The ‘Royal Portrait’ and the Commonwealth of King Jesus

William Marshall’s‘s frontispiece of the Eikon Basilike (Greek:Εἰκὼν Βασιλική
Wikimedia Commons :Licence

February 9th 1649 saw the publication of the so called Eikon Basilike (Greek: Εἰκὼν Βασιλική, the ‘Royal Portrait’), an anonymous ‘hagiography’ of the newly executed King Charles I as martyr, attributed to Charles himself, but more likely the work of others; some as yet quite probably unidentified. As is always the case, scholars are divided as to the true authorship of the work. Whatever the truth though, the speedy impeachment and speedier death of the unfortunate King in the wake of the Second English Civil War would usher in what many of the King’s enemies would see as golden age of religious freedom described by Professor Alec Ryrie in his November 2016 Gresham College Lecture as ‘The Republic of King Jesus‘.

‘To Kill A King!’ From Execution to Restoration, The Act of Prohibition of 1649

The death warrant of King Charles I and the wax seals of the 59 commissioners
Wikimedia Commons Licence

The 29th January 1649 is perhaps the most momentous day in the history of the English Monarchy, for it was on this fateful Monday that the last of the fifty nine of the Commissioners, who had previously sat in judgement at the trial of King Charles I and would now make themselves complicit in his execution, came together in Westminster to sign the death warrant for the execution of the King. Although they must have realized the historical and political significance of what they themselves were doing, few if any of them were even remotely aware at the time that their signatures would later be used in evidence to convict and condemn them as regicides; something which would in turn result in a number of those present actually being physically disinterred and posthumously executed some little time after their own respective decease.

The following day, directly after the King’s execution, Parliament had issued ‘An Act prohibiting the proclaiming any person to be King of England or Ireland, or the Dominions thereof’. Thus bringing an end to the British Monarchy once and for all. Or so it seemed at the time. The words of the Bill set out in detail the Parliamentary case for abolishing the Monarchy, and reflect the kind of sentiments that many of those serving in the New Model Army had been openly voicing for quite some considerable time:

‘Whereas Charls Stuart King of England, being for the notorious Treasons, Tyrannies and Murthers committed by him in the late Unnatural and Cruel Wars condemned to death; Whereupon, after Execution of the same, several Pretences may be made, and Title set on foot unto the Kingly Office, to the apparent hazard of the Publique Peace: for prevention thereof, Be it Enacted and Ordained by this present Parliament, and by Authority of the same, That no person or persons whatsoever do presume to Proclaim, Declare, Publish, or any way promote Charls Stuart, Son of the said Charls, commonly called, The Prince of Wales, or any other person to be King, or Chief Magistrate of England, or of Ireland, or of any the Dominions belonging to them, or either of them, by colour of Inheritance, Succession, Election, or any other Claim whatsoever, without the free consent of the People in Parliament first had, and signified by a particular Act or Ordinance for that purpose, Any Statute, Law, Usage or Custom to the contrary hereof in any wise notwithstanding.’

Although the Trial and Execution of King Charles I has been discussed at length by many historians, both past and present, in some considerable detail, few if any ever focus on the ‘get out clause’ written into the preamble of the 1649 Act; which may have formed the legal basis not only for the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, which followed hot on the heels of the Commonwealth and Interregnum, but also the subsequent Restoration of King Charles II and the Stuart Line in 1660. The clause, which sets out the ability of Parliament to lawfully restore the Monarchy at any future time, reads as follows: ‘None to Proclaim Ch. Stuart or any other person, King,; without the free consent of the people in Parliament,….’ This seems to suggest that certain elements within the Parliamentary hierachy had elaborate plans of their own with regard to the future course of English government long before the ink and the sealing wax was even dry upon the King’s Death Warrant. Something that we shall be looking at in considerably more depth at a future juncture.

Major-General Thomas Harrison, himself among the signatories found guilty of regicide at the Restoration
Wikimedia Commons Licence

Pleased to See the King: Twelfth Night, Paganism and the Execution of King Charles I

David Teniers (II) – Twelfth-night (The King Drinks) Wikimedia Commons

This year’s celebratory Christmas post from the ‘Lord Thomas Grey’s Regiment of Foot’ English Civil War blogspot looked at Puritan attitudes to the Festive Season; with particular reference to Parliament’s decision, in 1644, to replace the usual Christmas festivities with what is generally referred to in the language of the time as a ‘Solemn Fast’. Although ‘Lord Grey’s’ blog looks at the alliance between Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters north of the Border as one of the deciding factors in the reasoning behind the December 1644 Ordinance, Christmas was seen by Puritans generally, both here and in places like New England, where the Parliamentary faction in the English Civil War had found many of its most ardent supporters, as being an outward manifestation of paganism and idolatry; and as such a wholly undesirable social phenomenon.

Among the overtly Pagan Folk Songs and Traditional Customs that Parliament clearly sought to outlaw, along with all of the attendant trappings of drunkeness and licentiousness with which they were associated, were games such as Haxey Hood or Hunting the Wren, and related songs such as ‘The Wren Boys’ Song’. Indeed, the English Antiquarian John Aubrey, whose principal patron, Sir James Long, 2nd Baronet (c. 1617 – 22 January 1692), was a noted acquaintance of Protector Cromwell, in spite of his Royalist proclivities, gives us an interesting insight into how such customs were viewed by the seventeenth century English ruling elite, generally; with the following 1696 reference to the Irish version of ‘Hunting the Wren‘; blaming it all on the idolatrous Catholics: ‘Near the same place, a party of the Protestants had been surprised sleeping by the Popish Irish, were it not for several wrens that just wakened them by dancing and pecking on the drums as the enemy were approaching. For this reason the wild Irish mortally hate these birds, to this day, calling them the Devil’s servants, and killing them wherever they catch them; they teach their children to thrust them full of thorns: you will see sometimes on holidays, a whole parish running like mad men from hedge to hedge a wren-hunting.’

Given the overtly Papist and indeed Pagan associations between traditional English Folk Customs, such as the Feast of Epiphany, and Folk Songs such as ‘Please to See the King‘, both of which have been linked ultimately by the likes of J. G. Frazer with the sacrifice of the Pre-Christian ‘Year King‘, it is perhaps significant that on 6th January 1649 Parliament confirmed its intention to place the King on trial by the extremely narrow vote of 29 to 26. Following the establishment of a High Court at which to try him, the King’s trial for High Treason began on 20th January and ended with his execution just ten days later. The irony of the entire situation cannot be overlooked, especially when one considers that although the legal aspects of the proceedings were called into question time and time again by the King himself throughout the trial, the sentence and carrying out of the King’s execution resembles in so many ways the deposition of legendary British Kings as recounted by the Medieval pseudo-historian Geoffrey of Monmouth; whose work many in the Parliament of the time would doubtless have been familiar with.

Anonymous Dutch painting of the execution of Charles I, 1649; originally attributed to Jan Weesop.
Wikimedia Commons

The Great Conjunction of 1623 and the Rosicrucian Enlightenment

The Temple of the Rose Cross, Teophilus Schweighardt Constantiens, 1618
Wikimedia Commons Licence

Much mainstream media attention is currently focused on the imminent conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter which is scheduled to take place on Monday 21st December 2020, and which is being hailed as the first Astronomical event of its kind since 1623. Whilst some on social media and in the tabloid press have tried to represent this phenomenon as a contemporary manifestation of the Star of Bethlehem, little or no evidence exists to support such a click bait theory whatsoever. Indeed, the actual scientific evidence contradicts any such suppositions, as the conjunction will appear very differently in the skies to those observing it in different parts of the World.

At the time of the Great Conjunction of 1623 Europe was in the throes of the Thirty Years War. A series of events that had been sparked off by the Bohemian Revolt of 1618 to 1620. The Revolt had begun not long after the staunchly Catholic Austrian Emperor Matthias had sought to ensure the succession of his equally staunch kinsman, Ferdinand of Styria, to the Imperial title. Previous to this, the leaders of the so called ‘Bohemian estates’, for the most part a faction of exclusively Protestant minor nobles whose religious affiliations were largely Lutheran, Calvinist or Utraquist Hussite, had enjoyed extensive freedom of worship as a result of certain specific rights that had been granted to them by Emperor Rudolf II in 1609.

However, due to a situation of schismatic Protestant factionalism that had developed within the political landscape of the Bohemian Estates, Ferdinand had been elected Crown Prince of Bohemia, and therefore the lawful successor to its King, Matthias, in 1617. Upon his accession Ferdinand had dispatched two Catholic councillors to the castle at Prague as his personal representatives, with a view to their taking part in the administration of the Estates, in his absence, commencing in May 1618. However, on 23 May of that year, during the course of a riotous assembly of Protestants at Prague Castle, the pair had been seized, along with Philip Fabricius, Secretary of the German expeditionary office of the Bohemian Court Chancery, the most semior imperial official in Bohemia, and thrown out of the windows of the room in the Castle where the assembly had been taking place. An event recorded in the history books as the Second, or Third, Defenestration of Prague, depending upon which historian you read. These events were to set in motion the Bohemian Revolt, which subsequently spread to Silesia, Upper and Lower Lusatia, and Moravia.

 

‘The Third Defenestration of Prague’ (1618), contemporary woodcut by Johann Philipp Abelinus
Wikimedia Commons Licence

The result was a massive internal conflict between Catholics and Protestants throughout what was until recently modern Czechoslovakia, parts of Poland and modern Germany. Eventually the religious conflict spread even further afield, and came fo involve France, Sweden and a number of other European countries as well. On 4 November 1619 Frederick V of the Upper Palatinate was crowned King of Boehmia, having been persuaded to accept the crown on account of his position as head of the Protestant Union, which had been a powerful military alliance under his Father. Following his defeat at the Battle of White Mountain on 8 November 1620, just over a year after his Coronation, Hapsburg rule was effectively restored and all Protestant dissent in Bohemia and the other Czech lands ruthlessly crushed. The fall of ‘The Winter King’, as Frederick is generally known, led to the rise of, among various others, Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein (24 September 1583 – 25 February 1634), whose Valdštejnský palác, a major architectural landmark in the city of Prague, is presently the seat of the Czech Senate. All traces of the old Utraquist Hussite hegemony having been ruthlessly stamped out by the in coming regime.

Curiously, in the immediate run up to the outbreak of the Bohemian Revolt, a series of tracts, collectively known as ‘The Rosicrucian Manifestos‘, had appeared in print. Consisting of three anonymous works, appearing in 1614, 1615 and 1617 respectively, the ‘Manifestos‘ are obscure in nature and still shrouded in mystery. In spite of this they inspired a spiritual movement that has endured from those early beginnings in early seventeenth century Germany down to the present day. Frances A. Yates in her spellbinding historical study of ‘The Rosicrucian Enlightenment’, described by the Goodreads website as ‘A history of the role that the occult has played in the formation of modern science and medicine’, describes the impact of the ‘Manifestos’ on Central European Culture and thought in some depth. Indeed, as the editors at Goodreads have pointed out,’The Rosicrucian Enlightenment‘ has had a tremendous impact on our understanding of the western esoteric tradition. Beautifully illustrated, it remains one of those rare works of scholarship which the general reader simply cannot afford to ignore.’

Many of Frederick of Bohemia’s supporters came to associate the appearance of the ‘Rosicrucian Manifestos’, whether rightly or wrongly, with the rise and demise of ‘The Winter King,’ but the real influence at work was perhaps none other than the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II; who had moved the capital of the Habsburg Empire from Vienna to Prague in 1583. It was to be here that Elizabeth I’s Court Astrologer, and Magician, Dr. John Dee, had travelled in the company of his notorious assistant Edward Kelley, following an initial invitation to travel to Poland from the impoverished alchemist and nobleman Olbracht Laski. Coincidentally, at around the same time that Dee and Kelley had taken up residence in Bohemia, the renowned Jewish scholar, and creator of the infamous Golem, Judah Loew ben Bezalel, or Rabbi Loew, had likewise returned to the city of Prague.

The collective works of all of the aforementioned individuals are in truth among the principal antecedents of what was later to become ‘The Rosicrucian Enlightenment’, as described by Frances Yates. Previous to this, as has been suggested by an obscure work attributed to Kurt Albert Gerlach, translated during the latter part of the twentieth century by the Cambridge scholar Michael Behrend, Prague was a major centre of activity for Medieval Psychogeographers. A fact which may well have influenced Rudolf II’s decision to move his Court there in 1583 in the first place. In view of the extensive legacy of Alchemy and other philosophical ideas left behind in the Holy Roman Empire by John Dee and his circle, a legacy that remained very much alive long after his return to England at the end of the 1580s, it is inconceiveable that the Great Conjunction of 1623 would have passed unnoticed among Central European Astrologers and Alchemists of the time. Indeed, S.A.Kerman, writing in ‘The Rosicrucians and the Great Conjunctions‘, suggests that such phenomena exerted a major influence on the spiritual intellectualism of the period. In the abstract to the essay, which appears in John Christian Laursen and Richard H. Popkin’s collectively edited work ‘Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture Volume IV’; itself part of the International Archives of the History of Ideas/Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées book series; where it is suggested ‘that astronomical/astrological calculations based on several major conjunctions of the stars and planets were an important part of millenarian symbolism.’

John Dee’s legacy was inherited by Robert Fludd, the great English Paracelsian physician, astrologer, mathematician, cosmologist and Kabbalist, who, in many ways, was the human embodiment of Yates’s Rosicrucian Enlightenment. Dee was not only a witness to the Great Conjunction of 1623, which took place in July of that year, but also to the events that followed it. The Thirty Years War was still in full swing, and within weeks of the Conjunction Christian of Brunswick’s army had been annihilated by the Count of Tilly at the Battle of Stadtlohn, thus consolidating further the position of the Imperial Autocracy; following Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria’s succession as Elector of the Electorate of the Palatinate in the wake of the defeat of the Winter King. The Great Conjunction of 1623 took place in the Sign of Leo, the sign of Sun Kings, Holy Roman Emperors, autocrats and despots. Although the 2020 Conjunction has Saturn in Aquarius, the fact that Jupiter and Pluto are still in Capricorn suggests that this Astrological, and Astronomical event, will be no less problematic for some of those in the political sphere who are out of favour with the Globalized Ruling Elite, with Uranus in Taurus making a direct square to our contemporary Aquarian Saturn.

“An Astrologer Casting a Horoscope”, from Robert Fludd’s Utriusque Cosmi Historia, 1617
Wikimedia Commons Licence

Charles Stuart ‘that Man of Blood’!

Contemporary German print of the execution of Charles I outside the Banqueting House. Based on the earliest European depiction of the execution Wikimedia Commons Licence

The execution of King Charles I on 30th January 1649 was perhaps the singlemost revolutionary act to have taken place on English soil since the Norman Conquest of 1066. The last time an English monarch had been deposed, apart from the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey who was never crowned, had been in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, more than a century and a half previously; and although the reigns of various English kings had come to an abrupt end over the centuries, most notably that of King Edward II, at no time in England’s history had a reigning monarch been put on trial and subsequently exectuted for crimes against his or her own people. The fact that this was a unique occasion not only in historical and political terms, but in legal terms as well, and was to lead to the setting up of a special ‘High Court of Justice‘ at which the King had been tried, was to make the entire process a revolutionary act unique in the history of Europe, if not the World.

The execution took place on a specially erected scaffold outside the Palace of Whitehall. Interestingly enough, the legal basis for his guilt and the guilty verdict of the Court at which he had been tried had been rooted in the work of the Dutch historian and legal scholar Issac Dorislaus, who was to enjoy considerable influence under the Parliamentary Commonwealth that had been established at the King’s death. These arguments were derived from various principles of Roman law that had formed the legal basis for the deposition of Rome’s last king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, and the establishment of the Roman Republic. The fact that this was effectively the first and only time that such a trial had taken place was to lead the King himself to challenge the validity of the Court, and the legal basis upon which he himself had been committed for trial at the outset. Something that he was to be less than successful in doing.

During the course of this trial the King had been described by his captors as ‘a Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer and Public Enemy to the good people of this Nation,’ in addition to being referred to by name as ‘the said Charles Stuart’, when the sentence of death was read out, instead of ‘His Royal Highness’; as he would have been accustomed. Charles’s refusal to recognise the legal basis of the hearing was only to make matters worse, and the fact that he had previously taken on the role of absolute monarch following the dissolution of Parliament on 2nd March 1629 only undermined his legal defence further. Although his conviction for treason was perhaps a foregone conclusion by the time that his trial had got underway, there were many opportunities throughout 1648, during his initial captivity and before his escape to the Isle of Wight, which, if the King has used them wisely, would have led to a far less drastic outcome for Charles himself.

Charles’s portrayal as ‘that man of blood‘ by the religious Independents, a powerful Protestant faction within the Parliamentary Movement and the New Model Army in particular, was itself at the heart of the verdict of the Court and the sentence that was finally handed down. Indeed, Cromwell’s own personal interpretation of a number of key Biblical texts, with specific reference to this particular issue, was to form the intellecutal basis for his own political stance in relation to the events of January 1649 and the subsequent establishment of the Commonwealth and Parliamentary Protectorate that were to succeed the abolition of the Monarchy.

Among the key Biblical texts that were to influence the case for Charles’s execution was the following from Chapter XXXV of the Old Testament ‘Book of Numbers’, vv.33: `Blood it defileth the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it’. Cromwell believed that the deaths brought about and the destruction wrought by the momentous events of the 1640s could not be atoned for without the shedding of the King’s own blood. Charles’s adherents on the other hand were to see these events as culminating in the effective ‘martyrdom’ of ‘God’s Annointed‘, in the form of the newly deposed, and subsequently executed, royal personage. Whatever the truth, or lack of it, in any of these diametrically opposed philosophical arguments, the historical lesson of the trial and execution of this, the second of the Stuart Kings, is the consequence of personal accountability in all matters relating to the interactions of a particular ruler and his or her subjects; regardless of whether or not the basis of his or her political rule is either secular or religious in nature.

The Apotheosis, or, Death of the King, a 1728 engraving depicting Charles I ascending to heaven after his execution. Wikimedia Commons Licence

Impeachment! A World Turned Upside Down?

A plate depicting the Trial of Charles I in January 1649, from John Nalson’s “Record of the Trial of Charles I’         Attribution: Wikimedia Commons

With Donald Trump about to join Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson as only the fourth President in the history of the United States to face an impeachment trial, it is perhaps unsruprising that few in America and even fewer in England are even aware that the legal precedent for such proceedings is rooted in the events of January 20th 1649, when the trial of King Charles I began at Westminster Hall. The trial itself is not only one of the landmark episodes of seventeenth century English history, with all the high drama of a contemporary television soap opera, but also of England’s constitutional history generally; in that it set in motion a chain of events that were to transform the institution of Monarchy from one of Absolutism, a state in which it had remained since the Norman Conquest of 1066 had established the Franco-Norman Ascendancy, into the Constitutional Monarchy that the United Kingdom presently enjoys.

As the media’s attention focuses on the involvement of such high flying legal personages as Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz in the impending legal process, names such as John Bradshaw of Wyberslegh Hall, not to be confused with the New York Times bestselling author of the same name, are pretty much almost forgotten. Although this may be somewhat unsurprising, given the radical nature of the Trial of King Charles I itself, it is a sad fact indeed that so many Englishmen, and indeed Englishwomen, are completely unaware of the historical and political legacies of the events which took place in January 1649 and how they have affected our own contemporary world. This, the first ever public trial of an English monarch by his own subject people, was to be quite literally responsible not only for the bringing about of the first ever successful European Revolution, in the context of how we ourselves presently understand the term, and an event which was to turn the seventeenth century political world of the Stuarts completely upside down.

The central thrust of the trial revolved around two diametrically opposed legal arguments. The King, in conducting his own defence, demanded by what authority he had been brought to trial in the first place. His accusers on the other hand, acting on behalf of the Army Council and the Rump Parliament, were to base their case for the prosecution around Charles’s breach of what was seen by his captors as the bond of sacred trust between the Monarch and his People as manifest in the Coronation Oath that he had taken when he had ascended to the throne in 1625. The words of the Articles of Impeachment read out at the trial are clear and unambigious, and accuse the King of seeking to ‘erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his Will, and to overthrow the Rights and Liberties of the People…..’ out of what they describe as ‘a wicked design’. ‘Sir, under favour it was the Liberty, Freedom, and Laws of the Subject, that ever I…… —defended myself with Arms…..’  came the King’s response; in a defence that he and his supporters viewed as being firmly grounded in the fact that the bill enacted by the Rump Parliament on 4 January 1649, to establish the ad hoc High Court of Justice at which Charles was to be committed for trial, had never obtained the Royal Assent and therefore had no basis in law.

I began this blog post with a reference to how the present impeachment process now running its course on the other side of the Atlantic is rooted in English law. A fact openly acknowledged by the authors of a report published by the 1974 Judiciary Committee in the immediate aftermath of the Watergate Crisis and the subsequent impeachment of Richard Nixon. These facts did not go unnoticed by Benjamin Franklin, who was himself accredited by Thomas Jefferson with having penned the hoax epitaph of John Bradshaw originally attributed to an anonymous engraver resident at Jamaica, not so very far from where the some would say infamous regicide’s ashes had been subsequently interred. In view of this it is perhaps also significant that a certain John Phelps, who had served first as Clerk to the High Court that had tried the King, and later as private secretary to Oliver Cromwell, should himself have been the ancestor of a number of prominent Americans of note. These are said to have included President James A. Garfield’s 1881 appointee as Ambassador to Austria-Hungary, William Walter Phelps, and the Hon. Charles A. Phelps, M.D. of Massachusetts, who together with his kinsman commissioned the memorial to their ancestor John Phelps that can presently be found at Vevey, Switzerland, where it can still be seen.

John Bradshaw (1602-1659) Engraving after portrait by George Perfect Harding (Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

 

The Forest of Dean Riots and the Loughton Leveller

Public Notice attributed to Warren James, leader of the Forest of Dean Rioters Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

In an earlier post on this blog we looked at the celebrated ‘Charter of the Forest’, described by the organizers of ‘The New Putney Debates‘ as ‘a companion document to the better-known Magna Carta’, first enacted in November 2017, and a major influence upon the Digger and Leveller Movements of the seventeenth century. The principal aim of the Charter of the Forest was to provide protection for the ancient rights of forest Commoners, a class of persons allowed by statute to obtain at least a portion of their livelihood from common land and communal tracts of woodland and forest. Although most of this class of freemen have long since died out in most parts of England, in a number of key locations, most notably the New Forest and the Forest of Dean, ancient Commoners Rights are still extant, and include a wide variety of activities principally aimed at preserving the environmental and cultural integrity of the local Commons.

These include the customary Beating of the Bounds, an ancient, and at one time universal, traditional custom which in many parts of England was used not only to collectively delineate the old parish boundaries, but also as a ritual means of acquiring continued access to Common Land. In many parts of England this custom has proven origins that date before the Norman Conquest, so it may come as no surprise that the inheritors of the Franco-Norman Ascendancy that had effectively established the Medieval Feudal System that prevailed in England under the Normans, the Plantagenets and their successors, were to engage in constant and ever more elaborate attempts to deprive the Common People of their rights of access to these ancient commons as the centuries progressed. A situation that has continued until this day. The principal legal code in which much of this Custom Law and Common Right appears to have been brought together and codified before the establishment of what was generally referred to as ‘The Norman Yoke’ by seventeenth century Radicals such as the Diggers and the Levellers, who sought to strengthen and redefine many of these ancient freedoms and entitlements, were the Ancient Laws of Winchester; sometimes referred to as ‘Cnut’s Winchester Code’.

Although many of these ancient rights had been effectively reestablished after the English Civil War, during the Commonwealth or Parliamentary Interregnuum, by the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a large scale attempt being made by the well to do and landed classes, helped by their friends in Parliament, to do away with them once and for all. This in turn had led to wholesale social unrest in many parts of the country, and riots ensued in the Forest of Dean following the passing of the Dean Forest Timber Act (1808). Much of the subsequent fencing off of some 11,000 acres (4,500 ha) of woodland which had been set aside for enclosure under the Act appears to have become subject to the new measures in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, at a time of great economic hardship and austerity for many ordinary people; and this may have been a major contributor to the violence and rioting that would subsequently ensue.

Perhaps the best known participant in the Forest of Dean Riots was their self styled ringleader Warren James, whose principal claim to fame was perhaps his conviction and subsequent transportation to Australia in 1831/2. By stark contrast, Thomas Willingale, who was himself involved in a more subtle method of passive resistance rooted in the ancient Traditional Custom of ‘Lopping’,  as a means of preserving the rights of the Essex Commoners, with particular reference to the ancient traditions of Custom Law and Common Right in and around his native Epping Forest, successfully escaped arrest and the trauma of a criminal trial by employing his wits instead of his fists, thereby outmaneuvering the machinations and guile of local landowner William Whitaker Maitland. In doing so he was to gain the support of the Buxtons of Warlies and Knighton, themselves prominent local gentry with links to the Commons Preservation Society, along with John T. Bedford, a key member of the City of London Corporation. This was to result in the Epping Forest Act of 1878, which has preserved the unenclosed parts of the Forest as publicly accessible recreational open space, and with it the memory of Thomas Willingale,  whose own anniversary years of 1799 (birth) and 1870 (death) fell last year’s New Year’s Eve and this year’s New Year’s Day respectively, down to the present day.

Interestingly enough, England was not the only European country where such widespread enclosures were taking place. As the journalist and broadcaster Stephanie Flanders has pointed out in her 2012 Open University documentary about the life and work of Karl Marx for the BBC, similar developments in Germany were to inspire the development of the founder of Marxism’s own political thinking. Indeed, some of the young Karl Marx’s earliest cotributions to the ‘Rheinische Zeitung‘ involved critical essays focusing on what he saw as the failings of the Rhineland Diet, at that time seated at Düsseldorf, to deal with the erosion of what had previously been similar examples of Custom Law and Common Right which had prevailed since the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, and in some cases even before, in favour of the landed classses.

‘Stylised mural of Warren James (1792-1841). Painted by Tom Cousins at The Fountain Inn, Parkend, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire’ (photo credit and caption  Obscurasky – Own work Wikimedia Commons licence

Remember, Remember, the Sixth of December!

Colonel Pride refusing admission to the Presbyterian members of the Long Parliament. (Engraving, c. 1652)  Creative Commons Licence  

The sixth of December 1648 was an important day in English Parliamentary history, but one that is often forgotten and rarely invoked by commentators on the British Parliamentary system generally. The reasons for this, although probably complex, are perhaps rooted in the fact that the British Parliamentary Establishment never seems to openly remind the electorate of previous historical situations which the current ‘Elite’, if that is a fitting way to describe them, may be anxious to avoid. The historical situation to which I here refer being that of ‘Pride’s Purge‘, one of the key landmark political events of the late 1640s, when England was still embroiled in its Second Civil War.

However, in spite of this, the ‘living-heritage‘ section of the UK Parliament website does make an albeit brief reference to Pride’s Purge; although the exact circumstances under which it took place are not necessarily dealt with in sufficient detail for your average layman to understand in any real depth whatsoever. To be brief, and to the point, following Parliament’s defeat of the Royalist Armies in 1646, Charles I had been taken prisoner and attempts had been made by the leaders of the Parliamentary military faction, generally known as ‘The Army Grandees’, who included Oliver Cromwell, his son-in-law Henry Ireton and other senior officers, to negotiate a settlement with the King. And, it was the continual attempts by certain elements within Parliament itself to actively frustrate this process that were to lead in turn to the set of circumstances which were to set in motion the events of December 6th 1648: culminating in Pride’s Purge.

Readers of this post will probably be starting to compare the events of 2019, and the seemingly unending Brexit Debate, and ultimate stalemate, which have effectively created the scenario that was in its turn to lead up to the recent decision by Boris Johnson to call an election on December 12th, with what was happening at the close of the 1640s. In fact there is no comparison at all, other than the fact that the present leader of the House has been unable to persuade a sufficiently large majority of MPs to vote his much hyped ‘Brexit Deal’ through; in the same way that the leaders of the Military Faction within the Parliamentary Movement of the 1640s had been unable to field a sufficiently large Parliamentary majority of their own to see their proposals approved by the House. There the similarity begins, and there it ends simultaneously. In spite of what Nigel Farage and his supporters may tell you, the EU is not an Absolutist Dictatorship and none of its representatives have thus far ever held the kind of power that King Charles I was able to exercise through his celebrated Royal Prerogative.

Attempts to limit the power of the Seventeenth Century Monarchy in England had begun as early as 1628, with the so called ‘Petition of Right‘. An attempt to enshrine certain basic rights in constitutional law, which would prevent the King or Monarch from infringing those rights and therefore provide some sort of legal protection for the lowliest of his or her subjects. As such, the ‘Petition of Right’ is seen first and foremost as the successor of the ‘Magna Carta‘ of 1215, and secondly as the predecessor to the Third, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Parliament’s failure to limit the power of the King in the decade that followed was to culminate in the First English Civil of 1642 to 1646. Following the Royalist defeat and the imprisonment of the King, however, Parliament itself was so ill equipped to deal with the grievances of a number of key elements within its Army Faction that an irreconcilable rift ensued, which would effectively result in the military coup d’etat generally known as Pride’s Purge.

On 29th May 1647 officers and men of the Parliamentary New Model Army had presented a document, now generally referred to as ‘The Solemn Engagement‘, to the House of Commons; following a threat from Parliament to disband its forces. The full title of the document first adopted on that date, which had been univerally accepted by the General Council of tne New Model Army, which was to all intents and purposes the main power in the land following the complete collapse of any organized Royalist command structure, was ‘A Solemne Engagement of the Army, under the Command of his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax’. At its core the document’s contents basically consist of a list of grievances the New Model Army felt Parliament needed to address before it was willing to stand down. These included a considerable arrears of pay among many units which had not received regular payment for long periods of time whilst hostilities had been on going.

Following his initial capture by Parliamentary forces, Charles I had done as much as he could to exploit the various factions within the Parliamentary Movement to his advantage. And, his subsequent escape during a key series of debates between those prominent members of the Army Council, historically referred to as ‘The Grandees’, and members of the disaffected ‘Leveller Movement‘ from within the New Model Army’s lower ranks, had sparked a Second Civil War. This was to continue until January 1649 when Charles himself had been executed. And, it was the fact that Charles had so masterfully played off each opposing faction within the Parliamentary ranks against the other that had necessitated the events of December 6th 1648 in the first place. Indeed, it was the King’s open encouragement of the anarchy that had ensued in the aftermath of his own succesful escape from Hampton Court Palace, that was to result in the decision by the Army Council that all further negotiations between Charles and Parliament should cease; and that he should be committed for trial as ‘The Man of Blood‘.

The day began with Colonel Thomas Pride drawing up members of Pride’s celebrated Regiment of Foot directly outside the entrance to St Stephen’s Chapel as the House of Commons was about to convene for its morning sitting. Nathaniel Rich‘s Regiment of Horse were also present, as was Lord Grey of Groby, who helped to identify some of those who were to be subsequently arrested. In all some forty five Members were taken into custody by troops standing on or about the stairs leading to the House, while Pride himself was stationed at the top of the stairs, overseeing the exclusion of a further one hundred and eighty six, who the Army Council believed unlikely to support its measures for establishing a court to try Charles I for high treason; for his role in the incitement of the Second Civil War. The resignation in protest of another eighty six disaffected Members was to result in the ‘Rump’ of remaining Members unilaterally forcing this through on 6 January 1649, in spite of protests from the Upper House.

An interesting anecdote which is generally missed out by most contemporary historians, when recounting the events of 6th December 1648, is that following the Restoration of 1660, which had taken place some two years after Pride’s own death in 1658, the Colonel was among those whose bodies were ordered to be dug up and suspended on the gallows at Tyburn. Others who were intended to face a similar fate were Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and the Lord President of King Charles I’s trial hearing, John Bradshaw, who had passed sentence on the King. According to tradition, Pride’s corpse had become so badly decomposed that it was impossible for this posthumous mockery of an ‘execution’ to be carried out. These barbarous acts illustrate fully the despotic nature of the system of Monarchy that those elements within the Parliamentary Movement, such as the Levellers, who had been suppressed under the Commonwealth on account of the nature of their radicalism, had fought so hard to bring to an end.

Remember! Remember, the Sixth of November! It’s 800 Years Since the Signing of the Charter of the Forest!

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The World Turned Upside Down: The Trials of Freeborn John

 

June and July are interesting months in the historical chronology of the Levellers. Three hundred and seventy two years ago next month sees the anniversary of the arrest of John Lilburne, the famous Leveller agitator, for the alleged slandering of William Lenthall, at that time the Speaker of the House of Commons. The grounds upon which the warrants were issued centred upon supposedly false accusations that Lenthall had been corresponding with Royalists. The fact that many of those within the English Civil War Parliamentary Movement, who were simultaneously members of the landed gentry and therefore represented the interests of wealth and privilege that had historically been aligned to the Crown, were ultimately seeking a compromise with the King and the establishment of a limited monarchy along modern constitutional lines, means that it is perfectly possible that these accusations were well founded. However, in the absence of hard evidence Lilburne had nothing to substantiate the claims that he had made and was therefore to find himself imprisoned.

That October, however, in spite of the gravity of what he had been accused of, Lilburne was to be released in the wake of a petition to the House of Commons which had been signed by over two thousand leading London citizens. This in itself would tend to suggest that many of the population, particularly among the limited classes who were at that time eligible to vote, not only shared his views but were willing to put their signatures to a document in order to defend them. Of further significance is the historic role of the London Citizenry in the crowning of each successive monarch in Anglo-Saxon times. Something that would feature much in the writings and discourse of many of those who were to become caught up in the Leveller Movement of which Lilburne himself was to all intents and purposes the founder.  A fact that is evidenced by reference to the transcripts of the Putney Debates.

But this was not to be the end of the affair by any means. The following year, in June 1646 Lilburne was to find himself arrested and imprisoned again. This time for slandering the Earl of Manchester, whom he had accused of protecting an officer who had been charged with treason. In addition to this he had also referred to Manchester, who had been Lilburne’s former commander prior to the latter’s resignation of his commission upon refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant, a matter we shall look at in detail in a future post, both as a traitor as well as a Royalist sympathiser.

On the eleventh of July 1646 Lilburne was brought before the House of Lords, and following a short trial, sentenced to seven years imprisonment. The Judgement of the House of Lords, dated the same day as his trial, that of 11th July 1646, is transcribed in full below:

“It is to be remembered, that, the Tenth Day of July, in the Two and Twentieth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King Charles, Sir Nathaniell Finch Knight, His Majesty’s Serjeant at Law, did deliver in, before the Lords assembled in Parliament at Westm’r, certain Articles against Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburne, for High Crimes and Misdemeanors done and committed by him, together with certain Books and Papers thereunto annexed; which Articles, and the said Books and Papers thereunto annexed, are filed among the Records of Parliament; the Tenor of which Articles followeth, in these Words:

“It was then and there, (that is to say,) the said Tenth Day of July, by their Lordships Ordered, That the said John Lilbourne be brought to the Bar of this House the 11th Day of the said July, to answer the said Articles, that thereupon their Lordships might proceed therein according as to Justice should appertain; at which Day, scilicet, the 11th Day of July, Anno Domini 1646, the said John Lilburne, according to the said Order, was brought before the Peers then assembled and sitting in Parliament, to answer the said Articles; and the said John Lilburne being thereupon required, by the said Peers in Parliament, to kneel at the Bar of the said House, as is used in such Cases, and to hear his said Charge read, to the End that he might be enabled to make Defence thereunto, the said John Lilburne, in Contempt and Scorn of the said High Court, did not only refuse to kneel at the said Bar, but did also, in a contemptuous Manner, then and there, at the open Bar of the said House, openly and contemptuously refuse to hear the said Articles read, and used divers contemptuous Words, in high Derogation of the Justice, Dignity, and Power of the said Court; and the said Charge being nevertheless then and there read, the said John Lilburne was then and there, by the said Lords assembled in Parliament, demanded what Answer or Defence he would make thereunto; the said John Lilburne, persisting in his obstinate and contemptuous Behaviour, did peremptorily and absolutely refuse to make any Defence or Answer to the said Articles; and did then and there, in high Contempt of the said Court, and of the Peers there assembled, at the open Bar of the said House of Peers, affirm, “That they were Usurpers and unrighteous Judges, and that he would not answer the said Articles;” and used divers other insolent and contemptuous Speeches against their Lordships and that High Court: Whereupon the Lords assembled in Parliament, taking into their serious Consideration the said contemptuous Carriage and Words of the said John Lilburne, to the great Affront and Contempt of this High and Honourable Court, and the Justice, Authority, and Dignity thereof; it is therefore, this present 11th Day of July, Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords assembled in Parliament, That the said John Lilburne be fined, and the said John Lilburne by the Lords assembled in Parliament, for his said Contempt, is fined, to the King’s Majesty, in the Sum of Two Thousand Pounds: And it is further Ordered and Adjudged, by the said Lords assembled in Parliament, That the said John Lilburne, for his said Contempts, be and stand committed to The Tower of London, during the Pleasure of this House: And further the said Lords assembled in Parliament, taking into Consideration the said contemptuous Refusal of the said John Lilburne to make any Defence or Answer to the said Articles, did Declare, That the said John Lilburne ought not thereby to escape the Justice of this House; but the said Articles, and the Offences thereby charged to have been committed by the said John Lilburne, ought thereupon to be taken as confessed: Therefore the Lords assembled in Parliament, taking the Premises into Consideration, and for that it appears by the said Articles that the said John Lilburne hath not only maliciously published several scandalous and libelous Passages of a very high Nature against the Peers of this Parliament therein particularly named, and against the Peerage of this Realm in general, but contrived, and contemptuously published, and openly at the Bar of the House delivered, certain scandalous Papers, to the high Contempt and Scandal of the Dignity, Power, and Authority of this House: All which Offences, by the peremptory Refusal of the said John Lilburne to answer or make any Defence to the said Articles, stand confessed by the said Lilburne as they are in the said Articles charged:

“It is, therefore, the said Day and Year last abovementioned, further Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords assembled in Parliament, upon the whole Matter in the said Articles contained,

“1. That the said John Lilburne be sined to the King’s Majesty in the Sum of Two Thousand Pounds.

“2. And, That he stand and be imprisoned in The Tower of London, by the Space of Seven Years next ensuing.

“3. And further, That he, the said John Lilburne, from henceforth stand and be uncapable to bear any Office or Place, in Military or in Civil Government, in Church or Commonwealth, during his Life.”

This passage, taken from the ‘House of Lords Journal Volume 8: 17 September 1646’, and subsequently published in the Journal of the House of Lords: volume 8: 1645-1647 (1802), pp. 493-494, presents the reader with a number of interesting legal anomalies: which may well explain the attitude of the defendant. The first of which is that the entire trial appears to have been conducted in the King’s Name, much as modern day criminal trials still are, by members of the English Civil War Parliamentary faction at a time when they themselves were engaged in armed struggle with the self same monarch in whose name Lilburne had been brought to trial.

The other interesting anomaly involves the fact that at no point in the trial transcript is there any mention whatsoever of the affair for which Lilburne was originally arrested. Namely, the accusations he is reported to have made against the Earl of Manchester. Indeed, this entire tract is suggestive of the fact that Lilburne was in reality on trial first and foremost for his ideas. And in particular those ideas which he himself had previously committed to writing. His’England’s Birthright Justified‘, published in October 1645, at about the same time as he had previously been released from prison, for example, defends the rule of law against arbitrary power. In it Lilburne argues that Parliament’s own power must be limited by law to protect the rights of the individual. The author also attacks the monopolies of preaching, in the form of the Established Church and its Ministers, the Merchant Adventurers who dominated the Wool Trade, and the Stationers’ Company who controlled the printing of all published books.

The subsequent campaign to free Lilburne from prison was to lead to the establishment of the entire Leveller Movement, including the political party of the same name. Following the spreading of false rumours that the Levellers, who wanted a complete end to the Monarchy and the House of Lords, were conspiring with the Royalists to overthrow the new republican government, which had come to be dominated by the landed classes, Lilburne himself was accused of incitement. On 26 October 1649 he was brought to trial yet again. This time at the Guildhall in London, where he was charged with high treason and with inciting the Leveller mutinies within the Army.

At his trial Lilburne spoke eloquently in his own defence: ‘Sir, will it please you to hear me? and if so, by your favour thus. All the privilege for my part that I shall crave this day at your hands, is no more but that which is properly and singly the liberty of every free-born Englishman, viz. The benefit of the Laws and Liberties thereof, which by my birthright and inheritance is due unto me; the which I have fought for as well as others have done, with a single and upright heart; and if I cannot have and enjoy this, I shall leave this Testimony behind me, That I died for the Laws and Liberies of this nation; and upon this score I stand, and if I perish I perish.’

Once again his was released from prison just as he had been on 14th October, 1645, this time after being acquitted by a jury. Of further interest is the fact that during his previous trial before the Lords it had been ruled that ‘the said John Lilburne be sined to the King’s Majesty in the Sum of Two Thousand Pounds’. This refers to a fine of £2000 that he had been ordered to pay on being found guilty.

The particular point of relevance here is that following his previous release from prison in October 1645, John Bradshaw, who would himself rise to prominence as President of the High Court of Justice for the trial of King Charles I and as the first Lord President of the Council of State of the English Commonwealth, had brought a case before the Star Chamber on Lilburne’s behalf in the matter of a large sum of back pay that he should have received while serving as a Colonel in the Parliamentary Army. The sum that  Lilburne was awarded as a result of this case, which amounted to some £2,000 in compensation for his sufferings, was never paid by Parliament and appears to have been at the heart of the later decision to arrest him in the affair of the Earl of Manchester. It is interesting to note then that the money he had been owed, and the sum he would later be fined, amount to precisely the same amount.

 

Picture Credit:   John Lilburne: Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Licence