"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.