Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558-1689 by John Coffey

Author:John Coffey [Coffey, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780582304642
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2000-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Charles I and the Popish Plot

Charles’s marriage to Henrietta Maria was to have fateful consequences, for it fed the suspicion of hardline Protestants that Charles was leading the country back to Rome. Yet although Catholics were to enjoy unprecedented tolerance at court, this was not matched in the rest of the nation.

In May 1625, and in keeping with his marriage treaty, Charles instructed the Lord Keeper to suspend all proceedings against recusants. The move angered Parliament and the Privy Council, and by August Charles had backed down, issuing a proclamation calling for the enforcement of the penal laws. As in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, the penal code was rarely enforced to the letter, and only a minority of recusants were fined the full penalties prescribed. However, Charles did introduce a new requirement that Catholics pay a double charge on subsidies. In addition, a new and more efficient system of recusancy fining was adopted in 1626–7, though the motive was as much economic as religious. As a Catholic agent reported to Rome in 1636, ‘This is the only generall molestacon of Catholiques for recusancy, and these paimts are comonly racked very high by the diligence of the Commissioners, partly out of aversion in some of them from religion, but principally out of a desire in all of them to advance the Kings profitt’.39

During the Civil War, Puritans claimed that the king and the royalists had been soft on Catholics in the 1630s. In reality, however, it seems clear that the financial burdens on recusants increased between 1625 and 1640. As head of the Recusancy Commission and President of the Council of the North from 1628, Wentworth set rates of composition for recusants that were higher than anywhere else in the country. At his trial he boasted that he had raised income from recusants from £2300 to £11,000 per annum over just four years. Commenting on Charles’s reign, Clarendon declared that ‘The penal laws (those only being excepted which were sanguinary, and even those sometimes let loose) were never more rigidly executed, nor had the crown ever so great revenue from them, as in his time; nor did they ever pay so dear for the favours and indulgences of his office towards them’. Lindley concludes that ‘Roman Catholics in the reign of Charles I did not experience a period of exceptional leniency and general calm; on the contrary, the reign was a period of great trial for English Catholicism. They faced mounting financial pressure from a needy monarch who showed little real interest in their general welfare.’40 After 1625, there were no further attempts to introduce a formal toleration, and the government failed to produce an Oath of Allegiance that was more acceptable to Catholics.

The Catholic minority also continued to face discrimination in many forms. Baptisms, weddings and burials according to Catholic rites were outlawed, so most Catholics were forced to compromise with the established church in order to secure legal recognition of their age and legitimacy. Some followed Catholic rites, but then persuaded the church courts or local parsons to register the ceremonies as valid.

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