ENGLAND  1603 TO 1658 AD

The Stuarts. The first colonies. The East India Company. Fen Drainage. The Great Rebellion.

James I 1603 – 1625. Charles I 1625 – 1649. Long Parliament 1640. The English Civil War 1642. Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector 1653 – 1658.

1603 AD. The Union of the Scottish and English Crowns.

A childless, victorious, glorious, brave Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 AD with no natural successor. When the tough James I came from Holyrood to Whitehall in 1603 he was the first of many Scots to come south to find fortune and to escape the dull climes of Scotland. But his reign was only eventful for the executions he performed on his anachronistic stately journey south and to behead the English hero Sir Walter Raleigh to appease Spain and to sign a pace treaty with it. Incredible and cowardly! Both he and Charles I saw little change in England’s fortunes in the first 40 years. England looked to Holland for new ideas in religion, politics, dress, art, land drainage, commerce, and navigation at sea, philosophy, and science. Scotland, despite its Scottish / Danish monarchy being on the English throne, saw little benefit or influence. James I took England’s crown with the philosophy of the Absolute Rule of Monarchy, as did Charles II. Both failed to understand that the people who stood around them were direct, energetic Anglo-Saxon English who in time would not tolerate this. The beheading of Charles II and the later English Revolution of the 1680’s and the eventual installation of the Protestant Dutch William III would be the end result.

1635 AD. England’s colonies.

Whilst England was at war she found it hard to colonize. England’s attempt to colonize Virginia had failed. The beheading of Raleigh saw peace with Spain and colonization began again. London Companies like the Virginia Company and the Massachusetts Bay Company. Between 1630 and 1640 20,000 men and women departed from England to New England. The English Empire had begun. People like Roger Williams founded Puritan Rhode Island.

The Slave Trade.

English and in particular Scottish and Irish slavers trading in White convicts and prisoners from the English Civil War soon turned their hand to the Black Slave trade in this period. Both forms of slavery had developed to fuel servitude in the new colonies. A trend that begun with the Spanish. But it had started long before. The Arab Barbary Corsairs who operated from the north coast of Africa were the epitome of an African wide trade that had gone on for centuries. An endless cycle of Black tribes either selling their own into slavery, or of Arab and Black slavers capturing others (mainly on the West Coast of Africa), then rowing them out in canoes to waiting European ships. Indeed the Corsairs had been so prolific that they are estimated to have stolen 1.8 million White slaves from all over Europe including as far as Cornwall and into the North Sea. When the Royal Navy finally took the bull by the horns and sank dozens of Corsair ships and wrecked their lairs, they found slaver galleons that were hundreds of years old. Just refitted over time. Plantations mainly staffed and owned by Irish and Scottish plantation owners sprang up in Barbados and Virginia, riding on the back of this ancient trade. Horrors such as the Slave breeding station on the Caribbean island of Barbuda and the deaths of thousands of Black slaves ensued whilst crossing the Atlantic from West Africa to the Americas. Whilst slavery still continues in the world, this particular trade was disbanded primarily by William Wilberforce and the English Royal Navy led by particular English Royal Naval sea Captains with an anti-slavery zeal in the 1800’s. Slavery was and is still in truth and particular, a north African problem, given particular impetus by the Roman Empire, which denuded whole areas of Africa of people and animals - all taken to Rome.

Colonial Emigrants.

The people who sailed to the ‘New World’ took not just religion, but the cherished values of the English jury system, English Common Law and justice. It would prove to eventually influence world order, justice and law. But do England itself few favours.

Self-governance went with them, especially to the Americas with the creation of the New England Township.  Gilds and the Masonic Orders went with them.

1623 AD. The East India Company.

Elizabeth’s Charter of 1600 AD founded the East India Company. The ‘East Indiamen’ traded solely with the Crown because of this Charter. But the Royal Navy did not govern them as no English naval ships went round the Cape of Good Hope. The Company instead employed its own sepoys and built its own factories. The first great Anglo-Indian Ambassador Sir Thomas Roe – James I’s ambassador to the court of the Mogul Empire, which still ruled in the East. This lack of protection led to the Amboyna Massacre by Dutch on English colonist in the Spice Islands in 1623 AD. By contrast Crowell did much to protect the East India assets.

Rivalries of the Courteen association and the Bristol based ‘interlopers’ did much damage to the East India Company through the reigns of Charles and James II and William I.

The drainage of the Fenlands.

The Puritan Earls of Bedford began the drainage of the Fens accelerated by the Dutch engineer Vermuyden and the building of the 20 mile seventy foot wide canal from Earith to Denver Sluice. This became the Old Bedford River.

1631 AD. The Poor Law.

Set up in Elizabeth’s time. To prevent widespread distress during the Elizabethan and Stuart periods – a Poor Law was set up. This gave the structure for burghers to help poor by the provision of work.

In 1631 AD the Mayor and Recorder of Kings Lynn ‘bought materials to set the able-bodies poor to work, not suffering to our knowledge any poor to straggle and beg up and down the streets of this Burgh.’

The Cromwellian Revolution.

Henry VIII’s reign had been notable for anti-clericalism. During Elizabeth’s monarchy the people were afraid of the Inquisition – but had no quarrel with the clergy. But under Charles I the Bishops and clergy raised their heads again. The people took real alarm. This came to a head in the London mob turning against Bishops in Palace Yard (1640 to 1641 AD.) The people sided with English Puritanism.

The Cromwellian Revolution was not a socialist revolt. It was driven by thought and political aspiration of men like Pym and Hampden, to wrest control finally away from the feudal control of church and monarchy combined. The Puritan revolution of Baptists and Congregationalists drove this one – epitomised by John Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress.

‘To caste Kingdoms old
Into another mould.’

Born in dour Puritan Royston in Hertfordshire Cromwell was part of that Yeoman, Manor owning class that was now educated and wealthy. They could govern. And the men who joined his horse borne Ironsides – undefeated in any battle – singing psalms as they went forward into the fray, were very similar. These people are well described in Izaak Walton’s Angler. They were literate, well spoken, well married and well motivated. They read the Bible as well as political pamphlets. The Cromwellian Yeomen as you could call them.

Sides were chosen by loyalty rather than religion as is often misperceived. Many of the English counties who went to the Royalists and were Anglican and Protestant. The King was best loved in the unchanging shires.

The English Civil War was not a social war. It was did not promote greater equality of wealth. The ‘levelling’ forces in the New Model Army preached manhood suffrage not social justice and property redistribution. Only a small sect of ‘Diggers’ under Winstanley claimed that England land belongs to the English. When the Levellers or Diggers warned the Regicide Government (1649-1660) that it could only last if there was real social change they were right. The problem was that gentry who would rather see the restoration of a King than real social change led the English Civil War. That change did not happen and Charles II came back from exile to take over – where Charles I had left off.

1660 AD. English Common Law

English Common Law did survive the Restoration of the English Monarchy under Charles II. Judge based English Common Law won over the Prerogative Courts. Commercial law followed suit. No longer would the Crown dominate commerce via monopolies.

Houses Manors and Gardens.

Post Restoration England saw house design began to move towards drawing rooms and dining rooms rather than the high rafted Saxon and Elizabethan halls. Plasterwork was decorative and carpets made in England or Turkey and Persia were common. Gardens too began to become commonly popular as a place of flower growing and beauty. Not just a place to grow food.