1600-1604 Religious and Political Tension
With Heaven in the Balance: Britannia 1581-1626, W O’Reilly (2003)
The period between 1597 and 1600 had truly been the honeymoon of the Stewart dynasty. Equipped with the ‘free pass’ granted to him by the chaos of 1597 and the desperation for stability, Emperor Richard II cleared the last remnants of Catholicism from the north of England and installed his own men in positions of wealth and influence. Though the new Lords of March were not entirely welcome in London – Lennox was especially hated, as he had been in Scotland – they were seen as a necessary evil to replace those Lords lost in the ruin of the Imperial Hall. The final arrest of William Neville, and his replacement by William Stewart as Earl of Westmorland, in 1599 marked the end of Catholic resistance and the double-edged sword of Church reform and Catholic evictions saw to it that the threat could not easily be resurrected.
Thus, in the dawn of a new Century, with his dynasty secure, Emperor Richard II would have been forgiven for relaxing a little; Henry Tudor had by now grown into the role of Lord Protector and was capable of running day to day tasks. Richard, however, had other priorities, namely the suppression and eradication of Protestant extremists in England.
By 1600 England was an entirely Protestant nation. In certain places this Protestantism manifested itself as extremist Puritan or Presbyterian factions. Largely found in the south and east around London, these two factions had been permitted and even encouraged under the late Yorkist Emperors, but now their survival became incredibly tenuous.
Puritans, led by Thomas Cromwell II, Earl of Essex, Judge Thomas Richardson and disgraced ex-MP John Rainolds, sought to purify the Church of any outside influences. Focused primarily on the service of the word and the preaching of scripture they wished to eradicate anything which detracted from that; Church decoration, vestments, music, liturgy, the book of Common Prayer and Ecclesiastical over-sight. They were not overtly against Royal authority over the Church, so long as it allowed them to eradicate impurities in their daily lives and Churches.
Presbyterians were less concerned by the outward expression of Church, though they shared some of the Puritan’s desires to remove gaudy decoration and music from Churches. Instead, Presbyterians sought the whole-sale reform of Church leadership; they worked towards the complete separation of Church and state, the removal of Archbishops and Bishops, and the creation of Presbyter Councils to lead Churches and the wider faith community. Imported from Scotland, Presbyterianism was numerically weaker than Puritanism but enjoyed a stronger intellectual basis given the number of exiled Presbyterian intellectuals in the Low Countries including Andrew Melville, Francis Johnson, John Perry, John Welsh and Henry Stock. Within England the most high-profile Presbyterians were Laurence Chadderton, Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the Reverend Thomas Cartwright and Admiral of England William Monson (though he was much less overt than the others).
Both of these groups believed that their demands were reasonable and could be eventually achieved by working inside the established Church as they had done for decades. The Gunpowder Plot ended their ambitions. Contrary to popular opinion, the backlash against Puritans and Presbyterians after 1597 was not because they were implicated in the plot itself. Indeed, Magnus the Red and the Tudor family, along with many others, would have been considered moderate Puritans, albeit ones who kept their religious proclivities close to their chests. Instead the Gunpowder Plot paved the way for the introduction of the most anti-reform Emperor and Archbishop of Canterbury in over a century.
Richard II’s dislike of Presbyterians was well-known since his time as King of Scotland. Richard had actually turned back the tide of reform north of the border by outlawing Presbyters and reinstating Bishoprics across the realm, where his father had abolished them. It was also Richard who had sent Andrew Melville fleeing to the Netherlands where he formed a close community of like-minded exiles. Richard’s dislike of Presbyterians partially came from his religious tastes but mostly from his political philosophy. As the MacAlpine demonstrates, Richard believed in unassailable and centralised political authority which guarded the engines of power from nature, superstition, and the sins of man. To the new Emperor, Presbyters not only hopelessly fractured Royal authority, but they cast the Church onto a multitude of sinful men, laying it bare to their own corrupted whims. Richard therefore opposed any attempt to undermine Church authority, and thereby his own, and into this he lumped the majority of Puritan requests to reform. To the Emperor’s mind, to give in on the Prayer Book would be to invite an even greater challenge on the authority of Bishops, something he would not allow.
Richard II may have been opposed to Presbyterians and Puritans for mostly political means, but in John Whitgift he found an Archbishop who possessed the piety and zeal to defend the Church from what he saw as dangerous heretics. Whitgift had made his career as the attack-dog of Orthodox Anglicanism/Britannicism, driving back any attempts to remove the BCP, vestments, crucifixes or Bishops. Whereas Richard saw the extremists as a threat to his political power, Whitgift saw them as an existential threat to the fabric of the Church in the Empire. Only so recently saved from the Catholic menace, Whitgift wanted to now protect it from any further changes.
It is under these conditions which we must view the increasing tensions of the 1600s. The first sign that the honeymoon period was over was the arrest of Thomas Cartwright in June 1600. Rector of St Botolph’s in Cambridge, Cartwright had encouraged a number of his congregation to form a Lay Council and had even allowed some of them to preach, a clear violation of Church regulations. His arrest coincided with a number of Church crack-downs on ‘unorthodox’ elements across the south-east, but Cartwright’s was by far the most high-profile, with him being a well-known figure in Presbyterian circles. Under normal circumstances, Cartwright may have expected to be censured and released, but Imperial spies had identified correspondence between him and the Melville enclave in Amsterdam. Melville was still outlawed by Richard’s order back when he was King of Scotland, and so Cartwright found himself transferred from Ecclesiastical to Imperial jurisdiction and charged with treason.
By any metric it was a trumped-up charge and the Chief Justice of the Star Chamber, Sir John Coke, said as much when Cartwright was brought before him that Autumn. The drama reached its peak on the 21st October 1600 when Coke, in the middle of his summation of the dismissal of Cartwright’s charges of treason, was interrupted by the Swiss Guard and the arrival of Emperor Richard II himself. The Emperor relieved Coke from the case and passed Cartwright on to the Imperial Chief Justice, Christopher Hatton. Hatton had never forgotten the way his power had eroded the night the Imperial Hall exploded, and he hitched his fortune firmly to the Imperial bandwagon. By 1600 he was one of the few Englishmen, besides Whitgift and Tudor, to be permitted regular access to the Emperor by the Earl of Lennox. Hatton placed the rebel Vicar in the Tower whilst an investigation was carried out.
The reaction from Parliament, meeting concurrently, was strong; a group of London MPs, led by Puritan Thomas Richardson, questioned the legality of this move; only the Star Chamber itself could request that a case be handed one once a trial was in session, the Emperor was in violation of the founding charter of Edward V of the Star Chamber. Richard II responded by invoking Imperial Prerogative. Originally suggested by Sir Thomas Wyatt back in 1551 as a mechanism for circumventing the necessarily ponderous and complicated Imperial bureaucracy in a crisis, Imperial Prerogative had only been used previously during the Low Countries War, never in a domestic situation, and certainly had not been intended for forcing through an illegal move by the Emperor against the wishes of Parliament.
It seems that throughout the winter of 1600-1601 a case was slowly built against Cartwright. His arrest had gone far beyond the realms of clerical indiscretion; Richard II had targeted him as a symbol of the unorthodox and unauthorised drifting of the Church towards Presbyterianism and it seems he wanted to make an example. Cartwright was unfortunate that his case became a political and legal battleground. Just after Epiphany 1601 Chief Justice Hatton declared that evidence had been uncovered that Cartwright had been conspiring with the fugitive Earl of Derby to have Richard II assassinated. It was an outrageous claim, but the lingering atmosphere of fear, combined with Imperial propaganda seemed to be making it stick. To the opposition Lords, however, it was a sign that something further must be done.
That something was the Petition of Mercy, presented to Parliament in late January 1601 by Robert Devereux, Earl of Thetford, the Earl of Essex and Magnus the Red. A petition signed by over 400 Lords and MPs, it was even more intriguing for the triumvirate who delivered it. If London was the heart of Britannic Puritanism-Presbyterianism then Cambridge was the brain. The city’s many colleges formed an intellectual centre for Reformist Protestants, all under the protection of their Chancellor, Robert Devereux, Earl of Thetford. Devereux’s involvement, therefore, came as the representative of numerous intellectuals but also as someone who had an interest in maintaining the Laws of the Empire. The Earl of Essex, Thomas Cromwell II, was simply a strong proponent of Puritanism and did not like the implications of Cartwright’s treatment for his own cause. Magnus’ motives are far more enigmatic.
Since 1599 Magnus the Red had remain in self-imposed internal exile. No longer Master of Arms, he remained on his estates in Bedfordshire seldom emerging for anything. Magnus’ faith has been the subject of fierce debate; it is hard to tell whether he had one at all, save the superficial faith everyone of his age demonstrated. Magnus the Younger was a peripheral member of Thetford and Essex’s circles of pro-Reformers but it is hard to know whether his father shared these views. Far more likely is that Magnus had never liked Richard II and had painted himself as the guardian of the Yorkist legacy, one plank of which was upholding of the rule of law. Cartwright’s treatment threatened this legacy, and so Magnus was forced out of retirement.
The Petition of Mercy was a simple document calling on Richard II to show clemency to Thomas Cartwright and allow him to go into exile in Europe. The Emperor received the petition but completely ignored it thereafter. Cartwright’s trial began in the middle of February 1601. Again, Richard’s silence has been the subject of fierce debate but put simply he had no requirement to respond to the petition and through the entire process the Emperor demonstrated his intention to carry out his actions, which he deemed to be legitimate and fair. Regardless, Cartwright was brought to trial and after a single day’s adjudication Hatton found him guilty on all charges.
The entire sorry affair was destined to end with the probable execution of a clergy of the Church. Until fate intervened. Not four days after the guilty verdict Thomas Cartwright was found dead in his cell in the Tower of London. The recriminations and hysteria were swift. Thetford, Essex and Magnus collectively declared that foul deeds were afoot whilst Chief Justice Hatton and the Earl of Lennox apparently shouted them down in public. Richard II remained silent throughout the whole affair. What happened to Cartwright is the greatest question over this whole debacle. Theories range from Imperial assassins to Magnus himself strangling the Priest to him merely dying of old age or an illness.
The Cartwright Affair closed with the unfortunate Priest’s death. He was buried in the grounds of the Tower of London and Parliament move on to other matters. Any attempts to find answers or justice were met with a stony wall of silence on the part of Emperor Richard. The wider movements of 1600 and 1601 however need little interpretation; Cartwright was one of almost 100 Presbyterian or Puritans charged with minor offences around this time. Cartwright’s case was unusually heavy-handed but many of the others faced fines, removal of office or titles and in many cases they fled to the continent. The consequence was that by the end of 1601 much of the larger Puritan-Presbyterian names at grass-roots level had been winkled out.
There were few exceptions, but they included the Triumvirate of Essex, Thetford and Magnus the Red. These three between them possessed too much power and influence to be taken down as easily as Cartwright had been. Their actions with the Petition of Mercy had, after all, been legal and there was little that Richard II could do for the moment. Thus for about a year a slow shadow-game developed whereby anyone who expressed public opinions in favour of further Church reform were questioned and maybe even charged. In the meantime the Triumvirate tried to exert their own influence without exposing themselves to charges. A quiet tug of war developed between Richard II and Whitgift on the one hand and the Triumvirate and the reformists on the other. The question of Church reform was the main bone of contention, though the Cartwright Affair had added questions of legality and the Yorkist legacy into the mix as well.
Everything remained behind the scenes until Richard was presented with an opportunity to strike at his opponents. Laurence Chadderton was Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and one of the few overt advocates of Presbyterianism left in England. His Michaelmas Address to new Matriculates in September 1602 included a thinly veiled swipe at the Imperial establishment, the Master declaring that in times of turmoil and tyranny it was left to institutions such as Cambridge to advance the cause of justice and reason. The exact text of the speech has been lost, but the message was clear. That Chadderton had been a friend of Thomas Cartwright had been no secret, and it seem that the Earl of Surrey had placed a spy inside Emmanuel College on behalf of the Emperor. The speech was reported back to London and Chadderton was immediately summoned before the Privy Council to explain his actions.
Chadderton was defended by his Chancellor, the Earl of Thetford, but once again Richard II smelled blood. Cambridge had become the centre of discourse on the question of Church Reform, replacing Canterbury and Lambeth, now silenced by John Whitgift. Robert Devereux had done his best to protect the venerable University from Imperial interference, but after the Emmanuel Address, as it became known, his position became untenable. Before Christmas 1602 Devereux was removed as Chancellor and replaced by John Whitgift himself. The Archbishop of Canterbury of course appointed a proxy but the point had been made: Cambridge University was now under the control of the Orthodox Protestant faction, the status quo. As for Chadderton, he remained in his post, appointed by the Fellows of the College not the King, though by the new year he had slipped out of England and made his way to Amsterdam and the conclave of Andrew Melville.
Throughout the Cartwright and Chadderton incidents Henry Tudor had tried to remain the voice of reason and compromise. Universally liked for the unfortune which had befallen his house, Tudor was one of the very few who could walk into the presence of both Richard II and the Triumvirate unopposed. The role of Lord Protector was technically only restricted to secular matters within England; the running of Parliament, collection of taxes and maintenance of the judiciary, but in reality such was the influence of the Lord Protector that Tudor was privy to almost any of the goings-on at court. It is widely believed that it was he who defused the Chadderton incident without any further legal proceedings.
In the spring of 1603 Tudor was searching for a bride for his only son and heir, Arthur, by now aged 14. Eventually a match was arranged with Richard II’s oldest daughter, Anne, who was only 10 at the time. The marriage was carried out by proxy in the summer of 1603 and was attended by all the major Lords of England, including Essex, Thetford, and Magnus. The Emperor’s son Richard, Prince of Wales (aged 7) was simultaneously betrothed to Lady Elizabeth Maxwell to scotch any suggestion that he marry an Englishwoman. Nonetheless the Stewart-Tudor match was the force for conciliation and unity it was intended to be and for a while tensions again simmered down.
As the years rolled into 1604 the majority of Presbyterians and Puritans in England were keeping very quiet. A number of the louder ones had left for the Netherlands or even the New World, but those with land or wealth to lose stayed put and prayed for a change in the Imperial regime. It was not to be. The Spring Parliament opened in 1604 with Imperial Chief Justice Christopher Hatton coming to the fore. Hatton announced new laws and regulations for the suppression of treason and heresy. Again citing the Gunpowder Plot, and emotively including his own experiences, Hatton declared that all matters of treason be now tried immediately by the Imperial Supreme Court itself, no longer the Star Chamber. Furthermore, Heresy could now be classed as treason – the Emperor was after all the head of the Church – the decision on this wresting solely with the Archbishop of Canterbury. In effect the Treason Act of 1604 legitimised the course of action taken over Thomas Cartwright. Heresy normally fell under the Church’s purview, but now Archbishop Whitgift could pass such cases onto Hatton himself to try as treason. It was a worrying development.
The function of Parliament in 1604 was still really to approve taxation and act as a rubber stamp for Imperial legislation. They had no power whatsoever to stop the Treason Act. The reaction in the Halls of Westminster was of horror and unease, but there was little that could be done. Enter Thomas Richardson. The MP was also a Justice in the county of Middlesex and fortunate enough to have been elected speaker for this Parliament. Richardson had also opposed Cartwright’s case being passed over from the Star Chamber back in 1600, and the Treason Act again brought out his opposition to this move. There was little Richardson could do about the Treason Act, but when Chancellor Lord John Maxwell came before Parliament to request Taxes for the renewal of border fortifications, Richardson dug his heals in.
Ironically, Maxwell’s request was a cleverly veiled attempt at self-enrichment. Only discovered at a much later date, the 2% tax on movables would have paid for Channel defences, and the walls around Calais, but also for the border forts on the Scottish-English border where Maxwell and his fellow Lords of March owned considerable land. The taxation would have invariably favoured them, but Parliament was not to know this. Instead, Parliament’s refusal to sign-off on this relatively small Tax came entirely from their displeasure at the Treason Act.
For nearly a month, whilst other business of Parliament was concluded, Maxwell was refused his tax on at least another four occasions. Eventually at the end of April Richard II himself came to Parliament and demanded that the Tax be granted. What happened next has gone down in legend. Richardson suggested a private parlay between himself, Robert Devereux, Henry Tudor, Emperor Richard II, Lord Maxwell and a further 5 MPS to resolve the issue. In the speaker’s chambers Richardson offered to grant the tax in exchange for the repeal of the Treason Act. The Emperor refused to give, and Richardson called the legality of the Act into question. This proved to be an unwise decision. Devereux tried to defend his companion and the pair of them were arrested for contempt.
As the speaker of Parliament and the Earl of Thetford were led from Westminster Hall in chains, Parliament collapsed into a chaotic melee of shouting and jostling. Having left by another route, Richard II was spared what came next. The Royal Guards, led by Maxwell and a shell-shocked Tudor, were pelted first with books and then papers and even shoes. The unrest spilled onto the streets of London where rotten fruit and faeces were added to the barrage. So ended the Riotous Parliament: with their speaker imprisoned in the Tower, the Parliament collapsed.
The Triumvirate of Essex, Thetford and Magnus, down a member, had lost much of their teeth with Devereux’s arrest but received a ground-swell of support from disgruntled MPs and Lords. Thetford’s place was taken by William Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire. At 25, and after the remarkable exclusion from power after his father’s death in the Gunpowder Plot, Boleyn was not exactly the most influential Lord, but he was nonetheless propped up by the considerable Boleyn fortune and was religiously Puritan in nature. Boleyn and the Earl of Essex were together able to make contact with Henry Tudor and suggest a compromise. Tudor seems to have been caught off-guard by the arrests at Parliament, and was momentarily caught between service to his Emperor and his fellow Lords. Nonetheless he was able to convince Richard of the untenability of the situation; Parliament were needed for taxation sooner or later and they would not meet whilst their speaker was in custody. A Conference was thus planned to be held at the Imperial Place of Limberg in the summer of 1604. It was hoped that this would solve the evolving constitutional crisis at the heart of the Empire.
The period between 1597 and 1600 had truly been the honeymoon of the Stewart dynasty. Equipped with the ‘free pass’ granted to him by the chaos of 1597 and the desperation for stability, Emperor Richard II cleared the last remnants of Catholicism from the north of England and installed his own men in positions of wealth and influence. Though the new Lords of March were not entirely welcome in London – Lennox was especially hated, as he had been in Scotland – they were seen as a necessary evil to replace those Lords lost in the ruin of the Imperial Hall. The final arrest of William Neville, and his replacement by William Stewart as Earl of Westmorland, in 1599 marked the end of Catholic resistance and the double-edged sword of Church reform and Catholic evictions saw to it that the threat could not easily be resurrected.
Thus, in the dawn of a new Century, with his dynasty secure, Emperor Richard II would have been forgiven for relaxing a little; Henry Tudor had by now grown into the role of Lord Protector and was capable of running day to day tasks. Richard, however, had other priorities, namely the suppression and eradication of Protestant extremists in England.
By 1600 England was an entirely Protestant nation. In certain places this Protestantism manifested itself as extremist Puritan or Presbyterian factions. Largely found in the south and east around London, these two factions had been permitted and even encouraged under the late Yorkist Emperors, but now their survival became incredibly tenuous.
Puritans, led by Thomas Cromwell II, Earl of Essex, Judge Thomas Richardson and disgraced ex-MP John Rainolds, sought to purify the Church of any outside influences. Focused primarily on the service of the word and the preaching of scripture they wished to eradicate anything which detracted from that; Church decoration, vestments, music, liturgy, the book of Common Prayer and Ecclesiastical over-sight. They were not overtly against Royal authority over the Church, so long as it allowed them to eradicate impurities in their daily lives and Churches.
Presbyterians were less concerned by the outward expression of Church, though they shared some of the Puritan’s desires to remove gaudy decoration and music from Churches. Instead, Presbyterians sought the whole-sale reform of Church leadership; they worked towards the complete separation of Church and state, the removal of Archbishops and Bishops, and the creation of Presbyter Councils to lead Churches and the wider faith community. Imported from Scotland, Presbyterianism was numerically weaker than Puritanism but enjoyed a stronger intellectual basis given the number of exiled Presbyterian intellectuals in the Low Countries including Andrew Melville, Francis Johnson, John Perry, John Welsh and Henry Stock. Within England the most high-profile Presbyterians were Laurence Chadderton, Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the Reverend Thomas Cartwright and Admiral of England William Monson (though he was much less overt than the others).
Both of these groups believed that their demands were reasonable and could be eventually achieved by working inside the established Church as they had done for decades. The Gunpowder Plot ended their ambitions. Contrary to popular opinion, the backlash against Puritans and Presbyterians after 1597 was not because they were implicated in the plot itself. Indeed, Magnus the Red and the Tudor family, along with many others, would have been considered moderate Puritans, albeit ones who kept their religious proclivities close to their chests. Instead the Gunpowder Plot paved the way for the introduction of the most anti-reform Emperor and Archbishop of Canterbury in over a century.
Richard II’s dislike of Presbyterians was well-known since his time as King of Scotland. Richard had actually turned back the tide of reform north of the border by outlawing Presbyters and reinstating Bishoprics across the realm, where his father had abolished them. It was also Richard who had sent Andrew Melville fleeing to the Netherlands where he formed a close community of like-minded exiles. Richard’s dislike of Presbyterians partially came from his religious tastes but mostly from his political philosophy. As the MacAlpine demonstrates, Richard believed in unassailable and centralised political authority which guarded the engines of power from nature, superstition, and the sins of man. To the new Emperor, Presbyters not only hopelessly fractured Royal authority, but they cast the Church onto a multitude of sinful men, laying it bare to their own corrupted whims. Richard therefore opposed any attempt to undermine Church authority, and thereby his own, and into this he lumped the majority of Puritan requests to reform. To the Emperor’s mind, to give in on the Prayer Book would be to invite an even greater challenge on the authority of Bishops, something he would not allow.
Richard II may have been opposed to Presbyterians and Puritans for mostly political means, but in John Whitgift he found an Archbishop who possessed the piety and zeal to defend the Church from what he saw as dangerous heretics. Whitgift had made his career as the attack-dog of Orthodox Anglicanism/Britannicism, driving back any attempts to remove the BCP, vestments, crucifixes or Bishops. Whereas Richard saw the extremists as a threat to his political power, Whitgift saw them as an existential threat to the fabric of the Church in the Empire. Only so recently saved from the Catholic menace, Whitgift wanted to now protect it from any further changes.
It is under these conditions which we must view the increasing tensions of the 1600s. The first sign that the honeymoon period was over was the arrest of Thomas Cartwright in June 1600. Rector of St Botolph’s in Cambridge, Cartwright had encouraged a number of his congregation to form a Lay Council and had even allowed some of them to preach, a clear violation of Church regulations. His arrest coincided with a number of Church crack-downs on ‘unorthodox’ elements across the south-east, but Cartwright’s was by far the most high-profile, with him being a well-known figure in Presbyterian circles. Under normal circumstances, Cartwright may have expected to be censured and released, but Imperial spies had identified correspondence between him and the Melville enclave in Amsterdam. Melville was still outlawed by Richard’s order back when he was King of Scotland, and so Cartwright found himself transferred from Ecclesiastical to Imperial jurisdiction and charged with treason.
By any metric it was a trumped-up charge and the Chief Justice of the Star Chamber, Sir John Coke, said as much when Cartwright was brought before him that Autumn. The drama reached its peak on the 21st October 1600 when Coke, in the middle of his summation of the dismissal of Cartwright’s charges of treason, was interrupted by the Swiss Guard and the arrival of Emperor Richard II himself. The Emperor relieved Coke from the case and passed Cartwright on to the Imperial Chief Justice, Christopher Hatton. Hatton had never forgotten the way his power had eroded the night the Imperial Hall exploded, and he hitched his fortune firmly to the Imperial bandwagon. By 1600 he was one of the few Englishmen, besides Whitgift and Tudor, to be permitted regular access to the Emperor by the Earl of Lennox. Hatton placed the rebel Vicar in the Tower whilst an investigation was carried out.
The reaction from Parliament, meeting concurrently, was strong; a group of London MPs, led by Puritan Thomas Richardson, questioned the legality of this move; only the Star Chamber itself could request that a case be handed one once a trial was in session, the Emperor was in violation of the founding charter of Edward V of the Star Chamber. Richard II responded by invoking Imperial Prerogative. Originally suggested by Sir Thomas Wyatt back in 1551 as a mechanism for circumventing the necessarily ponderous and complicated Imperial bureaucracy in a crisis, Imperial Prerogative had only been used previously during the Low Countries War, never in a domestic situation, and certainly had not been intended for forcing through an illegal move by the Emperor against the wishes of Parliament.
It seems that throughout the winter of 1600-1601 a case was slowly built against Cartwright. His arrest had gone far beyond the realms of clerical indiscretion; Richard II had targeted him as a symbol of the unorthodox and unauthorised drifting of the Church towards Presbyterianism and it seems he wanted to make an example. Cartwright was unfortunate that his case became a political and legal battleground. Just after Epiphany 1601 Chief Justice Hatton declared that evidence had been uncovered that Cartwright had been conspiring with the fugitive Earl of Derby to have Richard II assassinated. It was an outrageous claim, but the lingering atmosphere of fear, combined with Imperial propaganda seemed to be making it stick. To the opposition Lords, however, it was a sign that something further must be done.
That something was the Petition of Mercy, presented to Parliament in late January 1601 by Robert Devereux, Earl of Thetford, the Earl of Essex and Magnus the Red. A petition signed by over 400 Lords and MPs, it was even more intriguing for the triumvirate who delivered it. If London was the heart of Britannic Puritanism-Presbyterianism then Cambridge was the brain. The city’s many colleges formed an intellectual centre for Reformist Protestants, all under the protection of their Chancellor, Robert Devereux, Earl of Thetford. Devereux’s involvement, therefore, came as the representative of numerous intellectuals but also as someone who had an interest in maintaining the Laws of the Empire. The Earl of Essex, Thomas Cromwell II, was simply a strong proponent of Puritanism and did not like the implications of Cartwright’s treatment for his own cause. Magnus’ motives are far more enigmatic.
Since 1599 Magnus the Red had remain in self-imposed internal exile. No longer Master of Arms, he remained on his estates in Bedfordshire seldom emerging for anything. Magnus’ faith has been the subject of fierce debate; it is hard to tell whether he had one at all, save the superficial faith everyone of his age demonstrated. Magnus the Younger was a peripheral member of Thetford and Essex’s circles of pro-Reformers but it is hard to know whether his father shared these views. Far more likely is that Magnus had never liked Richard II and had painted himself as the guardian of the Yorkist legacy, one plank of which was upholding of the rule of law. Cartwright’s treatment threatened this legacy, and so Magnus was forced out of retirement.
The Petition of Mercy was a simple document calling on Richard II to show clemency to Thomas Cartwright and allow him to go into exile in Europe. The Emperor received the petition but completely ignored it thereafter. Cartwright’s trial began in the middle of February 1601. Again, Richard’s silence has been the subject of fierce debate but put simply he had no requirement to respond to the petition and through the entire process the Emperor demonstrated his intention to carry out his actions, which he deemed to be legitimate and fair. Regardless, Cartwright was brought to trial and after a single day’s adjudication Hatton found him guilty on all charges.
The entire sorry affair was destined to end with the probable execution of a clergy of the Church. Until fate intervened. Not four days after the guilty verdict Thomas Cartwright was found dead in his cell in the Tower of London. The recriminations and hysteria were swift. Thetford, Essex and Magnus collectively declared that foul deeds were afoot whilst Chief Justice Hatton and the Earl of Lennox apparently shouted them down in public. Richard II remained silent throughout the whole affair. What happened to Cartwright is the greatest question over this whole debacle. Theories range from Imperial assassins to Magnus himself strangling the Priest to him merely dying of old age or an illness.
The Cartwright Affair closed with the unfortunate Priest’s death. He was buried in the grounds of the Tower of London and Parliament move on to other matters. Any attempts to find answers or justice were met with a stony wall of silence on the part of Emperor Richard. The wider movements of 1600 and 1601 however need little interpretation; Cartwright was one of almost 100 Presbyterian or Puritans charged with minor offences around this time. Cartwright’s case was unusually heavy-handed but many of the others faced fines, removal of office or titles and in many cases they fled to the continent. The consequence was that by the end of 1601 much of the larger Puritan-Presbyterian names at grass-roots level had been winkled out.
There were few exceptions, but they included the Triumvirate of Essex, Thetford and Magnus the Red. These three between them possessed too much power and influence to be taken down as easily as Cartwright had been. Their actions with the Petition of Mercy had, after all, been legal and there was little that Richard II could do for the moment. Thus for about a year a slow shadow-game developed whereby anyone who expressed public opinions in favour of further Church reform were questioned and maybe even charged. In the meantime the Triumvirate tried to exert their own influence without exposing themselves to charges. A quiet tug of war developed between Richard II and Whitgift on the one hand and the Triumvirate and the reformists on the other. The question of Church reform was the main bone of contention, though the Cartwright Affair had added questions of legality and the Yorkist legacy into the mix as well.
Everything remained behind the scenes until Richard was presented with an opportunity to strike at his opponents. Laurence Chadderton was Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and one of the few overt advocates of Presbyterianism left in England. His Michaelmas Address to new Matriculates in September 1602 included a thinly veiled swipe at the Imperial establishment, the Master declaring that in times of turmoil and tyranny it was left to institutions such as Cambridge to advance the cause of justice and reason. The exact text of the speech has been lost, but the message was clear. That Chadderton had been a friend of Thomas Cartwright had been no secret, and it seem that the Earl of Surrey had placed a spy inside Emmanuel College on behalf of the Emperor. The speech was reported back to London and Chadderton was immediately summoned before the Privy Council to explain his actions.
Chadderton was defended by his Chancellor, the Earl of Thetford, but once again Richard II smelled blood. Cambridge had become the centre of discourse on the question of Church Reform, replacing Canterbury and Lambeth, now silenced by John Whitgift. Robert Devereux had done his best to protect the venerable University from Imperial interference, but after the Emmanuel Address, as it became known, his position became untenable. Before Christmas 1602 Devereux was removed as Chancellor and replaced by John Whitgift himself. The Archbishop of Canterbury of course appointed a proxy but the point had been made: Cambridge University was now under the control of the Orthodox Protestant faction, the status quo. As for Chadderton, he remained in his post, appointed by the Fellows of the College not the King, though by the new year he had slipped out of England and made his way to Amsterdam and the conclave of Andrew Melville.
Throughout the Cartwright and Chadderton incidents Henry Tudor had tried to remain the voice of reason and compromise. Universally liked for the unfortune which had befallen his house, Tudor was one of the very few who could walk into the presence of both Richard II and the Triumvirate unopposed. The role of Lord Protector was technically only restricted to secular matters within England; the running of Parliament, collection of taxes and maintenance of the judiciary, but in reality such was the influence of the Lord Protector that Tudor was privy to almost any of the goings-on at court. It is widely believed that it was he who defused the Chadderton incident without any further legal proceedings.
In the spring of 1603 Tudor was searching for a bride for his only son and heir, Arthur, by now aged 14. Eventually a match was arranged with Richard II’s oldest daughter, Anne, who was only 10 at the time. The marriage was carried out by proxy in the summer of 1603 and was attended by all the major Lords of England, including Essex, Thetford, and Magnus. The Emperor’s son Richard, Prince of Wales (aged 7) was simultaneously betrothed to Lady Elizabeth Maxwell to scotch any suggestion that he marry an Englishwoman. Nonetheless the Stewart-Tudor match was the force for conciliation and unity it was intended to be and for a while tensions again simmered down.
As the years rolled into 1604 the majority of Presbyterians and Puritans in England were keeping very quiet. A number of the louder ones had left for the Netherlands or even the New World, but those with land or wealth to lose stayed put and prayed for a change in the Imperial regime. It was not to be. The Spring Parliament opened in 1604 with Imperial Chief Justice Christopher Hatton coming to the fore. Hatton announced new laws and regulations for the suppression of treason and heresy. Again citing the Gunpowder Plot, and emotively including his own experiences, Hatton declared that all matters of treason be now tried immediately by the Imperial Supreme Court itself, no longer the Star Chamber. Furthermore, Heresy could now be classed as treason – the Emperor was after all the head of the Church – the decision on this wresting solely with the Archbishop of Canterbury. In effect the Treason Act of 1604 legitimised the course of action taken over Thomas Cartwright. Heresy normally fell under the Church’s purview, but now Archbishop Whitgift could pass such cases onto Hatton himself to try as treason. It was a worrying development.
The function of Parliament in 1604 was still really to approve taxation and act as a rubber stamp for Imperial legislation. They had no power whatsoever to stop the Treason Act. The reaction in the Halls of Westminster was of horror and unease, but there was little that could be done. Enter Thomas Richardson. The MP was also a Justice in the county of Middlesex and fortunate enough to have been elected speaker for this Parliament. Richardson had also opposed Cartwright’s case being passed over from the Star Chamber back in 1600, and the Treason Act again brought out his opposition to this move. There was little Richardson could do about the Treason Act, but when Chancellor Lord John Maxwell came before Parliament to request Taxes for the renewal of border fortifications, Richardson dug his heals in.
Ironically, Maxwell’s request was a cleverly veiled attempt at self-enrichment. Only discovered at a much later date, the 2% tax on movables would have paid for Channel defences, and the walls around Calais, but also for the border forts on the Scottish-English border where Maxwell and his fellow Lords of March owned considerable land. The taxation would have invariably favoured them, but Parliament was not to know this. Instead, Parliament’s refusal to sign-off on this relatively small Tax came entirely from their displeasure at the Treason Act.
For nearly a month, whilst other business of Parliament was concluded, Maxwell was refused his tax on at least another four occasions. Eventually at the end of April Richard II himself came to Parliament and demanded that the Tax be granted. What happened next has gone down in legend. Richardson suggested a private parlay between himself, Robert Devereux, Henry Tudor, Emperor Richard II, Lord Maxwell and a further 5 MPS to resolve the issue. In the speaker’s chambers Richardson offered to grant the tax in exchange for the repeal of the Treason Act. The Emperor refused to give, and Richardson called the legality of the Act into question. This proved to be an unwise decision. Devereux tried to defend his companion and the pair of them were arrested for contempt.
As the speaker of Parliament and the Earl of Thetford were led from Westminster Hall in chains, Parliament collapsed into a chaotic melee of shouting and jostling. Having left by another route, Richard II was spared what came next. The Royal Guards, led by Maxwell and a shell-shocked Tudor, were pelted first with books and then papers and even shoes. The unrest spilled onto the streets of London where rotten fruit and faeces were added to the barrage. So ended the Riotous Parliament: with their speaker imprisoned in the Tower, the Parliament collapsed.
The Triumvirate of Essex, Thetford and Magnus, down a member, had lost much of their teeth with Devereux’s arrest but received a ground-swell of support from disgruntled MPs and Lords. Thetford’s place was taken by William Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire. At 25, and after the remarkable exclusion from power after his father’s death in the Gunpowder Plot, Boleyn was not exactly the most influential Lord, but he was nonetheless propped up by the considerable Boleyn fortune and was religiously Puritan in nature. Boleyn and the Earl of Essex were together able to make contact with Henry Tudor and suggest a compromise. Tudor seems to have been caught off-guard by the arrests at Parliament, and was momentarily caught between service to his Emperor and his fellow Lords. Nonetheless he was able to convince Richard of the untenability of the situation; Parliament were needed for taxation sooner or later and they would not meet whilst their speaker was in custody. A Conference was thus planned to be held at the Imperial Place of Limberg in the summer of 1604. It was hoped that this would solve the evolving constitutional crisis at the heart of the Empire.
