The Fourth Earl of Dorset and the Personal Rule of Charles I
The assembly of the Long Parliament in November 1640 witnessed an outburst of passionate hostility toward recent royal policies in church and state. “The Common-wealth hath bin miserably torne and macerated,” declared Harbottle Grimston, “and all the proprieties and liberties shaken: the Church distracted, the Gospell and Professors of it persecuted, and the whole Kingdome over-run with multitudes and swarmes of projecting cater-wormes and caterpillars, the worst of all the Aegyptian plagues.” Yet, as Kevin Sharpe has recently reminded us, “to those on the road during the 1630s, the journey seemed far from a headlong rush towards conflict.” Sir Henry Wotton could write in 1633 that “we know not what a Rebel is; what a Plotter against the Common-weal: nor what that is, which Grammarian[s] call Treason: the names themselves are antiquated with the things.” To resolve this flat contradiction requires much further research into the politics and government of Charles I's Personal Rule. In particular, a clear picture of the political behavior, relationships, and attitudes of many public figures is still lacking. This article therefore presents a case study of one prominent individual: Edward Sackville, fourth earl of Dorset, privy councillor and lord chamberlain to Henrietta Maria. These offices gave Dorset an exceptional opportunity during the 1630s to “see more clearly into [the king's] intents and actions.” Moreover, both official sources and personal correspondence should reveal his activities during the Personal Rule and his attitudes toward it. What follows will examine in turn Dorset's duties as the queen's lord chamberlain, the political influence that this office conferred, his work as a privy councillor, his relations with various factions, and his private opinions of the regime and of Charles I and Henrietta Maria.
Aristocratic Century: The sinews of power: political
In his excellent book on the Secretaries of State, Mark Thomson offered ‘the paradox of continuing domination of the aristocracy and the simultaneous insignificance of the House of Lords, per se ’. It is true that, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the supremacy of the House of Commons in financial matters was a wellestablished convention. The claims of the Commons to an undisputed control over money matters, which had been urged before the Civil War, were resumed immediately after the Restoration and a protracted dispute with the House of Lords began. In 1661 the Lords resolved that there were no precedents in history for this new claim by the House of Commons. In 1671, the Commons retorted that taxation ought not to be questioned by the Lords and in 1678 they reiterated that supply was ‘the undoubted and sole right of the Commons’ and ‘ought not to be changed or altered by the House of Lords’. The Lords' attempt in 1692 to assess their own taxes was also abandoned, though they retired under cover of a rather insubstantial smoke-screen that they maintained their power of amendment to be a ‘fundamental, inherent and undoubted right from which their lordships can never depart’. That established, they departed. Geoffrey Holmes quotes a nice example from 1702 when the bishop of Carlisle found himself the only peer answering to a money bill, ‘no other lord in the House regarded what was doing, this being only (pro forma) to preserve a seeming right to dissent from, or amend, any part of a money bill’.
The English Nobility and the Projected Settlement of 1647
On 26 July 1647 Westminster, in the grip of plague and political crisis, exploded with rioting. With the connivance of leading Presbyterian politicians in parliament and the City, a throng of apprentices and demobilized soldiers besieged the two Houses, coercing the imprisoned members to accede to their demands. Many of the rioters had subscribed to an outlawed ‘Solemn Engagement’, calling for the restoration of the king: they demanded the reversal of parliament's declaration against this Engagement, and the return of the City's militia forces to its own strongly ‘Presbyterian’ Militia Committee. As the main body of rioters swarmed into the Court of Requests, through the Painted Chamber and assailed the doors of the house of lords, another smaller party led by one Brace, a grocer, ran down the Water Lane leading from the house to the river, to block this means of escape. Reminded by one of the rioters that ‘not at anie hand [was] this house to be forced’ Brace retorted ‘what they did, they were aduised by a Member of the house of Comons’.6 ‘Keepe them in, keepe them in thises three daies’, shouted their ringleader, the reformado captain, William Musgrave, ‘and if they will not grant your desires, cutt their throates’ ‘Through the barred doors of the Lords’ chamber came cries of ‘Traytors, put them out, hang their guts about their necks and many other like words’.