dale and Jake for always being there 
 iii
with some small piece of encouragement. Lastly, I want to thank the two people who have keep 
me going on when all else fails. Thank you, Kate, for standing beside me through everything. 
Even though I have asked too much of you, you?ve held everything together. I will never forget 
it.  And finally, I want to thank my mother. You made all of this possible, and so, most of all, 
this is for you.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 iv
 v
 
 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... ii 
Acknowledgments................................................................................................................... iii-iv  
Introduction?????????????????????????????????1 
Chapter I: Religion, Public Authority, and Private Belief   ........................................................ 14 
Chapter II: Politics, Pulpits, and ?Public?   ................................................................................ 35 
Chapter III: Coronations, Ceremony, and Public Display   ........................................................ 87 
Conclusions   ............................................................................................................................. 116 
Bibliography???????????????????????????????...128 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The final, dispassionate, authoritative history of the Civil Wars cannot be written until the 
problems have ceased to matter; by that time it will not be worth writing. 
  C.V. Wedgewood 
             The Civil War?has raged on paper ever since the blood stopped flowing. 
Ronald Hutton 
             We are all at heart either Roundheads or Royalists. 
Kevin Sharpe 
 
  R. C. Richardson was already an old master when he chose these quotes to open the third 
edition of his The Debate on the English Revolution.
1
 First published following the rise of 
?revisionism? in the 1970s, Richardson?s discussion of the historical debate on the Civil Wars 
needed updating in 1988 and again in 1998 to keep pace with the bitter disagreements among 
historians. Revisionists, Marxists, anti and post-revisionists, and traditionalists all raised their 
banner in this historiographical melee. Almost exactly 350 years after the conflict that engulfed 
England, Scotland, and Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century, Richardson found so 
little agreement on the subject among historians that he concluded his third edition with same 
basic points that opened it.?The historian?s writing about the English Revolution is embroiled in, 
and reverberates with, the present,? he explained, before concluding that ?historians? attempts to 
explain and make sense of the English Revolution- a long running debate already three and a half 
centuries old- show little sign whatever of losing momentum.?
2
  
Strangely, however, Richardson?s twelve-year-old final prediction now seems almost 
entirely untrue. The bitter ideological and methodological divisions that separated historians into 
armed camps after the rise of revisionism in the 1970s were never really reconciled, but were 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
1
 R. C. Richardson, The Debate on the English Revolution, 3
rd
 ed. (Manchester: University Press, 1998), 1. 
 
2
 Ibid., 247-248, 249-250. 
1?
??
eventually dismissed as part of an unproductive or unnecessary debate. Both sides attempted to 
overcome these divisions, shifting the study of Charles?s reign to the ever-widening geographical 
areas under of his control, while generally avoiding any direct explanation of the Civil Wars 
themselves. Recent works have bridged the divide through a mixed methodology and an 
emphasis on the areas of loose agreement that emerged in the 1990s, but Mark Kishlansky has 
pointed out that in the three and a half centuries of historical writing that Richardson describes, 
one point has gone almost entirely unchallenged.
3
 The overwhelming consensus regarding the 
basic character traits and psychological make-up of King Charles himself is a uniquely stable 
area in a field known for its instability.  
This thesis is an attempt to better understand Charles I?s initial years as king. It looks at 
the statements that have traditionally defined the king?s religious and political positions in the 
context of the debates and events that produced them rather than as a set of preconceived 
mentalities (responsible for creating those controversies). In doing so, it asks a number of very 
basic questions: What role did Charles play in the creation of the religious and political debates 
that accompanied his ascension and early years on the throne? Were these beliefs or actions 
responsible for the increasingly tense relationship between the king and Parliament? What led 
Charles to employ novel and controversial explanations of his divine right in 1627? Did Charles 
really take a series of innovative steps to end public debates or did an unprecedented level of 
public debate lead Charles to take previously unnecessary steps to secure his kingship?  
Though Charles and his actions and beliefs have become a fundamental part of many 
post-revisionist accounts, historians have been unwilling to accept any real revisions to the long 
established depiction the king?s character and beliefs. For example, when Kevin Sharpe?s the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
3
Mark Kishlansky, ?Charles I: A Case of Mistaken Identity,? Past and Present 189 (Nov. 2005), 48. For an 
example of early attempts to overcome the ?revisionist divide? through new methodologies and theories, see Kevin 
Sharpe and Peter Lake, eds., Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Stanford: University Press, 1993). 
2?
??
Personal Rule of Charles I appeared in 1992, it provoked more condemnation than 
congratulations from historians studying the period, many of whom chose to ignore Sharpe?s 
insights rather than refute them.
4
 Sharpe?s numerous arguments amount to a total dismissal of 
most widely held claims about both the nature of Charles?s character and rule and any long-term 
origin or causes of the Civil Wars. He largely agrees with fellow revisionist Conrad Russell?s 
characterization of the limited oppositional capabilities of Parliament in the 1620s, though he 
vehemently rejects Russell?s later acceptance of a Calvinist consensus or orthodoxy in the 
Church of England before 1625.
5
 In the end, Sharpe claims that Charles?s decision to rule 
without Parliament came only after 1629. His resolution to do so was not from any tyrannical or 
authoritarian predispositions, but his psychological obsession with ?order,? as well as his 
perception of a growing threat to the commonweal that he strongly felt it was the monarch?s duty 
to protect.
6
  
In contrast to Sharpe?s revisions, Richard Cust offers a more traditional portrait of 
Charles?s ideological and psychological make-up by emphasizing the king?s attitude toward his 
relationship with his subjects. In Cust?s account, the parliamentary session of 1626, not the 
events of 1629, was the real turning point in Charles?s relationship with Parliament, when his 
hopes of compromise ?came unstuck.?
7
 Cust blames the failure of Parliament on Charles?s 
refusal to address the Commons? grievances, a different interpretation than those of Russell and 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
4
Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992); 
Kishlansky, 48 n. 39.  
 
5
Sharpe, Personal Rule, xviii, 275-276; Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621-1629 
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). 
 
6
 Sharpe, Personal Rule, 60.  
 
7
Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (London: Pearson, 2008), 59.  
3?
??
Sharpe who blame parliament for refusing to grant the necessary funds.
8
 He subsequently argued 
that Charles?s fear of ?popularity? played a crucial part in his distrust of parliament after 1626, 
which is traceable back to his dealings with Parliament in 1621.
9
  
Thomas Cogswell?s article ?The Politics of Propaganda: Charles I and the People in the 
1620s? joins Cust in emphasizing the importance of the Parliamentary debates of 1626, but 
draws on Charles?s public appeals prior to 1627 as proof of a willingness to engage the public up 
until that point.
10
 Cogswell suggests that Charles increasingly turned away from public 
explanations of his actions after 1627, which ?contributed to the development of a momentous 
crisis in 1628 and to a new style of kingship.?
11
 The bitterness of this crisis reinforced Charles?s 
belief in a ?hard-line attitude to the public,? which led to the reintroduction of tight Episcopal 
controls on the press and preaching, and to the eventual suppression of corantoes in 1632.
12
 Prior 
to 1627, however, Charles showed a real, if limited, understanding of the need and usefulness of 
public appeals. 
 Cogswell?s attention to popular politics represents the most significant and intriguing 
feature of the most recent historical research on Charles?s reign. His emphasis on popular 
politics, news, and public debate coincides with the undeniable influence that Jurgen Habermas?s 
ideas have had on early modern British history. Habermas?s ?public sphere? has captivated, 
challenged, and provoked historians almost since the very moment of its English debut in 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
8
 Ibid., 59. 
 
9
 Richard Cust, ?Charles I and Popularity,? in Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust, and Peter Lake, eds. 
Politics, Religion, and Popularity: Essays in Honor of Conrad Russell (Cambridge, UK: University Press, 2004), 
244.  
 
10
 Thomas Cogswell, ?The Politics of Propaganda: Charles I and the People in the 1620s,? The Journal of 
British Studies 29, no. 3 (July 1990), 187-215.  
 
11
 Ibid., 213. 
 
12
 Ibid. 
4?
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1989.
13
 Much of its appeal lies in its basic adaptability and flexibility. Habermas?s theory allows 
historians to employ its basic models and ideas without necessarily accepting all of its conditions 
and assumptions, enabling them to apply their own variations and adjustments. This adaptability 
has inspired thousands of pages of comment and analysis that have taken the public sphere to 
places and periods Habermas himself never envisioned. There is, however, another important 
element in the public sphere?s ideological allure. It presents historians with a welcome new way 
of looking at questions or periods that previously appeared to be bogged down in apparently 
irresolvable methodological and theoretical disagreement.  
Indeed, Peter Lake and Steven Pincus have recently argued that a more historically 
oriented theory of the public sphere can be employed to create a narrative of early modern 
England that is fundamentally different from both the more traditional Whig and Marxist 
accounts of the period, as well as the ?revisionist? models that challenged them.
14
 By combining 
the traditional printed text from the period that made up the majority of sources used in 
traditional Marxist and Whig narratives, with the revisionists? emphasis on manuscript sources, 
Lake and Pincus suggest that it is possible produce a new narrative focused on the depiction of 
communication.
15
 This method explores what ?really happened? along with the stories people 
told about what was happening.
16
 They claim that such a methodology, combined with their 
notion of the public sphere, allows for the analysis of various modes of communication and 
action in several areas of conflict and change without collapsing these areas into one another. In 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
13
Jurgen Habermas. The Structural transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of 
Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). 
 
14
 Peter Lake and Steven Pincus, ?Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,? Journal of 
British Studies 45 (2006): 270-292. 
 
15
Ibid., 273.  
 
16
Ibid.  
5?
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other words, their notion of the public sphere allows for the production of a more integrated 
account of the period than revisionists have been able to produce.
17
 
Lake and Pincus argue that the Habermasian version of the public sphere is not 
sufficiently fluid to fit into the actual development patterns of early modern England as they 
describe it. They dismiss Habermas?s four initial phases of the public sphere (the ancient, 
medieval, bourgeois, and the degraded). Instead, they introduce a more nuanced account of the 
development of the public sphere in which a newly suggested post-Reformation public sphere 
from the 1590s to the 1630s eventually gave way to a post-revolutionary public sphere that 
produced something close to Habermas?s own bourgeois public sphere.
18
 Lake and Pincus argue 
that after this post-Reformation sphere?s initial formation during the reign of Elizabeth I, ?issues 
of religious identity and division came together with issues of dynastic and geopolitical rivalry to 
create a series of public spheres? that were temporarily created by appeals to the public from 
within the regime itself in order to persuade the queen to take a specific action.
19
 They claim that 
this post-Reformation public sphere was framed by ?novel techniques of political maneuver and 
communication? that were supported by members of the establishment because of the heated 
atmosphere created by crises, such as the Elizabethan exclusion crisis, in spite of their potentially 
destabilizing nature.
20
 
Though the conversations taking place in this post-Reformation public sphere would have 
ideally been held in a more private arena, those theoretically private spaces became increasingly 
open to public view with the circulation of newsletters and scribal manuscripts. Parliament itself 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
17
Ibid.  
 
18
 Ibid. 
 
19
Ibid., 274.  
 
20
 Ibid. 
6?
??
was an example of one such arena. It was technically a private chamber closed off from common 
access. As Lake and Pincus explain, at the time all sides reverted to the language of religio-
political controversy and public appeals during times of crisis, whether real or imagined. These 
appeals, they argue, implied the existence of, or called into being, a public able to judge a matter 
based on information given to them, but were never considered part of normally acceptable 
political behavior. The pretenses of an emergency defended the initiators of these appeals from 
the charge of ?popularity,? which Lake and Pincus describe as a ?seditious appeal to the people 
inimical to good order and monarchical rule.?
21
  
In order to justify using potentially dangerous methods, appeals often described various 
plots and conspiracies that made public appeals necessary so that a return to the normal 
hierarchical structure after the danger ended was assumed. However, the nature of the European 
religious and political scene, contingencies of English politics, and the structure of the English 
state combined to prevent this return to normalcy from ever actually happening.
22
 Lake and 
Pincus claim that not until the late 1610s and early 1620s did various political, religious, and 
social conflicts combine to sustain a level of public discourse equal to the 1590s. In explaining 
that the intensity of the political conflict of the 1620s produced the ?peculiar cultural politics of 
the 1630s,? Lake and Pincus cite Sharpe?s work as proof that Charles?s reforms were linked 
maneuvers designed to suppress a public sphere that had developed in the previous decade in the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
21
 Ibid.; The use of ?popularity? by seventeenth century commentators seems very similar to the modern 
concept of demagoguery. Both are based on the fear of disingenuous individuals making appeals to the fears, biases, 
or ignorant assumptions of the popular sort in order to advance the actors own personal ambitions or goals rather 
than the public or common good. 
 
22
Ibid., 277.  
7?
??
context of the Spanish Match, England?s participation in the wars on the continent, and Charles?s 
efforts, both inside and outside of Parliament, to fund this involvement.
23
  
Lake and Pincus, mostly due to the nature of their project, are hesitant to flesh out the 
exact details and implications of their suggestions about Charles?s actions. They jump from their 
statements about Charles?s actions in the 1630s to the revolutionary ?transitional public sphere? 
that arose during the Civil Wars, steering clear of the historiographical quagmire surrounding the 
origins of the wars themselves.
24
 If Lake and Pincus are correct, however, the role the public 
sphere played in the decisions Charles made before and during the ?Personal Rule? was critical 
in shaping the events of the period. They argue that Charles?s policies during the 1630s were a 
?series? of ?engineered? maneuvers aimed at shutting down the public sphere that developed 
during the 1620s. If, as many historians claim, these same policies were the primary underlying 
cause of the Civil Wars, then the logical conclusion to draw from this is that the origins of the 
conflicts in the 1640s were directly connected to Charles?s perception of and relationship to the 
public debates and presentations of 1620s.
25
  
  
  Charles?s perception of and relationship to public debate, however, cannot be separated 
from the nature of the king?s position in English society. His unique nature was reflected in the 
multiple, often contradictory roles and descriptions ascribed to the monarch. For example, the 
king was the head of both the church and the temporal government. Socially, because of his these 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
23
Ibid., 276-277. 
 
24
 Ibid., 279.  
 
25
 Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinist: the Rise of English Arminianism, 1590-1640 (New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1987); David Como. ?Predestination and Political Conflict in Laud?s London.? Historical  
Journal 46 (2003), 263-294. 
 
  
8?
??
dual positions, he was both laity and clergy. Legally, at least in the language of the law, he was 
both plaintiff and judge.
 26
 And according to most writers, he was both divine and human. Other 
members of society were much more clearly represented in the traditional social order. Their 
places were defined by any number of natural, hierarchical relationships: father or son, lord or 
vassal, shepherd or sheep. These defining relationships each carried any number of expected 
duties that were part of the idealized, common fabric of society, upon which society?s best 
interest. The king protected this ?commonweal? with advice from his lords and knights in 
Parliament.
27
 The conferences themselves, however, were private by definition and setting. They 
were carried out among individuals in a closed space.
28
  
Common, in contrast to the extraordinary position of the king, was an unparticular, 
general description of the regular state of being for unexceptional individuals, which Habermas 
considers to be essentially ?private.?
29
 He claims that collectively the nobility in this period was 
neutral, that is, neither ?public? nor ?private,? but particular nobles publically occupied a rank 
within the social hierarchy. These representations of rank, according to Habermas, sought to 
make the invisible social hierarchy visible by demonstrating the individual?s particular worth 
through his proximity to a higher power, God or the king.
30
 They were a confirmation of inner, 
unseen virtues or properties finally made visible by the reflection of divine grace. The 
exceptional status of being graced by God or the king came with certain expectations and 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
26
 Kevin Sharpe, ?A Commonwealth of Meanings: Languages, Analogues, Ideas, and Politics,? in 
Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth-Century Politics (Cambridge: University Press, 
2000), 54. 
 
27
Lake and Pincus, 274.  
 
28
Ibid.  
 
29
 Habermas, 6. 
 
30
 Habermas, 6-7.  
9?
??
privileges. It suspended the common, unparticular state of the formerly unremarkable individual, 
for the public display of rank and its attendant virtues and privileges.  
Sharpe points out that the ?commonweal? was a divinely inspired, natural order that 
could never be descriptive of the world, but provided a ?powerful normative picture? of the 
ideal.
31
 The king at the top was analogous with God in the heavens, the father in the family. The 
king was the head of the body of the commonweal. God was the reason or soul of everyman?s 
body, and in that way, every man was a king.
 32
 Sharpe concludes within such a 
conceptualization, modern polarities of ?private and public? or ?state and individual? are out of 
place.
33
 Sharpe looks at these distinctions in James and Charles?s own writings and concludes 
that Charles saw no distinction between his public duties or actions and his private conscience.
34
 
He believed that all men shared a common conscience that spoke to each, which could be denied 
but not vary in its common message.
35
 This is not to say that Charles believed his personal will 
was divine. He believed what his heart told him was right, not what may be most beneficial to his 
own person, was the proper course of action. His conscience was the conscience of the 
commonweal. Sharpe goes on to explain that both James and Charles denied there could be any 
distinction between a king?s ?public and private voices,? and that James went to great lengths to 
remove any barrier between his public and private selves.
36
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
31
 Sharpe, ?Commonwealth of Meanings,? 43.  
 
32
 Ibid., 43.  
 
33
 Ibid., 73. 
 
34
 Ibid. 
 
35
 Ibid., 183-193, 193. 
 
36
 Ibid., 181; Kevin Sharpe,?Public Duty and Public Conscience in the Writing of James I,? in Remapping, 
160. 
10?
??
 While Sharpe warns historians not to project a ?private versus public? divide onto the 
mental process of seventeenth century actors, the words were certainly used in generally 
opposing ways during the period.  If James and Charles explicitly denied that the king possessed 
separate public and private voices, James?s directions to his son in his book Basilikon Doron 
reveal he did indeed recognize a difference in the proper style and content of the king?s speech 
according to context, public or private. When pointing his son to the proper manner of speech, he 
advised his son: 
Remember also, to put a difference betwixt your form of language in reasoning, and your 
pronouncing of sentences, or declaration of your will in judgment, or any other ways in 
the points of your office. For in the former case, ye must reason pleasantly and patiently, 
not like a king, but like a private man and a scholar; otherwise, your impatience of 
contradiction will be interpreted to be for lack of reason on your part.  Where in the 
points of your office, ye should ripely advise indeed, before ye give forth your sentence:  
but [after] it be given forth, the suffering of any contradiction diminish the majesty of 
your authority, and make the processes endless. The like form would also be observed by 
all your inferior judges and magistrates.
37
 
 
James?s words explained the need to ?put a difference betwixt your form of language in 
reasoning, and your pronouncing of sentences, or declaration of your will in judgment, or any 
other ways in the points of your office.? In reasoning, or the verbal act of decision making, his 
son should ?reason pleasantly and patiently, not like a king, but like a private man and a 
scholar? otherwise, your impatience of contradiction will be interpreted to be for lack of reason 
on your part.?
38
 James claimed that the king could not be contradicted or refuted, whereas a 
private man or scholar needed to demonstrate his reason to others. As he used it, ?private man? 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
 
37
 James I, Basilikon Doron or His Majesty?s Instructions to His Dearest Son , Henry the Prince (1616), in 
The Political Works of James I, ed. Charles Howard McIlwain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918),  
47. Hereafter referred to as Doron. I have partially modified the spelling in direct quotes only for the sake of clarity, 
but I have attempted to alter them as little as possible. 
 
38
 James I, Doron, 47. 
11?
??
indicated someone without recognized authority or position that would have otherwise validated 
his statement regardless of its acceptableness. The king, James continued, must ?pleasantly and 
patiently? bear being contradicted or opposed in the process of decision making or justification, 
though it is against the nature of kingship itself. In ?points of office,? however, James advised 
his son that he should take wise advice before ?giving sentence,? but ?suffer no contradiction? 
after it was ?given forth.? Such contradictions would ?diminish the majesty of your authority and 
make the processes endless.?
39
  
 
Basilikon Doron was Charles?s handbook for kingship.
40
 Its words and advice shaped his 
ideals of kingship and his perception of the proper place, time, and nature of public debate 
among his subjects, as well as his beliefs about the king?s role in and relationship with those 
debates. This thesis examines those very relationships during the early, formative years of 
Charles?s reign from 1625 to 1627. By exploring the language and nature of public debate in his 
early years as king, and the authorized sermons, proclamations, and declarations Charles and his 
ministers had published, it reconstructs the linguistic, ideological, and political contexts of the 
crown?s public statements in the 1620s. Though not specifically relayed through the language of 
the ?public sphere,? the ideas and conclusions presented criticize and modify both Lake and 
Pincus?s theoretical narrative and the more traditional studies by Sharpe, Cust, and Cogswell.  
 The religious debates described in Chapter I are a specific example of the erosion of the 
traditional, personal authority of public men in the early years of Charles?s reign.  Critics 
claimed that the ?private? ambitions and beliefs of the individuals who filled public offices were 
actually threatening the universal, authorized ?public? truth that their offices were traditionally 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
39
 Ibid. 
 
40
 Kishlansky, 50-51. 
12?
??
supposed to protect. This allowed critics to dismiss the judgments of Bishops and Privy 
Councilors as invalid and corrupt attempts for personal gain, rather than the will of the king and 
the authorized interpretation of the word of law.  
Chapter II describes Charles?s efforts in his early Parliaments to extend his personal 
authority over his councilors and servants in an attempt to protect his control of the systems of 
governance and judgment from these same private threats. Charles?s initial attempts to justify his 
dismissal of Parliament and his extra-parliamentary methods of supply show that Charles was 
willing to rationally explain the to his subjects events and circumstances that led to his actions 
without simply falling back onto arguments based in his prerogative and divine right. Charles?s 
failure to convince his people with these explanations was a product of the same ?public good v. 
private motivations? language and accusations that were previously used to call the individuals 
that held lesser public offices of into question. The result was the attempt to reconcile the king?s 
public office with his private conscience and his physical person through the sermons that 
supported the forced loan in 1627. 
Chapter III looks for signs of this same process of reconciliation in the king?s public 
ceremonies and performances by comparing his 1626 London coronation to his 1633 ceremony 
in Edinburgh. Contrary to many historians? claims that Charles was an increasingly withdrawn 
king, his insistence on the undeniable unity of his person and his office forced him to constantly 
present himself as the public king, which partially explains his often described love of ritual and 
ceremony and his reputation for being cold and reserved. This was the source of the ironic 
circumstance where the king actually became more of a public institution while his person 
became more withdrawn from public access. 
 
 
13?
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Chapter I: Religion, Public Authority, and Private Belief 
 
 
  In 1624, Richard Montagu published A New Gagg for an Old Goose, which purported to 
respond to Catholic critics of English Protestantism.
41
 While refuting Catholic lies about the 
nature of Protestantism he described double predestination, the Calvinist belief that God chose 
both the saved and damned, and claimed it was ?not the doctrine of Protestants.? Citing 
Lutherans as an example of Protestants who refused the idea, he claimed it was only ?the private 
fancy of some men?The Church of England hath not taught it, doth not believe it, and has 
opposed it.?
42
 Montagu seemed to be softening the divide between Anglicans and Catholics, and 
challenging the Calvinist consensus that had supposedly defined the Church of England for over 
seventy years.
43
 The 1624 Parliament reacted to the book with hostility, and James asked 
Montagu to clarify his position, despite appeals from the Archbishop of Canterbury, George 
Abbot, to make an example of Montagu.
44
 Montagu did so in 1625 with Appello Ceasarem, in 
which he explained that Puritans were ?intractable, insociable, incompliable with those that will 
not [accept their dissentions]; but in no point more, than in this their desperate doctrine of 
Predestination.?
45
 This doctrine, Montagu again stressed, was not found in the Thirty-Nine 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
41
 Richard Montagu, A New Gagg for an Old Goose? (London: 1624). 
 
42
 Ibid., 179.  
 
43
 Cust, Charles I, 86.  
 
44
Ibid.  
 
14?
??
Articles, the document outlining the fundamental beliefs of the Church of England. Its inclusion 
in the decisions made at the Synod of Dort, called to resolve a division among Dutch Protestants 
over the issue, meant little since the conclusions at Dort were never adopted by the Church of 
England. For Montagu, the English ecclesiastics who participated in that synod between 1614 
and 1618 only attached themselves to the decision of that body, and not the Church. Therefore, 
Montague ?saw no reason why any of those Divines of our Church there present should take any 
offence at my dissenting, who had no authority?to conclude me.; more than I do at them for 
differing from me in their judgments.?
 46
  
Parliament?s attempt to censure Montagu continued in the 1625 session, and Appello 
Caesarem was added to the list of charges against him. Charles attempted to rescue Montagu 
from his Parliamentary critics by claiming he was a royal chaplain, and therefore exempt from 
Parliament?s requests, but Parliament pursued the cleric despite the king?s declaration. 
Eventually, the 1625 Parliament was prorogued, and the June 14, 1626 Proclamation on Religion 
attempted to silence the controversy surrounding Montagu?s works. Charles?s exchange with 
Parliament over Montagu was the first time Charles tried to protect one of his subjects from 
Parliamentary prosecution. As the next chapter will show, it was certainly not the last. 
Montagu?s works are important because they were at the center of the intense religious 
disputes Charles faced from the very beginning of his reign. The story of Montagu?s works, their 
publication, the political and religious backlash they provoked, and their eventual condemnation, 
provides one of the most famous examples of public debate in the mid-1620s. They show the 
often complex and convoluted relationships between the crown and religious debate, 
Parliament?s ability to upset or interfere in that relationship, and the language each side used to 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
45
 Montagu, New Gagg, 60.  
 
46
 Ibid., 70. 
15?
??
damn or defend various works. They also provide an intriguing example of the close relationship 
between what is essentially academic theology and parliamentary or popular politics in the 
period. This relationship appeared consistently throughout Charles?s reign when religious 
language and ideas filled political speeches and political motivations fuelled religious sermons 
and devotions. 
Montagu?s works were printed in a period when religious debates were blatantly political, 
and political debate was generally only acceptable in religious disguise. The origins of the 
publically-presented religio-political debates of Charles?s early reign lay in the reactions of the 
public during the negotiations of the prince?s proposed marriage to the Spanish Infanta between 
1621 and 1624, commonly known as the Spanish Match.
47
 Thomas Cogswell, whose work drew 
attention to this long ignored period, claims the events in these years showed that the proper 
political contexts could reveal dangerous public fault-lines within the nation.
48
 James wanted 
Charles to have a Catholic queen, just as he wanted his daughter Elizabeth to be married into a 
Protestant dynasty. He hoped that by positioning his descendents between the Catholic major 
powers and the Protestant states, they could provide an insurance policy against religious wars 
while improving his own political stature abroad as well as his financial position at home. James 
succeeded in the placement of Elizabeth, marrying her to Frederick of the Palatinate. This left the 
marriage of the Prince of Wales to a Catholic line as the final step in securing the kingdom?s 
international position. Unfortunately for James, the outbreak of war between his prospective 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
47
 Cust, Charles I, 85. 
 
48
 Thomas Cogswell, ?England and the Spanish Match,? in Richard Cust and Anne Hughes, eds. Conflict in 
Early Stuart England (London: Longman, 1989), 130.  
16?
??
Spanish in-laws and his Protestant son-in-law in 1620 radically altered both his foreign and 
domestic policies.
49
 
The religious conflict on the continent brought a heightened thirst for news, as well as an 
inflammation of Protestant opposition to the match.
50
 The increasingly available news from the 
war reported loss after loss for the Protestant cause, which inflamed popular fears about the 
danger of Catholicism at the very moment that James attempted to relax restrictions on Catholics 
as part of the Spanish negotiations.
51
  Many saw the proposed match as a threat to the future of 
Protestantism in England, and ministers began to preach sermons on the dangers of marrying a 
Catholic ?idolator.? After dismissing Parliament for requesting a war against Spain in 1621, 
James was infuriated by what he perceived as a blatant case of ?popularity,? and had Archbishop 
Abbot issue a ban on all preaching related to ?matters of state? in 1622.
52
 Despite James?s claims 
that matters of policy and politics were the prerogative of the king, the protests continued. The 
political implications of religious debate and the spiritual fears associated with political acts 
combined to create a public opposition that was able to justify its public political appeals and 
statements using religious language. 
When Montagu published A New Gagg in 1624, the crown was negotiating with Louis 
XIII of France over a possible match between Charles and Henrietta Maria, Louis?s youngest 
sister. James had relaxed the laws against recusants during the period of negotiation with the 
Spanish, and his generosity toward papists continued after Charles and Buckingham?s return 
from Madrid in 1623. Parliament complained about lax enforcement of laws against Catholics in 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
49
 Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution (Cambridge: University Press, 1989), 13-20.  
 
50
 Ibid., 18.  
 
51
 Ibid., 18-19.  
 
52
 Cust, Charles I, 85.  
17?
??
1624, but James only re-issued the laws against priests and Jesuits, ignoring recusants.  James 
certainly realized that enforcing the laws during negotiations would force him to commit to even 
more distasteful concessions. Parliament and the people, however, had little taste for a Catholic 
match of either sort.
53
 The eventual match between Charles and Henrietta Maria did little to 
soothe parliamentary fears of papists run amuck. It is telling that several descriptions of 
Charles?s speech at the convening of Parliament in 1625 specifically mention the presence of the 
queen?s French entourage seated at the king?s right-hand side.
54
 
 
II. Predestination, Parliament, and Public Doctrine 
Parliament reacted strongly to Montagu?s works, particularly Appello Caesarem. While the 1624 
Parliament found A New Gagg doctrinally misguided, the 1625 session found its sequel seditious 
and contemptible. A New Gagg was referred to Archbishop Abbot in 1624, which was unusual 
for a number of reasons; not least that Abbot was not even sure of his jurisdiction to act at the 
request of the Commons without the Lords? or the king?s approval.
55
 In the early days of the 
1625 meeting, Henry Sherfield proposed Appello Caesarem be added to the consideration of 
Montagu?s works already underway because it was ?a very dangerous and seditious book.?
56
 
Yet, while the first days of the 1625 parliamentary session were filled with considerations 
touching religion, but the majority of them dealt with the threat of Popish recusants rather than 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
53
 Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, 37.  
 
54
 William Bidwell and Maija Jansen, eds., Proceedings in Parliament, 1625 (New Haven: Yale University 
Press, 1987), 192-193. Hereafter referred to as Proceedings in Parliament, 1625. 
 
55
 Ibid., 286. 
 
56
 Ibid., 240. The editors note that the original record of Sherfield?s proposal is written in the margins of 
the records from June 24, and could have been added later. 
18?
??
Arminian denials of absolute reprobation. The first bills heard in the 1625 session, which began 
on June 18, included an enforcement of the Sabbath Laws, a motion for the house to take 
communion and a motion to petition the king for the declaration of a fast.
57
 Not until at least the 
third day of meeting, and possibly not until July 7, was Montagu mentioned.
58
 The parade of 
French papists now accompanying the court, even at the opening of parliament, seems to have 
been the most immediate religious concern among the MPs.  
When the Commons voted to censure Montagu, it was not specifically because of his 
rejection of double predestination. Instead, Montagu?s works were suppressed on the grounds 
that they were in contempt of Parliament, in addition to being seditious statements against the 
late king, and a threat to the general peace of the Church.
59
 Charles sent word to the House on 
July 9
th
 that he would deal personally with Montagu, as he was his servant. The Commons 
should instead busy themselves with issues of supply.
60
 Parliament responded by claiming it was 
proceeding against Montagu only because he was in contempt of their House, and not because 
they believed there was any kind of theological power invested in Parliament. In reality, this was 
a charade. Parliament intended to persecute Montagu in any case, and continued to try to do so 
until it was dismissed. It initially referred A New Gagg to Abbot on the grounds of its theological 
position. It was only because Montagu published Appello Caesarum while under investigation by 
Abbot, that he could be prosecuted for contempt of the House of Commons. 
The parliamentary charges against him argued that because James had written in support 
of Dort and against Arminianism, Montagu was dishonoring the deceased king.  This argument 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
57
 Ibid., 204.  
 
58
 Ibid., 240.  
 
59
 Proceedings in Parliament, 1625, 331.  
 
60
 Ibid., 359.  
19?
??
ignored the positions and points of view Montagu?s work shared with James. Sheila Lambert has 
used Montagu?s correspondence with Richard Cosin to show just how closely James was 
involved with A New Gagg.
61
 Looking at James?s words and actions before 1624 in comparison 
to Montagu?s after that year reinforces Lambert?s conclusions about the king?s probable 
involvement.
62
 James?s effort to end the political criticism that appeared in sermons and 
pamphlets prior to 1624 emphasized the fundamental theological beliefs of the Church in order 
to prevent points of theological contention from being used to create political unrest. The 
language James used to explain his actions to control publically-present religious speech in 1622, 
whether spoken or printed, were very close to those Montagu was called to defend in 1624.    
James attempted to silence the backlash over his foreign policy decisions coming from 
the pulpits by promoting unifying, fundamental points of faith. His directions to preachers, 
presented as a circulating letter in 1622, contained appropriate subjects for sermons. The letter, 
sent to Archbishop Abbot, explained James?s concerns about preaching and included six specific 
directions to all preachers. The printed form of the letter contains the original letter from James 
to Abbot, the six points concerning preaching that James wanted obeyed, and Abbot?s letter to 
Bishop Harnett explaining James?s wishes. The third of the six points point reads: 
That no preacher of what title soever, under the degree of a Bishop or Dean at the least, 
 do from henceforth presume to preach in any populous auditory, the deep points of 
 Predestination, Election, Reprobation; of the Universality, Efficacy, Resistibility, or 
 Irresistibility of God's grace, but leave those [themes] to be handled by the learned men, 
 and that moderately, and modestly, by way of use and application, rather than by way of 
 positive doctrine, as being fitter for the Schools and Universities, then for simple 
 auditories.
63
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
61
  Sheila Lambert, ?Richard Montagu, Arminianism, and Censorship,? Past and Present 24 (Aug. 1989), 
36-68.  
 
62
 I do not mean to suggest that these points also support Lambert?s conclusions about censorship in 
general; only that James?s views were not incompatible with Montagu?s points. 
 
63
 James I, Directions Concerning Preaching (London: 1622), 2.  
20?
??
 
The inclusion of this specific reference to predestination places Montagu?s A New Gagg within a 
potentially seditious disagreement over Anglican doctrine that obviously began well before its 
appearance in print. Rather than an example of an Arminian reaction against the public 
discussion of the established beliefs of the Church of England, these directions show Montagu?s 
wording to repeat James?s own words from just two years earlier. James, apparently, did not 
want the tender point of predestination explained before popular audiences. Its significance is all 
the more in that it is the only theological point mentioned specifically in his directions.  
James saw how damaging the public discussion of doctrine could be in the events before 
and after the Synod of Dort in the Low Countries, and had no desire to repeat the political and 
religious turmoil that divided the Dutch between 1613 and 1620 in England, Scotland, and 
Wales. Predestination was obviously a potential point of controversy before Montagu published 
A New Gagg, and James?s dismissal of it as more appropriate for ?Schools and Universities? than 
public debate fits with what seems to have been the government policy of the time. James 
believed that predestination was not among the fundamental points of faith that ordinary 
believers needed to understand, but a relatively rarified area of theological doctrine that should 
not be discussed in public due to the dangerous lines of division it might draw.
64
  
This does not mean that James was an Arminian, or that he believed that the Church of 
England had not previously professed Calvinist beliefs. James clearly believed that the Arminian 
Remonstrates in the Netherlands were wrong, but in his letters to the States General he plainly 
explained that the discussion of predestination among the common people by either side did 
more harm than good. He described the ?scanty benefits that came of such preachings,? which 
?served only to flatter and deceive their minds with the petty details of this argument, which is 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
64
 Ibid., 2-3.  
21?
??
too high and obscure for the ordinary people.?
65
 Dudley Carlton wrote to the king?s secretary 
that James?s suggestions were being used to ?authorize? the Arminian evil that threatened the 
Dutch church because his advice was linked to a resolution passed by the States General of the 
United Provinces in 1614. This resolution banned preaching on predestination, though not in 
schools or amongst the learned. Calvinists resisted the resolution, while Arminians used the 
opportunity to change the debate from predestination to the authority that granted the 
resolution.
66
 James clarified himself in a second letter, asking the States General to use its 
?authority to keep matters in peace, without suffering those of the true and ancient profession to 
be made unquiet,? until a synod could be convoked.
67
   
In order to rescue his spiritual and secular kingdoms from the controversial spirit of some 
ministers, James used the same tactic that he originally suggested to the Dutch in 1614 in 
England in 1622. James wanted preachers to focus on those unifying, fundamental points that 
were publically authorized in the Church?s articles and homily books. Focusing on these 
fundamentals prevented doctrinal divisions from being inflamed into schism. In 1623 and 1624, 
James added proclamations against ?disorderly printing? to his directions on preaching. While 
James?s 1623 proclamation was a reprint of Queen Elizabeth?s 1587 proclamation of the same 
title, the 1624 proclamation, entitled ?A proclamation against Seditious, Popish, and Puritannical 
books and Pamphlets? was written specifically in response to the religious controversies of 
James?s own time. It declared that nothing on matters of religion, church government, or state 
should be published without being screened by either of the Archbishops, the Bishop of London, 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
65
 G. P. V. Akrigg, ed., Letters of King James VI & I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 358-
360.  
 
66
 Dudley Carleton, Letters From and To Sir Dudley Carleton, Knt., During his Embassy in Holland, 2
nd
 
ed. (London: 1775), 58. 
 
67
 Akrigg, 359. 
22?
??
or the Chancellor of one of the Universities.
68
 James was determined to prevent differences on 
secondary points of belief, whether presented in print or pulpits, from questioning the unity 
supplied by the fundamental beliefs of the Church. The 1624 proclamation put the protection of 
these fundamental beliefs into the hands of the Church?s highest-ranking clerics. It linked the 
public authority of Church documents with the personal authority of the divines who interpreted 
these documents when determining what should and should not be published.  
James and Montagu therefore shared an appreciation of the minority?s right to views that 
went against the majority. Both recognized the importance of a distinction between fundamental 
points of faith and insignificant trappings surrounding religious practice. James gives a very 
useful definition of puritans in 1603 as not only Anabaptists, 
but such brain-sick and heady Preachers their disciples and followers, as refusing to be 
called of that sect, yet participate too much with their humours, ?not only agreeing with 
the general rule of all Anabaptists, in the contempt of the civil Magistrate, and in leaning 
to their own dreams and revelations;?but particularly with this sect, in accounting all 
men profane that swear not to all their fantasies, in making for every particular question 
of the policy of the Church, as great commotion, as if the article of the Trinity were 
called in very controversy, in making the scriptures to be ruled by their conscience, and 
not their conscience by the Scripture; and he that denies the least iota of their grounds? 
not worthy to enjoy the benefit of breathing, much less to participate with them of the 
Sacraments: and before that any of their grounds be impugned, let King, people, Law and 
all be trod under foot.
69
 
  
It is clear who James meant when he referred to ?puritanes.? They could be either conformists or 
non-conformists who sought uniformity in beliefs and rejected the notion that there could be an 
acceptable level of disagreement among members of the church on theological points. This 
insistence on conformity made even the smallest doctrinal disputes into fundamental crises and 
destroyed the unifying myth of a community of believers bound by essential Protestant beliefs.  
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
68
 James I, Proclamation Against the Disorderly Printing, Uttering, and Dispersing of Books, September 
25, 1623; Proclamation against Seditious, Popish, and Puritannical books and Pamphlets, August 15, 1624. 
 
69
 James I, Doron, 4. Italics mine. 
23?
??
James used the article of the Trinity to illustrate an undeniable point of theological unity: a belief 
that fundamentally defines the true church. It is a public, common, and universal belief at the 
very foundation of Christianity, and ?a point of salvation.? In Basiliskon Doron, James advised 
his son to learn to differentiate between such points of salvation and those that were indifferent, 
?betwixt substance and ceremonies; and [between] the express commandment and will of God in 
his word, and the invention of ordinance of man.?
70
  Points of salvation were clear in the 
scripture, and could not be overly-emphasized. The rest were private inventions of presumptuous 
men that sought more knowledge of God than he chose to reveal.   
While James claimed that ?puritans? made a ?great commotion? in ?every particular 
question of the policy of the Church,? Montagu also accepted a general difference between 
public and private points of faith. ?There are public resolutions held of all,? he said, ?and private 
opinions maintained by some, by men particular in their own conceits?As those [the former] are 
proposed, resolved, tendered and commanded: So the others are free, and disputed and 
questioned, not enjoyed as [decided], or subscribed, because problematical.?
71
  Public doctrine 
was common, universal, and irrefutable. Private was defined only in binary relation to public: it 
was not public, not common, and not agreed upon. It was not included in the publically-
presented doctrines. Instead, it was singular and, though inconsequential for salvation, a constant 
danger to unity. James instructed his differing subjects to ?content themselves soberly and 
quietly with their own opinions, not resisting to the authority, nor breaking the Law of the 
Country, neither above all, slurring any rebellion or schism.? As long as James?s subjects obeyed 
the established authority and ?[possessed] their souls in peace,? he saw them as free to ?press by 
patience, and well grounded reasons, either to persuade all the rest to like of their judgments; or 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
70
 James I, Doron, 17. 
 
71
 Montagu,  A New Gagg, 2. 
24?
??
where they see better grounds on the other part, not to be ashamed peaceably to incline.?
72
 
Privately, diversity on secondary points of theology could exist, but public discussion of such 
points had to meet an established standard of appeal that recognized a common unity and 
authority under the law. 
Both James and Montagu believed that while there was nothing inherently wrong with 
private opinions or their public presentation, presenting these opinions as somehow being 
anything more than private fancy was dangerous. Montagu explained that he was only drawn 
into publishing A New Gagg  because the author that he was responding to did not take aim at 
?this man and that man of the Protestant party: not against private tenants,[?] but he drived 
directly at the Church of England.? Had his opponent accused specific (or generically 
personified) individuals or ?peculiar tenants,? Montagu claimed he would have had no need to 
respond, as ?these are singular, so let them stand or fall.? Private opinions should be left ?to their 
authors and abettors, old enough, and able to speak for themselves.?
73
 Presenting one?s own 
opinion as a personal judgment on a secondary point was acceptable; presenting private opinion 
as authoritative, or public, was not.  
This, however, is just what some of Montagu?s critics accused him of doing. The critics 
that responded to Montagu did not accept the differences James proposed between fundamental 
points and secondary beliefs. Some argued, most blatantly in Anthony Wotton?s case, that there 
were only fundamental parts of religion.
74
 George Carleton argued that there were never any 
doctrinal differences between the Church of England and ?Puritans,? only a disagreement over 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
72
 James I, Doron, 4.  
 
73
 Montagu, A New Gagg, opposite of the page marked 2 (actually second page), fifth page (marked 3). 
 
74
 Anthony Wotton, A Dangerous Plot Discovered (London: 1626), 13. 
25?
??
church government.
75
 Others refused to accept Montagu?s explanation of exactly what was 
?accessory? and what was fundamental.
76
 The rejection of the distinction between fundamental 
and secondary points of faith meant that the Church must have a binding, publically authorized 
position on all points of doctrine. In this view, Montagu misrepresented the Church of England?s 
publically authorized doctrine in order to promote an Arminian definition of God?s grace. 
Montagu did so by questioning the public authority of several documents that he said were never 
published by authority, including the Lambeth Articles, the Articles of the Church of Ireland, and 
conclusions of the Synod of Dort. Henry Burton, William Prynne, and the others that penned 
responses to Montagu were forced to defend the authority of these documents in order to prove 
that Montagu was overturning the publically authorized and declared position the Church of 
England. To these men, Montagu was not only a religious dissenter, but a seditious threat to 
public authority. However, the seemingly simple nature of these men?s claims was complicated 
by three short words on the cover of Montagu?s first book. It read ?Published by Authority.? 
 
III. Reaction to Montagu, Public Authority, and Private men  
 
The fact A New Gagg was published by authority left its critics in a precarious situation. As 
shown above, James?s likely involvement in its printing understandable given the political 
situation the king faced, but James could not acknowledge approval of the text during the 
controversy that followed its printing. Gagg?s defense, Appello Caesarum, carried a personal 
approbation from Bishop White, but lacked the declarative ?published by authority? that partially 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
75
 George Carleton, An Examination of Those Things Wherein the Author of the late Appeal holdeth the 
Doctrines of the Pelagians and Arminians, to be the Doctrines of the Church of England (London:1626). 
 
76
William Prynne, The Perpetuitie of a Regenerate Mans Estate (London: 1626); Henry Burton, Plea to an 
Appeal (London:1626). 
26?
??
shielded its predecessor. Still, authority was a strong sub-theme in both works, not only in the 
discussion of theological doctrine but in the debate over the printing of Montagu?s works 
themselves. In Caesarum, Montagu began with a discussion of authority. He claimed that his 
(parliamentary) critics? true aim was not his own work, but the authority that published it. 
Montagu explained that it was  
Not unknown unto Authority, that Puritanical Self-conceit, and Presumption, will square 
Law and Gospel too according unto that untoward Lesbian rule of their own Private 
Spirit, and special opinion? and dare challenge any Authority, old or new, for preaching, 
publishing, maintaining Errors; viz. whatsoever doth not consort or run with the Tide of 
their Private Spirits motion
77
  
 
In fact, Montagu continued,  these puritanical spirits ?seldom or never talk of [any] misbeing, 
misordering, misdemeaning, in any point or case, but that? they can lend a lash unto, or pinch 
upon the credit of Authority, though most Sacred.? They only chose disputes that allowed them 
to discredit or challenge authority, which ?they hold ? [interested] both for points of Popery and 
Arminianism.? Montagu concluded his attack by saying that if his opponents intended only to 
discredit him personally and not the authority that approved his publication, they could have 
simply disputed his book?s claim to be published by authority. Instead, they seemed to accept the 
book?s authorization, and still chose to challenge its points and the authorities that granted 
them.
78
    
However, since the majority of the published responses to Montagu followed Caesarum?s 
printing, Montagu?s critics were able to avoid directly questioning the authority that approved 
the first book. White?s personal approval of the second book, displayed clearly in an unusual 
preliminary approbation, placed the bishop himself in Montagu?s opponents? crosshairs. In 
Charles?s former chaplain Henry Burton?s response to Montagu, entitled Plea to an Appeal, the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
77
 Richard Montagu, Appello Caesarum: A Just Appeal From Two Unjust Informers (London: 1625), 3.  
 
78
 Ibid.  
27?
??
na?ve layman Arsotus?s first question upon receiving Montagu?s book concerns White?s approval 
when he asks how such a devout enemy to Rome could approve such a book. The Jesuit 
Babylonius explains that ?it is one thing what a man saith in public, for popular applause, and 
salary; and another, what he thinketh in his own private opinion and conscience? It is less envy 
to pass his judgment, under another?s name, which he thought not so fit in his own.? When 
Arsotus goes on to ask how this claim could be true since legally the accessory is no less guilty 
than the principal, the Jesuit clarifies himself by explaining the strategy behind White?s approval. 
He explains that ?Doctor White if he see occasion, may easily wind himself out of the snare; as I 
hear he doth already, saying, That the Copy printed varies from that which he approved.?
79
 
Burton was not only drawing White?s personal authority and doctrinal discipline into question, 
he opened the possibility of a separation of those persons who granted public or published 
authority from the true authority found in the public documents of the church. This privatized 
authority by removing the power of interpreting public texts from the men who filled the public 
positions that traditionally held the final word on such matters. It also provided a useful tool to 
separate truth from the self-perpetuating mechanisms and agents of state power: it separated 
authority from authorities.  
Burton?s introductory dedication to Charles not only positioned his work as a legitimate 
form of council, but asserted that there was indeed a separation of true authority from the state?s 
authorizers. Calling on the king?s role as the rightful source of justice, Burton presented this 
division as seven ?plaintiffs? that solicited the king?s assistance. First, and most important, was 
truth. He explained: 
she complains of hard usage, how she is driven to seek corners, since she cannot pass the 
Press Cum Privilegio, but must be silenced, yea Gagged, least, while she refuses to 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
79
 Burton, 4-5.  
28?
??
subscribe to An Appeal, she should by writing, clear her Doctrines from the infamous 
term of Puritanism, and herself from being reproached for a Puritan.
80
 
 
Burton?s point is undeniable. Truth was silenced by the unjust and illegitimate censorship of any 
work that did not agree with Montagu. Truth had been mislabeled as puritanism. Truth, herself, 
was construed as a puritan, a name previously given to only non-conformists.
81
  
Charles attempted to end the controversy sparked by Montagu beginning in February 
1626. In anticipation of the 1626 Parliament, the Duke of Buckingham hosted a theological 
debate at York House where Montagu, Bishop White, and others confronted Calvinist clerics 
including Thomas Morton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. The conference ended without any 
real declarative solutions, but most importantly, it appeared conclude that Montagu?s words did 
not contradict the established orthodoxy of the Church of England.
82
 It made the Church?s 
position on predestination and the nature of grace seem vague or ambiguous, which coincided 
with Montagu?s arguments about the true position of the Church of England. Since Montagu?s 
Calvinist opponents saw no possibilities for ambiguity in church doctrine, the true meaning of 
the York House ruling seemed clear. According to strict Calvinists, God?s grace revealed the true 
doctrine of his church to every member of the Elect. The truth of God found in the scriptures was 
perfectly clear on every point, and there could be no confusion over the message it relayed to the 
divinely-touched soul. It could only be misread by those who were not privy to God?s grace and 
not members of the Elect. No statement could possibly be beyond the declared positions of the 
Church: they could only be part of them or against them.
83
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
80
 Ibid., unnumbered page, third numerically.   
 
81
 Ibid., 17.  
 
82
 Anne Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War, 2
nd
 ed. (New York: St. Martin?s Press, 1998), 106. 
 
29?
??
 Shortly after the publication of Burton?s appeal, the crown made another attempt to end 
the debate. On June 14, the day before he dismissed the ill-fated 1626 Parliament, the king issued 
A Proclamation for the Establishing of the Peace and Quiet of the Church of England.
84
 It 
recognized ?that of late some questions or opinions seem to have been broached or raised in 
matters of doctrine, and the tenets of our religion,? which were meant only to attack papist, but 
by the ?sharp and indiscreet handling? by some has ?given much offense to the sober and well 
grounded readers? of these late books on both sides.?
85
 The king, through his ?singular 
providence of the peaceable government of his people,? proclaimed his contempt for anyone who 
?shall adventure to stir up or move any new opinions, not only contrary, but differing from the 
sound and orthodox grounds ?established in the Church of England.? The king would not allow 
the ?least innovation? in the doctrine and discipline of the Church, or in the government of state. 
The proclamation closed by demanding that ?neither by Writing, Preaching, Printing, 
Conferences,? should anyone raise any ?doubts, or publish, or maintain any new inventions, or 
opinions concerning Religion, then such as are clearly grounded?[by] the doctrine ?of the 
Church of England.?
86
  
  The proclamation revealed a clear position on public debate and the policy of the king in 
resolving such disputes. Charles thought it was necessary to ban all public debate on religious 
matters. He based this policy on the ?integrity of his own heart? and his ?singular providence of 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
83
 Ibid. 
 
84
?James F. Larkin,?ed.,?Stuart Royal Proclamations, Volume II: The Royal Proclamations of King Charles 
I, 1625-1646 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 90-93. Italics mine. 
 
85
 Ibid., 91. 
 
86
 Ibid., 91, 93. 
30?
??
the peaceable government,? as well as the advice of his bishops.
87
 Most importantly, the 
proclamation declared that not only it was illegal to contradict the established Church doctrine, 
but it was also illegal to make any statement ?differing? from the established Church doctrine. 
The wording of the proclamation left the exact meaning open for interpretation, potentially 
allowing authorities to be more subjective in their application of it. In effect, anything not 
specifically stated in the authorized public documents of the Church was off limits. Where 
previous attempts to limit religious debate, such as those issued by James, explained what 
ministers could not say, Charles?s proclamation seemed to define what clergymen could say 
based on what was outlined in the public documents of the Church. 
Even with its apparently innovative restrictions, however, Charles?s proclamation failed 
to stem the public debate surrounding the Church of England. William Prynne responded to the 
1626 proclamation as well as Montagu?s claims by claiming the Articles of Dort were, in fact, 
authorized documents explaining Church doctrine.  They placed a strict Calvinist theory of 
predestination unambiguously at the heart of the Church of England. Montagu?s dismissal of 
Dort?s relevance was therefore a false characterization of the Church?s beliefs.
88
 Prynne also 
defended the official nature of other documents Montagu previously dismissed, such as the 
Articles of Lambeth and the Articles of Ireland.
89
 Both of these documents supported Montagu?s 
opponents? assertions about what constituted the true doctrinal position of the Church of 
England. Charles?s declaration made it even more necessary for Calvinists to defend the 
orthodoxy of these documents since they provided Prynne and others with a means of arguing 
their position on Predestination without resorting to vague interpretations of the scriptures and 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
87
 Ibid., 91. 
 
88
 Prynne, 214-221, 223 
 
89
 Ibid., 223-233. 
31?
??
the Thirty-Nine Articles that Charles?s proclamation banned. Prynne?s work wholly shifted the 
debate from one over the exact meaning of Church statements into one over which Church 
statements were public and authorized.  
Prynne also seconded Burton?s accusation of oppressive censorship. In his dedicatory 
appeal to Archbishop Abbot, Prynne claimed that Popish and Arminian books ?sweetened, 
clothed and gilded over, with the name and countenance of the Doctrine of the Church of 
England,? were being ?printed and reprinted, sold openly and dispersed publicly without 
control.? Meanwhile, he continued, ?all such as would confute them can either find no license for 
the press.? The few that were secretly produced were ?either quelled or smothered? before they 
could be published, or called in before they could be dispersed. The agents of authority, ?by the 
supporting and propagating of the one, and the discountenancing and suppressing of the other,? 
betrayed ?that truth of God which we have hitherto professed.?
90
Prynne and Burton?s assertions 
separated defense of truth from the operating agents of authority. These men seized upon a 
contemporary rhetoric of separation between true public authority and the private, corrupt 
ambition of certain authorities. Though, to Burton at least, the king was the legitimate dispenser 
of true public authority, the potential for a separation of that public authority and royal aims 
seems obvious.  
 
As stated earlier, this chapter has not attempted to demonstrate that James was an 
Arminian or that Montagu was not shifting the definition of ?puritan? onto those who believed in 
the strict Calvinist understanding of God?s grace. What it has shown is that Montagu, whether 
through James?s involvement or not, professed a similar understanding to James about the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
90
 Prynne, third unnumbered page.  
32?
??
popular teaching of specific points of high-doctrine. They also shared a distinction between 
private belief and public doctrine, and the danger of creating unnecessary points of possible 
division in the Church. Though Montagu has been credited with beginning the Arminian 
revolution in the Church of England, some preaching on finer points of Predestination had to 
have been causing disturbances prior to A New Gagg being published for James to include the 
topic in his 1622 directions. James?s view was that the fewer points that subjects were required 
to meet, the smaller the window for unconformity and discontent: to demand conformity on 
every possible point of doctrine only increased the possibilities of division. Since strict Calvinists 
believed God inspired the Elect to the same clear conscience on points of religion, any difference 
in opinion implied that one of the disputants was not a member of God?s True Church (the 
Elect). Every opinion must either be part of the established orthodoxy of the Church or against it. 
There was no room for extra-orthodox beliefs within this mindset where every point of religion 
was truly a fundamental point of salvation. Moderation was possible only to the extent that the 
king was able to keep the metaphorical line from being drawn in the sand. By perpetuating myths 
of common belief that kept such divisions from coming to the surface, James managed to do this 
throughout his reign.  
When these unifying myths of common beliefs were challenged, men relied on publicly-
accepted, authoritative texts to prove their arguments, and these same texts were used to explain 
the judgment of whatever judge(s) decided the debate. But when the debate centered on what 
documents constituted the true publically authorized texts of the Church of England, as it did in 
Prynne?s response to Montagu, who (or what group) held the public authority to resolve the 
disagreement without provoking the same accusations of the judge?s private ambitions to 
overturn the true Protestant Church? The answer was unclear.  
33?
??
Charles helped to create this controversy through the wording of his proclamation 
declaring nothing outside the established doctrine presented in public Church documents should 
be printed, bringing exactly which documents contained this doctrine into question. Agreeing to 
prosecute Montagu, however, would have required Charles to rule that double Predestination was 
part of the orthodox doctrine of the Church of England. If double Predestination was part of the 
established orthodoxy of the Church, then every saved soul held equal powers of interpretation 
and judgment whether clergy or commoner, a position that reeked of Presbyterianism. By 
refusing to prosecute Montagu, on the other hand, Charles had to deny a theological point 
Calvinists believed the Church of England previously professed. No moderate solution was 
available. 
Charles did not create these binary choices for himself. He inherited this controversy and 
the claims of access to public presentation and judgment that stemmed from it. The accusations 
of censorship began before Charles had even been crowned, but they threatened his relationship 
with his subjects all the same. In truth, this process of separation and accusation was well under 
way by the time Prynne?s work was published in 1626. It played out in a political and legal 
theater filled with natural and religious justifications: in which it was possible for the king to no 
longer be the idealized dispenser of public authority but a private actor like any other. The 
following chapters describe how Charles first attempted to win over his audience with the 
rhetoric and ideology of the stage that he inherited; only to finally realize that to regain his 
position he must change both the nature of his stage and the make-up and expectations of the 
audience members themselves.   
?
?
34?
??
 
Chapter II: Politics, Pulpits, and ?Public? 
 A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man 
 cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these 
 things are graceful, in a friend?s mouth, which are blushing in a man?s own. So again, a 
 man?s person hath many proper relations, which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak 
 to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms: 
 whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person?I 
 have given the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part; if he have not a friend, 
 he may quit the stage.
91
 
Francis Bacon, ?On Friendship,? 1625 
  
On June 15, 1626, Charles I dismissed his second parliament in as many years. In the five 
months they sat, the Commons agreed to supply the king, but also demanded the impeachment of 
the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Admiral and the king?s favorite. Charles, no matter how 
desperate for supply, was unwilling to allow his friend to be removed. The ?Prince bred in 
parliaments? sent his subjects? representatives home, and he and his ministers turned to the 
difficult task of funding a war with Spain without taxation. With the royal coffers empty, a wild 
rumor about an eminent Spanish invasion sweeping the country, and parliament apparently 
unwilling to trust his judgment, Charles resolved to raise his money by appealing directly to his 
people.
92
 This chapter considers the public appeals Charles and his ministers made between 1626 
and 1628, examining the language and political contexts of the public and parliamentary debates 
that threatened Charles?s advisors in 1625 and early 1626 in an attempt to understand the ways 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
91
 Francis Bacon, Essays (1625), in Bacon?s Essays, ed., Alfred S. West (1897; repr., Cambridge: 
University Press, 1908), 83. 
 
92
 Richard Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626-1628 (Oxford: University Press, 1987), 1-31. 
 
 
35?
??
these early debates influenced the language, form, and philosophy of the crown?s subsequent 
public appeals.  
 The proclamations, declarations, instructions, and sermons Charles and his ministers 
published after June 1626 reveal a shift in the regime?s rhetorical and political strategies.  Many 
recent historians see this as a turn towards a philosophy and rhetoric of kingship that was much 
closer to Charles?s own personal beliefs, but it was also part of an escalating discussion of 
Charles?s own authority and actions that contained, at the least, the same rhetoric of distrust and 
change that justified the religious appeals discussed in Chapter I.  The same vague language of 
private threats to the commonweal from individuals holding public positions that threatened 
Charles?s spiritual advisors challenged his temporal ministers as well. Charles?s response to 
these challenges attempted to render his ministers? motivations beyond question by extending his 
own personal authority. Instead, Charles?s own intentions and judgments increasingly came into 
question, leaving his future control over the systems of governance in doubt. The result was a 
desperate attempt to explain the unquestionable divinity of the monarchy and reconcile the 
person and actions of the king with the unquestionable authority of his public office. 
 
 Charles?s first parliament met on 18 June, 1625. Convened amid a serious outbreak of 
plague in London, the session seemed rushed from the beginning. Charles opened the meeting by 
emphasizing the houses? role in his father?s decision to end the treaties with Spain in 1624, 
reminding the Commons of their promise ?to assist in a parliamentary course? should James 
break the treaties. Any worries over of the treatment of Catholics or other religious matters 
should be left to the king himself, Charles told them, and discussions of other grievances must 
wait for a later session. The king believed the Commons to be ?engaged,? or bound by their 
36?
??
honor, to support the war, and claimed it would be a dishonor to him and themselves if they did 
not keep their word. All of their attention in this brief session should be directed toward meeting 
this obligation. Where Charles and Buckingham skillfully managed the 1624 parliament by 
organizing a closely controlled lobby of crown supporters, no similar group was formed prior to 
the 1625 meeting.  According to Cust, Charles believed the MPs would simply honor their oath 
to his father by providing the monies necessary to fund the war effort, without the lobbying and 
coercing.
93
 Russell, on the contrary, explains that events since the 1624 session made a similar 
coalition impossible in the tense opening months of Charles?s reign.
94
  Regardless of the reason, 
the lack of prearranged support left the crown with very little control over the 1625 meeting.  
 Charles?s goal for the 1625 meeting was simple: secure funding for the war as quickly as 
possible. Almost immediately, however, some MPs proposed an adjournment because of the 
plague threatening Westminster. Though this attempt failed, the Commons then began discussing 
the forbidden topic of recusancy laws, basically the laws against Catholics, and proposed a 
petition on religion that threatened to take up valuable time better spent on supply. When the 
motion for supply was finally made, it was woefully inadequate. Charles and his ministers were 
left with little choice but to graciously accept the Commons? gift.
95
 
 Initially Charles appeared content to accept the insufficient supply and to allow the MPs 
to finish their business and leave, but he reversed this position only a few days later. Arguing 
that additional supply was absolutely necessary to launch the fleet that would implement the MPs 
preferred ?blue-water? strategy, his men in parliament claimed the initial subsidy was accepted 
as a goodwill gesture, traditionally given at the beginning of new reigns, and that further grants 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
93
 Cust, Charles I, 45-46. 
 
94
 Russell, Parliament, 212-213. 
 
95
 Cust, Charles I, 46. 
37?
??
were due to support the war effort. The MPs, their numbers greatly depleted by early departures, 
refused on a number of grounds. Charles and Buckingham further infuriated the MPs when it 
was announced that, instead of the dismissal many members anticipated, the meeting would be 
reconvened in Oxford on 1 August.
96
  
 In the twelve days parliament met at Oxford, Charles tried three more times to convince 
the MPs to grant additional funds. First, he attempted to win support by explaining his military 
strategy, before moving on to what Cust calls ?a harder-nosed approach.?
97
 The MPs responded 
by returning to a few members? earlier suggestion that Charles?s necessities were Buckingham?s 
fault, this time attacking the duke directly. Attempts to stem the attacks proved useless, and 
Charles, after talking with his council, dissolved the meeting on August 12.
98
 
In October, Charles and Buckingham launched a failed naval attack on the Spanish at 
Cadiz. International events in the months that followed the dismissal did little to increase the 
popular appeal of Charles or his favorite. Along with the failed attack on Cadiz, the crown was 
seriously embarrassed when several ships loaned to the French earlier in the summer were used 
to attack Huguenot strongholds in September.
 99
 James initially promised the ships to the French 
by as part of the marriage treaty, and in July Buckingham was forced to answer MPs? objections 
by guaranteeing the ships would not be used against fellow Protestants.
100
 When they were 
employed to that very end only a few months later, the diplomatic relationship between the 
English and their Catholic ally quickly unraveled. By December, Charles?s ministers were 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
96
 Ibid, 46-48. 
 
97
 Ibid., 48. 
 
98
 Ibid., 48-49. 
 
99
 Ibid., 50. 
 
100
 Proceedings in Parliament, 1625, 160.  
38?
??
negotiating a deal with Huguenot exiles in England for an English fleet to relieve the besieged 
French Protestants at La Rochelle. The Privy Council approved the plan on December 12, and a 
few days later, Charles summoned a new parliament for the following February. The king and 
Buckingham hoped to capitalize on the public outcry over the ?loan ships? to present Charles as 
the defender of the Protestant faith, envisioning the very real possibility of carrying out a popular 
war.
101
  
Under the impression that the 1625 session went awry because it was misled by a small 
number of malcontents, Charles and Buckingham took a number of steps to limit the potential 
grievances, and therefore distracting committees, the new members were likely to raise. 
Buckingham attempted to solve the Montagu crisis by holding the York House conference, 
described in the previous chapter, a few days later. Most importantly, Charles tried to prevent a 
number of those men who most adamantly resisted re-supply, along with those who had attacked 
Buckingham, from being elected in 1626 by appointing them sheriffs. Unable to leave their 
county jurisdiction, these malcontents were physically unable to attend the new session. 
Unfortunately for the crown, any hopes of a popular war ended just before the session met when 
peace broke out between Louis XIII and the defenders of La Rochelle. When the meeting 
opened, all the preparations of Charles and Buckingham quickly proved inadequate, as the king?s 
ministers had no agenda to direct the meeting due to the unexpected peace in France. Left with 
little to do, the 1626 parliament focused their attention on the failures of the previous year, 
eventually challenging the Duke of Buckingham directly.
102
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
101
 Cust, Charles I, 51. 
 
102
 Ibid., 51-52; William Bidwell and Maija Jansen, eds., Proceedings in Parliament, 1626, 4 vols. (New 
Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), I;203-206. Hereafter referred to as Proceedings in Parliament, 1626. 
39?
??
Though the MPs picked up where the 1625 meeting left off by attacking the king?s 
favorite, Charles allowed them to continue. In April, the Commons agreed to grant Charles a 
total of four subsidies, and set the timetable for their collection. As Charles?s published account 
later explained to his subjects, the king immediately turned ?to the Lords committees and the 
Council of War to hasten their resolutions?for his designs.?
103
 Everything was quickly 
prepared, according to the king, leaving ?but want of money to put things into action.? Charles, 
expecting ?that which they had promised,? appealed to the Commons to hurry the supply, and 
?laid before them truly and clearly how the state of things stood.?
 104
 The House, however, 
?being abused by the violent and ill-advised passions of a few members? refused to close their 
proceedings.  According to the king?s explanation, these factionalists were driven by ?private 
and personal ends?ill-beseeming public persons trusted by their Country, as they then were.?
105
 
Under the perverted influence of these men, the House would not proceed with anything but ?the 
prosecution of one of the Peers of this Realm.?
106
 Even after Charles sent the House a public 
letter clearly explaining that their actions prevented the delivery of the money they had promised 
by the date they themselves previously prescribed, the House ?never so much as permitted one 
reading of the Bill of Subsidy.?
107
 Left with no choice, the king, with ?unexpressible grief,? 
dissolved the parliament on June 15.
108
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
103
 Charles I, A Declaration of the Cause which moved his Majestie to assemble and after inforced him to 
dissolve the last two meetings in parliament (London:1626),18. 
 
104
 Ibid., 18,19. 
 
105
 Ibid. 
 
106
 Ibid., 19, 21. 
 
107
 Ibid., 24. 
 
108
 Ibid., 25. 
40?
??
Cust argues the 1625 and 1626 parliaments were a pivotal point in the politics of 
Charles?s reign. For him, the new king?s failures in these two meetings ?marked the point at 
which his honeymoon with the English people and his hopes of partnership with the House of 
Commons came unstuck.?
109
 Regardless of the eventual role these failures played in Charles?s 
later reign, the real question seems to be why were Charles and his ministers so spectacularly 
unsuccessful in the 1625 and 1626 parliaments? Russell and other revisionists blame the 
Commons? unwillingness to financially support the war after urging the crown into it on their 
obsession with local concerns that made them unwilling to vote away more of their constituents? 
money. He explains the 1626 attack on Buckingham as a combination of French interference, 
court conflicts over local and international politics, and religious distrust.
110
  
Cogswell counters this argument, claiming the Commons? refusal was the result of the 
crown?s failure to meet MPs? expectations by redressing their grievances and carrying out the 
?blue water? strategy it supported in 1624.  For Cogswell, the problems Charles faced in 
parliament were the result of the type of war he was waging and its lack of success.
111
 Cust, 
though he seems to agree with Cogswell, places most of the blame on Charles?s shoulders, 
seeing the king?s inflexibility and lack of judgment as the root problem with parliament.
112
 
Where Russell argued that Charles?s repeated attempts to convince parliament proved his 
commitment to their place in government, Cust concludes that the new king?s belief in 1626 that 
the Commons was out of control and his willingness to accept the possibility of ?new councils? 
afterwards its dissolution were ominous signs. Instead of Russell?s acceptance of the ?prince 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
109
 Cust, Charles I, 59. 
 
110
 Russell, Parliament, 256-259. 
 
111
 Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, 317-320. 
 
112
 Cust, Charles I, 61. 
41?
??
bred in parliaments,? Cust explains that Charles?s ?enthusiasm for parliaments was strictly 
conditional, dependent on their displaying a  degree of submissiveness and docility that was at 
odds with many of the political conventions of the period.?
113
 The next section explores the 
political ?conventions? Cust describes through the language of ?public? and ?private? used by 
the men in the parliamentary debates between 1625 and 1626.   
  
II. Parliamentary Language and public men, 1625-1626 
 
 The tumultuous events and unhappy conclusions of the 1625 and 1626 parliaments did not mark 
the end, as Cust claims, of Charles?s honeymoon with his subjects. Instead, it seems more 
accurate to describe his relationship with the English people as an intensely passionate courtship 
followed by a marriage marred by suspicion from the moment of consummation. The 
honeymoon lasted less than two months. The possible terms of Charles?s French match were 
already the subject of some popular anxiety prior to James?s death in late March, 1625, and 
constant delays between the marriage announcement in May and Henrietta Maria?s arrival in 
June allowed English imaginations to discern any number of secret motives behind them. 
Charles, as part of the agreement, suspended the laws against Catholic recusants on May 1. He 
and Henrietta Maria were married by proxy the same day. The suspension not only allowed the 
ceremony to take place, but also secured the first half of the queen?s dowry. Charles, 
simultaneously organizing and financing an elaborate funeral for his father and a war against 
Spain, desperately needed the money. Still, the suspension was guaranteed to be unpopular in 
England, particularly during a war against Catholic ambitions. Parliament was initially scheduled 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
113
 Ibid, 58-62; Russell, Parliament, 237. 
42?
??
to open in mid-May, but the queen?s slow pace forced Charles to delay the meeting for nearly a 
month. The MPs gathering in London, with little to do but wait amid the steadily increasing 
number of plague victims, were predictably suspicious of the delays. Charles finally met both his 
brides in June 1625 after waiting on the French for over a month. Unfortunately for Charles, both 
relationships began with sullen partners, and in the months to come, it proved nearly impossible 
for the king to live with both of them at the same time.
114
  
 An increase in the already widely held anti-Catholic sentiment accompanied the 
beginning of the war with Spain. Every unusual facet of the queen?s journey became a topic of 
concern among Charles?s Protestant subjects. The famous epistolary writer John Chamberlain 
described the fears many Englishmen felt in May 1625, writing ?most think? that her [Henrietta 
Maria] setting forth is so long and so often deferred [because] somewhat more is to be performed 
for the Catholic cause before we shall see her.?
115
 Many believed more than the suspension of 
the recusancy laws was promised to the French as part of the marriage alliance. For 
Chamberlain, concessions to the French were just as unacceptable and as dangerous as those 
secretly proposed and narrowly avoided during the Spanish negotiations two years earlier. As 
Chamberlain dryly explained it, ?thus, we are out of the frying pan into the fire.?
116
? 
When Charles met his subjects in Westminster on June 18, however, it was not the threat 
of Chamberlain?s papist fire, but the plague sweeping through London that created the anxious 
atmosphere that characterized the remainder of the 1625 session.
117
 Still, it was not long before 
the recusancy laws became an issue. After an opening prayer asking the Lord to, among other 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
114
 Cust, Charles I, 44; Russell, Parliament, 205-210. 
 
115
 [Thomas] Birch, ed., The Court and Times of Charles I, vol. 1 (London: Henry Coburn, 1848), 23. 
 
116
 Ibid. 
 
117
 Cust, Charles I, 44.  
43?
??
things, ?remove from us?all covetous humor of advancing our own private profits,? Charles 
began the session by reminding the houses of their previous engagement to support the war.
118
 
He also reminded them of his own zealous dedication to the True Religion, hoping to reassure 
those who ?think him not so true a keeper of religion.?
119
 Thomas Crew addressed the recusancy 
laws a short time later in Speaker?s customary appeal to request the four traditional petitions 
granted at the beginning of parliament.
120
 Lord Keeper Williams, speaking for the king, granted 
all of the petitions including ?unity of persons,? which presumably acknowledged the house as a 
body whose members could not be prosecuted individually.
121
 In return, Williams told the 
Speaker, the king asked the MPs to ?commit to him [Charles] that which God has committed 
already- a care of the maintaining of the true religion.?
122
  
The Commons denied Charles?s request almost immediately. Taking up the issue of the 
recusancy laws and a petition on religion among their initial debates, they called Richard 
Montagu in on July 8. The king responded, as discussed in Chapter I, that Montagu was his 
Chaplain-in-Ordinary and therefore his personal servant, asking the MPs to leave the matter to 
him. After the move to Oxford, the mood of the house was noticeably more contentious, and on 
the second day in their new home, they called Montagu in again.
123
 The debate that followed, 
and the MPs? reaction to the king?s request, indicated a great deal about the relationship between 
the king?s private servants and the public offices of both the king and MPs. Specifically, it 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
118
 Proceedings in Parliament, 1625, 645- 647. 
 
119
 Ibid., 657. 
 
120
 Ibid., 652. 
 
121
 Ibid., 653. 
 
122
 Ibid., 653. 
 
123
 Ibid., 378-383. 
44?
??
suggests common conceptions of what it meant to be a ?public? or ?private? servant, painting a 
clear picture of the rhetorical and philosophical lines taken up by both the crown and its critics in 
the following months. 
On 2 August, after the House?s attention was redirected to Montagu, Edward Coke began 
the debate by discussing the threat posed by divisions over religion. In Coke?s words, the ancient 
Britons were conquered by ?the want of united counsels,? and the same disease threatened to 
destroy their modern descendents ?in divinity if every private man may put out books of 
divinity.?
124
 Coke closed by suggesting ?no man may put out any books of divinity not allowed 
by the Convocation.?
125
 Robert Phelips followed with the motion that the Serjeant bring 
Montagu in, but Solicitor Heath attempted to cut him off by reminding the house of the king?s 
earlier statement that Montagu was his servant.
126
 
 Edward Alford was the first to respond to Heath, and his remarks are revealing. Though 
the manuscript of the Commons Journal reports that Alford ?put the House in mind of the danger 
to exempt the King?s servants from questioning,? the Bedford manuscript gives a more detailed 
account of Alford?s words.
127
 After bringing up three precedents in which the House was 
dissatisfied with the king?s actions after James made similar requests, Alford said ?all justices of 
peace, all deputy lieutenants are the King?s servants, and indeed no man can commit a public 
[offense] but by color and opportunity of public employment and service to the King.?
128
 ?If we 
admit this,? Alford continued, ?we shall take the way to destroy parliaments.?
129
  
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
124
 Ibid., 378. 
 
125
 Ibid. 
 
126
 Ibid. 
 
127
 Ibid., 379. 
 
45?
??
Thomas Wentworth picked up where Alford left off, putting ?the House in mind of the 
Lord Chancellor and Treasurer whom the House has dealt with.? Wentworth was referring to the 
impeachment of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor in 1621 and Lionel Cranfield, Lord Treasurer in 
1624.
130
 In both cases, being the king?s servant did not protect the men from impeachment. 
Wentworth went on to describe Montagu?s offenses as, though they might be called the offenses 
of a private man, similar to recent incidents where impassioned preachers had physically defiled 
the Bible itself. In these cases, according to Wentworth, ?if they were not punished by authority, 
by private faults, [they] would become public.?
131
 Where Wentworth claimed a private man 
could commit a public offense, Alford?s position relating all public servants to Charles?s private 
servants was much more dangerous to the king?s control of both his household and the 
government. In Alford?s view, all Charles?s servants were public, and allowing the king to 
protect his personal servants would also allow him to extend this private status to protect all 
public officials from parliamentary inquiry. From both sides of this debate, then, there was an 
emerging concern with the exact public and private nature of the king?s place in the 
commonweal, not just in the debate surrounding Montagu, but in all of the major issues before 
the MPs in 1625. 
Such concern was evident in the revolutionary tone of Sir Robert Phelips?s speech. 
Phelips began by attributing their being called to Oxford to ?a miracle,? since, as Eliot quoted 
him, ?no servant of the King?s, no minister of state (if they must be distinguished) but approved 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
128
 Ibid., 382. Italics mine. The manuscript reads ?officer,? but the editors agree that ?offense? is truer to 
Alford?s meaning.  
 
129
 Ibid. 
 
130
 Ibid., 379, n. 9. 
 
131
 Ibid., 382. 
46?
??
of what they had done? in giving the initial subsidies.
132
 Phelips suggested that Alford was 
correct to point out the unity of the king?s personal servants and the minister of state, who were 
obviously public men. Clearly, MPs were aware of the threat posed by the possibility that the 
king could extend the title of ?personal servant? to any man, but the opposite was also true, 
meaning parliament held the power to question any servant of the king.  Phelips?s use of the 
word ?state? reflected part of this ambiguity by pointing out the absurdity of an artificial 
separation of the king?s servants and those of the state.  
Interestingly, the obscurity Phelips pointed out between the ?king? and the ?state? was 
perfectly, though unintentionally, captured in the written reports of the speeches following that 
of Phelips. After an appeal by Sir Richard Weston, Chancellor of the Exchequer, begging those 
who would not be convinced of the king?s true necessity to consider his honor as well, Sir 
Edward Coke stood to speak on the matter for the second time.
133
 Coke began by reminding the 
house of the ordinance from the reign of Henry IV stating ?no man should inform the King of 
any man?s speech in parliament.? The king could only be informed of the ?direction of the 
house,? or its conclusions.
134
 Arguing the king?s present necessity to be a lesser form than those 
of previous occasions for supply, Coke claimed that ?no king can subsist in an honorable estate 
without three abilities: 1, to maintain himself against sudden invasions; 2, to aid his allies and 
confederates; 3, to reward his well-deserving servants.?
135
 Necessity, Coke explained, had 
always been given and often abused as the argument for supply, calling it ?a brazen wall? 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
132
 Ibid., 540. 
 
133
 Ibid., 543. 
 
134
 Ibid., 398-399. 
 
135
 Ibid., 392. This is the text in the Commons? Journal. 
47?
??
growing ?by want of providence.?
136
 The king should be able to subsist on his own revenue as 
his ancestors did, but Coke argued that abuses in the king?s household prevented him from doing 
so. Coke?s response to rhetorical claims of necessity was to recommend instead a total 
reformation of the king?s household, including the proposal that the ?customs and revenues of 
the kingdom be not employed for the maintenance of the king?s house and other private charges, 
but for the defense of the kingdom.?
137
  
 Coke proceeded to outline a proposal for an important and ambitious plan amounting to 
total financial reform. Calling it ?a major state paper? rather than a mere speech, Russell notes 
that its importance is underlined by the fact that more records of it survive than any other speech 
presented in 1625.
138
 The exact wording of the speech, however, differs from one recording to 
the next in ways that are intriguing. In all accounts, Coke began with some variation of the 
suggestion that, in lieu of supply, previous parliaments asked people ?to pray for the state and 
happiness of his Majesty, the peace and good governance of the kingdom, and the preservation 
of unity and love between his subjects and himself.?
139
 Still, his point about the king?s three 
required abilities, the three things a king must be able to do, was not uniformly recorded in the 
language of the Commons? Journal quoted above. Eliot remembered Coke as saying ?three 
things?were requisite to a king and for those there must be a constant ability in the state.?
140
 
The anonymous notes in the Tanner manuscript collection and the Carreg-lwyd deposit in the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
136
 Ibid., 399. This is from the Bedford manuscript.  
 
137
 Ibid., 659. 
 
138
 Russell, Parliament, 244. 
 
139
 Proceedings in Parliament, 1625, 544. This is Eliot?s account. All of the various accounts mentioned 
are included in this collection. 
 
140
 Ibid., 545. 
48?
??
National Library of Wales both read ?No king can subsist unless he be able to?,? closely 
mirroring the Commons? Journal.
141
 The Petyt manuscript, on the other hand, begins much 
differently. It reads ?no state can subsist of himself in an honorable estate except it has 3 
things.?
142
  
Though the editors of Proceedings in Parliament suggest ?himself? should be replaced 
with ?itself? for the sake of clarity, the ambiguous antecedent in the original text is consistent 
with the idea that there was no clear, commonly-held distinction among the king, his ?estate,? the 
?state of the king,? assumedly a physical reference to his person, and ?the state.? Saying ?no state 
can subsist of himself in an honorable estate? suggested a unity of the king?s person and the state 
that was not at all the same as the relationship between the two implied in Eliot?s ?requisite to a 
king and for those there must be a constant ability in the state.?
143
 In the former, the king and the 
state cannot easily be separated, whereas the later clearly implies a state that was independent 
from, though presumably serving as a tool of, the king himself.  
Seymour had previously pointed out the lack of concrete and commonly understood 
divisions between the king?s person and the state by questioning any distinction between the 
king?s servants and ministers of the state, which appears in both the language of the surviving 
records of Coke?s speech and his suggestions regarding the king?s duties. If, as Coke suggested, 
the king was supposed to support his allies, defend the realm from sudden invasion, and reward 
his servants? performance out of his own revenue, then there was no difference between the 
general good the king?s personal revenues served in funding his government and the king?s 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
141
 Ibid., 658-660. 
 
142
 Ibid., 404. 
 
143
 Ibid., 404, 545. 
49?
??
private estate funded by those same revenues.
144
 This seems to be consistent with the unity of the 
king?s person and private household and the state, or public service, which Seymour suggested 
earlier. Still, Coke claimed revenues and customs should not be used to service the ?king?s house 
and private charges,? but in defense of the kingdom, and though this seems to be contradictory, 
Coke was implying the king?s private existence to be separate from the personalized state that 
served him, both of which served a larger public and were somehow answerable to it.
 145
 
Heath?s answer to Coke?s speech makes this interpretation clear. Heath began, according 
to the Petyt manuscript, by explaining he had two ?parts to act, one as a private man and the 
servant of his Majesty; the other as a public man speaking for the public good,? as he was then 
doing.
146
 He went on to explain the necessity for supply was real, and ?concerns the kingdom as 
well as the King for he would never sever them.?
147
 These words almost perfectly summarize the 
points laid out above. In the debates and proceedings of 1625, the words used by both the king?s 
ministers and his opponents describe an understanding of public service separated from the 
service of both the king and the state, in spite of the remarkable ambiguity regarding the 
relationship between the two. Heath?s preamble, however, begs the question of when an 
individual acted on his public duty and when he acted in the service of his patron as a private 
man? Heath asked the Commons to direct their attention to the ?general? before turning to the 
?particular,? perhaps suggesting a depersonalized role for parliament as opposed to the very 
personalized role of the king.
148
 Still, the king, according to Heath, was not the embodiment of 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
144
 Ibid., 399.  
 
145
 Ibid., 659. 
 
146
 Ibid., 405. 
 
147
 Ibid., 406. 
 
50?
??
the kingdom, and could theoretically ?sever? his concerns from those of his subjects. Judging 
from Coke?s position, the kingdom?s interest was necessarily part of the king?s interest. The 
king?s interest, on the contrary, could have no relationship with that of the public at large. 
   
 Heath?s appeal, predictably, had little effect on the Commons? willingness to grant the 
king the additional subsidies he claimed to need, and Charles dissolved the session without 
receiving additional supply. The Cadiz expedition went ahead, undermanned and under supplied, 
and returned to England under the shameful veil of defeat just as the king and his ministers were 
preparing for the new parliament scheduled for February. Reports of the events in Spain, and the 
popular opinion they informed, were not kind to those in command. On January 19, in a letter to 
Carleton, Chamberlain described the public reaction to the previous year?s failures. ?Some lay 
the blame on the design or council,? he said, while others placed the burden on ?the soldiers; on 
their general, Viscount Sit-still (as they now style him).? ?Most [men],? however, blamed ?his 
Grace,? the Duke of Buckingham, for the expedition?s failure.
149
 Chamberlain followed his 
report with what appears in hindsight to be an insightful word of caution. ?I look for no good out 
of this parliament,? he told Carleton, ?the world being so far out of tune in every way.?
150
  
In addition to being the object of almost universal blame for the defeat at Cadiz, 
Buckingham also faced questions surrounding his ability to handle foreign affairs as a result of 
the shift in policy toward France.
151
 The Duke?s closest rival at court and on the Privy Council, 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
148
 Ibid., 547. 
 
149
 Birch, Court and Times, 72. ?Viscount Sit-still? refers to Lord Edward Cecil, commander of the Cadiz 
expedition. 
 
150
 Ibid. 
 
151
 Cust, Charles I, 52.  
51?
??
the Earl of Pembroke, disagreed with the hostile new policy toward France and seized the 
opportunity to challenge Buckingham?s nearly total control of policy and patronage.
152
 When the 
Commons began calling the duke?s policies into question in late February, Pembroke quietly 
supported their efforts in the Lords, while his clients in the lower house worked more openly to 
reduce the duke?s place. The initial challenge to Buckingham came from Sir John Eliot, who 
questioned Buckingham?s arrest of a French merchant ship, the St. Peter, after it was discharged 
by the Court of Admiralty.
153
   
 Buckingham answered the Commons? questions regarding his conduct toward the St. 
Peter on March 6. Heath delivered the message to the house, explaining that Buckingham had 
acted under Charles?s direction, the king having given him ?express commandment to stay the 
ship.?
154
 Heath presented a narrative of the information available to the king and the Lord 
Admiral as they made each important decision regarding the vessel, describing the contradictory 
actions as the result of new information becoming available to the duke.
 155
??
? At the same time, the Commons was attempting to call the Council of War in to answer 
questions about the planning of the war up to that point. When the Council answered in a single, 
unified reply that the Commons had no right to question the king?s council, the MPs immediately 
declared such an answer unsatisfactory, but had trouble determining a course of action without 
returning to debate their previously declared dissatisfaction with the initial answer. Debating a 
position that the House had already spoken on would divide the members of the Commons from 
the voice that spoke for the entire body, which was unacceptable. Eventually agreeing to call the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
152
 Russell, Parliaments, get cite. 
 
153
Birch, Court and Times, 83-84. 
 
154
 Proceedings in Parliament, 1626, vol. II, 204-205. 
 
155
 Ibid., 205, 210-211. 
52?
??
members of the Council of War in separately to be questioned, the Commons met with similarly 
vague responses from almost all of the members: ironically similar to the MPs? determination to 
speak as a whole. Sir John Ogle was the first called into the chamber, answering that ?he may not 
be put to sever and contrary himself from the rest.?
156
 Similarly, George Carew, Earl of Totnes, 
explained ?that they made a unanimous answer,? asking the Council be given time to review it. 
?If there shall be cause,? the seventy year old Carew concluded, ?they may unanimously reform 
it.?
157
 Lord Vere merely explained he was out of the country, and could not answer, while Oliver 
St. John, Viscount Grandison simply held that they were not bound to any other answer.
158
 Only 
Sir Robert Mansell specifically recognized the houses? right to a particular answer, but even he 
sought to protect his ?reputation [as a] discreet man.?
159
 Since he was ?one of the Council of 
War,? Mansell lamented, he was ?a sworn servant of the King.?
160
 Rather than be pressed to a 
particular answer, Mansell asked for ?leave to know the King?s pleasure.?
161
  
Much like the MPs? unwillingness to speak against the House?s singular voice by 
debating previously resolved issues, the Council of War largely answered that they spoke as a 
unanimous whole. Sir Edward Coke?s reminder in 1625 that the king was only to be informed of 
parliament?s conclusions, rather than any individual?s speech within their deliberations, protected 
free speech within the chamber in the same way.
162
 The freedom from arrest that MPs and their 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
156
 Ibid., 242. 
 
157
 Ibid., 239, 242. 
 
158
 Ibid., 241, 242. 
 
159
 Ibid., 242. 
 
160
 Ibid., 239. 
 
161
 Ibid., 242. 
 
53?
??
servants received at the beginning of each session helped ensure their freedom to speak their 
mind in the chamber. Parliament, like the Council answering their inquiry, was indivisible by 
those outside of its body, secretly deliberating then speaking in a unified voice. This was most 
likely what Lord Keeper William referred to when he granted the 1625 session ?unity of 
persons.?
163
 The MPs and their servants were inseparable from the whole body of the House, but 
what about the king?s other councils? When the Council of War returned to the chamber a few 
days later on March 11 to give individual, written answers, each of them returned the same reply, 
explaining the king permitted them to ?give account of their warrants for the issuing of money, 
but not their counsels.?
164
  
On March 11, just after informing the Council of War that they were no longer needed, 
Eliot delivered the report of the Commons committee appointed to review the St. Peter case. The 
committee claimed Heath?s defense of the duke?s action contained two parts: the inducement, 
information provided to the duke, and the command, the king?s order to arrest the ship. The 
committee determined that the arrest of the ship was grounds for a grievance because the king?s 
command to ?stay?[was] not justifiable because an order at Council Board and a decree ought 
not to have been contradicted but by the like authority and advice.?
165
 Clearly, the MPs 
suggested that, though the Court of Admiralty acted from the king?s authority, his personal 
authority could not justifiably undermine one of their orders without their consent. The stakes of 
such a declaration were clear: though the judicial and governmental apparatuses operated in the 
king?s name, they were beyond his personal authority and control, even in so-called ?matters of 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
162
 Proceedings in Parliament, 1625, 398-399. 
 
163
 Ibid., 653. 
 
164
 Proceedings in Parliament, 1626, vol. II, 263. 
 
165
 Ibid., 264. 
54?
??
state.? For Charles, it was a dangerous distinction that threatened his control of both his crown 
and the state. 
At the same time, an altogether different controversy in the House of Lords generated 
similar comments. From the beginning of the session, Charles attempted to keep the Earl of 
Bristol, the Duke of Buckingham?s primary accuser, from taking his seat. At the same time, he 
arrested the Earl of Arundel for opposing his orders by encouraging a marriage that Charles had 
forbidden. The members of the House of Lords, however, interpreted both situations to be part of 
the same attack on their privileges and the unity of their body. When the Lords objected to these 
two gentlemen being deprived, the king responded that Arundel was ?restrained for a 
misdemeanor which was personal unto His Majesty, and lay in the proper knowledge of His 
Majesty.?
166
 Forced to send Bristol a writ of summons, the king?s secretary sent one explaining 
that the king?s ?meaning thereby is not to discharge any former direction to restraint.?
167
 
Charles?s contradictory statements did little to help his cause. In both cases, the king was forced 
to explain his decisions by emphasizing a distinction between the maintenance of his person or 
estate and the common good as recognized by the MPs. In the end, Charles lost on all accounts. 
Bristol and Arundel both came to the house and Charles eventually dissolved parliament.  
 
  It is perhaps easiest to make sense of the rhetoric and ideas described here by turning to a 
contemporary whose writing the MPs and ministers knew well. In 1623, Thomas Scott wrote 
from exile that a ?private person is he that hath no direct or public calling to the action he 
undertakes.? For Scott, any public person, from the king to a local magistrate, who carried out 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
166
 Samuel S. Gardiner, ed., Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660, 3
rd
 Edition, 
(Oxford: University Press, 1906), 44. 
 
167
 Ibid., 45. 
55?
??
?any act of Justice without Law?lays by the prerogative and dignity of a public person and acts 
the part of a private man.?
168
 Scott claimed the law determined what was public and proper, and 
therefore, as Lake puts it, ?authority exercised outside the limits set by the law became ?private? 
and hence illegitimate.?
169
 These beliefs were entirely conventional, but for Scott, even those 
public men who laid aside ?their swords & maces (the ensigns of their offices)? became private 
men ?until they assume those types of their authority again.?
170
 The performance of public 
authority required the appropriate costume. 
 The law, for Scott, was the ?will of the State,? and the king executed the law as the head 
of the state. ?When they do their own wills,? Scott explained, ?and not the will of the state (that 
is the law) then they become private persons in those particulars, because they cease to be 
executors of the law.?
171
 The king must act and be judged in public, make himself known to his 
subjects, and receive approval from the ?state representative (that is the parliament).?
172
 
Parliament, then, was the ?state? embodied: a microcosm of the public forum, whose will 
determined the proper actions of public officials. Charles?s private affairs, such as his marriage, 
were public affairs because his person was so important to the commonwealth. Indeed, no 
individual at all, public or private, had power over his own body, each being part of the 
commonwealth.
173
 As Lake succinctly puts it, the practical application of Scott?s ?rigid 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
168
 Thomas Scott, Vox Dei (1623), reprinted in Workes (Amsterdam: De Capo Press, 1973), 19; Peter Lake, 
?Constitutional Consensus and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match,? The 
Historical Journal, 25, vol. 4 (Cambridge: University Press, 1982), 814. 
 
169
 Lake, 814. 
 
170
 Scott, Vox Dei, 19. 
 
171
 Ibid., 20. 
 
172
 Lake, 815. 
 
173
 Scott, Vox Dei, 20. 
56?
??
dichotomy? between public and private ?left little room for the excise of the king?s judgment or 
initiative.?
 174
  It also left the office of the king as an entirely public position, filled by a man who 
must publically perform his office like any other. 
 Charles, his ministers, and the MPs they appealed to in 1625 and 1626 seemed to agree 
that the king could act in his own interest, going against the public good. To do was the hallmark 
of a tyrant, however, and Charles?s ministers emphasized the connection between the king?s 
interests and those of the state or commonweal. Heath?s answer to Edward Coke was one 
example. Still, in early 1626, the crown acknowledged, if only rhetorically, it was theoretically 
possible for the king to act outside his public office. Following the end of the 1626 session, the 
crown?s position changed. Only one year later in November 1627, Heath himself famously 
dismissed the possibility when defending the government during the Five Knight Case. 
 Writing in the 1590s, James, as discussed earlier, advised his son to speak differently in 
his council than in his official role as king. He told his son to ?reason pleasantly and patiently, 
not like a king, but like a private man and a scholar? when in his councils, ?otherwise, your 
impatience of contradiction will be interpreted to be for lack of reason on your part.?
175
 By the 
time of James?s death, this binary view of kingship created difficulty for public men who were 
unable to carry out their official duty if their actions and motivations were open to the public eye.  
While Scott?s theory essentially made everything and everyone public, or open to public 
inspection, Francis Bacon suggested a man, whether king or commoner, could only speak in the 
part he played. Strangely, if Scott made everything public, Bacon?s comments can be interpreted 
as suggesting the almost the polar opposite. As Bacon explained it, ?a man cannot speak to his 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
174
 Lake, ?Thomas Scott,? 815. 
 
175
 Bacon, 83. 
57?
??
son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms.?
176
 Bacon 
acknowledged public existence was impossible to separate from personal relationships. He 
implied a unity of personal and public that was essentially the converse, mirror image of the 
Calvinist connection between one?s outward person and interior self produced by Scott. If Scott?s 
world was entirely public, Bacon?s was entirely personal. Though a man must speak from within 
his role, Bacon concluded, ?a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the 
person.? Charles, throughout the initial years of his reign, cast his friends in such roles. As they 
were increasingly linked with his person, however, his own judgment and rule came under 
criticism, as described in the preceding pages. Bacon?s final words now seem prescient: ?I have 
given the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part; if he has not a friend, he may quit the 
stage.?
177
 
 
III. Print, Public Appeals, Religion, and the Forced Loan, 1626-1628 
Charles probably felt little desire to reason pleasantly or patiently with his subjects in June 1626, 
but he did not immediately turn away from public attempts to win his subjects? support. The 
government?s account of the drama of the 1626 parliament, quoted above, appeared on June 
30.
178
 Explaining that the MPs were driven by ?private and personal ends? that were ?ill-
beseeming public persons trusted by their Country, as they then were,? the official explanation 
was a simple narrative of the events that led to his dismissal of parliament, for which there was 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
176
 Ibid. 
 
177
 Bacon,  83. 
 
178
 Cust, Forced Loan, 18. There is no day of publication printed on the original. 
58?
??
no alternative.
 179
  It set the king up as the defender of the public good, while explaining the 
dismissal was absolutely necessary for the good of the commonweal. It turned the accusations 
made against Charles in the 1625 session on their head, publically claiming that rather than a 
king acting in his personal interest against the commonweal, private MPs instead rejected their 
duty as ?public men.?
180
 The explanation of necessity was also consistent with the approach his 
councilors took in the last days of the 1625 parliament when they pled necessity and expedience 
almost constantly and apparently unconvincingly.
181
 In 1626, however, Charles?s narrative was 
part of a larger effort to solve the problem that has historically defined Charles?s reign: how to 
raise money for the crown outside the traditional avenue of parliament.  
After the dismissal of parliament in June 1626, Charles and his advisors attempted 
several different methods of extracting money from the people. In July, Charles?s ministers sent 
directions to the Justices of the Peace in various counties for the collection of the benevolence. 
These instructions informed the judges exactly how they should approach the people to request 
that they contribute to the crown. The document reminded the Justices of the Commons? original 
grant of the money ?not for our own private use, but for the common safety of us and our 
people.?
182
 Though the crown was assured the money would be delivered, ?the disordered 
passion of some members of that house, contrary to the good inclination of the graver and wiser 
sort?misled themselves and others,? forcing the king to dissolve the meeting.
183
 The people 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
179
 Charles I, Declaration of Causes, 16. 
 
180
 Ibid. 
 
181
 Proceedings in Parliament, 1625, 450. 
 
182
 Charles Petrie, ed., The Letters, Speeches, and Proclamations of King Charles I, 2
nd
 ed. (New York: 
Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), 46. 
 
183
Ibid., 47. 
59?
??
would certainly understand the pressing needs that led the government to take such drastic 
measures. Though such desperate times threatened the common safety, and ?might justly 
warrant? the king ?to take any ways more extraordinary and less indifferent to any part thereof,? 
the king hoped to approach his people in ?that way which might be most equal and acceptable 
unto them.? In other words, though he could have justifiably taken more extreme measures, the 
king chose the method he thought least imposing. ?In a case of such unavoidable necessity,? the 
king wanted his people ?to be a law unto themselves,? freely giving as if compelled by the 
formal law that was intended.
184
 
Charles?s reasoning had little impact on his subjects. Mede reported on July 24 that when 
the subsidy-men were called to Westminster concerning the collection of the benevolence, ?all of 
them (saving some thirty amongst five hundred, all of them the king?s servants) began to cry ?a 
parliament! A  parliament!?
185
  Meetings in Middlesex ?and five or six? other places followed a 
similar script, Mede reporting that ?many more [were] said to refuse than grant.?
186
  In Kent, 
?the whole county denied? by turning Charles?s appeal for them to be ?a law unto themselves? 
on its head. According to Mede, the Kentish delegates claimed ?that subsidies were matters of 
too high a nature for them to with.?
187
 
After a failed request for a ?benevolence? or free gift from the people, which was wholly 
against statutes, and a traditional Privy Seal loan, which was too slow coming in, a more 
innovative punitive loan based on the structure of a Privy Seal loan was devised.
188
 By the time 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
184
 Ibid. 
 
185
 Birch, Court and Times, 130-131. 
 
186
 Ibid., 131. 
 
187
 Ibid. 
 
60?
??
the council began the process of implementing this loan, however, a foreign policy crisis forced 
the crown to adopt much more innovative techniques. In addition to recording the dissent 
accompanying the benevolence, Mede also reported the king?s dislike and distrust of his wife?s 
French entourage.
189
 In September, he claimed the English ambassador to Louis XIII had been 
mistreated by the French, and that the French king sent new ambassadors to report on the 
escalating disagreement over the queen?s household. One of these men, Count de Tillieres, was 
formerly the Lord Chamberlain of the Queen?s Household, only recently removed by Charles 
himself. The king forbade the count from setting foot in England, further fueling the flames of an 
already dangerous breach between the two crowns. Charles, already facing the problem of supply 
and dissention among his subjects, confronted several serious diplomatic crises, just as his 
domestic policies placed him in no positions to redress them.
190
 
On September 11, news of Christian of Denmark?s defeat at the Battle of Lutter reached 
England. Mede relayed the bad news only a few days later on September 15.
191
 Charles was 
sworn to supply his uncle, and, though he had done everything in his power to meet his 
obligations, his payments were inconsistent from the start.
192
Charles, possibly already weary of 
his people and parliament, felt his honor was at stake. Charles?s subjects also heard about the 
defeat. The same day he conveyed the news of the defeat, Mede described the total failure of 
Charles?s attempts to raise funds through traditional Privy Seal loans.
193
 According to Mede, 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
188
 Cust, Forced Loan, 37-40. 
 
189
 Birch, Court and Times, 133-134. 
 
190
 Ibid., 145-146. 
 
191
 Ibid., 148. 
 
192
 Cust, Forced Loan, 39. 
 
61?
??
Englishmen saw no other way for the king to raise the monies he needed except by calling 
another parliament, though many knew the king hoped to find another way.
194
 A few days later, 
their questions were answered when they received a request for a different type of loan: one that 
famously came to be described as the Forced Loan.
195
 
Soon after the news of Christian?s defeat at Lutter reached England, the ?Forced Loan? 
was conceived as a means of providing the immediate funds necessary to rescue the Danish king. 
The initial directions for the collection of the loan closely followed the same line as the orders 
for the benevolence the preceding summer. The king?s subjects ?shall be truly informed from us 
of what importance and of what necessity? forced the crown to impose the loan them.
196
 After 
explaining parliament?s failures and the unique necessities of the situation, the king assured his 
people: 
We faithfully promise and undertake on the royal word of a King, (which we will be 
jealous not to break with our people), that not a penny of those monies?shall be 
bestowed or expended but upon those public and general services only, wherein everyone 
of them and the whole body of the kingdom, their wives, children, and posterity, have 
their personal and common interest.
197
 
 
The king, without explicitly saying so, as he had previously, swore that the funds were not for his 
personal use, but only for the public interest that affected every subject?s personal interest.  
Charles?s council apparently knew the loan would not be well-received, and they 
immediately appealed to the ministers of the Church of England for support. Explaining how 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
193
 Birch, Court and Times, 148. 
 
194
 Ibid. 
 
195
 Cust, Forced Loan, 40-43. 
 
196
 Gardiner, 52. 
 
197
 Ibid., 52-53. Italics mine. 
62?
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close the Church and state were, differentiated ?only in matters of civil and religious ends,? 
Charles?s request described the way the Church called upon the state when ?pressed beyond her 
strength.?
 198
 This same call was often made by the state, asking the Church to ?teach that duty 
which her members know not, and to exhort them to, and encourage them, in that duty which 
they know.?
199
 Reminding the clergy how ?not long since we ordered the State to preserve the 
Church, and by a timely proclamation settled the peace of it,? now the state needed assistance in 
return. The clergy and ministers should ?serve God and Us by preaching peace and unity at 
home.?
200
 Charles told the clergy how desperate the international situation was, and how 
necessary speedy supply was to the safety of both Church and state. ?Neither may you forget,? 
he reminded the ministers, ?to inform the people committed to your charge , that this war?was 
not entered rashly and without advise?but by the council of both Houses of parliament them 
sitting.?
201
 The king, Charles claimed, ?cannot be left in that business but with the sin and shame 
of all men.? It was a sin ?because aide and supply for the defense of the kingdom, and the like 
affairs of state, especially those advised by parliamentary council, are due to the king from his 
people by law both of God and men.?
202
 If the clergy preached unity and charity, ?the mother of 
[unity],? Charles had no doubt that God would bless the people ?with that love to himself, to his 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
198
 Instructions Directed from the King?s Most Excellent Majesty Unto All the Bishops of this Kingdom 
(London: 1626), pages unnumbered, 1-2. 
 
199
 Ibid. 
 
200
 Ibid., 2. 
 
201
 Ibid., 6-7. 
 
202
 Ibid., 7. 
63?
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Church, and to their own preservation, which alone will be able to bind up the divided 
affections.?
203
 
The protests that followed the loan more than proved the crown?s fears well-founded. 
Mede called the loan a ?pressed subsidy,? describing the way it was implemented through the 
traditional subsidy-men. First enacted in several parts of Westminster, Mede claimed it was 
greeted by multiple riots, most notably in the St. Clement?s area. As the loan was expanded to 
areas farther from London, Mede relayed the crown?s attempts to persuade the public by sending 
three members of the Council to every shire, hoping to convince men to support the loan.
204
 Just 
as the crown sent councilors out in support of the loan, Mede reported those against it sent 
advisors out into the counties to meet the loans as well.
205
 The men in charge of the resistance 
were the same men that previously opposed the duke in parliament, according to Mede?s 
account, men like Dr. Samuel Turner, who combined their attack on the loan with a full scale 
assault on the duke.
206
 If Mede?s sources are to be believed, the campaign was extremely 
effective. Londoners talked of little but the duke?s disdain for parliament, and his determination 
to raise the money through extra-parliamentary methods.
207
  
Mede himself confirmed this on November 11, when he claimed that a ?scurvy? book 
called The Duke and The Devil was in great demand among the booksellers in St. Paul?s 
churchyard.
208
 Indeed, it was the same year when the author of The Forerunner of Revenge 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
203
 Ibid., 8. 
 
204
 Birch, Court and Times, 154; 163-164. 
 
205
 Ibid., 171. 
 
206
 Ibid. 
 
207
 Ibid., 163. 
 
64?
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famously blamed Buckingham for James?s death, simultaneously painting Charles as either an 
unwitting accomplice or out and out co-conspirator.
209
 More indirect attacks on the duke were 
propagated in print by men like Edward Sutton, whose description of ?base, creeping flattery? 
pointed out that Alexander the Great was poisoned by his cupbearer.
210
 Sutton described 
flatterers as ?the earwig of the mighty? and the ?ordinary disease of kings.?
211
 These men, he 
explained will advise the king to raise money in any number of illegal ways, ?always 
disgraceful,? using news to their own advantage while tilting it to disparage others.
212
 Readers 
surely understood the aim of these attacks, leaving little surprise that the duke became such an 
unpopular figure as the events of 1626 unfolded. 
 Sutton?s measured attack showed the hallmarks of being motivated by those within the 
regime. Though he attacked flatters within the court, he explained each man should hold himself 
within his own position, not seeking to judge those above him.
213
 None should be so base, he 
continued, as to appeal to the ?senseless multitude,? appeals to the ?scum of the people? being 
one of the most distinct characteristics of a flatter.
 214
 Sutton later explained that ?things 
determined should not be related but to those whom without they cannot be effected.?
215
 Still, 
Sutton?s attack highlighted many of the beliefs conjured in support of the crown?s opponents in 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
208
 Ibid., 169. 
 
209
 George Eglishham, The Forerunner of Revenge?(Frankfurt:1626). 
 
210
 Edward Sutton, The Serpent Anatomized? (London: 1626), unnumbered title page; 5. 
 
211
 Ibid., 9-10. 
 
212
 Ibid., 17-19. 
 
213
 Ibid., 22. 
 
214
 Ibid., 26, 40. 
 
215
 Ibid., 37. 
65?
??
the previous months, claiming ?all at court run after their own prosperity.?
216
 Only those whose 
own house was in order, Sutton concluded, could sit in judgment of others: only a ?clean hand 
could cleanse.?
217
 This final assault implicated not only the duke, whose mother and step-father 
were known papists, but, given the popular knowledge of the king?s troubled family, most likely 
drew readers? thoughts to Charles?s own judgment as well. 
Such connections between the duke and the king were not uncommon in 1626. Though 
another letter writer reported in early November ?the Lords have not imprisoned any for refusing 
the subsidy, though it is said to be the king?s express command,? another of Mede?s informers 
wrote the same day that ?the bold speakers begin to go to the pound.?
218
 Specifically, a ?Captain 
Brodeman was sent to the Gatehouse?for speaking more than his part,? which the writer 
described as bordering on remarks punishable by death.
219
 The writer told Mede that though he 
could not repeat the man?s words, the Captain ?is taught better manners, to put a greater 
difference hereafter between a duke and a king.?
220
 Obviously, not all of the popular reaction to 
the loans was focused on Buckingham, and though the majority of the outcry was focused on the 
duke, it would be shortsighted to dismiss any implicit connection to the king.  
It was, of course, no coincidence that men like Turner and Brodeman began to speak out 
more frequently in November. On October 28, just after the local resistance around Westminster 
in mid-October, the judges refused to subscribe to the loan?s legality. In the following weeks, a 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
216
 Ibid., 12. 
 
217
 Ibid., 22. 
 
218
 Birch, Court and Times, 165-166, 167. 
 
219
 Ibid., 167-168. 
 
220
 Ibid., 168. 
66?
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number of peers refused as well.
221
 Though Charles promised repeatedly that the loan would in 
no way be used as a precedent, many assumed this was a necessary untruth. The crown?s 
inability to prove the loan?s legality widened an already expansive avenue of criticism, but the 
legal and moral challenges to the crown?s points circulating in manuscripts and letters were also 
symptoms of growing divisions at the center of the government as well.
222
  According to Cust, 
the Council was divided as to how to respond to the judges and noble who refused to subscribe to 
the loan?s legality, as well as the issue of a new parliament. After the judges? refusal, many 
believed the king would be forced to summon a parliament regardless any supposed reservations 
he may have held. Turner and the others, Mede wrote in November, claimed the loan to be ?the 
duke?s last refuge.?
223
 If it failed, there was certain to be a parliament.  
Buckingham, meanwhile, prepared to go to France. The relationship between Charles and 
his brother in law was rapidly deteriorating in the last two months of 1626. The French, upset 
over Charles?s refusal to meet all of the requirements of the marriage treaty and English support 
for the Huguenots, held a considerable number of English and Scottish ships and their cargoes in 
French ports. The duke planned to go to Paris to negotiate the return of these ships, as well as the 
infamous loan ships still under French control, when the French seized the English wine fleet at 
Bordeaux in December.
224
 Louis saw little reason to negotiate given England?s obvious 
weakness.
225
 On February 16, Mede reported that the French king had repeated Charles?s trick 
from a few months earlier, refusing to allow Buckingham to step foot on French soil. War with 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
221
 Ibid., 164; Cust, Forced Loan, 54. 
 
222
 Cust, Forced Loan, 54-55. 
 
223
Birch, Court and Times, 171. 
 
224
 Ibid, 176-181; Russell, Parliament, 328-329. 
 
225
 Russell, Parliament, 328. 
67?
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France began to seem inevitable. Many were left doubting the crown?s commitment to 
continuing a war with the true Spanish enemy, leaving the loan to face further internal and 
popular resistance from the pro-France/anti-Spanish factions in both the Privy Council and the 
counties.
226
 
The loan was expanded into the counties in December, and the local meetings lasted until 
March 1627. The county meetings first ran into difficulty on January 12, when twenty-two 
Northamptonshire gentlemen joined over 200 free-holders to present the commissioners with a 
petition that claimed payment of the loan was ?generally excused except by parliament,? 
essentially stating that no funds could be demanded except those passed by parliament.
227
  
Though the commissioners merely rejected the petition, it certainly helped any opposition case 
when one of the Council members, Lord Manchester, admitted the loan could not avoid 
becoming a precedent, during the subsequent public discussion.
228
Many continued to refuse the 
loan, and the Council was forced to take action. It first responded to the Northampton refusals by 
calling all of the gentlemen who still refused to London, where they were promptly detained.
229
?
The second move came a few weeks later when Robert Sibthorpe delivered his now famous 
sermon Apostolike Obedience at the next assizes in Northampton.
230
  
Sibthorpe announced ?he that [resists] the prince, [resists] the power and ordinance of 
God,? whether ?[the prince] perform his duty or not.?
231
 If the subject is unable to meet the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
226
 Birch, Court and Times, 194, 188. 
 
227
 Ibid., 184; Cust, Forced Loan,168. 
 
228
 Birch, Court and Times, 198; Cust, Forced Loan, 168. 
 
229
 Birch, Court and Times, 194. 
 
230
 Ibid.; Robert Sibthorpe, Apostolike Obedience? (London:1627).  
 
68?
??
sovereign?s request, ?subjects are bound to undergo the punishment without either resistance, or 
railing and reviling,? while remaining ?free from conspiracy although they power and 
opportunity for it.?
232
  Many times, Sibthorpe claimed, the oppressed subject?s ?attempt to free 
their bodies and states from sovereign invasion,? only ?captivated their souls under Idolatrous 
Superstition.?
233
 Sibthorpe tried to uphold the loan?s legality, pointing out that ?those who best 
know the laws of this kingdom have lent at this time.?
234
 The entire reason for the loan, he 
claimed, and the war that demanded it, was the protection of the Protestant faith, explaining that 
?religion itself being the mark that is shot at in this business.?
235
 
Sibthorpe later claimed he originally ?conceived? the sermon in response the directions 
sent to the all the bishops the previous September, and produced it when the loan commission 
asked him, along with other local divines, to provide an opinion regarding the lawfulness of the 
loan on January 12.
236
 It is likely, however, that the sermon was only given at the assizes on 
February 17, since as Sibthorpe put it, his meditations only ?lately learned to speak.?
237
 If the 
members of the commission asked Sibthorpe to respond to the petition and ideas that confronted 
them during the January 12 meeting, it was likely due to the Council?s emphasis on utilizing 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
231
 Ibid., 11. 
 
232
 Ibid., 13.  
 
233
 Ibid., 18. 
 
234
 Sibthorpe, 19. 
 
235
 Ibid., 19.  
 
236
 Ibid., ?Epistle to King Charles,? unnumbered. 
 
237
 Ibid. 
69?
??
local connections to garner support and his connection to the area.
238
 Sibthorpe?s preaching of 
his sermon, then, seems to have been a response to the objections in raised in Northampton. 
Sibthorpe?s sermon was the first of the three sermons published in defense of the loans 
that have come to be known as the ?Forced Loan sermons.? The other two will be discussed 
below, but what sets Sibthorpe?s apart from the others is the minister?s relative obscurity at the 
time of publication. The other two sermons were preached in Charles?s presence by royal 
chaplains, while Sibthorpe?s was produced by an unknown, providential minister and preached 
during the assizes far from the court. Archbishop Abbot later claimed the sermon only received 
royal approval through the patronage of Laud and Buckingham, and when Abbot refused to 
approve the sermon for print, it was Laud, not Sibthorpe, who answered his questions on the 
matter. Abbot?s refusal infuriated Charles, and eventually led to his being forced to retire, 
leaving Laud and a group of Arminian bishops to exercise his authority. As such, Sibthorpe?s 
sermon marked an important moment for both the strategy behind the support of the loan, as well 
as in the government of the Church of England. 
Just a few days after the Northampton meeting that eventually produced Sibthorpe?s 
sermon, an anonymous manuscript dated January 24 began circulating in Lincolnshire. Directed 
?To all English Freeholders from a Well-Wisher of Theirs,? it was an ambitious assault on the 
crown?s arguments supporting the loan.
239
 Inspired, and possibly penned, by Theophilus Clinton, 
Earl of Lincoln, the document was widely distributed in 1627, and was an important cog in the 
initial campaign against the loan.
240
 Lincoln was jailed after one of his servants was caught with 
a number of copies of the manuscript in late February, but he remained an instrumental part of 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
238
 Cust, Forced Loan, 112-113. 
 
239
 Ibid., 170. 
 
240
 Ibid., 170-171. 
70?
??
the resistance to the loan as his servants continued to circulate a number of versions of the 
manuscript. Lincoln?s manuscript frankly declared the loan to be a scheme to rescue 
Buckingham, and it cast doubt on the king?s word in the form of his promises and assurances.
241
 
It was a call to open opposition, declaring the king bent on ruling without parliament and asking 
freeholders to take a stand for parliament, directly against their king.
242
  
Lincoln?s manuscript was far more specific than most appeals produced either in support 
or against the loan. Probably because of the internal delays in getting Sibthorpe?s sermon 
approved, his sermon was not published until May. In the meantime, another sermon supporting 
the loan appeared in print. Isaac Bargrave picked up Sibthorpe?s distinctions by drawing out the 
difference between righteous sacrifice and godly obedience. In A Sermon Preached Before King 
Charles, March 27 1627, Bargrave drew upon the Old Testament book of Samuel to explain the 
king?s position.
243
 Proposing that all sin was based in rebellion, Bargrave claimed that witchcraft 
and idolatry were merely rebellion against God, and any resistance towards the command of 
kings? was a sin equal to witchcraft. God ?gives us a King,? Bargrave proclaimed, ?and then as 
the power of that blessing, he prescribes our obedience to our King.?
244
 Obedience, Bargrave 
went on to say, was ?the best exposition of the Law, better then the best of Sacrifices?because 
the wickedest man alive may offer Sacrifices: none can obey but the good.?
245
 Bargrave 
explained this point by saying ?Men hath such a will as cannot be subject?We are all born 
enemies of God,? so they ?willingly hear of God as a Savior, but if you propound him as a 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
241
 Ibid., 173. 
 
242
 Ibid. 
 
243
 Isaac Bargrave, A Sermon Preached Before King Charles?(London: 1627). 
 
244
 Ibid., 2. Italics original. 
 
245
 Ibid., 3. Italics original. 
71?
??
Commander, their answer is ready: our tongues are our own, who is Lord over us??
246
 His point 
was clear: ?Obedience was good in its self, Sacrifice only in respect to the law that commanded 
it.?
247
  
Bargrave took as his text the example of King Saul?s defeat of Agag, when the Israelites 
spared the defeated king and his fattest cattle after the Lord commanded them to kill all that they 
found. They did this ?it is alleged?to sacrifice them unto the Lord: and so they made Religion a 
stalking horse to rebellion.? Saul, Bargrave explained, confessed to committing these sins ?for 
fear of the people, and so made popular applause his god.?
248
 Current dissenters were like Saul 
?saying, I have fulfilled the commandment of the Lord? referring to the actions that were actually 
taken for political ends to win ?vain glory? for the dissenter.
249
 They claimed to act righteously 
by supporting the law of God while ignoring his word; it was the ?willful disobedience? of a 
willing mind.
250
 Though rebellion may be backed with reason, Bargrave reminded his listeners, 
Abraham ?obeyed God even against reason? ready to kill his son to fulfill the Lords? command. 
It was true, he claimed, that ?no sacrifice was so acceptable? to God ?as for the King to lay down 
his will at God?s altar.?
251
 Kings ?are neither from Pope or people, as some would have it, 
but?immediately from God.?
252
 Bargrave closed with a direct challenge to the godly dissenters, 
obviously addressing a popular complaint of the period: ?I would,? he prayed, ?that there were 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
 
246
 Ibid., 4. 
 
247
 Ibid., 5. 
 
248
 Ibid. 
 
249
 Ibid., 12. 
 
250
 Ibid., 13-14. 
 
251
 Ibid., 16. 
 
252
 Ibid., 18.  
72?
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none among us who placed their conscience too much in their will?[that] there were none to tell 
us that to obey our Prince is to betray our country?who stamp it?on the clergy that they preach 
obedience.? ?Well Christians,? he answered, ?let it be more practiced, I dare promise it will be 
less preached.?
253
 
Bargrave was a royal chaplain, and his appeal was far more abstract than Sibthorpe?s 
sermon before it, or Roger Manwaring?s after. Bargrave?s sermon was published less than a 
week after its preaching, and, unlike Sibthorpe?s, the king himself was probably the most 
important factor in its printing.
254
 There is no evidence of Laud?s involvement in the decision to 
print Bargrave?s sermon, and, in fact, the two men were eventual enemies.
255
 Instead, it seems 
likely that Abbot?s demise left those outside Laud?s group scrambling to ensure their continued 
favor with the king, and Bargrave?s sermon may have been an attempt to prove himself worthy 
of his position at court. Bargrave preached at the time when news of the Earl of Lincoln?s 
imprisonment and refusal in front of the Star Chamber was a central topic of London news, just 
as Sibthorpe?s sermon was preached following the first large-scale arrest of men who refused the 
loan in January.
256
 Since the call for sermons in support of the loan was issued in September, but 
none were specifically mentioned until Sibthorpe?s in January or printed until Bargrave?s in 
March, their production was most likely a government attempt to quell any popular reaction to 
the public reports of the arrest of the loan?s enemies, rather than a single, proactive campaign on 
the loan?s behalf. 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
253
 Ibid., 18-19. 
 
254
 Birch, Court and Times, 214-215. 
 
255
 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ?Issac Bargrave.? Laud blocked Bargrave?s appointment to 
an important ecclesiastical position in the fall of the same year. 
 
256
 Birch, Court and Times, 207. 
73?
??
Indeed, the printing of the final forced loan sermon came at time when London was 
enthralled by a number of controversial royal actions. Preached during the king?s progresses in 
July, Royal Chaplain Roger Manwaring?s two-part Religion and Allegiance was delivered just as 
Buckingham?s fleet finally set sail to relieve the besieged Huguenots of La Rochelle.
257
 At the 
same time, a large number of gentlemen previously released on bail were recommitted under the 
Council?s orders for refusing the loan, including the High Sheriff of Gloucestershire.
258
 Though 
Mede claimed the fleet departure ?converted many men?s curses into prayers,? there were 
certainly some popular misgivings surrounding the war with France, particular given the loans 
initial justifications based on the Spanish war.
259
 At the same time, a number of the gentlemen 
held in London for refusing the loan were causing the crown more difficulty. Having realized the 
men?s presence provided a sort of headquarters for a more centralized opposition to the loan, the 
Council attempted to disperse the gentlemen, but they refused to leave. Instead, they began to 
press the government for a public trial over the nature of their imprisonment, which the Council 
desperately wanted to avoid.
260
 There is little doubt that during this type of unrest, the crown 
needed to ensure future support for a venture that was guaranteed to be difficult to fund from the 
outset, and Manwaring?s sermon was probably but one attempt to do so. 
 The first of the two sermons began by explaining the various relationships upon which 
the Godly order is determined: between the Creator and the created, husband and wife, parents 
and children, and finally between a servant and his Lord. The anointed of the Lord that resided 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
257
 Ibid., 247; Roger Manwaring, Religion and Allegiance?(London: 1627). 
 
258
 Birch, Court and Times, 249. 
 
259
 Ibid., 247. 
 
260
 Cust, Forced Loan, 61. 
74?
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on the divinely-appointed thrones of Europe were, in Manwaring?s words, ?Gods on Earth.?
 261
  
Manwaring proclaimed that all power is created by God, and that the power of the king was not a 
collection of human power, but God?s own power. The power of God (and therefore the king) 
was not subservient or inferior to any multitude of men; indeed no power could constrain it.
262
 
Just as Adam was granted dominion before there was either Pope or people, the king was not 
subject to the approval or limitations of either.
263
 Nor was he bound by the laws of the nation. As 
the father of the country, no subject could question or disobey the will of the king ?without 
hazard of his own damnation.?
264
 In other words, any law, tax, or levy that the king felt obliged 
to command were to be obeyed, and refusal to do so was a threat to one?s spiritual prosperity. 
Speaking from the words of Solomon, Manwaring attacked the nature of the law and idea 
of council directly. The laws, he claimed, took their binding power from the will of the Lord 
himself.
265
 The words of the Bible themselves were the council of kings, given by the Lord, so 
?None may, nor can search into the high discourse, and deep counsels of kings; seeing their 
hearts are so deep, by reason of their distance from common men.?
266
 Manwaring explained that 
this meant ?the heart of a King is unsearchable?and none may dare to call into question the 
judgment of a king because the heart of a king is in the hand of God.?
267
 Parliaments, he 
preached, were not to impose ?any Right to Kings, whereby to challenge tributary aides and 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
261
 Manwaring, 1-3. 
 
262
 Ibid., 2-4. 
 
263
 Ibid., 6-7. 
 
264
 Ibid., 9. 
 
265
 Ibid., 9. 
 
266
 Ibid., 17. 
 
267
 Ibid. 
75?
??
subsidy helps, but for the more equal imposing and more easy exacting thereof;? the subsidies 
themselves being the king?s by natural right and divine justice.
268
 Those who opposed the king in 
these points, according to Manwaring, were driven by the desire for popularity and personal 
power. They dissented only ?under the plausible shows of singular liberty and freedom; which if 
their consciences might speak, would appear nothing more than the satisfying of private humors, 
passions, or purposes.?
269
 He closed his first sermon by explaining the necessities of the crown?s 
current situation, and by arguing that those who refused to give to the king only gave support to 
their common adversaries.
270
 
 If Manwaring?s first sermon was unclear in its theological arguments connecting God and 
the king, his second clarified these points in what amounted to an all-out assault on the 
possibility of justified resistance to the king. This was the final attack that Charles and his 
government authorized against their critics. Manwaring drew an even more direct connection 
between God and the king, moving from the king?s connection to God in his first sermon to God 
as a king in the second. Shifting gradually from theology to the history of the ancient Church, he 
began by exclaiming that the ?word of God is a mystery most deep and sacred: Sacred for the 
things it doth contain?as for the fountain from whence it flows.?
271
 This fountain was the mind 
of God, ?to whom the scriptures are even [more] naturally known, and with much more facility 
understood, than by us?can possibly be discerned.?
272
 God, according to Manwaring, was the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
268
 Ibid., 26. 
 
269
 Ibid., 28. 
 
270
 Ibid., 30-31. 
 
271
 Manwaring, Religion and Allegiance, Second sermon, 1. Though both sermons were printed as one text, 
the numbering resets at the beginning of the second sermon. 
 
272
 Ibid., 2. 
76?
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author of the scriptures, and all authority in it was dependent upon his singular gift. He said ?the 
Lord God is our Law-giver; the Lord God is our Judge; the Lord God is our King? and in the 
natural law passed down from him as judge, ?it is?what is best and most divine, that ought to 
rule.?
273
  The king then, was highest under God, and after God, the most divine, and God gave 
him power over all states and people.
274
 God not only called everyone to obey his sovereign, but 
?fetcheth reasons, and fills his mouth with arguments, to press and persuade the same.? In these 
cases, the king?s reasoning spoke with the word of the Lord, and this made his reasoning and 
word sacred, just as if it were the word of the Lord God. Contradicting the king?s reasoning then, 
was a sin in itself.
275
 
 Manwaring willfully accepted the challenge of those who may ask why religion 
connected the king with God.
276
 The first, he explained, was ?from the communion of names,? 
since God not only stood among the ?council of Princes,? but gave them the authority to act in 
his name.
277
 This was a gift, he continued, that God gave ?only unto such as are most near and 
dear to him; namely to a king, angels, and priests, to whom alone the scriptures honour with that 
high and noble grace to be called Gods.?
278
 As such, the permanent due that human souls owed 
God in the tithe was also reflected in the temporal duties that all subjects owed to their king: it 
was no coincidence that those denied the Lord his part also attempted to limit the king?s 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
273
 Ibid., 9. 
 
274
 Ibid., 10-11. 
 
275
 Ibid., 11-12. 
 
276
 Ibid., 22. 
 
277
 Ibid., 23. 
 
278
 Ibid. 
77?
??
power.
279
 Here, Manwaring connected the spiritual and theological rifts that divided the Church 
to the current constitutional and legal disagreements that divided the nation.  
 Manwaring attacked the idea that men could play any part in the distribution of justice 
and law that flowed directly from God and his earthly deputy, the king. Manwaring explained 
that it was impossible for men to claim any part in the distribution of the ancient and divine gift 
of justice that flowed directly from God and the king, quoting David?s admonition that ?my 
goodness extend not unto thee.?
280
 Men played no part in granting the king?s legitimacy, and had 
no role in meeting out justice other than what the king gave them. This ?Indivisibility of Justice? 
meant that men had no legitimate means to give any royal act ?merit or Recompence? because 
both stemmed from ?imperial dignity itself.?
281
 Manwaring point was simple. At no time could 
the divine justice of the Lord, passed down to his highest deputy the king, be divided. Any 
attempt to claim the need for the people?s affirmation or disputation was unjust and illegitimate; 
the king was justified by God, and the parity of justice was his gift to the people. ?Justice,? 
Manwaring concluded, ?is between equals?so cannot justice be any rule or medium whereby to 
give God, or the King, his rights.?
282
 The king?s rights existed outside of temporal human laws, 
and could not be abrogated by any human effort. Manwaring was addressing the fundamental 
theoretical question of the period: where the king stood as a member of the temporal 
commonweal, or legal body of the nation, and where he stood as a member of God?s elect 
community. 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
279
 Ibid., 24. 
 
280
 Ibid., 24. 
 
281
 Ibid. 
 
282
 Ibid., 25. 
78?
??
 The entire notion of the commonweal was a tool for Manwaring to explain the current 
objections to the king?s policy, only to be dismissed later. Taking the theme of the objections 
against the ancient Church fathers, Manwaring compared the objections raised against the loan to 
the objections that faced true Christian religion. The initial objection against the early Church 
was ?that Christian Religion was a fatal superstition; and that the Professors thereof the Authors 
of new and scandalous incantations.?
283
 Manwaring?s aim and intent here is clear. He was 
drawing a connection to the ?innovations? many dissenters saw being made in the Church of 
England, dismissing them as a common technique of those opposed to proper worship. When the 
early professors were prosecuted, Manwaring explained, the people?s suspicions drove their 
kings into acting against God.
284
 These heathen people claimed that the Christians were the 
cause of any troubles and misfortunes that affected the commonweal. This notion of the ?Roman 
commonweal,? Manwaring claimed, was ?but a mask, or vale, for their malice?a ready way to 
create mischief to the harmless Christians, from such as had not judgment to weigh the cause.?
285
 
Manwaring attacked the very idea of commonweal as a vehicle for uninformed and malicious 
criticism, used by the vulgar and ignorant to speak about subjects beyond their knowledge. In 
these people?s minds, any misfortune that befell the country was a commentary on the collective 
sinful state of the whole country. Manwaring was not only taking aim at the criticism leveled at 
the loan specifically, but a noticeably expanding millennialist tendency among the English.
286
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
283
 Ibid., 31. 
 
284
 Ibid. 
 
285
 Ibid. 
 
286
 This is most notable in Joseph Mede?s letters to a Dr. Stuteville. They include the famous water-spout 
that destroyed the Duke of Buckingham?s stairs during the 1626 Parliament. Birch, Court and Times, 117. 
79?
??
The widely held obsession with natural acts as signs and portents was dangerous to the image of 
an ordered society, and Manwaring was pointing to it as a danger to both church and state. 
Manwaring was describing a divinely ordained social system that necessarily revolved around a 
direct connection between God and the king. All actions were related to the individuals? duty to 
the king. To raise human laws above the king that gave them authority was ridiculous.  
Charles was apparently present when Manwaring?s sermons were preached, and they 
were published by his command a month later.
287
 Joyce Lee Malcolm argues that the order to 
print the sermon was later attributed to Archbishop William Laud, but sadly, there is no citation 
of her source for this claim.
288
 Cust has argued that Charles had the sermon published despite a 
strict warning from Laud that it would be ?very distasteful to the people.?
289
 Cust?s source, 
however, is Laud?s later defense of his actions during his 1628 questioning in parliament, where 
it would have been shocking for him not to attribute the sermon?s publication to the king?s direct 
order. Just as in the case of Buckingham in 1626, Laud?s 1628 defense was based on his claim to 
have acted at Charles?s command. Again, the decisions of Charles?s ministers, under increasing 
pressure from parliament, had to be placed under the authority of the king himself to protect 
Charles?s servants from parliamentary indictment. 
Manwaring?s sermons were an unprecedented direct and specific application of the divine 
right of kings that was necessary because of the contemporary distinctions between the king?s 
personal actions and his actions on behalf of the state. These distinctions were not only seen in 
the parliamentary language cited above, but in the responses to the sermons themselves. One of 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
287
 Joyce Lee Malcolm, ed. The Struggle for Sovereignty: Seventeenth Century Political Tracts 
(Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1999), 55. 
 
288
 Ibid., 54. 
 
289
 Quoted in Cust, Charles I, 67.  
80?
??
these, by a Canterbury divine also named Thomas Scott, wholly different than the one discussed 
above, provides a useful example. Scott?s manuscript response to Bargrave?s sermon asked if a 
king, who was ?so bewitched?as to set his cities on fire, or his navy,?or lend or give away our 
ships, ordinance, powder, and mariners to our enemies,? and could not otherwise be convinced to 
change, ?may he not be resisted??
290
 ?Is it not lawful,? Scott continued, ?in such a case to rescue 
King Saul (when he would have killed himself and the kingdom) from Saul the king??
291
 
Manwaring?s answer was an emphatic ?no.? While Scott saw the interference of the people as 
legitimate because, it seems, the king?s person was public property, Manwaring?s objection 
turned this distinction on its head by claiming the king could not act as a private person anymore 
than God?s existence could be separated from his actions.
292
  
Scott was utilizing a form of the theory put forward the other Thomas Scott in Vox 
Populi, which argued for a distinction between the king?s actions as a ?public person? and a 
?private man.?
293
 Circumstances, however, led the later Scott to apply these distinctions to a 
much more specific situation. Though he was drawing on general political commonplaces, he 
pulled them to their logical conclusions, which had a revolutionary effect.
294
 Manwaring was 
essentially doing the same thing. The often contradictory theories that held the commonweal in 
balance were finally placed in a position of irreconcilable difference. It is unfair to assume that 
Charles?s ideal of government during the parliaments of 1625 and 1626 was directed anymore by 
Manwaring?s theory than to assume that parliament?s actions were driven by those of Scott. They 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
290
 Cust, Forced Loan, 181. 
 
291
 Ibid. 
 
292
Ibid. 
 
293
 Ibid., 182.  
 
294
 Ibid. 
81?
??
interacted in very distinct ways, stretching common assumptions to their logical, oppositional 
ends.  
Manwaring?s points, though they have often been linked with Sibthorpe?s, marked a 
different distinction between the king?s actions as a public and private person that those that had 
previously appeared in both the crown?s statements in parliament and in the other forced loan 
sermons. While Sibthorpe claimed the subject must be obedient to his king even if that king?s 
actions were unjust or unlawful, Manwaring argued that the king?s actions could never actually 
be unjust or unlawful. It is unclear exactly how much Manwaring?s words owed to a shift in the 
crown?s ideological position, but a markedly a new direction became apparent in the later 
months of 1627. Though no other sermons were published, probably replaced by the massive 
propaganda campaign Buckingham launched a few days later to support his landing on the Isle 
of Rhe, Manwaring?s words were closely echoed by Attorney General Heath during the Five 
Knights trial in November.
295
 Heath, who, as discussed above, argued in the 1625 parliament 
that the king?s interest could be separated from those of the public though the ?king would never 
sever them,? presented a much different argument to the judges during the trial. Defending the 
king?s power to imprison without giving cause, Heath argued: 
I do not mean that it is such a power as that a king may do what he please, for he hath 
 rules to govern himself by, as well as your Lordships, who are subordinate judges under 
 him. The difference is, the king is the head of the same fountain of justice, which your 
 Lordship administers to all his subjects. All justice is derived from him, and what he 
 does, he does not as a private person, but as the head of the commonwealth, as 
 justiciarius regni, yea, the very essence of justice under God upon earth is in him?
296
 
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
295
 Thomas Cogswell, ?The People?s Love: the Duke of Buckingham and Popularity,? in Cogswell, Cust, 
and Lake, 211-234. 
 
296
 Gardiner, 60. 
82?
??
Put simply, when Heath said ?what he does, he does not as a private person, but as the head of 
the commonwealth,? he declared all of the king?s actions to be part of his public duty. It was 
impossible for him to act as a private person. Fittingly, since as we have seen many believed 
illegal actions to be private where legal actions were public, it was also impossible for the king to 
act in any manner that was against the law. As Heath explained, ?the common law, which hath 
long flourished under the government of our King and his progenitors, kings of this realm, hath 
ever had that reverent respect of the sovereign, as that it hath concluded the King can do no 
wrong.?
297
  
Heath?s argument confirmed a shift in the nature of royal justifications in 1627. Though 
Charles initially attempted to explain himself through the traditional, parliamentary-style 
arguments of the period, the same failure that prevented his success in parliament damned his 
initial efforts to justify the loan. Charles had attempted to explain his actions to parliament, then 
to his people, only to be rebuffed on each occasion. It seemed to Charles as if his people were 
unwilling to trust his judgment, and refused to accept any explanation other than that which 
blamed any failures on the king?s servants. Francis Seymour?s declaration in the 1625 parliament 
that the ?cause of the necessity, rather than the necessity itself? was what should be addressed 
neatly summarized the problem.
298
 When the king refused to reveal all of the decision-making 
processes that led to the current situation, parliament assumed the necessity was created out of 
some private motivations rather than any public needs. While those private motivations were 
originally claimed to be those of the Duke of Buckingham, Charles?s attempts to protect him by 
extending his personal authority led to the king himself being questioned. No personal authority 
alone was enough to legitimize questionable actions. James?s advice that ?if anything be asked at 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
297
 Ibid., 62. 
 
298
 Proceedings in Parliament, 1625, 450.  
83?
??
you that you think not meet to reveal, if you say, that question is not pertinent for them to ask, 
who dare examine you further?? was no longer tenable.
299
 The king?s judgment no longer carried 
enough authority to justify his minister?s actions. Charles attempted to remedy this the way his 
father probably would have as well. He turned to religion to reinforce his judgments, 
simultaneously embodying the public good with his own judgment as well. He no longer needed 
to justify his actions before public judgment. He was now the embodiment of the public; the 
single, living personage of the state. ?
The language, debates, and ideas described in the two previous chapters present the 
pinnacle of a rhetorical process that began, according to Lake, Cust, and others, in the 1570s and 
80s. Cust, drawing from Lake?s earlier works, suggests the open political style of those 
presenting themselves as ?public men? in the 1580s ?helped trigger a growing sense of alarm at 
the threat of ?popularity.??
300
 Simultaneously, as men in the localities became increasingly wary 
of the corrupting influence of any link to the court, ?public men? came to be viewed as outsiders 
able to act in the name of the public good because of their independence. In this way, the role of 
?public men? shifted from royal collaborators to the exact opposite; they became the court?s 
?sternest critics.?
301
 In turn, those within the regime came to portray such `individuals as 
?popular spirits,? stirring up the ignorant masses for self-serving, private gain. Whether or not 
these ?public men? could defend themselves from these accusations, Cust explains, became one 
of the rhetorical battlegrounds of the period, though ?public men? or ?patriots? usually 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
299
 James I, Doron, 17. 
 
300
 Richard Cust, ?The ?Public Man? in Late Tudor and Early Stuart England? in Peter Lake and Steven 
Pincus eds., The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern Britain (Manchester, UK: University Press, 2007),  
136. 
 
301
 Ibid., 135-136. 
84?
??
succeeded in convincing whatever audience of their dedication to the common good.
302
 The only 
men who were for the most part unconvinced by the ?public men?s? defenses were those 
connected to the court. He concludes that the result was the production and dissemination of a 
conspiracy theory based on the danger, not of private motives and papists, but of ?popularity? and 
?popular spirits.?
303
 Those within the regime labeled these natural representatives of the localities 
as ?oppositionists,? thereby feeding a process of polarization that encouraged highly charged 
language and the politicization of previously neutral issues.
304
  
The pages above describe the same process Cust has so eloquently drawn out.  They point 
out, as Cust has, that whether or not ?public men? could defend themselves from accusations of 
private motives became one of the rhetorical, public battlegrounds of the period. The new threat 
of ?popularity? highlights an initially superficial linguistic shift that was simply the result of the 
regime turning the accusations made against it back onto those same critics. The accusations of 
?popularity,? Cust agrees, were simply another phrasing of the same charges of ?private 
motivations? those within the regime were facing: self-serving individuals promoting private 
ambitions under the guise of public service. In both cases, accusations of ?private? motives 
forced individual actors to employ radical justifications for their actions and positions as servants 
of the public good, justifications that relied on polarity and that stripped away possible areas of 
negotiation, compromise, and tolerance between differing opinions.
305
 The previous pages show 
a process of polarization that climaxed in the 1620s, but not one caused by the natural 
representatives of the localities being cast as ?oppositionists? by those within the regime. Instead, 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
302
 Ibid., 136. 
 
303
 Ibid. 
 
304
 Ibid., 137. 
 
305
 Ibid. 
85?
??
the crown?s rhetoric was a product of the same processes that created the extreme justifications 
mobilized by those in opposition. It was a functional process of radicalization driven by the 
endlessly escalating rhetoric required to justify public speech and opposition, and it culminated 
with the expositions of ancient constitutional rights versus divine right that conclude this chapter. 
Charles?s public actions after 1626 were all part of an attempt to reconcile his physical 
person with the public authority of his position, to prove them an indivisible part of the divinely 
ordained whole. Just as the language of his public appeals shifted to the natural, hierarchical 
rhetoric of the ?forced loan sermons,? the nature of Charles?s public displays became more 
orderly after the tumult of the first few years of his reign. Though Charles was predisposed to 
orderly ceremonialism, the need to emphasize the proper order of society led to more carefully 
controlled public performances. The monarch?s interaction with his subjects came to emphasize 
the proper hierarchy of social life, meaning that the king must be performing in his public role in 
everything he did. This resulted in the ironic circumstance in which the king somehow became 
more of a public institution, while his own person was actually more withdrawn from public 
view. 
?
 
?
?
?
?
86?
??
?
 
Chapter III:?Coronations, Ceremony, and Public Display 
 
On the morning of February 2
nd
, 1626, Charles made the short journey from Whitehall to 
Westminster to be crowned King of England. He travelled down the Thames on his royal barge, 
landing just below the bridge at the Parliament steps. Clothed in white with an outer garment of 
royal purple, Charles continued into Westminster Hall, where he was placed on his throne by the 
high nobility of England. These nobles, each bearing a piece of the regalia or attending the king?s 
person, then joined with the high clergy to form the order of the solemn procession that led the 
king into Westminster Abbey. There, on a four foot tall stage, George Abbot, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, presented the new king to his subjects at each corner of the stage. Each time, shouts 
of ?God save King Charles? declared the audience?s approval. Charles was placed on the lesser 
of the two thrones that stood on the stage, where he rested during a sermon by Richard Senhouse, 
Bishop of Carlisle. Immediately following the sermon, Charles stood and swore an oath 
acknowledging his duties as king. Then, stripped to his white shirt and hose, Charles displayed 
his humanly form to his subjects before retreating behind a traverse specially drawn for the 
occasion.
306
  
The Archbishop, shielded from the audience, recalled Samuel?s anointing of David as he 
poured holy oil onto Charles?s exposed skin in six specific places: his palms, the center of his 
breast, between his shoulders, on the point of each shoulder, each of his elbows, and finally the 
crown of his head. Thus consecrated, the king was adorned with the regalia of Edward the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
306
 This description is taken from Christopher Wordsworth, ed., The Manner of the Coronation of Charles 
the First (London: Henry Bradshaw Liturgical Text Society, 1898), 1-35. 
87?
??
Confessor, the ancient hose and sandals stretching as they were actually placed on Charles?s feet. 
The spurs, the swords and scepters, and the blessed crown soon followed, each given and taken 
away so as not to burden the king. Finally, five hours after entering the Abbey, Charles knelt to 
receive communion. The sacrament concluded, the entire procession reformed in the order it 
arrived in and slowly made its way back to Westminster Hall.
307
 
In June 1633, after eight years of delays and postponements, Charles was crowned King 
of Scotland in a very similar ceremony at Holyrood Abbey. While, in 1626, Charles and his 
advisors had removed many of the public performances and celebrations that traditionally 
accompanied English royal coronations, the 1633 celebration in Edinburgh saw these displays 
revived in all of their expected pomp and glory. Beginning with his royal entrance into the 
Scottish capital, Charles performed for his Scottish subjects in a manner he had previously 
seemed unwilling to attempt for their English counterparts. He progressed throughout the city, 
travelling in state to attend sermons, publically giving the ?royal touch? for the King?s Evil, and 
openly visiting a number of outlying areas of the country where he was born. After a month in 
Scotland, Charles travelled back to England, both the king and his councilors regarding the trip 
as a complete success. Historians, however, have claimed the 1633 coronation ceremonies to be 
the point where Charles?s relationship with his Scottish subjects began to unravel. Similarly, they 
have also claimed Charles?s 1626 London coronation to be a window into the eventual failures of 
his reign, displaying his disregard for his English subjects? expectations and his withdrawal from 
his public duties. It remains to be asked how two events so different in form and display 
managed to produce such similar resentments, and what sort of influences created the often 
discussed ?flaws? in each respective celebration? 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
307
 Ibid., 32-40.  
88?
??
 
Comparing the ceremonies of Charles?s Scottish coronation in 1633 to Charles?s 1626 
coronation in London and other public spectacles reveals that Charles and his advisors made 
important innovations in well established forms of royal display. Often these changes involved 
the abandonment of a traditional form or observance. The political contingencies that surround 
such modifications in public interaction in turn suggest practical reasons inspired many of these 
changes. Just as any failure or innovation in public ritual and display has real political 
significance, the political events and situations accompanying such modifications had an 
undeniable role in their inception. Very practical political and fiscal factors often determined the 
scale and forms of public display of royal power. Still, those changes, along with other 
modifications that suggested actual changes in the symbolic and ideological mindsets of the 
court and the country during Charles?s reign, had an undeniable impact on their actual and 
potential audiences. As such, forms of royal ceremonies were the product of shifting ideologies, 
perceptions and understandings of traditional discursive performances of power, and, as first 
addressed here, responses to very concrete political and fiscal contexts. 
 
Many historical studies focusing on Charles?s public presentations depict the king as an 
increasingly withdrawn monarch, unwilling to present himself to his subjects. According to 
Judith Richards, Charles refused to meet his subjects? expectation that he make himself 
publically visible by filling specific public roles, though he seemed to understand these 
expectations. He failed to give his subjects access to his person or his personality, shunning them 
from his physical presence while denying them even an image or portrait of himself. Focusing 
primarily on changes during the king?s 1626 coronation in London and his failure to match his 
predecessors? willingness to provide the ?royal touch,? Richards claims ?that Charles was aware 
89?
??
of [his subjects?] expectations throughout his reign. Why he regarded those expectations as 
having so little significance for so long is unclear.?
308
  
Richards relies on Clifford Geertz?s notion of ?ritual signs of dominance? to argue that 
Charles?s failure to perform his duty separated him from his subjects and left them unable to 
form traditional subject-ruler relationships or bonds of loyalty.
309
 Other historians have reached 
different conclusions.  Paul Monod claims that Charles attempted to end the public discourse of 
his early reign by reverting to a Renaissance style of kingship through a withdrawal from public 
scrutiny, but was unable or unwilling to reproduce the necessary representations of power and 
ceremonial reinforcement of royal authority such a style required. Monod?s assertions are largely 
based on the work of Richards and Malcolm Smuts, whose study of court culture during 
Charles?s reign emphasizes a growing cultural divide between the court and the rest of the king?s 
subjects.
310
 Conversely, Kevin Sharpe sees Charles?s attitude toward public presentation as a 
rejection of his predecessors? use of the royal word to control discourse, attempting to position 
himself above public debate through linguistic, artistic, and ceremonial statements. Monod and 
Sharpe arrive at opposite conclusions about the outcome and success of Charles?s efforts. While 
Monod claims the king?s withdrawal inflamed a growing cultural divide between court and 
country by shutting down the public discourse Calvinist doctrine demanded, gradually leading to 
revolt in all three of Charles?s kingdoms, Sharpe concludes that Charles effectively conquered 
debate. In stark contrast to Monod?s belief that Charles?s attitude towards public display was 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
308
 Judith Richards, ??His Nowe Majestie? and the English Monarchy: The Kingship of Charles I before 
1640,? Past and Present 113(Nov. 1986), 70-96, 94.  
 
309
 Ibid., 83.  
 
310
 Paul Monod, The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe, 1580-1714 ( New Haven: Yale 
University Press, 1999), 103-109; Malcolm Smuts, ?Public Ceremony and Royal Charisma: The English Royal 
Entry in London,? in A.L. Beier, David Cannadine, and James Rosenheim, eds., The First Modern Society: Essays in 
English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge: University Press, 1989), 65-93. 
90?
??
among the origins of the rebellions of his later reign, Sharpe explains that only the Scottish 
invasion of 1637 ended the ?authority of silence? and shaped a ?new politics of discourse? where 
power ?depended on the articulation of the royal voice.?
311
  
Sharpe, along with Mark Kishlasky, has recently countered Richards?s claims by 
suggesting that Charles actually travelled through more of his kingdom than any of his 
predecessors, but Sharpe also concedes that Charles was less adept at cultivating his people?s 
support than his predecessors. Sharpe attributes this problem to Charles?s personal obsession 
with order and the king?s awkward and reserved nature towards even his closest advisors. This 
obsession explains the king?s often noted preference for ceremony and ritual in even the most 
trivial actions.
312
 More than the result of personal preferences, however, this ritualization 
reinforced the perception of the mystical magic of monarchy by strictly controlling the actual 
physical space around the royal body. Charles was not only controlling the presentation of the 
royal image, he was attempting to limit all possibilities of physical contact with the royal body. 
Most historians? explanations of Charles?s reformation of public presentations of 
authority still seem to privilege psychological and intellectual determinants and to neglect 
immediate political and fiscal contingencies, as well as the social goals and objectives that 
Charles?s alterations were designed to meet.
313
 Even before his coronation in London in 1626, 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
311
 Kevin Sharpe, ?The King?s Writ: Royal Authors and Royal Authority in Early Modern England? in 
Remapping, 144-145.  
 
312
 Sharpe, Personal Rule, 631, 218-220; Kishlansky, 61-70. 
 
313
 This is surprising given Sharpe?s position of ?radical? revisionism. He is seemingly willing to present 
Charles?s psychological obsession with order as the primary factor in many of his cultural initiatives. Psychological 
tendencies, however, are not usually singular determinant forces, nor are they always developed privately or 
domestically without outside social contributors. This is not to say Sharpe is wrong to suggest Charles was inclined 
toward orderly ceremony, only that such tendencies must be viewed in connection with any number of contingent 
factors. In the name of fairness, I should point out that Smuts does emphasize the role that long-term economic 
changes, such as the incredible decline in the value of specie, played in the decisions monarch?s made about public 
displays; Smuts, 90.  
91?
??
Charles was forced to make a number of alterations to traditional forms of public display because 
of overpowering political and economic circumstances that demanded some alterations 
regardless of the king?s personal preference. By 1633, however, most of these crises were long 
passed, leaving Charles free to perform his monarchial duties in Scotland according to his own 
judgment. The Scottish coronation is therefore a better representation or gauge of the king?s 
policy toward public ceremony, display, and interaction. Its features, along with Charles?s 
alterations to other public ceremonial roles, spectacles, and spaces, reveal a king who did not 
simply withdraw from his subjects out of personal preference. Instead, he responded to the 
language and events described in the previous chapters, as well as the arenas and institutions that 
encouraged them, by reinforcing the sacred nature of both his position and his person in the 
spaces, rituals, and exhibitions that visually represented society to its members. Among the 
results were Laudian religious services that emphasized the mysterious nature of God and the 
divine jurisdiction of the clergy as blessed intercessors who held mysterious knowledge, church 
interiors that created a sacred space where laymen came at the designated time to receive the 
gifts of the universal, unquestionable power embodied in these spaces, and highly ordered civil 
and religious processions that presented the divine social hierarchy and the king?s place at the 
center of it through a number of spatial and symbolic physical representations.
314
  
?
 
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
314
 ?Laudian,? as Peter Lake has suggested, is used here simply to refer to the ceremonial forms of worship 
and other high-church religious practices that characterized the reformed services of the Church of England during 
the Personal Rule. It should not be taken as a suggestion of Laud?s, rather than Charles?s or anyone else?s, 
responsibility for the ultimate shape and application of these forms. Peter Lake, ?The Laudian Style: Order, 
Uniformity, and the Pursuit of Holiness in 1630s,? in Kenneth Fincham, ed., The Early Stuart Church, 1603-1642 
(Stanford: University Press, 1993), 161-185. 
92?
??
II. London, 1626 
Though Charles?s coronation was first scheduled for September or October 1625, it eventually 
took place on February 2, 1626. Both contemporary observers and modern scholars have 
described the 1626 ceremony as a ?private? ceremony.
315
 Charles travelled to Westminster from 
Whitehall by boat rather than in the traditional public processions, avoiding an important 
opportunity to display himself to his people.
316
 Ideally, the new monarch would make a solemn 
procession through the city on the day before the coronation ceremony. Leaving the Tower of 
London, the procession was essentially one elaborate ceremony of welcome and reception, with 
each of the municipal and corporate dignitaries performing a specific, inherited role and 
function.  At the same time, specific corporations and guilds had assigned roles and duties that 
each saw as part of their traditional rights and privileges. While travelling through the city, the 
new monarch would pass by a number of elaborate celebratory arches constructed specifically 
for the occasion. Each arch was an allegorical image accompanied by a dramatic performance 
elaborating the message of the arch. The journey from arch to arch was carried out amid a variety 
of planned and impromptu music and dancing, both partly fuelled by the wine that flowed freely 
from the city?s major public fountains. 
The following morning, the uncrowned monarch met the high nobility in Westminster 
Hall. After placing the king on the throne, each noble took responsibility for whatever right or 
duty their office claimed, whether bearing a part of the regalia or assisting the monarch. Formed 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
315
 Birch, Court and Times, 72.  
 
316
 Richards, 82; United Kingdom, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles I, 
1625-1649, 23 vols. (1858-1897; repr.,London : Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1964), I: 271. 
Hereafter referred to as CSPD with the corresponding years italicized in lieu of the volume number. Richards 
dismisses the suggestion that this was to reduce the cost of the ceremony, despite contemporary reports from those 
within the government suggesting such. 
93?
??
into a specific order by rank and office, these nobles were joined by several members of the high 
clergy on a short procession from Westminster Hall to the Abbey with the king following near 
the rear under a fine silk canopy. Walking on a lavish cloth laid beforehand, the procession 
entered the Abbey. They returned to Westminster Hall in the same order after the ceremony 
ended. That evening, the newly crowned monarch feasted with the nobles and court inside the 
hall. During the celebration, various personal ceremonies and rituals were also carried out by the 
decedents of ancient families who had inherited the right to assist or honor the king in a 
multitude of ways. From holding the king?s napkin to riding into the Hall on horseback to defend 
his honor, these personal and symbolic duties carried a great amount of meaning. They were an 
inherited right of service that needed to be recognized to confirm the new king?s understanding 
of the nobles? traditionally guaranteed rights and privileges.
317
 
In February of 1626, the ceremonial procession from Westminster Hall into the Abbey 
and the rites that followed were mostly in keeping with the traditional ceremony used for the 
coronation, but there were a small number of interesting modifications. Charles, according to 
Peter Heylyn, chose to wear white rather than the traditional purple. Heylyn pointed out that this 
was Charles?s own decision, and had nothing to do with any shortage of purple fabric.
318
 
Charles, like his father, also chose not to wear the traditional red shirt for the anointing, though 
Simon D?Ewes assumed it was put on behind the specially drawn traverse, out of the audience?s 
sight.
319
 Red was the color of nobility and peerage, while white was associated with men of God 
and virtue. Virtue personified wore white robes in Thomas Dekker?s pageant for James?s 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
317
 Percy Ernst Schramm, A History of the English Coronation, trans. Leopold G. Wickham Legg (Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1937), 86-96. 
 
318
 Peter Hylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus quoted in Wordsworth, 6.  
 
319
 Henry Ellis, ed., Original Letters Illustrative of English History, 2
nd
 edition, 3 vols. (London: Harding, 
Triphook, and Lepard, 1825), III: 218.  
94?
??
entrance, so it is fitting that Heylyn claimed that Charles wore white to ?declare that Virgin 
Purity with which he came to be espoused unto his Kingdom.?
320
  
Charles?s choice to wear white to represent his purity was especially significant given the 
date of his coronation. Charles was crowned on February 2
nd
, the traditional date of the religious 
festival celebrating Christ?s presentation in the temple and the symbolic purification of his virgin 
mother Mary. Though most coronations took place on holy days, Charles, whether out of 
necessity or preference, chose the traditional date of Christ?s presentation in the temple to be 
presented to his subjects as king. No matter what circumstances may have led to Charles 
coronation taking place on February 2, the significance of that date and his decision to wear 
white emphasized the connection between God in his earthly form and the king. It also 
represented the unquestionable character of Charles?s heritage and claim to the throne, as well 
the professed clarity of his conscious and ambitions in claiming the throne. 
This symbolism combined with the traditional language of the ceremony of the 
coronation to reinforce the connection of the between the king and Christ on Earth, as well as the 
spiritual purity of the king himself. After the anointing, the Archbishop of Canterbury prayed: 
God, the Son of God Christ Jesus, who is anointed by his father above his fellows, he by 
his anointing [pour] down upon thy head the blessing of the Holy Ghost and make it enter 
into the bowels of thy heart, so by this visible gift thou may receive invisible grace, 
having justly executed the government of this temporal Kingdom, thou may reign with 
him eternally, who only being without sin doth live in glory with God?Amen.
321
  
 
This prayer explained the symbolism of the anointing, not in the more typical example of Samuel 
anointing David to signify God?s chosen king, but by unpacking the connection between Christ 
and God. It seemed to link Jesus?s earthly divinity to a symbolic anointing that placed him above 
his peers, just as Christ anointed his chosen representative on Earth, Charles. Asking that this 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
320
 Heylyn quoted in Wordsworth, 6.  
 
321
 Wordsworth, 34. 
95?
??
physical anointing be symbolic of the invisible pouring of God?s grace onto Charles?s immortal 
soul, the prayer closed by explaining that just rule on Earth was proof of this spiritual anointing, 
an outward sign of the righteous and unblemished soul that was required if the king was to rule 
beside God in heaven for eternity. 
Aside from the symbolic shift in the royal wardrobe, ceremonial roles dedicated to the 
sovereign?s interaction with the masses were also altered. Traditionally, when the king?s 
procession moved from Westminster Hall to the church, they traditionally walked on a specially 
arranged cloth. This cloth, similar to cloth present at a monarch?s funeral, was to be divided 
among the subjects gathered outside the church, serving as both a religious relic and a gift of 
substantial material value. This duty was the responsibility of the Royal Almoner for the 
coronation, who at the time of Charles?s coronation was the Earl of Exeter.
322
 It was also his 
duty to distribute specially minted coins to the crowd during the king?s procession back to 
Westminster Hall. Unfortunately, as he wrote to Secretary Conway on January 22, Exeter was 
suffering from such a severe bout of gout that he was unable to meet his duties, though he 
insisted that his absence was in no way related to the financial costs of his position. There is no 
record of Exeter?s replacement, or if the cloth was properly distributed.
323
 It is doubtful that the 
distribution took place given that king also requested 100 pieces of silver to distribute to the 
crowd, but was unable to obtain the coins in time.
324
 It seems entirely possible that any 
spectators that gathered to see Charles?s processions to and from Westminster Abbey may have 
received no relics or rewards at all.  
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
322
 Wordsworth, 11. This post is not the same as the traditional Royal Almoner, which was held by a 
clergymen and not hereditary. 
 
323
CSPD, 1625-1626, 230.  
 
324
 Wordsworth, 11.  
96?
??
The public processions therefore offered less access to the king and probably did not 
involve the traditional custom of distributing relics or souvenirs to the throngs gathered outside 
the church. What is also striking is the complete absence of published reports or pamphlets 
describing the coronation ceremony. Official or unofficial printed accounts of contemporary 
coronation ceremonies were usually part of a larger description of all of the public ceremonies 
and displays that surrounded the event. More detailed accounts circulated in manuscript letters.  
Mede passed a description of the ceremony written by Simon D?Ewes onto to others, suggesting 
that some knowledge of what occurred certainly circulated in the public domain. D?Ewes 
described the ceremony in detail, specifically noting that when the curtain was drawn during the 
anointing to hide the king?s exposed body parts, those ?being arcana,? it was ?drawn, I dare say 
boldly, few more single persons then there were thousand within the church saw it.?
325
 Mede 
added that a prayer was included in the service that had been left out since Henry VII?s 
coronation, describing the king as ?not merely being lay, but a mixed person.?
326
  
How Mede knew of these supposed innovations remains a mystery, but the absence of 
published descriptions left no way of combating such rumors. It was easy for writers like Mede, 
then, to portray the new king as an innovator. These portrayals, however, along with the real or 
imagined innovations they described were the product of a number of outside influences. The 
first, and most obvious, of these was the tangled web of extraordinary political and social 
contingencies that greeted Charles?s ascension. These produced the second and less direct of the 
two main influences on contemporary portrayals: a somewhat widespread perception of Charles 
as a reformer or innovator expressed as part of the often outspoken concern over the new king?s 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
325
 Ellis, Letters, 218.  
 
326
 Ibid., 220. 
97?
??
foreign policies and his dedication to upholding the true faith both at home and abroad long 
before the ceremony at Westminster. 
 Unfortunately for Charles, his reign in both of his kingdoms began with doubts already 
swirling around him. James died near the end of March, 1625 when Charles was anxiously 
awaiting the arrival of his new bride from Paris. Charles faced the difficult and expensive tasks 
of organizing his father?s funeral and welcoming his new bride before Parliament could be 
convened. Charles set the official mourning period at a full year. The funeral itself is reported to 
have cost the crown upwards of ?50,000, part of which was invested in over 9,000 ?blacks,? 
pieces of black cloth for proper mourning attire, distributed to mourners.
327
 In May, he planned 
to meet his bride at Dover and accompany her into the city of London. In preparation for his 
journey to the southeast, he published the Proclamation of May 17. The proclamation explained 
that Charles attempted to limit his peoples? access to his royal presence during the spring and 
summer of 1625 in part because of a massive outbreak of plague that killed 41, 313 Londoners 
before the end of December.
328
 Added to the costs of his father?s funeral, the moderately 
elaborate procession of the wedding party from Dover to London, and the need to convene 
Parliament as quickly as possible, the threat of plague was one among a number of practical 
reasons for putting the king?s coronation off until a more convenient date. It is also worth 
mentioning that Charles was preparing a massive fleet at Dover during this same period, which 
certainly would have increased traffic travelling the notoriously questionable roads between the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
327
 CSPD, 1625-1626, 22.  
 
328
 Larkin, 71, n. 2.  
98?
??
capital and the ports. The addition of throngs of beggars and onlookers to this traffic would have 
contributed to an already difficult logistical situation.
329
  
These circumstances reasonably excuse Charles?s decision to delay his coronation until 
the following year, but they do not necessarily explain why his coronation was not accompanied 
by the traditional entry and procession through London, or the other public displays normally 
associated with coronations. Though many historians give the impression Charles never intended 
to hold the entry and procession, the available evidence suggest otherwise. It seems more 
accurate to suggest Charles may not have been overly attached to the ceremonies in the first 
place, and when circumstances made them difficult or inconvenient, or they could not be carried 
out in the manner Charles desired, he simply abandoned them. In December of 1625, Charles 
certainly planned on the entry as part of his coronation; this is clear from Arundel?s letter to the 
City of London concerning the celebratory arches.
330
 By the following January, however, Mede 
wrote that the procession had been postponed until May.
331
 On May 25, a letter from Pembroke 
ordered the City to have the unused arches taken down.
332
  
In addition to the recent plague, the ongoing war, the Montagu controversy, and the 
financial crisis Charles?s government faced, one reason for the delays was Charles?s difficult 
relationship with his new queen. The Venetian ambassador explained that Charles hoped to have 
his queen crowned at the time of his entry, but the geopolitical circumstances described in the 
previous chapter and related disagreements over Henrietta Maria?s personal household frustrated 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
329
 For the state of the roads between London and Dover, see 1630 Proclamation concerning the King?s 
Highways in Larkin, 248.  
 
330
  Corporation of London. Analytical Index to the Series of Records Known as The Remembrancia, 1579-
1664 (London: E.J. Francis & Co., 1878), 116. Hereafter referred to as Remembrancia. 
 
331
 Birch, Court and Times, 77.  
 
332
 Remembrancia, 416-417.  
99?
??
the king?s plans from the beginning.
333
 Charles?s new wife was proving difficult to live with, 
thanks to her continuing connections to her homeland and the French Church. Though initially 
Charles anticipated being crowned with his queen, she eventually refused to take part in the 
February ceremony after drawn-out negotiations between Charles?s representatives, the French, 
and even papal envoys failed to produce a resolution. The ambassador explained that the queen?s 
coronation would hopefully be settled by May, when the king hoped to make his royal entry into 
London.
 
By May 1626, however, the international dispute surrounding the queen?s coronation 
was far from settled, and the entry procession was cancelled.  Neither of the two events ever 
actually happened.
 334
  
The officers of the City of London may have also played an important part in the crown?s 
decision to cancel the entry and procession. Charles, like his predecessors, used the city like a 
modern bank. The city provided immediate cash loans to the crown against collateral such as 
expected subsidies or royal jewels. Charles received several large loans from the city almost 
immediately after his father?s death. When the king dismissed Parliament in the summer of 1626, 
he immediately turned to the city for another loan. The city leaders, though, were reluctant to 
grant it. Any loan would eventually have to be collected from the people of the corporation who 
already had a number of grievances with the crown. After some negotiating and maneuvering, 
the city agreed to the king?s request. According to Mede, however, they did not agree to a loan. 
The officers gave the king ?15,000 not as a loan or a free gift, but as ?that which was to be 
granted to his majesty on his riding through the city.?
335
 This allowed the city to meet the king?s 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
333
 United Kingdom. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs Existing in the 
Archives and Collections of Venice and in other Libraries of Northern Italy (1864-1947; repr., Nendeln, 
Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1970), XXII:51, 294. Hereafter referred to as CSPV, 1625-1626.  
 
334
 Ibid., 311, 466.  
 
100?
??
request without setting a precedent that might be used against them in the future. It also removed 
one of the major motivations Charles may have had to hold the ceremony. This was not the 
reason that the procession was cancelled in May of 1626, but it may say a great deal as to why 
the procession was never rescheduled. 
As for the possible May entry, the ongoing and chaotic Parliamentary sessions in early 
1626 combined with the desperate attempts to supply the English fleet and growing fears about 
the possibility of a Spanish invasion of England to demand all of the crown?s attention in late 
May. The social disorder that would have accompanied Charles?s procession through London in 
the late spring or early summer of 1626 was exactly what the overburdened royal government 
and treasury did not want. Charles almost certainly did not want his most reliable source of cash, 
the London merchants, spending staggering amounts of money on celebrations that would take 
away men and materials that were needed for the desperately struggling war effort. Given the 
political, social, and fiscal upheaval that gripped London for the rest of the decade, it can hardly 
be surprising that Charles?s entry and procession never took place in the 1620s. 
 
 In the end, Charles?s ascension was totally stripped of many of the public processional 
traditions of previous ceremonies. While it is convenient in hindsight to blame these innovations 
on Charles?s disregard for his subjects? expectations, the previous pages explain that most were 
the cumulative result of a number of unfortunate challenges the king faced during his first two 
years on the throne. Charles?s unfortunate inheritance left him in a position which forced him to 
adapt to difficult circumstances in order to protect the legitimacy of his reign. The new king?s 
subjects, however, were not privy to the sort of detailed explanation provided here. 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
335
 Birch, Court and Times, 126. 
101?
??
Understandably, many men publically questioned the delayed timing and strange nature of 
Charles?s coronation. It is telling, however, that many of the questions began almost as soon as 
the new king assumed the throne, well before any expected forms were altered or any public 
ceremonies should traditionally have taken place. 
In May of 1625, less than two months after James?s death, Mede wrote: ?Why the 
coronation is deferred so long, we know not; but some imagine some mystery in it, besides the 
present business and danger of infection.?
336
 This must have been fairly common conversation 
because in the same month, the Venetian ambassador noted that ?men talk of the possibility of 
[the king] not being crowned in order to remain more absolute? by avoiding the coronation oath 
requiring him to uphold the laws.
337
 These concerns seem odd since coronations, entries, and 
processions were often delayed. James?s coronation ceremony was held four months after 
Elizabeth?s death, but the plague caused James and his advisors to cancel all public aspects of the 
ceremony, specifically requesting subjects not come to Westminster. He also postponed his entry 
and progression through London until March 1604, nine months after his coronation the previous 
July, because of a pestilence very similar to the plague that greeted Charles?s ascension in 1625. 
James was never actually placed upon his throne in Westminster Hall; instead, he proceeded 
directly to the Abbey after the royal barge had docked near the bridge. After the ceremony, he 
came back to the boat and left, forgoing the traditional feast in the Hall.
338
 In May 1625, when 
Mede and the Venetian Ambassador reported the popular suspicion that Charles would alter or 
forego the traditional coronation celebration, the new king was still two months short of the four 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
336
 Ellis, Letters, 193.  
 
337
 CSPV, 1625-1626, 51.  
 
338
 John Nichols, ed., The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of James the First 
(London: Society of Antiquaries, 1828), I: 323-324.  
102?
??
months between his father?s ascension and coronation. The men Mede described expected 
innovations, and saw novelty where none existed.  
The remarkable comments relayed by the Venetian ambassador captured this climate 
perfectly. In May 1625, Charles had given his subjects no reason to suspect their new king of 
absolutist ambitions, nor had he presented any evidence that could possibly lead his subjects to 
question his intent to take the coronation oath. So where did this distrust originate? Charles?s 
marriage to a Catholic was the most glaring source. Cogswell?s discussion of widespread, 
popular resistance to the Spanish Match and the reservations of men like Chamberlain, discussed 
in Chapter II, suggest that, even if Charles?s subjects found Henrietta Marie?s French blood less 
offensive than the Spanish alternative, a Catholic queen and a king willing to marry her 
undoubtedly caused concern. Charles?s suspension of the laws against Catholics on his wedding 
day presumably gave truth to these concerns. The comments recorded by Mede and others in 
May 1625 make much more sense when viewed as a product of Charles?s suspension of the laws 
against recusants on May 1. 
Contemporary English thought linked absolutism and tyranny to Catholic ideas of papal 
or concilar infallibility and the constant danger Catholic ambitions posed to every facet of 
English life. Rumors about Charles?s desire to be ?more absolute? likely expressed his subjects? 
fears for the future of the religious foundations of the English church rather than any threats to 
constitutional rights. The ?mystery? Mede?s men suspected, whether real or imagined, was of 
course a private motivation, almost certainly dangerous to the status quo and the commonweal. 
Considered as part of a greater, predominantly religiously motivated distrust of the king?s actions 
in May 1625, then these men?s expectation of some private motives provides a valuable lesson 
for historians. The breakdown of trust between the king and his subjects may not necessarily 
103?
??
have been the product of a disconnect created by what contemporaries described as the ?private 
nature? of Charles?s court. It is equally possible that contemporary descriptions of the king?s 
?private? nature were actually the product of an existing unhappiness or distrust. Even so, if the 
public concern over the nature of Charles?s London coronation was created by an already 
inflamed religious distrust for which it was partially blamed, the distrust surrounding his Scottish 
coronation in 1633 proved quite the opposite. It saw a recognized, underlying religious distrust 
stoked to an inferno by the nature of the ceremony itself. Where religious issues created the 
strained relationship between Charles and the English that was largely responsible for the 
innovations many men unjustly expected and imagined in the 1626 ceremony, real innovations 
during the Edinburgh ceremony and celebrations radically altered the relationship between 
Charles and the Scots, creating a dangerous distrust similar to the one that greeted Charles in 
1625. 
 
III. Scotland, 1633 
 
In late June, 1633, Charles?s assembled court finally began their procession to his long overdue 
coronation as King of Scotland. Charles inherited the Scottish crown from his father over eight 
years earlier, but his journey was delayed by a seemingly endless succession of crises and 
contingencies. By the time Charles could slowly make his way to Edinburgh, it had been fifteen 
years since a Scottish king had set foot on his nation?s soil. The journey north took a little over a 
month, as the king stopped to be entertained by important English nobles, to pursue the hunt in 
the parks and forests along the way, and to make official state entries in several northern cities. 
In all, the trip consumed most of the summer of 1633, drawing almost all of the court and council 
104?
??
away from London. The journey was Charles?s first trip to his birth-country since he left it at the 
age of three, his first official royal entry into one of his capitals, and, according to some 
historians, a rare example of Charles undertaking a traditional form of public display that was 
important to his subjects? perception of both his reign and his authority. In the Scottish 
coronation we find how Charles chose to publically represent himself and his authority when 
relatively unrestrained by overwhelming circumstances. 
Recently, historians have highlighted the ways that Charles?s Scottish coronation proved 
the king to be totally oblivious to the Scots? religious and national sensibilities.
339
 This point is 
incontrovertible. His use of bishops for the ceremony itself, particularly for the already 
controversial anointing, undoubtedly upset the already frustrated Scots. His father ordered his 
mother be anointed when she was crowned Queen in 1590, but the reaction of the Scottish 
ministers was so strong that James threatened to install a bishop to carry out the ceremony.
340
 
While Anne was eventually anointed by Robert Bruce, Charles was anointed by the Archbishop 
of St. Andrews, which can only have added to the religious tension of the time.
341
  
Other alterations, however, have been unfairly pointed to as evidence of an equal amount 
of disregard. Charles?s choice to hold the ceremony at Holyrood Abbey instead of the abbey at 
Scone provides one example. Some scholars point to it to indicate Charles?s shortcomings, but 
no one alive during Charles?s reign had ever witnessed a coronation at the ruined abbey.
342
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
339
 Allen Macinnes, Charles I and the Making of the Covenanting Movement, 1625-1641 (Edinburgh: John 
Donald Publishers, 1991), 128, 142-145.  
 
340
 Schramm, 99. 
 
341
 Wordsworth, 101;General Reference Office of Scotland. Papers Relative to the Marriage of James the 
Sixth of Scotland with the Princess Anna of Denmark, 1590 (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1828), 53. Hereafter 
referred to as Marriage of James. 
 
342
 Kishlansky, 70.  
105?
??
James?s coronation was a rushed ceremony at the Church of the Holy Rood outside Sterling 
Castle when he was an infant, and Charles?s mother Anne was crowned Queen at Holyrood 
Abbey in 1590.
343
  The Scots initially suggested St. Giles as the site ceremony, but Holyrood 
Abbey was a more traditional choice.
344
 The move from Scone can hardly have upset too many 
of Charles?s Scottish subjects, although the rejection of St. Giles, a strict Presbyterian 
congregation within Edinburgh, may suggest some underlying meanings in the location apart 
from tradition.  
 Charles?s Scottish coronation and the public ceremonies that surrounded it reveal the 
logistical challenges such ceremonies presented to a weak royal administration, and the king?s 
attitude toward such presentations, whether in 1626 or 1633. Charles?s letters to the Privy 
Council of Scotland and the Council?s directions to royal agents show the king?s determination 
to limit the possibilities of common access to the king?s person, and the need to take precautions 
to reduce the numbers of vagabonds and beggars in the crowd. In February 1633 the council 
reported: 
Great numbers of vagabond beggars repair from all parts of the country toward 
Canongate and Edinburgh where?their shameful exclamations and crying so troubles 
and wearies the noblemen and other subjects walking the street as they cannot 
conveniently attend their lawful affairs and business at the Council and Session.
345
 
 
It is obvious that word of the king?s arrival in the city attracted an unusual number of beggars to 
places the king was expected to pass. The council gave the responsibility of clearing these 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
343
 Marriage of James, 50.  
 
344
 [Patrick Walker ?], ed., Documents Relative to the Reception at Edinburgh of the Kings and Queens of 
Scotland (Edinburgh: 1822), 70.  
 
345
United Kingdom. The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, 2
nd
 series, ed. P. Hume Brown, 
(Edinburgh: Lords Commissioners of His Majesty?s Treasury, 1904), V:104-105. Spelling altered. Hereafter referred 
to as Privy Council of Scotland. 
106?
??
unwanted beggars to the burghs themselves, approving the collection of taxes in each borough to 
place these vagabonds in poor houses to keep them from harassing the king and his entourage.
346
 
Limiting the number of beggars that the king?s party passed en route to each city, however, 
would have proven much more difficult.
347
   
Specific directions to each of the nobles who were supposed to greet the king?s train on 
its progression to the capital were added to provisions regarding Charles?s baser subjects. They 
reinforced the need to meticulously control the specific subjects within the king?s immediate 
surroundings. For instance, the Earl of Dunfermline was commanded to ?have special care that 
no rascals, commons, or others be suffered to be in your lordship?s company, but gentlemen well 
horsed and in good equipage.?
348
 These directions and others like them, however, should not be 
taken to suggest that Charles dismissed the importance of the proper role of his common subjects 
in these ceremonies. The next sentence of the same directions made it clear that ?the commons 
are not to be hindered to stand along the gate sides to get a sight of his Majesty.?
349
 This 
statement very clearly shows that the crown understood how important it was for common 
subjects to be able to see the monarch, and went out of its way to ensure they would be able to do 
so. These points were reinforced by the conclusion of the orders explaining that these 
requirements were ?a point of service highly concerning his majesty?s contentment.?
350
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
346
 Ibid. 
 
347
 Similar orders and accompanying descriptions were issued before James?s 1617 visit to Scotland, so 
these efforts were by no means unprecedented. See Documents Relative to the Reception at Edinburgh, 61. 
 
348
 Privy Council of Scotland, 100-101.  
 
349
 Ibid., 101.  
 
350
 Ibid.  
107?
??
Still, Charles wanted to reinforce the separation between his person and his subjects. In 
his orders to the city of Edinburgh, he gave the city authority to organize the traditional standing 
guard to line the streets that he would pass through, but he also took the precaution of having the 
city organize a ?moving? guard to surround the king on the day of his entry into the city.
351
 
Charles took similar precautions when he finally made an Elizabethan style entry into London in 
1641, when he had a mounted guard posted along the city?s streets. Smuts presents this alteration 
as a specific response to the popular political protests that preceded the 1641 entry, but Charles?s 
actions in Edinburgh reveal Charles took similar steps long before the unruly crowds of the 
1640s.
352
 
Charles entered Edinburgh on June 15, 1633 to all the pomp and ceremony the city could 
devise. He was greeted by five formal arches and accompanying pageants with classical and 
historical themes, which he surveyed on his journey through the city to Holyrood House. It was 
the first time the city had welcomed a reigning monarch in sixteen years and the first time it had 
presented pageants to welcome a visit in over forty years. Surprisingly, there was little printed 
accompaniment surrounding the entry. The texts of the pageants were printed in Edinburgh along 
with a handful of welcoming verses, but no accounts of the actual progress were printed. Even 
more surprising is the fact that the coronation and entry pageants received no attention from 
London printers. One poem describing the king?s journey north still exists, but there were no 
London editions of the pageants or coronation printed.
353
   
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
351
 Ibid., 117.  
 
352
 Smuts, 92.  
 
353
 The Entertainment of the High and Mighty Monarch King Charles? (Edinburgh: 1633); Scotland?s 
Welcome? (Edinburgh: 1633); Grampius Gravitation? (Edinburgh: 1633); King Charles His Birthright? 
(Edinburgh: 1633); Poem on the King?s Most Excellent Majesties Happy Progress into Scotland (London: 1633). 
108?
??
It is possible that the nature of Charles?s Edinburgh festivities may have upset his English 
subjects, not because they would have offended their cultural sensibilities, but because they 
would have met London?s expectations perfectly. All of the aspects of Charles?s Edinburgh 
coronation combined to produce an almost perfect English coronation celebration. The state 
entry accompanied by pageants may have been rare in Edinburgh, but they were expected as 
standard procedure in London. The crimson robed Charles?s entry into Edinburgh on June 15, his 
solemn procession from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood before the coronation ceremony on June 
18, and the coronation ceremony itself were all in the traditional English fashion. Though the 
ceremonial anointing and white clad bishops may have upset the Scots? Calvinist sensibilities, 
they would have been expected in London. The railing that surrounded the elevated stage set up 
in Holyrood may have been a point of conversation in London, but it was one among several 
points of outrage in Edinburgh.
354
 
The robed bishops, who supposedly knelt on their entrance to the church, the crosses 
displayed near the ?altar? on the stage, and kneeling king who received communion ?with great 
reverence? left the Scots with little doubt of the dark, papist innovations that their English guests 
planned to introduce in Scotland.
355
 The long opening sermon, a Calvinist favorite, did little to 
sooth inflamed passions. The 200 gold and 1000 silver coins the almoner distributed to the 
gathered masses on the procession out of the church may have had some effect on the souls 
fortunate enough to receive them, but few were likely to forget that the hand that cast them to the 
crowd belonged to the Bishop of Murray.
356
  
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
354
 Wordsworth, 94.  
 
355
 Ibid., 94-106.  
 
356
 Wordsworth, xxv-xxx; xxvi.   
109?
??
Heylyn explained that Charles had little to do in Edinburgh but ?see and be seen.?
357
 He 
travelled in state to touch one hundred souls, both young and old, for the ?king?s evil? on June 
24
th
 in celebration of the nativity of St. John the Baptist.
358
He personally attended what he 
considered an almost perfect Parliament in a hall he had newly built for that purpose. And he 
travelled to a number of cities and burghs north of Edinburgh to see his kingdom and for his 
subjects there to see him.
359
 As Maurice Lee points out, Charles 1633 visit to Edinburgh was a 
logistical success.
360
 It was a success in the mind of Charles and his ministers as well.
361
 The 
king had travelled his country, been lavishly welcomed by his loving subjects, and achieved all 
of the financial and administrative goals he hoped to reach with the Scottish Parliament. As he 
left Edinburgh after spending a little over a month in Scotland, Charles had little reason to 
question his relationship with his Scottish subjects. They had proven their love time and time 
again. His subjects, however, were left holding the bill for a distant king who appeared to have 
little regard for their gifts or their religion. Charles proved himself willing to meet his subjects in 
person and display himself before them in all the state and ceremony possible. Unfortunately for 
Charles, the image he displayed was a foreign and alienated monarch intent on reaching into 
Scotland only to force his will on the kingdom?s pulpits and purses. 
 
III. Ceremonies, Spaces, and the Sacred 
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
 
357
 Quoted in Wordsworth, xxix. 
358
Marriage of James, 117. 
 
359
 Maurice Lee Jr., The Road to Revolution (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 126-135.  
 
360
 Ibid., 133.  
 
361
 CSPD, 1633-1634, 126, 128.   
110?
??
Both of Charles?s coronations left his subjects feeling alienated, unsure of the king?s intentions, 
and uncertain of his commitment to the traditional norms they held dear. In the London 
ceremony, the lack of tokens, printed descriptions of the festivities, and the procession through 
the city were most damaging to the ceremony?s potential to manifest and renew the personal 
bonds between subject and ruler because they limited real and symbolic access to the royal body.  
?One of the most important favors a monarch could bestow,? according to Sharpe, ?was 
admission into the royal presence: a sight of divine monarchy.?
362
 The royal body was sacred. 
Sacred was public in the most traditional sense: undeniable, universal, bonding, and legitimate. 
While ceremonies and rituals were opportunities to approach the sacred, physical places, printed 
accounts, relics, and images provided secular individuals with a real material connection to it. 
This contact created a sense of intimacy and knowledge because these objects were 
representative of actual physical contact with the revered. For many subjects, particularly the 
uneducated poor, the sacred was physically present in the symbol. This meant religious ideas and 
social concepts often had material manifestations within the personal world of each individual. 
The ladies who drove the recorder of St. Edmond?s to smash the church?s stained glass window 
after he discovered them making ?low curtsies?to God the Father in the [stained-glass] 
window? exemplify this point in their belief that God was actually in their parish window.
363
 
Charles?s failure to provide those relics meant individuals could not create personal connections 
to the king anointed. The monarch?s connection with the poor was special, just as grace was a 
divine gift to the depraved. The king healed their sickness; the king?s almoner traditionally 
handed out alms to the poor he encountered in his travels; and seeing the royal body would have 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
362
 Sharpe, Personal Rule, 630. 
 
363
 David Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603- 1660 
(Oxford: University Press, 1985), 51. 
111?
??
at least raised their spirits.
364
 The king?s presence was his gift to his subjects, both noble and 
common. By gracing his subjects with his presence, Charles showed his pleasure with them. He 
was also sharing his majesty and his Arcana, or the sacred nature that gave him mysterious 
knowledge, with them in some way. In the royal touch, he was sharing his sacred mystery with 
his subjects in the most intimate, physical way. The receiving of petitions and council, on the 
other hand, allowed them to share in the king?s most precious secular prerogative: the ruling of 
his kingdoms. During his London coronation in 1626, as Richards rightly suggests, Charles 
failed to do any of these things.
365
  
According to Richards?s account, similar failures characterized Charles?s public 
ceremonial forms until just prior to the Civil War. He was rarely seen, refused to allow all but a 
few of his subjects into his presence, and travelled as privately as possible. Charles, this line of 
argument clearly suggests, refused to play the public part of a king. The forms and displays of 
the 1633 coronation in Edinburgh, however, challenge such a view on several levels. First, 
Charles did not become ?increasingly withdrawn? from his subjects? view as his reign 
progressed. In fact, it would be safer to suggest the opposite. The 1633 celebration proves he was 
willing to present himself to his subjects, and, as Sharpe and Kishlansky have shown, he did so 
more frequently during the 1630s than in the first five years of his reign. The ceremonial reforms 
during Charles?s London coronation in 1626 show Charles?s penchant for ceremony and sacred 
symbolism, but the public forms of the celebration cannot be taken as any type of precursor to 
the king?s public policy during the personal rule. Those policies were actually much more 
consistent with the nature of the king?s Scottish coronation. Any search for the possible 
connection between Charles?s reformations of public rituals or the king?s role in ceremonial 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
 
364
 Richards, 77, 113.  
365
 Ibid., 113. 
112?
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functions and his ultimate failure to ensure the personal loyalty of his subjects is therefore better 
understood if viewed in relation to public forms and reception of the festivities in Edinburgh in 
1633 rather than the London ceremony in 1626.   
 The ceremonial nature of Charles?s court and the public ceremonies that publically 
displayed it have received a great deal of recent attention from both political and cultural 
historians.
366
 Simultaneously, the prevailing consensus that Charles?s religious policies and 
reforms throughout the 1630s were uniquely responsible for the unrest that allowed the crises of 
his later reign to take the shape the did has also led historians to dissect the public nature of the 
religious ceremonies and services of the Laudian church.
367
 In both instances, historians see 
Charles?s public spectacles and religious reforms as having been more controlled, orderly 
ceremonies than those of his predecessors. Sharpe?s describes the court reforms of the late 1620s 
and 1630s as having placed an emphasis on the physical separation of the royal body, and the 
reduction of access to the space around it. Charles used his Gentlemen Ushers to control access 
to his person, making his every interaction into a ritual of kingship. Rituals, according to Sharpe, 
that ?publically emphasized the reverence due to the king?s body and the mystical majesty of 
monarchy.?
368
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
366
 The terrific work of Richards, Smuts, and many other cultural historians and literary scholars helped 
expand the discussion of politics beyond those few individuals recognized as ?politicians,? forcing many former 
?revisionists? to move beyond high-politics to defend their positions. The result has been something that appears 
very similar to what Sharpe hopefully described as a ?cultural turn? in the study of Stuart politics; Sharpe, 
Remapping, 19. 
 
367
 Altar railing has become the primary focus of these studies. For a brief historiography, see Kenneth 
Fincham, ?The Restoration of the Altars in the 1630s,? The Historical Journal, 44, 4 (Cambridge, University Press, 
2001), 919-920. For the local impact of these reforms, see David Cressy, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor 
and Stuart England (Oxford: University Press, 2000), 186-211.  
 
368
 Sharpe, Personal Rule, 218. 
113?
??
This was not limited to the confined spaces of the royal court or the king?s presence 
chamber. The ?concern with reverence and ritual became an obsession on public occasions.?
369
 
Such public occasions ?expressed the royal mind,? communicating an ?image of royalty,? even a 
?monarchial ideology.?
370
 Charles?s reforms to the festivities of the Order of the Garter on St. 
George?s day highlighted these ideas. Charles reinstated the tradition that the king publically 
proceed to Windsor the day before St. George?s day when the Order?s traditional celebration was 
held. He also modified the ?George,? the medallion bearing the image of St. George that each 
knight was required to wear at all times, to make the badge more religious in its imagery.
371
 All 
of these reforms were meant to communicate the virtues of manliness, order, chivalry, hierarchy, 
and chastity that were emphasized in Charles?s personal life to the public realm.
372
 
The religious forms of the Caroline Church continued the process, emphasizing the 
sacredness of specific spaces, and publically reinforcing the importance of divine order and 
proper reverence. Peter Lake?s seminal discussion of the ?Laudian style? describes the physical 
forms of the Church in the 1630s as focused on the ?divine presence in the world and more 
particularly within the church.?
373
 ?The typical Laudian interior,? according to Lake, ?with the 
altar railed at the east end of the chancel, perhaps a screen erected between the nave and the 
chancel,? did indeed present a picture, delineated in architectural or spatial terms, of the 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
 
369
 Ibid. 
 
370
 Ibid., 219. 
 
371
 Ibid., 219-220. 
 
372
 Ibid., 220. 
 
373
 Lake, ?The Laudian Style,? 164. 
114?
??
Laudian view of the Christian community.?
374
 It was a reaction against an idealized puritanical 
enemy who ?allowed the church to be used for all manner of secular purposes,? seeing the sacred 
church manifest, not it the spaces of houses of worship, but in the physical bodies of the 
individuals who made up the church.
375
 To Laudians, Lake explains, the godly saw themselves 
as the holy objects, rather than the physical spaces of the nation?s cathedrals. In making all 
parishioners come to the newly placed altar to kneel at the railed off spaces demarking the sacred 
presence of the holy and divine on earth, the Laudian emphasis on sacred spaces aligned neatly 
with the renewed emphasis on ceremony and ritual both inside the court and in its public 
displays. Each of the elements, as seen in the previous pages, was present in the ceremonies and 
celebrations in Edinburgh, making the 1633 coronation a unique example of what Lake and 
Pincus describe as the ?unique cultural politics? of the 1630s. Cultural politics, they seem to 
suggest, that were uniquely responsible for the distrust and unrest that ultimately allowed all of 
Charles?s kingdoms to take arms against him during the Civil Wars. 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
374
 Ibid., 177-178. 
 
375
 Ibid., 179. 
115?
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Conclusions 
 
The preceding pages describe aspects of the public debates that surrounded Charles in the early 
years of his reign and attempt to explain how his reaction to them shaped the policies and 
performances of his later years. They describe an erosion of traditional, personalized authority in 
the mid-1620s that forced the individual persons in public positions (i.e. ?the authorities?) to 
justify their statements without relying on the authority inherent in offices they held. Critics 
initially questioned the king?s policies and decisions indirectly, but publically, by critiquing his 
closest temporal ministers and his spiritual advisors. The king?s exclusive power to judge these 
two groups lay at the very heart of his control over the systems of governance.  Bishops and 
clergy officially interpreted the public doctrines of the Church of England and its positions on 
scripture. The king mediated their disagreements and judged their debates in conference; his 
approval basically determining the winner of a particular debate.  The same was true of his 
temporal councilors who developed and debated government policy in his councils.  The king 
judged the performance and worthiness of the men within all of these councils.  
 The king?s ability to protect these ministers from public and parliamentary criticism was 
absolutely necessary in order to preserve his power, but rarely, prior to the 1620s, was the 
monarch forced to demonstrate this power. Instead, these men and the crown protected their 
position by directly and indirectly refuting criticisms in the same manner that they were 
presented: they simply countered the argument against them by deploying commonly accepted 
sources of truth to refute their critics? claims. Clerics used the same scripture to defend 
themselves that their critics deployed to attack them. The king?s secular councilors responded 
116?
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with the legal and historical sources that their critics? used to legitimize their public critiques. 
These methods required the existence of both a universally accepted source of truth and a 
commonly-held conception of the ideal forms of governance. The growing belief that what 
benefited the universal community of the ?state? was not necessarily the same as what benefited 
the individuals in public positions that traditionally represented or made up the state eventually 
destroyed myths of mutual interests.  
Members of the regime itself instigated the earliest public debates hoping to persuade the 
monarch to some particular policy or action, but the possibility of separating the traditional 
positions of public authority from the public good allowed other members of society outside the 
court to make public statements under the guise of protecting the ?state? or church from the 
corrupt individuals that claimed to represent it in public positions. Still, the monarch was seen as 
the arbiter and judge of these debates as well as those within his traditional religious and 
temporal councils. Since his decisions were reflected in the actions and statements of the 
government, it was rare for the king to publically express specific judgments on these debates. 
On the few occasions in which he did, James?s decisions at the Hampden Court Conference in 
1604 for instance, the king publically heard all the information and his decisions carried his 
personal authority as delivered from his own mouth. Such an explicit approach removed the 
possible threats of corrupt ministers or bad councils and made clear the legitimate, definitive 
judgment of the king. In these cases, it was impossible to question the king?s actions and 
statements without attacking the king himself. Though the clear enunciation of the king?s 
personal word and authority protected such specific statements, it also made them undeniably 
dangerous, a desperate tactic of last resort that potentially put the foundations of monarchy itself 
into play. 
117?
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In 1625 and 1626, however, Charles was forced to increasingly wager his own personal 
authority to protect secular and spiritual authorities from public and parliamentary criticism by 
over-extending and over-clarifying royal positions that were normally much more withdrawn and 
generally stated.  Parliament avoided directly confronting the king by justifying Montagu?s 
prosecution on procedural grounds in 1625. The 1626 impeachment of Buckingham, however, 
carried a more obvious assault on Charles?s judgment. Charles and his ministers? failure to win 
enough support in parliament through traditional arguments left them with few options other than 
the personal intervention of the king. After Charles dismissed parliament, he attempted to 
persuade his subjects with the same ineffectual justifications he gave to the MPs. They explained 
the immediate situations that made unusual procedures and policies necessary, and the king 
promised that he would reward their loyalty with a new parliament as soon as possible. Charles?s 
requests failed, however, because his subjects simply responded by restating the need for 
parliamentary approval. The basic question, then, seems to be why Charles and his ministers? 
efforts in the 1625 and 1626 Parliaments failed to win support?  
Charles?s failure in parliament cannot be separated from the contexts and events that 
made the meeting necessary. The religious wars, debates, and unrest that welcomed Charles to 
the throne in 1625 presented him with an unprecedented combination of political and cultural 
challenges to his authority and to his kingship. Many of these difficulties were the result of long-
term processes or inherited circumstances that had affected Elizabeth and James, but James never 
faced the type of broad crisis that occurred in his son?s early reign. At the center of it all was a 
widespread perception of change and innovation that was both a product of and contributor to the 
culture of distrust that accompanied the crises and challenges of the 1620s. These perceptions 
118?
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shaped both the language of public religious and political debates, as well as the nature of state 
ceremonies and performances.  
Many Englishmen, as Chapter I reveals, believed Charles?s lax policies regarding his 
wife?s Catholic co-religionists and his protection of Montagu confirmed their long-held fears that 
Charles?s marriage would lead to the destruction of the fundamental Protestant character of the 
Church of England. Parliamentarians and pastors railed against ?Arminian? writers and the 
clerics who defended them, accusing both groups of secretly supporting the Roman Church and 
betraying the one True Church. In Chapter III the distrust between the king and his public 
generated controversy over Charles?s coronation. In May 1625, many subjects saw ?some 
mystery? behind Charles?s decision to delay his coronation apart from the risks and demands of 
the war and the plague. In the same month others suggested that the new king delayed his 
coronation because he wanted to gain more absolute power by not swearing to uphold the laws as 
required in the coronation oath. The controversies over the forced loan discussed in Chapter II 
seemed to confirm many Englishmen?s suspicions about the king?s disregard for the ancient 
laws. Distrust and a fear of disorder and instability permeated the language and displays of 
political culture and cultural politics in Charles?s first five years as king.  
The ?mystery? some men saw in the timing of Charles?s coronation portrayed secret 
motivations and causes, but carried larger theological baggage as well. ?Mystery? could describe 
the mystical, symbolic presence of God as well as an aspect of faith beyond the reach of human 
logic. Both theological definitions implied the presence or influence of a higher power, along 
with secret knowledge or justification of specific actions that mediated between that power and 
lesser subjects. This special knowledge was not part of the publically available explanations, 
however, much like the pejorative ?private? signified a singular, uncommon belief or behavior. 
119?
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Those men who shared Prynne and Burton?s belief that God?s grace allowed every member of 
?the elect? to understand and interpret God?s word rejected the mysterious knowledge priest and 
clergy formerly claimed. Applied to political actions, this mode of thought asked ?why could any 
of the reasons behind government actions not be publically explained unless if they were 
illegitimate?? Such motivations, beliefs, or other ?mysteries? were secretly hidden from open 
sight because they were extraordinary suspensions of the ordinary, natural order.  
Chapters I and II are studies of specific public attempts to remove the ?mystery? from the 
doctrines of the Church and the policies of the government of England. The Calvinist position in 
the debates over predestination claimed God, through singular, absolute power, decided who to 
save and damn, but it also suggested that men could understand the specifics of God?s actions 
and the nature of salvation. The political and legal debates in Chapter II arose as subjects 
demanded these same specifics from their king and his ministers. In both examples, individuals 
claimed that ordinary men outside traditional positions of authority had the same inherent ability 
to judge as those who held public positions, whether in the interpretation of scripture and law or 
judging the fitness of government ministers. Chapter III shows Charles?s public ceremonies 
attempted to re-establish that ?mystery? after 1629 by tightly ordering public spectacles and 
limiting access to the royal body itself. Close control of access to the king forced appeals through 
traditional channels that were part of the hierarchical structure of society, while also making the 
area around his sacred body more awe-inspiring. Mystifying the king and the Church through 
ceremonies and spaces that reflected hierarchical order reaffirmed the role of councilors and 
clergy as intermediaries between the sacred and the subject. At the center of both stood an 
uncontestable sacred space and body, claiming unquestionable power over interpretation and 
judgment.    
120?
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II. Writing, Rhetoric, and the Public Sphere 
 
England saw much change and disorder in Charles?s first five years on the throne. A new king 
married to a Roman Catholic queen led the country into war after a generation of peace. The 
Protestant forces on the continent, the defenders of True Faith whose very survival seemed 
connected to their own, appeared to be in danger of total defeat at the hands of the Habsburg 
armies. Plague tore through London and the suburbs, and the economy stagnated under pressure 
from pirates off the coast and the war?s obvious impact on trade. Soldiers were billeted in private 
homes, and towns were forced to meet their demands when the government who called them 
could not. In the following years, unruly bands of unpaid soldiers criss-crossed the countryside 
while the crown attempted to pay them through unprecedented means of taxation. Even in the 
house of God, listeners heard about the secret danger posed by the Papists and the Arminians as 
wells as from the Puritans. Everywhere Englishmen turned in the first five years of Charles?s 
reign, they were alerted to imminent dangers and persistent crises. Such anomalies and threats 
justified typically unheard of public action by common individuals, acting to protect their society 
and their faith. 
Still, how real was the crisis of 1625-30? Were these circumstances actually threatening 
the stability of the realm, or was the perception of crisis the salient feature of Charles?s early 
reign? In published works, discussions of crisis and disorder in turn served as a rhetorical device 
to justify public appeals by those outside traditional public positions. Writers and speakers 
publically referenced unprecedented dangers and actions to legitimate breaches of social norms 
unthinkable under typical circumstances. In times of peace, royally approved events such as 
121?
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entries, coronations, or parliaments temporarily suspended normal order, and granted subjects 
freedom to act outside the everyday rules of society. The presence of the king was an integral 
part of these suspensions; the men in parliament or the audience for an entry technically became 
part of his court and council, and were therefore extraordinary. During periods of crisis and 
disorder, however, the crises and events themselves suspended the traditional norms regulating 
public speech and many other public behaviors. This led to the rhetoric of eminent threat and 
crises, which permeated publications in the 1620s, as a means of justifying public criticism. It 
also makes discussions of change, disorder, or innovation in published works unreliable as a 
gauge of true public perception because the change was presented as a justification for the work 
itself. 
In the case of private letters, even those intended for semi-public circulation such as 
Joseph Mede?s newsletters, one need not rely on accusations of change, disorder, and 
innovations to justify writing. By its very nature, epistolary writing focuses on the unusual and 
on change. It is, after all, a medium for relaying ?news,? events that are unique and singular. 
Since singular and unusual events and behaviors were commonly interpreted as ominous portents 
of divine dissatisfaction dangerous to the natural order, ?news? was by its very nature negative. 
Mede?s letters are almost hysterical as they report change, threat, and innovation. In this way, 
they can mislead modern readers into assuming a more widely held perception of crisis because, 
in reality, relaying the news meant that the author focused on change and disorder.  
Mede?s information either came from men who frequented ?Paul?s walk,? the long nave 
aisle of St. Paul?s where fashionable and educated men discussed the news they received from 
the most recently delivered merchants? correspondence, or from his fellow divines who received 
and transmitted information through their own correspondence networks. Merchant packets 
122?
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naturally described recent events and new conditions affecting trade, almost always negative 
changes that threatened investments during years of war and instability. Mede?s clerical source 
likely shared the beliefs that led the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to call him the 
?father of English millenarianism.?The basic foundation of millenarianism, the belief that Christ 
will physically return to Earth to personally reign over one thousand years of peace (the 
millennium), required necessarily unique, singular, and extraordinary events as proof of Christ?s 
imminent return because the scripture claimed wars, plagues, and famines would mark the days 
leading up his arrival. Both Mede?s sources focused on the negative and unusual.  
Just as it was necessary to argue against some imagined change in order to affect any 
actual change, some expectation of news was necessary to initiate the discussions through which 
news was transmitted outside of traditional sites of conversation and correspondence. Though 
printed and written communication receives most scholarly attention, long-established social 
institutions were at the center of communication even in periods that involved such ?novel 
techniques? in written and printed exchanges. The public statements during the opposition to the 
marriage were obviously political, but they were presented in churches and during religious 
meetings, which were the centers of social interaction from the smallest parish church in the 
country to St. Paul?s in London. In these spaces, the community, as a united congregation of 
worshipers, came together as an embodiment of the commonweal. These were open spaces with 
largely unrestricted access where information was exchanged, and the individual physically took 
his or her position within a visual representation of society as a whole. 
Such a view allows for the contextualization of the theological motivations for Charles?s 
religious reforms, which were predominantly focused on the ?holiness? of physical spaces, and 
the prescribed ordering of the services held in those spaces. When viewed as information centers 
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rather than simple houses of worship, the spaces and functions of churches and their reformation 
take on new importance. Rather than the product of high-theology, Charles?s reforms can be seen 
as an attempt to control social interaction by controlling the physical spaces of social arenas, 
thereby indirectly controlling the conduct of individuals within those arenas. These reforms, like 
all of Charles?s policies, were an attempt to refocus and reconstruct a hierarchical view of society 
that operated through a clearly defined, visibly manifest network of rank, emanating from one 
central and universal authority. Though, in theory, God was that power, its earthly distribution 
was channeled through the king. Just as God was the source of all grace, the king controlled the 
marks of privilege and honor on Earth: the renewed reverence of the Order of the Garter, for 
example. 
Lake and Pincus point out, as I have above, that the crises Mede and others reported, 
whether real or imagined, justified public appeals. Men claimed emergencies to defend 
themselves of accusations of ?popularity.? Crises and threats were reported in the same public 
arena whose very existence they justified. Lake and Pincus suggest such appeals called into 
being, or implied the existence of, a public capable of rational judgment based on the 
information it was given. The question, however, is to what extent this rhetorical strategy and the 
language of crisis made Lake and Pincus?s public sphere necessarily self-perpetuating, constantly 
expanding from the point of initiation with each supposed crisis? In this process of expansion, 
once the rhetorical strategies of justification reached certain polarized positions, no reasonable 
room for reconciliation remained. As Cust argues, the ground for negotiation eroded in the 
1620s. Polarization was the natural end of the temporary public spheres Lake and Pincus 
describe. Cust sees this erosion as the result of changes in the regime?s ideological position and 
the rhetoric that accompanied it. The radical evolution of the rhetoric and change to the 
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ceremony of kingship, however, may belie to some extent the importance of ideological change. 
In a political culture whose forms were based on an ingrained distrust of the unknown individual 
actor, reasoned negotiation was circumscribed by the radical rhetoric of crisis necessary to 
legitimate public expressions of dissatisfaction. 
 This rhetoric of crisis paralleled the actual parliamentary strategies of self-preservation. 
By the public identification of new problems, parliamentary men could claim the need to remain 
in session. Such comparisons led to the even larger question of the exact relationship between 
Lake and Pincus?s public spheres and the existence and nature of parliament. If both acted and 
questioned in this way, taking similar forms, then they certainly interacted in a complex, multi-
faceted manner, with each somehow dependent on and reacting to the nature, even the existence, 
of the other. Though the questions of how the politics of the public sphere directly influenced the 
manner of the parliamentary proceedings or what role a sitting parliament played in the creation 
of a public sphere are important, it is more reasonable to conclude that the shared forms were 
indicative of a key feature of the political culture of the period: a depersonalized conception of 
true, public authority free from the corruption inherent in associating the authority of public 
positions with the unquestionable judgment of the individuals who filled them. It was the product 
of the internalized distrust of the individual, the stranger, or the always deceptive actor that 
characterized so much of early Stuart popular and political culture. The rhetoric of crisis drew 
upon the community?s general suspicion of individuals and outsiders and its growing fear of 
private motives and disingenuous persons in order to justify public speech. Such rhetoric 
inflamed and created distrust far beyond the social and demographic shifts it responded to, 
changing a climate of circumstantial misgivings and doubts into a popular culture of constant 
uncertainty, hyper-sensitive to the slightest perception of innovation or change.  
125?
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The institutional conflicts of the late 1620s were part of the same process. The 
contemporary understanding of ?public? as an institutionalized common good and its 
personalized evil counterpart shaped the perception of personalized authority?s danger to the 
integrity of the innately ?good? institutional systems and procedures. It was never the monarchy 
or parliament that was the problem, but the individual men misleading it. Simultaneously, the 
Church of England had an established orthodoxy as close as possible to the ancient church, but it 
was being perverted by disingenuous individuals. The popular faith in the legitimacy of the 
institutions of power was undermined by the persons within those institutions perceived to be 
acting in private, diabolical interests. With all other institutions motivated by the private desires 
of dangerous individuals, the legitimacy of a totally impersonalized institution such as 
parliament could only increase. 
The growth of depersonalized institutions and authorities corresponded with the rise of 
the intellectual movements centered on the belief in universally available, legitimizing truths 
independent of personalized, definite sources of ?right? and ?wrong.? History, Common Law, 
and religious texts created dangerous avenues of authority outside of the traditional, personalized 
systems of authorization and legitimization. Charles was able to remove parliament as an 
institutional avenue for dissent, but the shroud of institutional balance was destroyed. Parliament 
had previously been merely another institution of control that provided an illusion of council and 
popular participation, but it slowly assumed the role of judging the personal authorities of other 
institutions. After the end of parliament, Charles was able to control the other institutions of 
power, but this could only reinforce the power of parliament in its position as the institutional 
avenue of legitimization. 
126?
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The crown was not losing specifically its ability to govern or systematically control 
subjects. It was losing its ability to protect the institutions of control themselves from allegations 
of diabolical personal interest. The loss of control stemmed from institutional conflict between 
legislative, judicial, academic and religious powers generated by the ever-increasing, constantly 
widening public and parliamentary discourse on the origin and nature of authority. This struggle 
ultimately forced the monarchy into closing the institutions of control that it previously relied on. 
The monarchy responded by attempting to reinforce the central authority of the king himself to 
compensate for the lack of institutional mechanisms of power. Withdrawing from possible 
avenues of council allowed the monarchy to centralize the perceived source of authority in the 
person or choice of the monarch by reducing the possibilities of alternative authorities. It also 
meant focusing all distrust and blame on a single source: a tyrannical, crypto-Catholic king bent 
on eliminating the proper institutions of public authority. Ultimately, the violence of the civil 
wars would destroy the myths of institutional purity and thereby allow the dissolution of the 
monarchy. By the time of the wars, however, those myths were all that remained of the divine 
kingship whose final embodiment the anarchy and violence of the 1640s eventually destroyed. 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
127?
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