{"id":81855,"date":"2022-06-03T15:41:03","date_gmt":"2022-06-03T20:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=81855"},"modified":"2022-06-03T15:41:03","modified_gmt":"2022-06-03T20:41:03","slug":"81855","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=81855","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

It Took Two British Civil Wars to Plant the Seeds of American Liberty<\/a><\/p>\n

In the\u00a0previous installment<\/a>\u00a0of this series, I gave the historical and religious background of the English Civil War \u2014 which planted the seeds of every significant institution that would take root in American soil. As we noted before, there were many concrete issues at stake in the struggle between the Crown and Parliament.<\/p>\n

Rural people, gentry, nobles, high-church Anglicans, and persecuted Catholics feared that the power of Parliament would benefit city-dwellers, merchants (including slave-traders), nouveau riche speculators, and radical Protestants. So they rallied behind the efforts of monarchs such as James I and his son Charles I to increase the king\u2019s own power, independent of Parliament.<\/p>\n

This led them to support a political theory which James I called \u201cthe Divine Right of Kings.\u201d On this view, the king embodied the law itself, which was identical to his will. Obedience to God required obedience to His appointed ruler on earth, leaving no justification for resistance or revolt. As David Kopel notes in\u00a0The Morality of Self-Defense and Military Action<\/em><\/a>, James\u2019 theory was new to Englishmen. It was quickly denounced both by Calvinists and Catholics.<\/p>\n

Ancient Absolutism, Revived<\/h4>\n

The theory had ancient precedent. The absolute power of Roman emperors, oriental monarchs, and other pre-Christian rulers was still the norm outside of Europe even in the 17th<\/sup>\u00a0century. It was only the collapse of the Western Roman empire that allowed for much more decentralized political institutions to emerge. The rediscovery of Roman law during the Renaissance gave monarchs a powerful, prestigious weapon in their quest to consolidate power.<\/p>\n

Feudal barons would zealously guard their independence throughout the Middle Ages, yielding concessions from kings like the\u00a0Magna Carta<\/a>. The Church would assert her rights, and protect her vast institutional wealth and land-holdings, wielding moral authority over the people.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But\u00a0as we saw<\/a>, the shattering of the Church in the Reformation ended its political independence, and made it everywhere subject to state control and interference. The military revolution of the late Renaissance, with rifles replacing bows, and cannons battering down castle walls, made warfare too expensive for anyone but powerful monarchs. Professional armies replaced feudal levies, and kings became less dependent on barons\u2019 cooperativeness.<\/p>\n

Turning Barons from Warlords into Courtiers<\/h4>\n

Throughout Continental Europe, except in the fractured Holy Roman Empire \u2014 which effectively ceased to function as a state \u2014 monarchs were able to shake off medieval checks and balances on their power. In France, the monarchy broke the backs of the nobility during a vicious civil war (the Frondes, 1648-1653). Dukes and counts went from quasi-autonomous military allies of the king, to courtiers who competed for the \u201cprivilege\u201d of holding the king\u2019s chamber pot. This would culminate with their quasi-imprisonment in the gilded cage of Versailles.<\/p>\n

Please Support\u00a0The Stream<\/i><\/a>: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic, and Moral Issues of Our Day.<\/div>\n

Similar centralization took root in Habsburg Spain, where the rights of local communities to vote and to levy taxes were revoked by Charles V. In Scandinavia and Russia, monarchs quashed noble resistance, centralized their own power, and imposed religious homogeneity through established, intolerant churches.<\/p>\n

The English Resistance Movement<\/h4>\n

And that is what James I hoped to codify through his Divine Right of Kings. It\u2019s what his parliamentary opponents, many of them religiously motivated, were determined to prevent. Kopel cites the intellectual landmarks of this resistance movement, noting that radical Protestants in England cited Jesuit Robert Bellarmine and other Catholic thinkers on the God-given limits of royal power. Kopel writes:<\/p>\n

In 1644, the Scottish Presbyterian Samuel Rutherford published\u00a0Lex, Rex: or the Law and the Prince.<\/em>\u00a0The point of the title was that the law precedes the king: the monarch must obey the law. In fact, the law is the ultimate king, above any human monarch.\u00a0Lex, Rex<\/em>\u00a0refuted Charles I\u2019s bold assertion, articulated by an absolutist judge, that\u00a0rex est lex loquens\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 that is, the king is the law speaking.<\/p>\n

The antecedent for\u00a0rex est lex<\/em>\u00a0was the despotism of the late Roman Empire. The antecedent for\u00a0Lex, Rex<\/em>\u00a0was the Old Testament. There, the very definition of the Hebrew nation is the people who live according to the law given by God. The Anglo-American ideal of the \u2018rule of law\u201d embodies Rutherford\u2019s principle. \u2026 [S]overeignty was inherent in the people, and was granted only conditionally to king\u2019s by the people.<\/p>\n

Like previous resistance theorists, Rutherford extrapolated a right of resistance from the natural right of self-defense. \u2026 One way a well-ordered society preserved a proper balance of power was ensuring that government did not have all the weapons: \u2018To denude the people of [arms] because they may abuse the prince, is to expose them to violence and oppression, unjustly: for one king may more easily abuse [arms] than all the people; one may more easily fail than a community.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The British Republic<\/h4>\n

Arguments like Rutherford\u2019s were widely published and proved persuasive. Repeated efforts by Charles I to establish the monarchy as independent of Parliament, able to tax and raise armies without its consent, eventually led to civil war. After a bloody, back-and-forth struggle of several years, Parliament prevailed. Charles I was tried for treason and executed.<\/p>\n

The English republic that emerged from this savage conflict might have honored representative principles. But its new polity only represented certain sectors of society. Its rule rested on fragile compromises among various sects of Protestants, some much more radical than others.<\/p>\n

The differing views eventually paralyzed Parliament, and power fell into the hands of the competent, capable Oliver Cromwell. He ruled for five years as a virtual military dictator, without consulting Parliament. Cromwell rode roughshod over Catholics, high-church Anglicans, and many other sectors of British society, who never recognized the legitimacy of his government. Some in the Anglican church began to speak of \u201cCharles I, King and Martyr.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Failed Theocracy?<\/h4>\n

Theocratic temptations emerged during Cromwell\u2019s regime, which banned theatrical shows and tried to suppress popular celebrations such as May Day and even Christmas as \u201cpapist\u201d or pagan. Cromwell\u2019s efforts to suppress mostly Catholic, pro-royalist Ireland were particularly brutal, and helped cement the bitterness against English rule that would eventually ensure Irish independence.<\/p>\n

During Cromwell\u2019s reign, a wide array of new, radical voices were heard. One of the most consequential was that of genius poet John Milton, a genuine Renaissance man and fervent Republican. He published a series of pamphlets in defense of his political ideas, the most influential of which was\u00a0Areopagitica,<\/em>\u00a0which laid out the strongest case yet argued for an almost new idea: the freedom of the press, the publication of ideas from any citizen without prior approval from the government. Our own First Amendment owes its origin in large part to this document.<\/p>\n

Upon Cromwell\u2019s death in 1658, a groundswell of support arose for a return to normalcy, to the old English system of balance between a limited monarch and Parliament. The exiled Stuart heir to Charles I, his son Charles II, offered to restore that if given the throne. He returned in 1660, promising amnesty to those who\u2019d overthrown and executed his father, and a balanced system of government. As we\u2019ll see in the next installment, suspicious English soon came to fear that he wouldn\u2019t be keeping such promises. It would take another, albeit briefer, civil war to make sure of that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It Took Two British Civil Wars to Plant the Seeds of American Liberty In the\u00a0previous installment\u00a0of this series, I gave the historical and religious background of the English Civil War \u2014 which planted the seeds of every significant institution that would take root in American soil. As we noted before, there were many concrete issues … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rights","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81856,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81855\/revisions\/81856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}