Chris Gaffney, 1965
Source: Labor Review, No 30, 1965
Transcription, mark-up: Steve Painter
There are numerous interpretations of the English Civil War. The liberal view is that the parliamentary armies were fighting for liberty against a despotic sovereign who taxed the people without their consent, in the form of parliamentary approval.
The King had also, they argued, tried to destroy parliament and was attempting to destroy the liberty of the subjects. It’s true that the government was despotic and it was not until the Commonwealth in the 1660s that the bourgeois class won self-government.
The struggle primarily was not that of the people, for parliament represented the bourgeoisie. The liberal interpretation also does not adequately explain the role of the church.
Why was the king despotic? Why did the landed classes revolt? Under Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) parliament had supported the monarchy. It had also supported the sovereign’s efforts to keep order against the Pope and the Catholic Church, subdue the warring magnates of the sixteenth century, and helped to resist the Spanish invasion threat.
Support of crown policy in those times was to bourgeois advantage, as it made England safe for peaceful development of capital.
Why did this not continue under the Stuarts? Because James I was an oaf, as the liberals claim? But surely the attempts at rigorous enforcement of his reactionary policy showed that he was not as stupid as the liberals claim. He certainly was astute enough to place numbers of his men (the Privy Councilors) in parliament.
The English Revolution, like the French, was a struggle by the bourgeoisie for economic, social, religious and political power after it had grown wealthy and powerful during the sixteenth century.
Royal assistance had enabled peaceful development untroubled by foreigners and overseas exploitation of wealth. The Crown in the early seventeenth century was the most vigorous opponent of the popular party — the bourgeoisie.
The interests for which Charles I stood were not those of the masses. He represented the landowning nobles, and their policy was influenced by a court clique of aristocratic dealers at the masses’ expense.
Thus the bourgeoisie was not purely self-centred in its drive to throw off the parasitic class that prevented society moving to a higher level of economic and social life.
Victory for the bourgeoisie did improve the lot of the masses to some degree After the 1640s, the wages of the ordinary worker nearly doubled.
The choking effect of the older classes depended on a dwindling economic existence The state supported this class, and so had to be removed.
The church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries occupied a central position in social life. It influenced social activity and education. It was the news source and the propaganda medium for most of the populace. The government often delivered its orders through the pulpit, and the parish was an important part of local government.
Thus the violent clash between the Puritans and the Church of England was, even if we assume that the religious question was non-political, of a great deal more importance than any religious question might be today.
Men such as Cardinal Wolsey were evidence of this. The church defended the existing order. In days when the state was weak, the church had a parish in every district and hallowed entry to any home. It was able on the threat of hellfire to instruct the people in what to do or believe.
Thus anyone wishing to overthrow the social order in the seventeenth century also had to change the organ of government propaganda or challenge it with a new faith that provided a spiritual and moral basis for an otherwise immoral challenge of an established state instrument of power.
Because church and state were closely linked (the king was the supreme head of the church and chose the leading church dignitaries) political conflicts always became religious conflicts.
There was, therefore, an economic content behind what otherwise was a purely theological argument. Each class sided with the religion that suited its interests. The fading feudal landowners were supported by the Church of England. The theology of Puritanism was more especially concerned with economic and social development. The clash was not primarily theological.
Merchants, yeomen and minor gentry wished freely to invest their capital in industrial, commercial and agricultural development, but in this they were hampered by feudal relics and by the government aiding the old ruling class to restrict production and the accumulation of capital.
In attacking the feudal landlords and their state in conjunction with the court parasites who were trying by means of Crown-granted monopolies to dominate business profits, the bourgeoisie faced a formidable struggle.
England in 1640 was ruled by landlords trying to hold back a rapidly growing capitalist sector. There were, except in London, very few politicians. Small peasants and artisans were losing their independence and were hit by a rise in prices that made them increasingly dependent on the merchants and squires.
So the interests of the rising capitalists, merchants and farmers were identical for a time with those of the small peasantry, artisans and journeymen, against the parasitic feudal landowners and speculative financiers.
The later development of capitalism would break the temporary alliance formed for the historical purpose of ridding society of the old class, as the small independent artisans and peasants would become not merely a partner with the bourgeoisie but servants of capital.
Until about 1590, there was little conflict between the Crown and an as yet fairly weak bourgeoisie, which was not ready to assert its power.
Piracy and plunder of Spanish vessels returning with plunder from the Americas fed the growth of capital. The discovery of new lands in Ireland and North America also delayed conflict with the rising entrepreneurs.
Class divisions had not hardened sufficiently for the bourgeoisie to threaten the old society until about the reign of James I (1603) and the clash continued into the reign of Charles I.
As the income from land declined, the old feudal gentry became increasingly dependent on the court for economic pickings. This trend was worsened by acute inflation during the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign (1558-1603).
The state (the Stuart monarchy) steadily became useless to the town and country capitalists, which increased its power during years of peaceful development, aided by inflation.
Now it sought to achieve political power and the feudal aristocrats were forced to fight for God, king and the existing social order, in other words their own survival.
As the greatest of the feudal landlords, the king had been hit hard by the general price rise, and he greatly disliked the change from a feudal to a capitalist social order.
The parliamentary franchise was very limited, representing the landed classes and merchants. It was not till James I died that the House of Commons was able to seize the initiative from the Crown-dominated House of Lords. Parliament under Henry VIII and Elizabeth only met occasionally and then approved royal policy not by stacking the parliaments with the King’s men but by the overwhelming pressure the Crown could exert.
When external and internal reaction had been defeated (the threat of Papacy and the Spanish Armada) the bourgeois need for Crown protection was reduced. The Crown began to resent the increased strength and influence of the bourgeois and wished to consolidate its own position.
This clash was evident in the parliaments of Charles I and James I, which revealed the increasing division between the bourgeoisie and the Crown.
James was a political fool, but that alone does not explain the success of Elizabeth and the failure of James.
James’s divine theory of kingship was a symptom of the growing King-parliament divide, not a cause of it, for the King was defining his position only because his rights were being challenged.
The immediate conflict with parliament was finance, a source of tension already in Elizabeth’s parliaments, especially in the 1590s. Thus the difference between the relations of James and Elizabeth with the bourgeoisie was not to be found in personality but rather in the shift of class relationships.
Bourgeois wealth had increased greatly, yet the Crown’s revenue came mainly from feudal landholders relying on rents, rather than mercantile profits. The landlords’ income was static, and in fact decreasing with inflation, and inadequate for their needs.
The Crown, to maintain its standing, had to tap the new wealth if it was to maintain its position. It tried first by taxing the bourgeoisie and the gentry. That led to fierce quarrels with parliament, which claimed control of taxation and wasn’t going to allow its increase until it fully controlled the executive machinery of the state.
The Crown also tried to participate directly in the productive process, leading to the establishment of profitably monopolies. This enraged the business world and further alienated it from the crown.
In 1616 there was scandal when the Crown sought control of the clothing industry for the benefit of the exchequer, leading to an overproduction crisis and resultant unemployment, the blame for which fell on the Crown.
The Crown tried hard to bring back old times by trying to increase feudal revenue, but that proved a hopeless task. The nobility also turned to the Crown to administer economic controls for their benefit, seeking privileges when they saw the bourgeois driving them out of their traditional professions.
Since 1535 the gentry had desired the remaining church lands. International moral authority ended when Papal supremacy was dislodged, and now the national church depended on the Crown.
Elizabeth’s church had stood for passive obedience to divinely constituted authority and preached that rebellion was the worst sin.
This view was ideal when the Crown was near-omnipotent and backed by a bourgeoisie wanting peaceful development opportunities for capital.
As the bourgeoisie began to move for their own benefit, so the Puritan attacks on the Church become hardly distinguishable from the parliamentary attacks on the crown.
Two systems with their own ideologies clashed. Presbyterianism advocated the abolition of royally appointed of bishops, and domination of local churches by elders (local bourgeois). It wanted the church to spread the economic and political modes of thought of the capitalist class.
Presbyterianism preached sobriety, hard work in the station to which each had been called by God. The wealthy were to accumulate capital and the poor to labour at their allotted task, all under the eye of the great taskmaster. Thus God assumed a striking resemblance to the divine capitalist.
The Puritans claimed that the religious policy of Charles was a return to Papacy. In the doctrinal sense, this wasn’t true, but Charles was trying to return to relationships that were well out of date. The controller of the church and its dogmas was in a strong position to control the pattern of society.
The Long Parliament, bourgeois though it was, reflected the division between England’s feudal north-west and the capitalist areas of the south-east. The House of Commons was subject to, and reliant upon, Londoners, the yeomen and artisans of the home counties and more specially the merchants and capitalists.
In 1640 most classes were determined to smash the bureaucratic machinery by which the Crown had been able to govern outside parliament, which represented the economic strength of England.
The Star Chamber and other prerogative courts were abolished. Parliament wished to make the king finally dependent upon the parliament for finance and to take control of the standing army for itself. Parliament also sought control of the church as a valuable propaganda centre and a source of moral authority that could be effectively wielded.
With the fresh revolt in 1641, parliament, not wishing Charles to have control of the army, seized the control. Parliament began to split along class lines.
The more conservative of the gentry and most of the aristocracy saw the House of Commons beginning to speak to the masses, clearly trying to form an anti-feudal alliance, leading to a break-up of the old social order.
Class division spread all over the country, the royal monopolists and the court oligarchy supported the economic livelihood that now focused on their support for the Crown and the state.
Artisans, peasants, merchants and town and country capitalists supported the progressives in parliament, the germ of a new society.
Division in the House of Commons was most clearly evident with the passing of the Grand Remonstrance, a sweeping indictment of Charles’s reign designed as a popular appeal to win support for the popular grouping in parliament. This measure, which only passed by two votes left an irreparable split in the House of Commons.
The future royalists in parliament withdrew when church property was seized. They feared that the revolutionary fervour they had aroused would swallow property. For this reason many of the big bourgeois, fearing a revolution against property, changed sides and supported the king. The big bourgeois element did not want the revolution to go too far.
The king in 1642 rejected all overtures and war began. The issues were obscured by the fact that many of the hated state officials were also church officials. Many saw the struggle as for Puritanism against a dangerously Papist Church of England. But their actions show that more was involved.
The issue was political. Charles was rejected not because he was a bad man but because he represented an obsolete social system.
When unlimited growth of capital was the best means of increasing the national wealth, the state had tried to perpetuate a feudal social order.
Charles had tried to regulate trade and so restrict the bourgeoisie while also trying to take tax industry. Because he lost favour with the moneyed classes, he had to levy illegal taxes and to try and dispense with parliament.
The parliamentary armies were fighting not merely a few evil courtiers but an outdated system of rule, and so had to smash the state in its feudal form insofar as it denied the bourgeoisie its political power.
During and after the Civil War, the capitalist class was willing to pay taxes three and four times as heavy as those they had refused to pay to Charles I. When they objected to the king’s taxation it was not the taxes that they minded, but the policy for which they were paying — a policy hostile to their development.
They were quite willing to pay for a government that served their interests.
The overthrow of the old regime was the prerequisite of social and economic advance. A victory for Charles would have meant the economic stagnation of England and retention of a feudal society in a commercial age, leading to a more violent struggle later.
“The parliamentarians thought they were fighting God’s battles. They were certainly fighting those of posterity,” wrote Christopher Hill in The English Revolution.
The English Revolution provides an excellent example of the materialist conception of history. The feudal society had sowed the seed of its own destruction, the bourgeoisie. As this class grew, it became restricted within the bounds of the old society, which denied it economic fulfillment and political power. The parliamentarians in the Civil War clearly acted for their class interests. Their philosophy and religion were moulded by their production.