"Without consent of Parliament": the High Church critique of the Personal Rule

Following on from yesterday's post, it is interesting to note both Waterland and Swift in their respective sermons for Restoration Day and the Martyrdom of King Charles I, while giving explicit recognition to the Royal Martyr, are critical of the use of the Royal prerogative during his Personal Rule.

Waterland praised Charles I as the Church's "nursing father" who "had lost his head in defence of it". This, however, does not prevent him from stating "faults there were, many and great, on all sides". The first faults he lists are those on the side of the King:

The churchmen and royalists, many of them, for being too full of heat and resentment, for taking unwarrantable steps at the beginning, and making use of unseasonable severities, and some unusual stretches of prerogative; which gave great offence, and first paved the way to our future troubles.

We might, of course, expect this of Waterland as a Church Whig, while noting his explicit condemnation of those who in the 1640s assaulted "our excellent Church" and of the "deplorable state of religion" during the Commonwealth. In the Tory Swift, however, we see the same critique:

It may be an instruction to princes themselves, to be careful in the choice of those who are their advisers in matters of law. All the judges of England, except one or two, advised the King, that he might legally raise money upon the subjects for building of ships, without consent of parliament; which, as it was the greatest oversight of his reign, so it proved the principal foundation of all his misfortunes.

This illustrates a key characteristic of the dominant 'Orthodox' political theology. It was not a theology of what Burke termed "the old prerogative enthusiasts". As Addleshaw pointed out, the "theory of divine right" had little influence in the High Church tradition, with its Hookerian veneration for mixed constitution in Church and State (in the Church, crown, bishops, convocation, and canon law; in the State, crown, parliament, and common law). Thus, even amidst the Orthodox reverence for the Royal Martyr, there was criticism of reliance on prerogative power during the Personal Rule, recognising that this disordered the mixed constitution, being "without consent of parliament".

As such, it is a rather interesting example of the limits of reverence for the Royal Martyr (in other words, such reverence was emphatically not an endorsement of Charle I's use of the royal prerogative) and a reminder of the importance to High Church political theology of the mixed constitution - what Burke termed "this idea of a liberal descent" - as a means of securing ordered liberty, "a rational and manly freedom".

One last point. This critique of the Personal Rule and the expansion of prerogative power, exemplifies the concern that it was not just popular sentiment that must be checked by law and parliamentary institutions, but also executive power. As Swift mischievously noted towards the conclusion of his sermon, the temptation to exalt or expand the prerogative was not unique to Tories, for Whig administrations could also threaten "the liberty, and property, and life, and religion of the subject" by an expansion of prerogative powers:

And this opinion hath not been confined to that party which was first charged with it, but hath sometimes gone over to the other, to serve many an evil turn of interest or ambition, who have been as ready to enlarge prerogative, where they could find their own account, as the highest maintainers of it.

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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