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Constitutional Consensus and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

P. G. Lake
P. G. Lake
Affiliation:
Bedford College, University of London
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Extract

In 1620 Thomas Scott published a notorious pamphlet entitled Vox Populi. This purported to recount the proceedings of the Spanish council of state and denounced the devious machinations of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, and by implication the pro-Spanish policy of King James. Once Scott's authorship became known he took the traditional way out and fled to the Low Countries. There he served as a preacher with the English regiments and as a minister at Utrecht. He also continued his pamphlet commentary on events in England. Scott, then, was that well-known figure, the radical puritan opponent of the Jacobean regime. He has certainly been cast in that role and until recently such a view of his career would have seemed unexceptionable enough. However, of late there has emerged a corpus of work which might be thought to render any such view of Scott untenable. On the one hand, the existence within the mainstream of English protestantism of anything approaching a coherent body of puritan attitudes has been challenged, at least until the emergence of Arminianism polarized religious opinion and almost created a self-conscious and aggressive puritanism where there had been none before. In the political sphere it has been claimed that within the predominant view of constitutional and political propriety any attempt at concerted opposition to royal policy was both conceptually and practically impossible.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , December 1982 , pp. 805 - 825
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Wright, L. B., ‘Propaganda against James I's “appeasement” of Spain’, Huntington Library Quarterly, vi (1943), 149–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wright's view of Scott fitted perfectly with the then predominant interpretation which saw royal authority increasingly challenged in the early seventeenth century by a self-conscious parliamentary, puritan opposition centred on the house of commons. For more recent statements of this view see Zagorin, P., The court and the country (London, 1969)Google Scholar, or Stone, L., The causes of the English Revolution (London, 1972).Google Scholar

2 Russell, C. S. R., ‘Parliamentary history in perspective, 1604–1629’, History, lxi (1976), 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parliaments and English politics, 1620–1629 (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar. In his discussion of religion Professor Russell draws heavily on the work of Dr N. R. N. Tyacke. See Dr Tyacke's ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and counter-revolution’ in Russell, C. (ed.), The origins of the English Civil War (London, 1973), pp. 119–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For the widespread anti-popery of this period see Hill, C., Antichrist in the seventeenth century (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Wiener, C. Z., ‘The beleaguered isle, a study of Elizabethan and Early Jacobean anti-catholicism’, Past and Present, LI (1971), 27–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bauckham, R. J., Tudor apocalypse (Abingdon, 1978)Google Scholar. On the relation of Scott's view of parliament to the conventional view of the constitution see the references given below to Judson, M., The crisis of the constitution (New Brunswick, 1949). For a relatively obscure provincial gentleman who shared all the major elements in Scott's world-view see R. P. Custand P. G. Lake, ‘Sir Richard Grosvenor and the rhetoric of magistracy’, B[ulletin] of the I[nstitute] of H[istorical] R[esearch], forthcoming.Google Scholar

4 P. G. Lake, ‘Laurence Chaderton and the Cambridge moderate puritan tradition’, 1978 Cambridge Ph.D. diss.; S.L.Adams, ‘The protestant cause; religious alliance with western European calvinist communities as a political issue in England, 1585–1629’, 1973 Oxford D.Phil. diss.

5 Scott himself remarked on the suppression of anti-Spanish sentiments in England and mocked preachers who shared his views but betrayed their calling with their silence. Thomas Scott, Vox Populi (1620), sig. C3; The second part of Vox Populi (1624), p. 17, where the suppression of anti-Spanish opinion is attributed to Gondomar; Vox Regis (1623), p. 9; The collected works of Thomas Scott (1624), ‘To the reader’. Only in the copy in the British Library S.T.C. 22102.

6 For an instance of this incorporation see Lake, P. G., ‘Matthew Hutton; a puritan bishop?’, History, LXIV (1979), 182–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 On the ambiguities inherent in any such procedure and for a distinctively ‘puritan’ view of one such central orthodoxy see Lake, P. G., ‘The significance of the Elizabethan identification of the Pope as Antichrist’, J[oumal of] E[cclesiastical] H[istory], xxxi (1980), 161–78.Google Scholar

8 For a brilliant analysis of these difficulties see Russell, Parliaments and English politics, pp. 26–32.

9 Collinson, P., ‘A comment; concerning the name puritan’, J.E.H. xxxi (1980), 482–8.Google Scholar

10 For all this see below.

11 Thomas, Scott, The highways of God and the king delivered in two sermons preached at Thetford in Norfolk anno. 1620 (London, 1623), p. 64.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. p. 63 and p. 71.

13 Ibid. p. 74.

14 Vox Populi, sig. C2r–v.

15 See the line taken by Matthew Hutton in P. G. Lake, ‘Matthew Hutton’.

16 Thomas Scott, The Belgic pismire (1622), sig. A3v.

17 Vox Populi, sig. B3r–v.

18 Ibid. sig. Cv–C2.

19 The highways of God and the king, p. 16, where Scott denied that the calvinist view of predestination implied that God was the author of sin, or Ibid. p. 21, where he compared the protestant and papist views of the liberty of God to see which was the more exalted.

20 Thomas Scott, Digitus Dei (1623), p. 38.

21 The highways of God and the king, p. 11.

22 Thomas Scott, The projector (1623), sig. A3V.

23 The highways of God and the king, pp. 12f.

24 Vox Populi, sig. B2f.

25 Vox Populi, sig. C2; Vox Regis, p. 20.

26 The Belgic pismire, p. 67.

27 At the end of Vox Populi the deliberations of the Spanish council of state are disrupted by the news of the ‘apprehension of our most trusty and able Pensioner Barnevelt’. Sig. C2 and sig. Dv.

28 The projector, pp. 36f.

29 For Scott's education at St Andrews see Adams, S. L., ‘Captain Thomas Gainsford, the “Vox Spiritus and the Vox Populi”’, B.I.H.R. xlix (1976), 141–4. For Scott's admiration of Scotland see The collected works of Thomas Scott (S.T.C. 22102), ‘To the reader’. For his advocacy of reformed unity see Digitus Dei, pp. 33—7; for the need for alliance with the Dutch Symmachia or a True-Love's Knot. For his admiration for the United Provinces as the model of a godly commonwealth see The Belgic pismire.Google Scholar

30 On the internationalism of English protestantism see Bauckham, R. J., Tudor apocalypse; P. Christianson, Reformers and Babylon (Toronto, 1978);Google Scholar Adams, ‘The Protestant cause’, chapter 1.

31 The projector, p. 21.

32 Ibid. pp. 18f.

33 The highways of God and the king, pp. 82f.

34 This was the picture put forward in Vox Populi.

35 P.R.O. S.P. 14/119/64 fos. 110–11, John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, 3 February, 1621.

36 Vox Regis, pp. 3–4.

37 S.P. 14/134/20, Thomas Locke to Carleton, 20 November 1622.

38 S.P. 14/134/75, Locke to Carleton, 25 December, 1623.

39 S.P. 84/121/235–6V. Also 84/102/14, Sir John Ogle to Sir George Calvert, August 1621; 81/22/156r-v, 184r-v, two more letters from Ogle to Calvert, November 1621. Ogle attributed his own loss of favour with Carleton, Maurice of Nassau, ‘my best friends both here and there’ and ‘many good patriots on both sydes that bear up agaynst the Pope and Spaniard’ to his own efforts against Scott in 1621. S.P. 81/23/33–4, Ogle to Calvert, January 1622, also S.P. 16/3/83, fo. 128, Ogle to Conway, June 1625. I owe these references to the kindness of Dr Adams and Mr Tom Cogswell.

40 Adams, ‘The Protestant cause’, appendix III and ‘Captain Thomas Gainsford’.

41 Russell, C., Parliaments and English politics, pp. 12–14Google Scholar; Adams, S. L., ‘Foreign policy in the parliaments of 1621 and 1624’ in Sharpe, K. (ed.), Faction and parliament (Oxford, 1978).Google Scholar

42 The sermon Vox Dei...a sermon preached 20 March 1622 at the assizes at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk (London, 1623) is often confused with a pamphlet of the same title by our Thomas Scott. It is in fact by a totally different Thomas Scott. This Scott was rector of St Clements, Ipswich, from 1613 to 1638 and served as a chaplain to the earl of Pembroke. This confusion has led to the erroneous assumption, enshrined in the D.N.B., that our Scott was chaplain to Pembroke and in England in 1622. I owe this point to Dr Adams.Google Scholar

43 The highways of God and the king, pp. 69–70.

44 Vox Dei (1623), p. 19. Such sentiments, of course, were entirely conventional, see M.Judson, The crisis of the constitution, especially chapter 11.

45 The highways of God and the king, pp. 69–70.

46 Vox Regis ‘To the Reader’.

47 Ibid. pp. 13–14.

48 Ibid. p. 14. For parliament, particularly the commons as ‘the representatives of the people’, see Judson, The crisis of the constitution, chapter VII, and Hirst, D., The representatives of the people? (Cambridge, 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 The highways of God and the king, pp. 86f; on the exercise of an independent choice by the voters as a key to a successful parliament see Cust and Lake, ‘Sir Richard Grosvenor’ and D. Hirst, The representatives of the people?, pp. 66–7 and pp. 229–31.

50 Vox Populi, sig. B3V.

51 Vox Regis, pp. 18f.

52 Ibid. pp. 24f; for Nehemiah, Vox Dei, pp. 47–8.

53 Vox Regis, pp. 37f.; pp. 45–6.

54 Ibid. pp. 67–8.

55 The Belgic soldier (1624).

56 Vox Regis, p. 55.

57 Ibid. pp. 18f.

58 See the frontispiece of Vox Regis.

59 Vox Populi, sig. A3 and Bv; The Belgic pismire, ‘To the true-hearted British readers’; Vox Regis, ‘To the reader’.

60 The second part of Vox Populi, pp. 9–10 and pp. 12–13.

61 Vox Populi, sig. C, for Gondomar's description of the faction which brought down Sir Walter Raleigh.

62 The Belgic pismire, pp. 6–7.

63 Vox Populi, sig. C4.V.

64 The second part of Vox Populi, pp. I5f, for Gondomar's intelligence network, staffed mainly by papists, priests and Jesuits.

65 The Belgic pismire, pp. 27–8.

66 Vox Regis, pp. 27–8.

67 Ibid. p. 31.

68 Vox Populi, sig. B3v.

69 Vox Regis, pp. 48–9.

70 The Belgic pismire.

71 Vox Dei, p. 86.

72 Vox Regis is more or less dedicated to proving this point.

73 The collected works of Thomas Scott, S.T.C. 22102, ‘To the reader’.

74 The Belgic soldier, p. 39; The Belgic pismire, pp. 13f.

75 Digitus Dei, sig. B.

76 For this radical application of the ‘rhetoric of Antichrist’ to the English scene and particularly the English church by separatists, semi-separatists and ‘root and branch’ enemies of episcopacy see Christianson, Reformers and Babylon.

77 Vox Dei, p. 59.

78 D. Hirst, ‘Court, country and politics before 1629’ in K. Sharpe (ed.), Faction and parliament; C. Russell, Parliaments and English politics, especially chapter 1.

79 It is ‘opposition’ in this first sense with which Professor Russell is concerned. See Russell, ‘Parliamentary history in perspective’. However, the present paper is concerned to argue that the situation was a good deal less clear-cut, with opposition taken in the second sense.

80 For the political polarization of the later 1620s see Russell, Parliaments and English politics. Also Stephen, White, Sir Edward Coke and the grievances of the Commonweal (Manchester, 1979)Google Scholar. On religion see N. R. N. Tyacke, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and counter-revolution’. For Pym see Russell, C., ‘The parliamentary career of John Pym’ in Clarke, P., Tyacke, N. R. N. and Smith, A. G. R. (eds.), The English Commonwealth, 1547–1640 (Leicester, 1979), pp. 147–65.Google Scholar