Charles I: Personal Rule and Political Breakdown, 1629–40 (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes

Personal Rule: Religion and the Church

Why religious conflicts intensified during the Personal Rule

During Charles I's Personal Rule (1629-40), religious tensions escalated to dangerous levels. Without Parliament in session, opponents had no legitimate forum to voice concerns about the religious changes Charles and his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, imposed on the Church of England. The reforms Laud introduced from 1633 onwards appeared to many Protestants as a deliberate move towards Catholic practices, threatening the very foundation of England's reformed religion. These changes, combined with growing evidence of Catholic influence at Court, created widespread alarm and opposition that would eventually contribute to the breakdown of royal authority.

The Laudian reforms

In 1633, William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury and immediately issued new instructions requiring bishops to enforce uniform practices across all dioceses. Preaching was restricted to Sunday mornings and evenings only, replaced in the afternoon by teaching of the Catechism – the outline of doctrines and creeds set out in the Anglican Prayer Book, taught as questions with learned responses and appearing as set prayers in certain services. This substitution symbolised Laud's emphasis on authority and communal worship over the intensely personal, Bible-based faith encouraged by Puritan preachers.

Weekday lectures were banned entirely, removing a practice favoured by Puritans that had provided preaching opportunities for ministers who objected to ceremonies and sacraments required by the Prayer Book. Laud launched a legal challenge against the Feoffees – a group of Puritan trustees empowered to raise money and purchase impropriated parishes to install good preaching ministers for them. Established in 1626, they had gained control over approximately thirty parishes and were seeking to extend their work through buying advowsons (see Chapter 2, page 21). When Laud banned them, he took over the parishes they had bought, though his action offended Puritans and many others as an attack on property rights.

Churches were to be decorated and music encouraged. In Hull, for example, the Church bells were restored to Holy Trinity Church despite objections from the Mayor and Corporation. The plain communion tables occupying the centre of many churches were removed to the east end and covered with richly embroidered cloth, reminiscent of the Catholic High Altar, railed off from the ordinary lay members of the congregation. Orthodox Anglican or Arminian views would be appointed to them, ensuring that only those who accepted neither extreme Puritan nor Laudian Catholic beliefs held positions of religious authority.

Intentions and reactions

From Charles and Laud's perspective, these changes established order and beauty in the Church. Replacing preaching with set prayers and ceremonies reduced the scope for individuals to express controversial views and avoided disputation. Music, decoration and ritual encouraged reverence for God and joyful worship, a celebration that appealed to the emotions rather than the intellect alone. Catechisms of the public reading of official confessions of faith expressed the unity of a harmonious Christian community. Protecting the altar from abuse by placing it behind rails marked respect for holy things. Charles and Laud were fulfilling their duty in caring for the Church and ensuring that others did the same. Laud himself articulated this policy:

Unfortunately, Laud's instructions were interpreted in very different ways by many of the ministers and laity upon whom they were imposed. They thought that restrictions on preaching did the devil's work by leaving people in ignorance and darkness, and that rituals and ceremonies encouraged a mechanical and superstitious emphasis on appearances at the expense of inner faith. They also believed that decorations and statues encouraged the worship of symbols, and that the new placing of the altar recalled the Catholic Mass in which, it was claimed, the communion bread and wine were miraculously transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ (Transubstantiation). For many people, not only of the Puritan faction, this was a return to superstition and idol-worship, attacking the heart of the Protestant faith. It was particularly controversial and also particularly obvious to the ordinary layman, who saw the physical evidence of the change in his own parish church.

There were also other associations. If the altar was railed off and approached only by the clergy, then this emphasised the status of the clergy as a separate order, above the laity. What was, for Charles and Laud, an attempt to improve the quality of religious provision by creating uniform standards and raising the quality and status of the clergy, appeared to many laymen to be a renewal of the clerical pretensions associated with the Catholic Church. In this context, the presence of bishops on the Privy Council, the claims that they derived their authority from Christ himself, handed down through the Catholic Christian tradition, the emphasis on authority and the special status of the clergy all came together to create fear of absolutism and Catholicism.

The Catholic threat

The growing evidence that Catholic influence was tolerated at Court increased these fears. The Queen practised worship as a Catholic according to her marriage terms, and her priests and confessors sought to gain converts where possible. Catholicism became fashionable in Court circles, and several Privy Councillors, such as Lord Treasurer Weston, were Catholics. In 1637 Charles welcomed an ambassador from the Pope, George Con, and their shared appreciation of art encouraged a growing friendship. Many suspected the King of Catholic sympathies, and even those who accepted that neither he, nor Laud, held Catholic beliefs, feared that by indulging High Church attitudes they were allowing secret Catholics to enter and undermine the Anglican faith. In an era when the Pope was identified as the Anti-Christ, the head of a vast international conspiracy supported by Spain and dedicated to the destruction of true religion, such fears and suspicions isolated the King from many of his subjects.

Enforcement and punishment

As with other areas of government, there was little that could be done to prevent the changes being made. Ministers who refused to accept the new rules risked losing their livings and Laud ensured that the bishops carried out regular visitations to enforce the King's will. Serious acts of defiance were brought before the prerogative court of High Commission, which also imposed censorship through the licensing of books and pamphlets. In more extreme cases, those who defied the law could be brought before the Star Chamber. In 1637 three Puritans named Burton, Bastwick and Prynne, who had published a series of pamphlets attacking Laud and the Queen, were brought to the Star Chamber accused of sedition (encouraging unrest). Burton was a physician, Bastwick a preacher, and Prynne was a lawyer – all university men of gentry status. Despite this, they were sentenced to be placed in the pillory, branded on the cheeks and to have their ears cropped. Such mutilation was rarely inflicted on men of their status, and the sentence was carried out before a shocked and horrified crowd, who sympathised with both their views and their sufferings.

Growth of opposition

Faced with this kind of action, those who opposed Charles and Laud on religious grounds reacted in one of two ways. Within the lower ranks of society there were already a few more radical Puritans who had come to believe that a state Church was, in itself unacceptable, and that a true Church consisted of a body of believers joining in a voluntary association and governing its members by its own rules. The persecution carried out by Archbishop Bancroft in the early years of James's reign (see Chapter 2) had led to small congregations taking refuge in Holland, where some of them came into contact with Baptist and Millenarian ideas. In 1616 the first English Baptist church was established by an exiled minister named John Smyth. A few years later, another such group, later termed the Pilgrim Fathers, set off to sail to the colony of Virginia in search of religious freedom, and being blown off course, established the first English colony in New England. There they were joined by others whose separatist views made life in England dangerous and by the mid-1630s there were a number of such colonies.

Little is known of the separatists within England at this time, since they were, of necessity, scattered and secretive, but there was a brief glimpse of their potential in the actions of John Lilburne, a protégé of Dr Bastwick, who was arrested in 1638 for attempting to smuggle copies of Bastwick's sermons into England from Holland, where they had been printed without licence. Brought to trial and sentenced to be pilloried, Lilburne used his public moment to harangue the populace of London on the evils of bishops and was promptly imprisoned. He remained in prison until after the calling of the Long Parliament, when a sympathetic intervention by the MP for Cambridge, Oliver Cromwell, secured his release.

Both Lilburne and Cromwell would play a more substantial role in the growing crisis in later years, but during the 1630s the radicals and separatists remained a small and isolated minority. In the short term a far more noteworthy reaction came from the more moderate Puritans who were, and wished to remain within the Anglican Church. Nevertheless, they were deeply resentful of the Laudian bishops and feared that both the religious and political aims of Charles and his advisers posed a threat to England as they knew it. Fear of Catholicism, resentment at the pretensions of the Laudian clergy and a sense that the King was willing to override both law and Parliaments in pursuit of his perception of royal government, combined to convince some that he was seeking to create an absolute monarchy. In 1637, faced with Hampden's failure to challenge Ship Money, the prospect that financial independence would enable Charles to dispense with parliaments completely (and the example of Burton, Bastwick and Prynne to show what could happen to those who resisted), leaders of the Puritan interest like the Earl of Bedford considered emigration to New England as a way out. This proved unnecessary because neither Charles's intentions nor his effectiveness were quite what they seemed.

Key dates: religion and the church

Year	Event
1633	Laud appointed Archbishop of Canterbury; new injunctions issued laying down rules and changes in the Church
1635	William Juxon, Bishop of London, appointed as Lord Treasurer
1637	George Con, Ambassador from the Pope, welcomed at Court and took up residence; Star Chamber trial and punishment of Bastwick, Burton and Prynne