The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution. Samuel Rawson Gardiner
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The Constitutional Documents Of The American Revolution
1626 - 1660
SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER
The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, S. R. Gardiner
Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck
86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9
Deutschland
ISBN: 9783849654580
www.jazzybee-verlag.de
CONTENTS:
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.. 1
PART I: FROM THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES I TO THE MEETING OF THE THIRD PARLIAMENT OF HIS REIGN. 41
PART III: FROM THE MEETING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT TO THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR. 147
PART IV: FROM THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR TO THE EXECUTION OF THE KING. 244
PART V: THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE.. 339
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The documents in this volume are intended to serve either as a basis for the study of the Constitutional History of an important period, or as a companion to the Political History of the time. By far the greater number of them are printed in books which, though commonly to be found in large libraries, are, on account of their size and expense, not readily accessible to students in general. The MS. of the Constitutional Bill of the first Protectorate Parliament, in the handwriting of John Browne, Clerk of the Parliaments, is preserved at Stanford Hall in the possession of Lord Braye, with whose kind permission the copy used in this volume has been taken. It is possible that a great part of the document might have been recovered from the entries of clauses and amendments in the Journals of the House of Commons, but, as far as I know, this is the only complete copy in existence.
The documents in Part I of the present edition have been added at the suggestion of Professor Prothero, who very generously placed at my disposal the copies he had made with the intention of adding them to his own Statutes and other Constitutional Documents illustrative of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I (Clarendon Press, 1894). Though the Navigation Act of the Commonwealth has no claim to a place amongst Constitutional Documents, it is of sufficient importance to be printed in the Appendix.
S. R. G.
INTRODUCTION
I.: To the meeting of the Third Parliament of Charles I. [—— 1628.]
Revolutions, no less than smaller political changes, are to be accounted for as steps in the historical development of nations. They are more violent, and of longer duration, in proportion to the stubborn resistance opposed to them by the institutions which stand in their way; and the stubbornness of that resistance is derived from the services which the assailed institutions have rendered in the past, and which are remembered in their favour after they have ceased to be applicable to the real work of the day, or at least have become inapplicable without serious modification.
On the other hand, many who, throwing off the conservatism of habit, have bent themselves to sweep away the hindrances which bar the path of political progress, show an eagerness to put all established authority to the test, and to replace all existing institutions by new ones more in accordance with their ideal of a perfect State—an ideal which, under all circumstances, is necessarily imperfect. Revolutions, therefore, unavoidably teem with disappointment to their promoters. Schemes are carried out, either blundering in themselves or too little in accordance with the general opinion of the time to root themselves in the conscience of the nation; and, before many years have passed away, those who were the most ardent revolutionists, looking back upon their baffled hopes, declare that nothing worthy of the occasion has been accomplished.
The historian writing in a later generation is distracted neither by these buoyant hopes, nor by this melancholy despair. He knows, on the one hand, that, in great measure, the dreams of the idealists were but anticipations of future progress; and on the other hand, that the conservative misgivings of those who turned back were but the instrument through which the steadiness of progress indispensable to all healthy growth was maintained. A Revolution, in short, as an object of study, has an unrivalled attraction for him, not because it is exciting, but because it reveals more clearly than smaller changes the law of human progress.
One feature, therefore, is common to all Revolutions, that the nation in which they appear is content, perhaps after years of agitation, with just so much change as is sufficient to modify or abolish the institution which, so to speak, rankles in the flesh of the body politic. In the French Revolution, for instance, the existence of privileged classes was the evil which the vast majority of the nation was resolved to eradicate; and after blood had been shed in torrents, the achievement of equality under a despot satisfied, for a time at least, this united demand of the nation. Not the taking of the Bastille nor the execution of Louis XVI, but the night of August 4, when feudal privileges were thrown to the winds, was the central fact of the French Revolution. It was of the essence of the movement that there should cease to be privileged orders. It was a secondary consequence that the King’s authority was restricted or his person misused.
In the English Revolution, on the other hand, it was of the essence of the movement that the authority of the King should be restricted. The Kingship had done too much service in the recent past, and might do too much service again, to be absolutely abolished, and there was no widespread desire for any social improvements. The abolition of the House of Lords and the sweeping away of Episcopacy were secondary consequences of the movement. Its central facts are to be traced in the legislation of the first months of the Long Parliament, especially in the Triennial Act, the Tonnage and Poundage Act, and the Acts for the abolition of the Star Chamber and the High Commission. Then, just as in the French Revolution the Reign of Terror followed upon the abolition of privileges on account of the suspicion that those who had lost by the change were conspiring with foreign armies to get them back; so in the English Revolution there followed, first the Civil War and then the trial and execution of the King, on account of the suspicion that Charles was personally unwilling to consent to the loss of power and was conspiring with foreign armies to recover it.
The authority inherited by