Читать книгу The Struggle for Sovereignty - Группа авторов - Страница 36

After Charles abandoned London in January 1642 for what he hoped would be the more loyal North, the two houses of Parliament at Westminster attempted to negotiate with him through a series of published declarations, remonstrances, answers, and open letters. These reached a constitutional climax in June with Parliament’s publication on 1 June of the Nineteen Propositions, proposals that would have sharply and permanently circumscribed the king’s powers, and Charles’s response on 18 June.

Charles’s “Answer to the Nineteen Propositions” has become even more famous than the propositions themselves. This answer has been heralded for its endorsement of England’s mixed and balanced constitution and for its reliance upon law for support. Of chief significance, however, is the king’s acceptance of the concept that he is not above the three estates assembled in Parliament but in fact is one of the three estates. The Answer was written for Charles by two of his moderate advisers, Sir John Colepeper and Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland—men who had worked in the Long Parliament the previous year to rein in the expanded royal prerogative. The passage in which the king endorses the idea of being one of three estates in Parliament—thus excluding the bishops from membership and reducing the position of the Crown to coordinate membership—was penned by Colepeper. It is unclear whether Falkland fully endorsed the Answer’s concession that the king was one of the three estates. He later pleaded inadvertence, claimed Colepeper had been misled by some lawyers, and that clergymen had misunderstood. Sir Edward Hyde, the best known of Charles’s moderate advisers, was unhappy with the concession and tried to delay publication. It is even unclear whether the king actually read the crucial passage, although he assuredly glanced at, and gave his approval to, the lengthy reply. In important respects it does not reflect views Charles espoused before or afterward.

Whatever confusion reigned among the king’s advisers, however willingly, reluctantly, or unknowingly the king complied, the Answer publicly altered the basis of royal defense and argument.

There is much of interest in the entire reply. Because historians have focused almost exclusively upon its crucial constitutional concessions, however, the answer has seldom been reprinted in its entirety. As a result its tone has been misread. The reply reprinted here was published by royal order at York and is unusual in providing the text of both the Nineteen Propositions and the king’s Answer. In earnest of the king’s desire that the Answer be widely published and read in churches throughout England and Wales, six further editions were printed in 1642. It is notable that two editions published in 1643 either omitted the reference to the three estates of Parliament or the entire section on the English constitution.