King Charles II's "absolute monarchy" - the Publishing of Power, and the Writing of Resistance.

Our children loved to watch Horrible Histories on BBC. This clip was one they really loved, and which our Charlie memorised and liked to recite. Entertaining certainly, but it masks who King Charles II really was.

He, and his brother the Duke of York, the future King James II, had been at war with Scottish Presbyterian Covenanter civilians since Charles was crowned in 1661. Battles and persecutions ensued. Charles 'prorogued' Parliament on 27 May 1679 and less than a month later on 22 June 1679 at Bothwell Brig south of Glasgow, 5000 troops were sent in to rout 6000 Presbyterian civilians. Charles prorogued Parliament again and again in the 1680s.

Just like in Scotland, the army was sent to break up open air religious services known as 'conventicles' in south west England, at places like Bristol and Salisbury. 'Whigs' in England began to protest, with localised riots and by raising petitions which were denounced by Charles II and his Lord Chief Justice as 'seditious'.

A goldsmith from Taunton in Somerset, Thomas Dare, personally confronted Charles II in London with a petition from the people - Dare was arrested for "seditious words" and sent back to Taunton for trial in April 1680. He was fined £500 and was given a three year suspended sentence. The specific words that he had dared utter were that "the King's subjects had but two ways, one by petition, the other by armes".

The crown and state against the people...
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In the "west" we like to think that we have rights, which are in some way protected in law.  This idea has been handed down to us, culturally and philosophically, through the centuries and it's now our presumed default - it's the water in which we swim. Like David Foster Wallace's proverbial fish, we're not even aware that the water is there. But this was not always the case.

King Charles II loved the idea that kings not only had privilege, but total domination, that they were in every way superior to the people, and were above the reach of common law. 

In 1680 he, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, published a manuscript text which had been written during the reign of his late (executed) father, King Charles I. The author was the late Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653), and it was entitled Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings (text online here).

In his opening salvo, Filmer utterly rejects an idea that we take for granted:

Mankind is naturally endowed and born with Freedom from all Subjection, and at liberty to chose what Form of Government it please: And that the Power which any one Man hath over others, was at first bestowed according to the discretion of the Multitude.

Filmer believed that "in a monarchy the king must of necessity be above the laws". This is the basis of "absolute monarchy', and potentially tyranny.

Filmer raged against the "Reformed Church", "Papists", "Jesuits", "zealous favourers of the Geneva Discipline". He cited John Calvin and George Buchanan, and "R. Dolman" who was a pseudonym of Robert Parsons (1546-1610) who had authored A treatise of three conversions of England from paganism to Christian religion (online here). 

With Filmer resurrected, various Whigs then retaliated in print, with ideas of democracy and liberty which would echo across the Atlantic almost 100 years later – they were James Tyrrell, Algernon Sidney, and John Locke.

More to follow... 

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PS: The 1689 Bill of Rights put an end to such abuses by future monarchs - for example:

Dispensing Power.

That the pretended Power of Suspending of Laws or the Execution of Laws by Regall Authority without Consent of Parlyament is illegall.

Late dispensing Power.

That the pretended Power of Dispensing with Laws or the Execution of Laws by Regall Authoritie as it hath beene assumed and exercised of late is illegall.

Right to petition.

That it is the Right of the Subjects to petition the King and all Commitments and Prosecutions for such Petitioning are Illegall.

• English Radical Whigs: Natural Law and Natural Rights by Michael Zuckert, University of Notre Dame (2011) is online here

• Presbyterianism in Devon and Cornwall in the seventeenth century thesis by Rev. J.T. Gillespie of Plymouth (1943) is online here.

The vanished tombstone of William Hewling, Lyme Regis, 1685

At Lyme Regis, a tombstone at St Michael The Archangel Church has this inscription:

Here lieth the body of William Hewling, son of William Hewling of London, and grandson of William Kyffin, Esq., Alderman of London, who suffered martyrdom before he was full twenty years of age, engaging with the Duke of Monmouth for the Protestant religion and English liberty against Popery and slavery, September 12th, 1685.

(source here from 1894; however by 1922 the gravestone was described as "no longer exists").

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The Hewling brothers, William and Benjamin, were followers of the Duke of Monmouth and were arrested after the failure of his rebellion. Both were executed, William at Lyme aged 19 and Benjamin at Taunton aged 22. Their sister Hannah had pleaded for their release; her intervention, and payment of a colossal £1000, saved William from being disembowelled.

• Their grandfather William Kiffin was a "Strict and Particular Baptist" pastor (see this source).

• Kiffin's autobiography Remarkable Passages In The Life of William Kiffin (1689; 1823 edition is online here). He had met with his two grandsons after their arrests. It is moving to read the grandfather's account of the boys' last days and hours.

"The Sheriff having given his body to be buried, although it was brought from the place of execution without any notice given, yet very many of the town, to the number of about two hundred, came to accompany it. And several young women, of the best of the town, laid him in his grave, in Lyme church yard, the 18th of September, 1685."

• Hutchins' 1774 The history and antiquities of the county of Dorset gives this description here:

"In the church yard, on the S. side of the church was formerly a tomb, two sides of which, with the following inscription, are preserved, in that part of the church which is under the school" 

• Benjamin Hewling was one of 18 men who were executed at Taunton, and was reputedly buried at St Mary Magdalene Church at Taunton, now Taunton Minster. There is no known gravestone.

Royal Citadel Plymouth, 1688 – "the first fortress in England to declare support for William"

I've walked around the massive walls of the Royal Citadel many times - from the open space of Plymouth Hoe down along Madeira Road to the Mayflower Steps and the Barbican and its array of coffee shops and quayside restaurants - but have never booked a tour of the inside - they are very infrequent as the Citadel is still a functioning military facility. The curving coastal road is a beautiful sunrise location, and the many huge international Navy memorials, with joggers and dog walkers in the morning light, make it look almost like a movie set at times.

After the arrival of William of Orange's vast armada at Torbay on 5 November 1688 - where soldiers, horses and provisions were unloaded - the ships then sailed 35 miles westwards towards Plymouth where they moored in the shelter of Plymouth Sound and wintered there. The Royal Citadel was the westernmost army garrison of King James II, and William knew that he had to take control of it, to ensure that (as Macaulay put it in his mammoth The History of England) "the invaders had now not a single enemy in their rear" for their advance eastwards towards King James II and London.

William's Declaration was read aloud to the Royal Citadel garrison who immediately defected to his cause, and the Declaration was then fastened to the Citadel gate. The irony in this is that the regiment there, the Earl of Bath's Regiment, had been raised just over three years earlier during the June 1685 Duke of Monmouth civilian rebellion, in order to crush it. Monmouth was William of Orange's cousin, and Continental battle comrade. Heads and quarters of some of the 350 executed 'rebels' had been put on public display in Plymouth. However, when faced with William's vast European army and navy, the regiment melted.

A Plymouth primary source for this is The Journal Of James Yonge, Plymouth Surgeon 1647-1721 in which he says:

"... In November this year the Prince of Orange arrived at Torbay with great fleet of men-of-war and merchant ships, and landing there, marched to Exeter, where great resort of gentlemen &c. went to him and declared for him. His declaration was also read in the Citadel and Guildhall and at length the whole nation revolted ..."

William had a lot on his plate. We've all grown up with Ireland's fixation on the Battle of the Boyne, but there was far more going on that just that. Following the naval Battle of Beachy Head on 10 July 1690, he authorised the first Royal Naval Dockyard to be built at Plymouth, in 1691, to defend the west from further French attack. 

• Painting above, showing the Royal Citadel in the background, is entitled 'Plymouth in 1666' by the Dutch artist Willem Van De Velde. It is on display in The Box Arts Centre.

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A more detailed account of the events at Plymouth Citadel can be found in the Report on the Manuscripts of the late Reginald Rawden Hastings, Vol II, pages 198-199 (online here), a letter from Theophilus Hastings, the Earl of Huntingdon, to King James II. He had a regiment in Plymouth too:

"What passed on Saturday night relating to my imprisonment and the garbling of the regiment both officers and soldiers I did presume to inform your Majesty in a letter by Major Ingram. 

On Monday the formal revolt of this garrison was made, when the Governor caused the Prince of Orange’s Declaration to be read in his presence to the remaining officers of the regiment and to the officers of the citadel; to which when each man had given his concurrence, the Governor then ordered it to be read at the head of the battalion to the private soldiers, to which in imitation of the officers they assented by throwing up of their hats and huzzas; upon which it was fastened publicly on the gates of the citadel. The solemnity ended by several barrels of ale as a largess to the regiment to drink success to this noble achievement. 

The Governor himself hath received a commission from the Prince of Orange to command in these parts, and on Tuesday the vacancies were filled up, Hastings being made Colonel and Jacob Lieutenant-Colonel. Hatton refused to serve under any other authority than your Majesty and is dismissed and some others of the officers . . 

I could have prevented my present confinement and now obtain my liberty if I would have joined in this guilty action. But those principles of honour and loyalty that hath preserved me hitherto will always direct me to make nothing the act of my will but what shall be answerable to those principles. 

I am here a close prisoner, my arms taken away, having not the liberty to walk in the citadel without a guard. My whole dependence is upon your Majesty, whether you will summon the place, it being said it is kept for your Majesty, or demand me, or take in custody some relation of him here, or exchange me. I submit to your Majesty’s wisdom, humbly beseeching that if I receive any despatches from the Secretaries of State, it may be by an expressed writ all with their own hands, for a reason I have which I dare not commit to writing, most letters being opened."

 

• Photo below of the grand entrance to the Royal Citadel, showing the date 1670, and presumably to which the Declaration was fastened, is from Flickr here.

And, just a few hundred yards away in Plymouth's historic Barbican waterfront area is the Plymouth Gin Distillery, founded 1793, where a display in the reception and shop area credits William with introducing gin to England - "Dutch courage"!

John Coad, One of the Sufferers - the primary account of a "Godfearing Carpenter": 1685 defector rebel, slave in Jamaica, and an inspiration for "Robinson Crusoe"

This is amazing stuff - John Coad, the "Godfearing carpenter" of Stoford in Somerset, was recruited as a soldier in King James II's army, but in June 1685 he defected to the Duke of Monmouth, was captured, was sentenced to be sent to Jamaica as a plantation slave, was freed at the Glorious Revolution and eventually returned to England in 1690.

His surviving manuscript of his life was published in 1849, entitled A Memorandum of the Wonderful Providences of God to a Poor Unworthy Creature: During the Time of the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion and to the Revolution in 1688.

Coad was one of over 800 men who were shipped off to the Caribbean plantations as slaves; and who were plausibly the inspiration for their fellow Monmouth 'rebel' Daniel Defoe for his world famous novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) - a link recognised by Tom Paulin in his 2001 essay in the London Review of Books, entitled 'Fugitive Crusoe' (subscription required).

• 1849 printed edition of the original manuscript is online here
• A account of the Coad family from 1870 is online here, in Rambles, Roamings and Recollections by John Trotandot
• His son, Rev Thomas Coad, was a Presbyterian minister in England (1740 letter online here)

The notorious evil of Percy Kirk / Kirke in the "Bloody Assizes" of autumn 1685

Percy Kirk / Kirke is best known to history for his involvement in the 1689 Siege of Derry. However, given his past brutalities during the 1685 "Bloody Assizes" of King James II, many were utterly incredulous that William of Orange had recruited Kirk / Kirke. Here's why:

"... Nor was Judge Jeffreys the only person who was thought to execute the King's orders ; but Colonel Kirk, a soldier of fortune, a man of boldness and looseness, did also act a considerable part in these unhappy tragedies:

after the Duke (of Monmouth)'s defeat, he caused ninety wounded men to be hang'd at Taunton, not only without permitting their relations to speak with them, but with pipes playing, drums beating, trumpets founding, and all other military pomp and joy.

At another town he invited his officers to dinner, near the place where some of the condemned rebels were to be executed, and order 'd ten of them to be turn'd off with a health to the King, ten in a health to the Queen, and ten more in a health to the Lord Jeffreys. These Cruelties he afterwards endeavour'd to palliate, by pretending, that he did nothing but by express order from the King, and his General.

But he was charged with one action that could proceed only from his own brutal inclination to lust and blood, and that was, the drawing in a poor maiden to prostitute her self to him, with the promise of saving her brother's life, and nevertheless causing him to be hang'd on the sign-post of the same house, and out of the window presenting the credulous abused damsel with that barbarous spectacle of his treachery and cruelty..."

– From this source

William Disney, the printer of the treacherous 1685 Declaration of James, Duke of Monmouth

Faithless I proved to my Prince and Nation,

Printing a most Rebellious Declaration:

By which foul Fact I wrought my overthrow,

Let all beware that they may not do so.

My Head upon the Bridge must surely stand,
Because I was a Traytor to my Land:
Upon the Gates they'l set my Quarters too,
For doing what I was forbid to do.

William Disney - seemingly a "barrister at law" of the "Citty of West Minister" - was charged with high treason. He was hanged, drawn and quartered on Kennington Common in London on 29 June 1685. His head and quarters were displayed on one of London's city gates.

Why? His home, and business premises, had been raided by King James II's troops on 15 June where they found a printing press, along with 750 partially complete copies of the Duke of Monmouth's Declaration, and five which were fully complete. These were all burned before the Royal Exchange, apart from one copy which is shown below (it's from the Lansdowne MSS in the British Museum.)

When Monmouth and his rebels first landed at Lyme Regis on 11 June, his Declaration was publicly read at the market cross, at Taunton on 20 June ("where he suffered himself to be proclaimed king") and probably at numerous other places too during his six week rebellion in south west England. 

Disney had form. Around 1680 he had gone to some lengths to prove that Monmouth, who was the first born son of King Charles II, to Lucy Walter, was in fact legitimate and was therefore the rightful heir to the throne. Disney had been implicated in the failed 1683 "Rye House Plot" to kill King Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York, who became King James II.

The real King?
The Declaration refused to acknowledge that King James II was king at all, referring to him by his prior title of Duke of York and denouncing him as a usurper. 

One of Disney's colleagues in the printing operation was printer John Bringhurst (article here) who managed to escape to the Netherlands. Another was Henry Danvers (Wikipedia here). The project seems to have been masterminded by "W. C." of Paternoster Row, a prolific London printer of the era.

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• Here is an online edition of the published True Account of the Behaviour and Confession of William Disney Esq. Text edition is online here.

• Oxford DNB entry for William Disney is online here.

• The Declaration of James, Duke of Monmouth is online here.

• An analysis of the 1685 Declaration of James, Duke of Monmouth, and how it compares with the 1688 Declaration of William Prince of Orange is online here.

(top image from the English Broadside Ballad Archive)

So who sectarianised Ireland? The cross-community Centenary commemorations of the Siege of Derry, 1788

For some in our part of the world, sectarianism is their identity, and they almost wallow in how they choose to apply it to themselves. It has not always been this way.

“In 1788 and 1789 there were important centenary anniversary commemorations.

In early December 1788 the closing of the gates was remembered by special church services in both the cathedral and a Presbyterian church, followed by a civic procession, a military parade and the burning of Lundy.

It also involved a special dinner, attended by town dignitaries as well as Catholic clergy.

In August 1789 commemoration of the breaking of the boom and the relief of the city included a sizeable procession to the cathedral which involved not only the members of the corporation but the Catholic bishop and his clergy, as well as the Presbyterian clergy and elders.

On both these occasions the siege was commemorated as a great blow against tyranny which brought liberty to people of all Christian denominations…

In the atmosphere of late eighteenth-century Ireland, with the rise of a tolerant Irish patriotism, events of 1688-9 were seen as part of the Glorious Revolution with its constitutional benefits for all, embracing Presbyterians and members of the Church of Ireland, and Protestants and Catholics”.

From The Sieges of Derry, William Kelly (Four Courts Press, 2001)

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Difference doesn't have to lead to division, but it will if we want it to. In the first 15 minutes of this recent podcast, Jimmy Dore talks from a US perspective about how social cultural division is inflamed by power élites for their own ends.

Illustration above from National Library of Ireland.