The Idea of Absolute Monarchy in Seventeenth-Century EnglandAuthor(s): James DalySource: The Historical Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 227-250Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638259 .Accessed: 28/03/2011 19:16

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The Historical Journal, 2I, 2 (1978), pp. 227-250.

Printed in Great Britain

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY

ENGLAND*

JAMES DALY McMaster University

And first, it is necessary that we should agree what we mean by an absolute Monarch, which is indeed a point rather con- troverted, than clearly decided by any Author, that I have yet met withal. [Thomas Goddard, Plato's Demon, I684.]

When Lord Acton declared that 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely', he was speaking for a time when the triumph of parliamentary government seemed assured. Our century's historians have become a little more tolerant (or a great deal less assured) about the relative fortunes of autocratic and representative governments. They usually view absolutism more sympathetically, and exaggerate its vices less, than Acton did. But their accumulated labours have uncovered another quandary, that of understanding just what absolutism is, and what it is not. Take the medieval context. On the one hand, we are told that the supremacy of law, and not 'the anarchical autocracy of an absolute king', was universally accepted at that time. On the other, it is held that as typical a medieval thinker as John of Salisbury 'attributed to his Prince both absolute power and absolute limitation by law'.' In the more restricted context of Stuart England, the picture is equally confused. Some scholars are sure that there were few or no advocates of divine-right absolutism in England before the Civil War.2 Yet it can also be asserted that the opposition leader Sir John Eliot, and practically everyone else including Coke, believed that England was an absolute monarchy.3 (The qualification involving divine right does not remove the discrepancy, since that term is a source of even greater confusion than

* I should like to express my gratitude to Dr John Morrill, Selwyn College, Cambridge, for his very helpful criticisms of an earlier draft of this article.

I R. W. & A. J. Carlyle, A history of medieval political theory in the west (Edinburgh and London, I936), VI, 5I7. Ernst Kantorowicz, The king's two bodies (Princeton, 1957), p. 95.

2 J. W. Allen, English political thought I603-44 (London, I938; New York, I967), p. 4I0.

John Plamenatz, Man and society (London, I 963), 1, I 55. F. D. Wormuth, The royal prerogative I603-I649 (Ithaca, 1939), p. 45.

3 R. W. K. Hinton, 'English constitutional theories from Sir John Fortescue to Sir John Eliot', English Historical Review, LXXV (I960), 42. C. H. Mcllwain, Constitutionalism and the changing world (Cambridge, I 939), p. 78.

227

228 JAMES DALY

absolutism.) The fact is that, even in a limited context, there is no agreement on the precise meaning of absolutism or absolute monarchy.

As far as Stuart England is concerned, this is perhaps appropriate, because the men of that time were not sure about the meaning either. It could vary sharply, not only between different writers, but within the works of the same man. In addition, it evolved through the century, so that a clear understanding of what is meant at one time might be confusing when applied to a later part of the period. And the word 'absolute' possessed a breadth of meaning quite foreign to that of our time, thus further complicating the historian's task. It is therefore necessary to explore and reconstruct contemporary understandings of the term, which is so important for its application to the political struggles of the time.

What we are looking for are windows into the political mind of the age, and while Sir Thomas Smith wrote well before i6oo, his uniquely frequent use of the term is a good point on which to begin the exploration. Smith's range of meaning is very broad and revealing.4 When speaking of the three classical forms of government, he adds that these really exist only in theory; no existing government is ' simple, pure and absolute in this sort and kinde'; no government is 'absolutely and sincerely' made of any one kind. Real governments are always mixtures of the classical elements of monarchy, aristocracy or democracy. Though the context is political, the use is a general one, a synonym for 'pure'. In a nearby passage he adds another usage, when he says that, of all writers, it is Aristotle who ' hath most absolutely and methodically treated' the subject of different forms of government. Here the meaning is suggestive of perfection, or at least high quality, and this, like the previous meaning, is one which we shall meet again. It is not unrelated to another aspect, that of a perfect title. Absolute queens or duchesses are said to be those who enjoy the titles in their own right, rather than that of their husbands. The same note of full personal possession is struck in a different meaning, where the kings of the Saxon heptarchy each 'absolutely' reigned 'in his countrie, not under the subjection of other'.5 (This complete indepen- dence of external powers comes to be one of the most widely accepted usages in the reign of James I.)

Once the internal structure of the political unit comes into view, it appears at first that absolute power is not to Smith's liking. Chapters eight and nine contrast the absolute kings (early patriarchs, Jewish kings, Roman emperors) with the 'name king and the administration of Eng- land'. The contrast is heightened when Louis XI is blamed ' for bringing the administration royall of France, from the lawful and regulate raigne, to the absolute and tyrannical power and government'. He knows of some

4 Sir Thomas Smith, De republica anglorum, ed. L. Alston (Cambridge, I906). The introduction discusses Smith's use of the term: pp. xxxi-xxxii.

5 Smith, De republica, p. I4 (i, 6); p. I7 (i, 8); p- 30 (I, i6); p. 46 (i, 24); p- I9 (I, 9).

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 229

who would deny that such great power means tyranny, who would only consider it 'the absolute power of a King, which they would pretend that everie King hath, if he would use the same', but who would accept its contrast with 'the Royall power regulate by lawes'. Nevertheless, he finds such 'absolute administration' necessary only in war, dangerous and corrupting in peace. The early patriarchal kings 'ruled absolutely', but he reminds the reader that tyrants also have had 'that absolute power'. It seems clear enough that this is not a power he likes, and yet he softens the blow when he describes the loving, truly fatherly care of the patriarchs for the descendant subject: 'And therefore such a one doth beare the first and natural example of an absolute and perfect king. '6

This veering back toward a favourable use of the term becomes striking when the operations of English government are considered. Here, in frequently quoted passages, it is found that 'The most high and absolute power of the realme of Englande, consisteth in the Parliament.' There, the prince and the whole community are united in all their power, and parliament's action is the 'whole realmes deede'. And within that parliament, it is the prince who 'is to give life, and the last and highest commaundement', for it is the royal assent which makes a bill into a law. If the king does not possess the absolute power, he brings it into official being. With this sort of absolutism he has no quarrel at all. And it is not the only sort of absolutism. The monarch alone has the making of war and peace 'absolutelie in his power', and in the field he can, by martial law, execute offenders 'without processe of law or forme of judgement'. His absolute powers also include the right of coinage, among others. Thus the word denotes a particular attribute of office, rather than a form of government. A similar restricted meaning is found where 'absolute and definite judgement' is given - by parliament 'which is the highest and most absolute', by grand assize, and by wager of battle.7 This strictly legal sense of an unchallengeable discretion within a specific context, whether political or juridical, is also given by Lambard.8 It is one of the most frequent uses of the term in the early part of the seventeeenth century, and it permits absolute power within a limited sphere.

If Sir Thomas Smith's single work provides such wealth of meaning, Shakespeare's greater volume does the same, and somewhat nearer to the Stuart period. A most concise study of his use of the term 'absolute' finds, roughly, three dominant meanings or groups of meanings: (i)

resolved, positive, uncompromising; (2) precise; (3) faultless, perfect. A closer and more detailed examination has yielded a somewhat different scheme, though including all the above elements. It proposes this divi- sion: (i) unconditional, complete; (2) positive, certain, decided, not

6 Ibid. p. i6 (I, 7); pp. I6-17 (I, 8); p- 24 (I, 12)- 7 Ibid. p. 48 (ii, I); pp. 58-6o (II, 3); pp. 64-5 (II, 5-8)- 8 William Lambard, Justices of the peace, bk. i, ch. xi, quoted in Alston, introduction to

De republica anglorum, p. xxxii.

230 JAMES DALY

doubtful; (3) highly accomplished, faultless, perfect.9 It is in the first of these divisions that most of the political importance of the term is found.

When old Prospero is describing his villainous brother's vaulting ambition, his discontent at having all the actual power without the name of duke, he says that 'he needs will be Absolute Milan'. His position would then be complete and supreme, both in name and fact. The name is not necessary in another connection, where Duke Vincentio of Vienna has retained the title, but, pretending to go abroad, has delivered to another 'My absolute power and place here in Vienna."0 His deputy, Angelo, will lack the name but will have all the power of the highest office, without reservation. This absolute power does not necessarily corrupt; Shakespeare is overwhelmingly favourable toward authority, although he does not forget to admit that 'a dog's obeyed in office'. In both the cases mentioned, villains wield absolute power, but that same power had been wielded by good men, and there is no hint of a frown on that power.

There are other examples of much the same use of the term as those just given." In addition, there is a broader range of meaning attached to it. Marc Antony is said to be 'an absolute master' by sea, a usage which explains itself and emphasizes the supremacy of control. A more precise political implication occurs where Cleopatra is, by Antony's gift, made 'Of Lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia, Absolute queen'. Her authority is to be sovereign, independent of Rome.'2 (Here again is a constant in the meaning of the term.) A largely legal use concerns pardons and treaties, which are complete and unconditional.'3 All these political contexts blend into one another, though each has a different emphasis. They also blend into the more general meaning of' positive, certain and without possibility of doubt'. Everyone knows that Duncan placed an absolute trust in the thane of Cawdor. Hope can also be absolute; dramatic and emphatic expressions are absolute, as conveying a quality of certainty in the saying.'4 Despite its apparent irrelevance, perhaps the most interesting meaning is found in the other non-political class, that of 'highly accom- plished, faultless, perfect'. Cases such as 'absolute courtier', 'as grave, as just, as absolute as Angelo', 'a most absolute and excellent horse', 'an absolute gentleman', clearly convey this sense.'5 Despite the superlative

9 R. J. Cunliffe, A new Shakespearean dictionary (London, etc., I9IO); Alexander Schmidt, Shakespeare-lexicon, 4th ed. (Berlin and Leipzig, 1923), vol. I.

10 The tempest, I, ii, io8-9; Measure for measure, I, iii, I3.

" E.g. Coriolanus, iii, i, i I6; Timon of Athens, v, i, I67; King Lear, v, iii, 302; Cymbeline, III, Vll, IO.

12 Antony and Cleopatra, ii, ii, i69; iiI, vi, I I.

13 E.g. Henry IV, Part One, IV, iii, 5o; Part Two, Iv, i, i86. 14 Macbeth, I, iv, I4; Antony and Cleopatra, iv, iii, io; Coriolanus, iii, i, 89; Macbeth, iii, vi,

4o; Measure for measure, III, i, 5; Coriolanus, III, ii, 39; Cymbeline, iv, ii, io6; Pericles prince of Tyre, II, ii, I9.

15 Merry wives of Windsor, iii, iii, 66; Measurefor measure, v, i, 54; Henry V, III, Vii, 27; Hamlet, V. ii. iii: V. i. I4A7.

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 231

clearly stated, 'most' could still be added to express heartfelt veneration, as in 'most absolute sir', 'most absolute lord'.'6 Unlike Smith, Shake- speare never uses the term in a critical sense. On the contrary, it always implies a sense of unimprovability, of completeness, of wholeness or integrity. His hearers must therefore associate even its political meaning with this general and highly approving application, and this association continues to cling to the notion of absoluteness for some time.

Shakespeare and Smith have been treated at such length because, between them, they provide all the possible uses of the term which will be found in the decades immediately following. During that period, the same blending of meanings is often found, but it is necessary to take each broad category separately, for some developed in response to political changes, while others remained stable. The wholly favourable sense of 'perfect' or ' highly accomplished' was in general use for a long time. God was absolute because He was perfect, a perfectly united nation was absolute, and the mixture of governmental forms showed that none of them was 'absolute and perfect' in itself.17 Nobles or statesmen could be called absolute on account of their experience or acumen, rather than their power.18 A delightfully and perfectly accomplished woman was absolute, James's Queen Anne was alleged to be 'the most absolute in all State and Titles', and a French visitor is said to think that no king is 'absolutely crown'd' until he has visited England. Indeed, even English theatres are more attractive than other kingdoms' courts, because Eliza- beth's realm is 'so amply absolute'.'9

Such uses had political implications, of course, and helped to reinforce a common political usage in James I's time. The necessity of asserting the king's independence of papal jurisdiction, his 'imperial' crown, his total security from deposition, were obviously related to it. The absolute courtier or lady was literally peerless, had no equal, let alone superior. Just so with the king; the only supreme governor of church and state, he was neither a delegate, nor elective like the Holy Roman Emperor. His lack of any superior redounded to the country's honour, and expressed its unity and integrity in the comity of nations. To boast of his absolute- ness was thus to brag about the nation as much as to exalt the ruler.20

16 Coriolanus, Iv, v, 142; Antony and Cleopatra, IV, Xii, 117. 17 William Younger, The unrighteous judge; or judex cretensis (I62I), n.p. William Covell,

Polimanteia, or the meanes, lawful and unlawful, to judge of the fall of a commonwealth (written 1595, published I635), T 4. Henry Wright, The first part of the disquisition of truth, concerning political affairs (i6i6), I4.

18 Calybute Downing, A discourse, of the state ecclesiastical (I632), p. 15. Barnabe Barnes, Foure bookes of offices (i6o8), p. 32.

19 Thomas Heywood, Edward IV, Dramatic Works (I874; reprinted I964), I, 6o; If ye knozw, not me, ye know no body, Works, I, 204. Ben Jonson's Masque of queens, 2 Feb. I609, in John Nichols, The progresses... of king James the first (I828), II, 215. George Chapman, Biron's conspiracy, IV, i, 76, 110-13. Cf. William Blandye, The castle or picture of pollicye (I58I), p. I5.

20 Sir Christopher Wray, 4 April 1571, in J. E. Neale, Elizabeth Iandherparliaments, I559-8I

(London, 1953), p. I 87. Sir John Hayward, An answer to the first part of a conference concerming

232 JAMES DALY

But such expressions of national pride could have domestic echoes. The sense of fullness or completeness of royal power was obviously implied, and could be pushed to great lengths. While, for example, the two houses of parliament had to consent to legislation, it was the king's le Roi le veult which actually changed a bill into a law. It was natural enough to describe this life-giving legal power as an attribute of royal absolutism, another expression of sole superiority.2" Indeed the term could be used in a very broad unspecified sense in royal messages or proclamations where it implied a largeness of jurisdiction which might be innocuous, but might be something very different.22

It was this sense of legal amplitude which was destined to put the term into bad odour with more and more Englishmen. As political dispute matured into crisis, Englishmen's ears began to hear a sharper and more imperious note in the word 'absolute'. Lambard and Smith had spoken of an absolute discretionary power within defined limits, but the Ex- chequer Barons in the Bate decision had pronounced the king's power to be double, ordinary and absolute, the ordinary power being regulated by common law, but the absolute power, which concerned 'policy and government', operating according to 'the wisdom of the king'. 23 Instead of an absolute discretion within specified classes of powers (e.g. coinage, war and peace), there was an absolute discretion of a larger and less defined nature. Parliamentary critics of the increased impositions of I 6o8 pounced on this, lest such a power, 'the King's own absolute will and pleasure', swallow all the legal restraints on the Crown.24 It has been asserted that royal lawyers and judges were moving from the idea of specific absolute prerogatives which were recognized by law to be wholly within the king's discretion to a 'general absolute prerogative' which might extend as far as the king pleased.25 Such an interpretation involves problems which cannot be dealt with here, but it is necessary to point out that the period's understanding of the term 'absolute' is not entirely what one would expect from it. What one often finds is a subtle conflation of meanings, where the term can denote an undoubted right (neutral)

the next succession to the crowne of England (I603), chapter 6; A report of a discourse concerning supreme power in matters of religion (i6o6), pp. 6-B. Christopher Lever, Heaven and earth, religion and policy (i 6o8), pp. 58-9. John Rawlinson, Vivat rex (I 6 I 9), p. 32. Barnes, Foure bookes, 62.

21 E.g. Edward Forset, A comparative discourse of the bodies natural and politique (i6o6), pp. I6-I7. Sir Walter Raleigh, The prerogative of parliaments in Works (London, I829, etc.), VIII, 2I3.

22 E.g. a message to the judges in the case of Commendams, and a royal proclamation. D. H. Willson, King James VI and I (London, I 959), p. 38I. Nichols, Progresses of KingJames I (I828), I, 27-

23 J. R. Tanner (ed.), Constitutional documents of the reign of James I (Cambridge, I930),

pp. 337-4 I - 24 Tanner, Documents, p. 250, also pp. 249, 255, 258-9. 25 W. S. Holdsworth, A history of English law (London, 1903-24), IV, 206-7; VI, 2I-66. M.

A. Judson, The crisis of the constitution (New Brunswick, New Jersey, I 949; New York, I 964),

chapter iv, is indispensable here, though the term 'legal absolutism' is used far too freely.

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 233

and a right exercised by the king alone (procedural) but which the context points toward a general right undefinable in extent (capable of overriding legal limitations).26 As the political temperature rose, the weight of such conflation drifted toward that last implication.

In the debates over the Five Knights' Case, the Petition of Right and ship money, the term and its cognates are found to have the usual overlapping implications, and 'absolutely' is sometimes found outside the legal context altogether.27 Both sides employ the term sparingly, but without evident trepidation or the knowledge of using a loaded term. But government spokesmen used it oftener, and sometimes in a general sense of undefinable power inseparable from the Crown.28 It is the context which denotes both a still-casual understanding and a coming change of tone. Strictly speaking, the usage is usually neutral, but since acts or claims to which it applied were being challenged by the 'country', the term describing them is more often found in a negative context. Even if lawyers are only saying that the king has a definite power to do something, those who dread that specific power will learn to dread the word they hear applied to it. And the wider use of course doubled the effect. But contemporaries would probably not have recognized a term like 'legal absolutism' as properly defining the issues. Finch's sweeping judgement on ship money, which so shocked the 'political nation', spoke of both the king's power and the subjects' property rights as absolute, and Sir Dudley Digges, a sufficiently active proponent of the Petition of Right, was able to say that Charles 'hath as absolute power as any King, yet the Common law provide for all '.29 Nevertheless, statements like those of Heath in I627 and Bankes in I637 were undoubtedly eroding the favourable connotations of the word, pushing it toward something like its later associations.

This was to accentuate a meaning which had always been present. A divine like Rawlinson could admit that 'A king in his absolute and unlimited power is able to do more than a good king will do.' Fulke Greville was also aware of the danger, though he did not regard abso- lutism as inescapably leading to it. (Indeed, he was capable of using the term to apply to those entrusted with an inferior or derivative power.)30

26 See, for example, the 'Commons Apology' of I604, and James Whitelocke's speech in i6io. Tanner, Documents, pp. 226, 262.

27 A complete collection of state trials, ed. T. B. Howell (London, I8I6), iii, I I46, I I56, I I62,

where Justice Croke, in giving judgement for Hampden, covers virtually the whole spectrum of meaning.

28 State trials, III, 37 (Attorney-General Heath), I5I (Sergeant Ashley), IOI6-23 (repea- tedly, Attorney-General Bankes), III 4 (Justice Berkeley), etc.

29 Chief Justice Finch, in State trials, III, 1226, I23I (and Holborne, for Hampden, had used the same meanings, pp. I76-9). Digges quoted in Judson, Crisis, p. I8.

30 Vivat rex, p. 6. See also William Tooker, Of the fabrique of the church and churchmen's livings (I604), pp. 99-IOO, where absolute is carefully contrasted with limited monarchy, and tyranny is one possible kind of absolute power. Fulke Greville, A treatise of monarchy, stanzas go, 3 I 4, 52I.

234 JAMES DALY

George Chapman used the term with a dramatist's flair, to mean perfect, etc., but he also could mingle the sense of certain or undoubted ('absolute heirs') and still have a conspirator urge action against a king because the royal absolutism might become a threat to the person whom he is trying to influence.31 It was the presence of religious controversy which joined legal dispute in reinforcing this sinister direction of interpretation. When the greatest of puritan preachers could say that, since God was absolute, He could lawfully command what was otherwise against the law, it was natural enough for a preacher of more courtly sympathies to declare that an absolute prince was above all laws.32 But Charles I's promotion of arminian divines resulted in a greater emphasis on royal authority. They needed to stress the royal supremacy both against puritans who were finding increasing favour in parliament, and against Rome because of their theology, which left them open to charges of leanings in that direction. The high-flown rhetoric of Montague, Sibthorpe, Manwaring and many others seemed to make nonsense of notions of legal limitation on the Crown. The wonderfulness of kingship seemed to mesmerize the king's preachers, who imparted to the notion of absoluteness an aura quite remote from anything in Smith, Shakespeare or even contemporary royal lawyers.33 Later royalists were to pay for this, as did Charles I himself. Sir John Eliot was in many ways a conventional 'absolutist' in theory, but he inveighed against those who worked to erect 'Monarchie unlimited, an absoluteness of government without rule', and he identified the arminian clerics as the chief villains in this enterprise.34 The fury unleashed on them in I64I was far more the result of such conviction than of strictly puritan sympathies.

The clergy, like the ship-money advocates, were preparing the way for the later pejorative evolution of the notion of absolutism, but the task was far from finished. Even those who feared absolute power had not denied absolute powers, and the still-protean nature of the public mind is exemplified in the work of one determined enemy of the early Stuarts. Sir Anthony Weldon had lost a lucrative position through James's dis- pleasure, and lived to take revenge on Charles as an active member of the county committee of Kent in the Civil War. He was glad to point out that Raleigh had been destroyed by 'the Spanish faction, then absolute at court', but this connotation of power is not the only one he uses. Within

31 Chapman, Biron's conspiracy, i, ii, I02-3; I, i, I94. 32 William Perkins, quoted in G. L. Mosse, The holy pretence (Oxford, I957), p. 52. Down-

ing, A discourse, p. 9I. And Downing was similarly conventional when he noted that absolute kings do not have to account for their actions, p. 43. His later adhesion to the rebels in the Civil War is not anticipated in this work.

33 Judson, Crisis, ch. v. It is clear that the divines' use of the term comes much closer than the lawyers' to a general concept of absolutism. See also Allen, English political thought, pp. I6I-96.

3' Eliot, The monarchie of man, ed. A. B. Grosart (London, I879), II, 46. On the discre- pancies in Eliot's thinking about absolutism, see Harold Hulme, The life of Sir John Eliot (London, I957), pp. 375 ff.

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 235

three pages of his scandal-mongering revelations of Stuart court life, he twice speaks of the most accomplished statesmen as absolute, and on the same pages, and in virtually the same breath, registers his wholly disapproving conviction that Charles I was the most absolute of English kings.35 It is significant that in one of these critical references, he links the term 'arbitrary' with the other, evidently feeling that some such addition is necessary to make the pejorative meaning clear. Even in the minds of those most disposed to be critical of the monarchy, the favourable connotations of 'absolute' were still strong.

With the coming of civil war, everything changed. For the first time there emerges a body of opinion which does not concede any of the pleasing connotations of the word in question, which largely restricts it to a political context, and finds it unacceptable in that context. Absolute power becomes virtually a synonym for tyranny. But this is by no means the end of the story, which now becomes more difficult and confusing. In the first place, the royalists had something to say about the word and its evolution, but even within the opposition camp, the word is not so simply or so easily understood as one might expect it to be. All the main parliamentary writers denied the classical royalist doctrine of non- resistance, and it is in this connexion that they usually use the word 'absolute'. They wished above all to deny that the king had an absolute claim on their obedience, or even their passive disobedience. Their emphasis is not on the lawful scope of the king's power, but on what the subject might do if the king exceeded that scope. They impugned the absoluteness of the king, not so much because he lacked certain powers, but because, whatever power he had, he could be forcibly resisted for exceeding it. This line of attack introduced a type of argument which had not been present in the earlier period.

This was evident from the first, when Henry Parker's Observations upon some of His Majesties late Answers and Expresses opened the Civil War debate. Parker was not always clear on basic principles, but he was clear enough on why the king was not absolute. Grudgingly conceding that absolute monarchy might be acceptable in primitive or barbarous communities (as it evidently was in Turkey), he nevertheless maintained that in any real civilized society the supreme power was in some sense 'trusted' with its power for the protection of the public. Its claim to obedience was fiduciary, coming from the community; when it exceeded the limits set by the purposes of the grant, the power was forfeit. It was not possible for a government to have truly absolute power, that is, power that could not be forfeited by misbehaviour. Such absolutism would contradict the very purpose of government, which was the preservation of its subjects. Those subjects could not forfeit the natural right of self-preservation

35 Sir Anthony Weldon, The court and character of King James the first, in Sir Walter Scott (ed.), The secret history of the court of King James the first (Edinburgh, i8i I), i, i6o; II, 57-9.

9 HIS 21

236 JAMES DALY

against their own government.36 This was substantially the opinion of the Scot, Samuel Rutherford. A doughty and influential presbyterian theologian, his Lex Rex, while not particularly original, is one of the most complete statements of all the theories which might justify resistance to kings. His well-honed mind was probably the most systematic among parliamentary writers, and he was crisp and clear on the subject of absolute monarchy. 'An absolute and unlimited Monarchy is not onely not the best form of Government, but it is the worst', because 'An absolute power above a Lawe is a power to doe ill.'37 No such power could come from God, in fact none could come from anyone, since people could not give a right to do wrong. On the contrary, all political authority was conditional and fiduciary, and ceased to exist when it threatened the purposes which had brought it into existence. Turkey was welcome to its absolute monarchy, and the English and Scots would be no better off than Turks if they accepted such government themselves.38 Absolute monarchy was both unlimited and irresistible, and Rutherford could only regard it as inherently immoral.

Somewhat the same conclusion was reached by a rather different route in the work of Philip Hunton, who was careful to pay tribute to the royalist Henry Ferne as effectively demolishing some of the positions of other parliamentary writers, and also recorded Ferne's dislike of the term 'absolute'. He agreed that England was not an absolute monarchy, using some royalist work to establish it as a mixed monarchy. Since, he continued, the different powers in this mixed monarchy had fallen out, there could be no settled judge of their contention within the constitution, and people would just have to make up their own minds as to whom to support in the war. Had England been absolute, of course, there would be no such right to contemplate resistance. Hunton was careful to be irenic, and thought that absolute (and hence irresistible) monarchy might be legiti- mate, but England certainly was not such, since the king had to share power with parliament. Hunton's interpretation leaned more heavily on limitedness of power as opposed to absolutism, but ended by justifying resistance as a consequence of the king's lack of absolute power.39

More radical enemies of the king were just as impatient of the notion of absolutism, to the point where they paid little attention to it - not because they liked it more, but because they included it in a wider and fiercer condemnation. They had journeyed so far from the pre-war world that they scarcely bothered to attack a concept which was now only a part of the target of their reforming zeal. As bitter an enemy of the king

36 Henry Parker, Observations upon some of his majesties late answers and expresses (I642),

pp. 4, 8, 10, 26, 34, 40. See also W. K. Jordan, Men of substance: A study of the thought of two English revolutionaries, Henry Parker and Henry Robinson (Chicago, I942), pp. I40-78.

3 Samuel Rutherford, Lex rex: the law and the prince (I644), pp. 385, I84.

38 Rutherford, Lex rex, pp. I07, I 29, i8i, I84, 189, 385, 433-55. 39 Philip Hunton, A treatise of monarchy, Harleian miscellany (i8oi-iI), VI, 330-I, 339,

357-60. See also Judson, Crisis, 397-407.

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 237

as the independent minister John Goodwin heaped every kind of abuse on royalists, and was clear enough that all power came from God, and hence for certain good ends and within limits dictated by those ends. When government went beyond those limits it could, and must, be resisted. Yet, amid all his vitriol, Goodwin, so far as I have been able to see, never used the word 'absolute'; his violence was lavished on what he considered a diabolical tyranny.40 Milton did occasionally use the word, but it was just another way of saying despotism, and occurs infrequently and almost casually.4tHis fervent conviction that princes could be re- moved at the people's behest, and his general anti-monarchical bias, never wavered, but he had too many grudges against the king to pause over one particular concept. So, apparently, did the regicides themselves; they charged the king with seeking 'an unlimited and arbitrary power', but they did not mention absolutism in the charge.42 Perhaps the most instructive example of this use, or non-use, of the term is found among the Levellers. Though implacable enemies of the old regime, they strove against England's new chains, and a regime acceptable to the Parkers and the Huntons was to the Levellers simply another manifestation of the Norman yoke. Whether a king, let alone an absolute king, would be at the head of such a regime was a matter of little moment to them; it was the regime, under whatever form, which they detested. They knew what 'absolute' meant; it meant unlimited, beyond accounting, irresistible, unchallengeable. All this was anathema to those who thought that the people were supreme and the government their delegates. They knew about 'absolute tyranny', and Lilburne thought that he knew that Crom- well was, after i 649, an 'absolute King '43 ' Supreme authority' they understood to lie in the people, and 'unlimited, arbitrary power', ' mere unlimited power', 'arbitrary tyranny', etc., they held to lie in the people's enemies and their own. In one brief pamphlet Walwyn could speak of 'absolute murderers' and 'absolute necessity' and of something 'absolutely denied', but in one page he spoke of ' supreme authority' five times and on another used 'arbitrary' four times !44 The notion of absolutism was not high on the Leveller list of worries. It was subsumed in starker forms of oppression, and was merely and occasionally in- cluded in their condemnation. But its pejorative sense was there none- theless.

40 John Goodwin, Anti-cavalierisme, passim; Os ossorianum, or, a bone for a bishop to pick (i643), 29-36' (actually 3I-8).

41 See, for example, The tenure of kings and magistrates, in Complete prose works of John Milton (New Haven and London, i962, etc.), III, I99, 217, 233; Defence of the English people, in Works, Iv, part I, 348, 490.

42 S. R. Gardiner (ed.), Constitutional documents of the puritan revolution, 3rd ed. ( I906, etc.), pp. 372, 377-

43 William Haller and Godfrey Davies (ed.), The Leveller tracts, I647-I653 (New York, I944), pp. I48, 158, i62, 8o, 413-

44 Haller and Davies, Tracts, pp. x35-6, I4x, I42, I39: The bloody project. 9-2

238 JAMES DALY

The same effect could come from very different sources. Harrington's aristocratic republicanism had little time for a monarchy already dead because of a change in the 'balance' of property-holding. The'Gothick' balance had been essentially aristocratic for a long time, and England had really been a mixed state, not a true monarchy. It was hardly necessary to attack absolute monarchs, when only the early Norman kings had succeeded in being such, and only then because of extraordinary cir- cumstances which soon ceased to exist.45 Harrington's lack of interest in absolutism had, however, recorded that an absolute monarchy would possess the kind of power which his public would consider despotic, and the same effect came from a different and greater source during the Interregnum. Hobbes's sovereign had far more power than most people had understood by the term 'absolute', but he was willing to describe it in that term.46 The mere notion of limitation was absurd in the Hobbesian system. It is true that the individual's continuing right to resist the sovereign in the interest of self-preservation modified the irresistibility of Hobbes's mortal god, but the general impact of his theory was in the direction of an awesome state authority, and he did not reject the label of 'absolute', which has often been applied to his sovereign.47 Hobbes had his admirers, but he so often and so deliberately offended contem- porary convictions that anything he seemed to advocate was apt to suffer as much from his adhesion as from the enmity of others. One staunch royalist complained that his vision of sovereignty would 'render mon- archy odious to mankind .48 It is not surprising that Andrew Marvellb who used the word 'absolute' only once in his poetry, used it in speaking of 'Leviathans and absolute commands '.49 Far more than Harrington, Hobbes's grim reputation involved the notion of absolutism with a terrifying sovereignty.

The cumulative effect of Interregnum criticism could not fail to rein- force mightily the sinister connotations of the notion of absolute mon- archy. The conditional and fiduciary nature of political authority was a constant among opposition writers of whatever school, and even those who largely ignored the label were adding to the opprobrium of the concept, as did Harrington and Hobbes in their different ways. The old arguments about how much or what kind of absolutism was good were buried in a flood of indignation about the very notion. Lucy Hutchinson

4 Charles Blitzer, An immortal commonwealth; the political thought of James Harrilngton (New Haven, 1960), ch. iv. James Harrington's Oceana, ed. S. B. Liljegren (Heidelberg, 1925),

P. 47. 46 See, for example, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (Oxford, 1960), pp. 126, 134. 47 Among many such applications, Professor Plamenatz entitles a section 'Hobbes's

Argument for Absolute Monarchy'. J. P. Plamenatz, Man and society, I, I48. 48 John Bramhall, The catching of leviathan, in Works (Oxford, 1843, etc.), IV, 56o. 49 Andrew Marvell, Britannia and Rauleigh, I, 32. A concordance of the English poems of

Andrew Marvell, compiled and edited by George R. Guffey (Chapel Hill, 1974) finds that this is the sole poetic use of the term.

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 239

surely spoke for a large number when she averred that England had always been a limited or 'bounded' monarchy, though many monarchs, most recently Charles I, had tried to turn it into an absolute one, so that they might do what they liked.50 The crude simplicity of the comment makes it all the more powerful, and registered a profound change from even the severest of Charles I's pre-i64o critics.

One might expect that royalist writers would have both a more favour- able and a more united view on the absoluteness of the monarchy. In general, they did agree on the nature and powers of kingship, and this agreement continued through the rest of the century.51 But the collapse of the monarchy and the Civil War itself left a deep impression on royalist theorizing. It is usually defensive, and anxious to show that royal power is no threat to liberty. To a very great extent, this embarrassing and somewhat disingenuous haste to disown an inconvenient past spilled over into royalist thought on the meaning of absolute monarchy. In doing so it produced a sharp disagreement, not on the nature of the English monarchy, but on the terms which might describe it.

Hobbes chided the king's advisers for denying that the government was absolute, and scoffed at their fear that, if the king won the war, 'his power would be what he pleased, and theirs as little as he pleased, which they counted tyranny '.52 Certainly royalist writers were at pains to claim that the king's power was legally limited. Where did this leave the absolute power which had been conceded to him for so long? Seldom does the strange history of the term 'absolute ' show up more significantly than now, for, while royalists were united on the powers of the monarchy, they were divided on whether or not it ought to be called absolute, and this division continued for the rest of the century. Sir Roger Twysden was so moderate a royalist as to be very near a neutral, and he dismissed an absolute monarchy as being one where the king's arbitrary will was law; England's was a monarchy limited by law.53 But it is from a far more typical royalist, the royal chaplain (and later bishop of Chester) Henry Ferne, that the most interesting testimony comes. This most effective of Civil War royalist authors of course affirmed complete non-resistance, and denied that this implied an absolute monarchy: 'It is not the denial of resistance that makes a Monarch absolute, but the denial of a Law to bound his will.'54 When he wrote these words he was familiar with both Parker's and Hunton's work, and indeed with most of the rest of

50 Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of the life of Colonel Hutchinson (London, I906), pp. 6I-2.

51 The most notable exception to this rule is the case of the best known of all royalists, Sir Robert Filmer. I think I have been able to show, in an as yet unpublished manuscript, that Filmer's political thought was strikingly different from that of other royalists.

52 Hobbes, Behemoth in The English works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Sir W. M. Molesworth (London, I840), VI, 306.

53 Sir Roger Twysden, Certain considerations upon the government of England, ed. J. M. Kemble (Camden Society, I849).

54 Ferne, A reply unto several treatises (I643), p. I5.

240 JAMES DALY

parliamentarian writing, so he had a good idea of the problems which could be posed by the term 'absolute'. He met them squarely:

It was never my intent... to plead for absoluteness of power in the King, if by absoluteness of power he meant (as it should be) a power of arbitrary command, but if by absoluteness of power this Author means (as he doth sometimes) a power not to be resisted or constrained by force of arms raised by subjects, such a power we plead for.55

Ferne was affirming the meaning of the term which so many were denying, that the king could not be removed, that his title was absolute. But he thought the term properly applied to arbitrary government, which he rejected, and in this usage he showed how very far a royalist could depart from the dominant uses of the word before the Civil War.

In this departure he was followed (or accompanied) by many. Both Sir John Spelman, the son of the antiquary Sir Henry and a leader of much promise until his premature death in I643, and Bishop John Bramhall, long redoubtable royalist controversialist, spoke of absolute power as a thing to be feared, and either implied or stated that England's monarchy was not absolute.56 Very much the same view was held by the earl of Bristol, a prominent royalist councillor and exile, whose Apology declared that William the Conqueror's absolute power had been 'limited and restrained' by 'reciprocal pacts, laws, and stipulations' which had left Englishmen in 'free subjection'. The Restoration author George Starkey believed that England's was a 'supreme, a true, but not an absolute Monarch'.5 The greatest of tory publicists also rejected the term, seeing it to stand for an arbitrary power like that of France, or even Turkey.58 Perhaps the most important testimony (next to Ferne's) comes from John Nalson, one of the most active tory writers of the Exclusion era. He similarly rejected the term, as not applying to a monarchy where the prince had precluded himself from the exercise of some of his originally absolute power; to him, it was the subject's liberty that was absolute, otherwise the government would be arbitrary and tyrannical.59 The same identification of absolute and arbitrary power, so rare before i 640, is

55 Ferne, Reply, p. I 2. Cf. Conscience satisfied (i 642), pp. 20, 46; The resolving of conscience (I643), p. 3.

56 Sir John Spelman, Certaine considerations upon the duties both of prince and people, Somers tracts, IV, 377-9. John Bramhall, The serpent-salve, Works, III, 359-60.

57 John Digby, earl of Bristol, The apology of John, earl of Bristol (Caen, I647, London, I656), pp. 65-6, 69. George Starkey, The dignity of kingship (i66o), p. I25; cf. 77-80. This work has been attributed to Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon, but Donald Wing accepts Starkey's authorship.

58 John Dryden, His majesty's declaration defended (i68i), pp. 9-I0. Louis J. Bredvold, The intellectual milieu of John Dryden ('934; Ann Arbor, I956), pp. I48-9.

59 John Nalson, The common interest of king and people (I679), pp. i I6, I42, I52-3. Nalson was the compiler of the Impartial collection of the great affairs of state, an answer to Rushworth's collection.

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 24I

found among other royalist writers as well.60 This tradition is summed up by Nathaniel Johnston, whose very long Excellency of Monarchical Government (i 686), is an authoritative summary of royalist political thought. To a degree unusual at the time, Johnston showed a wide familiarity with the writings of royalist predecessors, and quoted them often. Hence the importance of his denial that the monarchy was 'Abso- lute, Arbitrary, and Unbounded'. On the contrary, English kings had graciously receded from their absoluteness, and given many securities for the subject's liberty, 'And by this means the Government is secured from the falling into an Arbitrary and Tyrannical way of Rulers, and the Minds of the Subjects free from the dreadful apprehension of Slavery.'61

Thus the 'anti-absolutist' royalists. There was an equally strong repre- sentation of those who took the opposite stand. Early in the Civil War, Griffith Williams, like Bramhall an Irish bishop, had scoffed at the suddenly popular notion of a 'mixed' monarchy, and quoted Bodin and Smith to the effect that the English king was absolute - though of course he conceded that his power was presently limited by previous grants. His fellow-cleric, Francis Quarles, took an even higher line, denying that kings could be limited at all (though he only did so in the context of denying the right of resistance).62 A very different sort of writer, the common lawyer Edward Bagshaw, denied that absolute and arbitrary amounted to the same thing; the English king governed by laws which limited his power, but was still 'the most absolute and free Monarch of the world'. Peter Heylyn was rather less clear-cut in his conception, but he seems to have regarded absolutism and limitation as compatible. He usually leaned toward 'absolute' as applying to lack of external or internal coercion or higher authority, and thus he harks back to the older definitions. In any case, he did not deny the term.63

Among those who do not reject the notion of absolute monarchy, it is apparent that they nevertheless were aware of the fears which led others to do so, and that they were led into some very sharp distinctions in an attempt to head off possible misunderstanding. Opening the trial of the regicides in October I 66o, Sir Orlando Bridgeman hastened to assure his hearers that, though England was an absolute monarchy, 'God forbid that I should intend any absolute government by this.' Absolute govern- ment would imply a royal freedom from all laws, whereas English law itself enforced the king's absolute power against both pope and rebels.

60 E.g. Robert Sanderson, preface to Archbishop Usher's Power communicated by god to the prince, in Sanderson's Works (Oxford, I844), V, 207-8. Sir Roger L'Estrange, The parallel (I679), IO.

61 Nathaniel Johnston, The excellency of monarchical government (I686), p. 7I. 62 Griffith Williams, The discovery of mysteries (i 643), pp. 82-3, 96-7; Jura majestatis (i 644),

pp. 35-4I, I23, I42-54. Francis Quarles, The loyal convert (I644), p. 8. 63 Edward Bagshaw, The rights of the crown (published i66o, but written in the I640s),

pp. IOI-2, I03-4; quotation on latter pages. Peter Heylyn, The stumbling-block of disobedience (I658), pp. 38, I22, 225 ff., 242-9. Certamen epistolare (I659), p. 7I.

242 JAMES DALY

'Though this is an Absolute Monarchy, yet it is so far from infringing the people's rights, that the people, as to their properties, liberties, and lives, have as great a privilege as the king.'64 Somewhat the same distinction was in the mind of the courtier-administrator Sir Philip Warwick, for he affirmed that the monarchy was both absolute and limited, or, as he put it, 'absolute, tho' limited .65 He denied that England was an arbitrary monarchy. A much more complex statement of this point of view had come two decades earlier, in Robert Sheringham's excellent royalist work The King's Supremacy Asserted (i 66o). The author was careful to make a sharp distinction between absolute and arbitrary government; England's was very much the former, and yet this did not erode limi- tations on the king's power; he was able to quote Sir Edward Coke as agreeing that England was an absolute monarchy. An arbitrary monarch did not need to legislate with consent; England's did.

Sheringham was well aware of the eggs on which he was treading, and provided a schematic analysis which was intended to avoid all the problems. There were, he said, three kinds of absolute and three of limited government. Government could be absolute in respect of its power and in the use and exercise of it, or absolute in either of these only. Limited government was similarly subdivided, and, for good mea- sure, there were the same three divisions within mixed governments. The English monarchy, he concluded, was absolute in respect of the power, limited in the use and exercise of it, and mixed in some respects! Thus Sheringham hoped to have his cake and make a banquet of it too. His pamphlet is the best work of its length among royalist political works, and its author seems to have been trying to reconcile all the others, and fuse their various positions on absolutism into one which would answer all objections.66

On the face of it, the Scottish lawyer and official Sir George Mackenzie was less inclined to compromise than Sheringham. He boldly affirmed that, not only England and Scotland, but all monarchies were by their nature absolute. Such governments derived their authority direct from God (but Mackenzie could still congratulate his ancestors 'for making the reasonable choice of an absolute Monarchy'). He even thought that an elective monarch could be absolute, which in this context meant irre- sistible. His contrast lay between absolute and limited monarchy, and by limited he meant one in which some superior power could coerce the king.67 While he gave the king supreme power, he conceded that it had to be exercised in certain ways, and above all he restricted the power of government in such a way that the king's absolute power did not extend

64 State trials, V, 990-2. 65 Sir Philip Warwick, A discourse of government ... written in the year i678 (I694), p. 20;

cf. 4I. 66 Robert Sheringham, Thte king's supremacy asserted, pp. 17, 31, 81-4, 92-3. 67 Sir George Mackenzie, Jus regium (1684), pp. 13, 32-3, 36, 39, 42, 47-8.

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 243

beyond thoroughly limited bounds.68 Thus Mackenzie's absolutism is not so very different from Sheringham's - or, indeed from the view of many who denied the term absolute altogether. The same is true of George Hickes, the tory writer who started as Lauderdale's chaplain and ended by becoming a non-juring bishop. He decried arbitrary monarchy, and maintained that the English, which he called both absolute and limited, was as much a true monarchy as the grimmer kind. Its limitations were real, but they flowed from the royal sovereignty itself, and were not imposed from outside. Having been granted by monarchs, they were as much an expression of absolute power as that which still remained for the king's personal exercise.69

Perhaps the last royalist word may be left to Thomas Goddard, whose perplexity about the meaning of absolute monarchy gave this paper its motto. After considering some of the problems of definition, and the difficulty of avoiding the imputation of tyranny, he concluded that 'An Absolute Monarch then is he, who having receiv'd a just authority, executes the Laws of God and Nature without controul.'70 Such a defini- tion took few risks, and left much unsaid. Goddard, at least, was not troubled by any conflict between the king's limitation by laws and the lack of coercive power to assure that he kept within that limitation.

Royalist-tory writers certainly perpetuated the earlier notions of government more faithfully than any other group after I640, and one might be tempted to state as their opinion what George Chapman's editor says of his subject, that 'Chapman, like most thinking men of his day, believed in absolute monarchy, but he held that the monarch could be absolute without being arbitrary '.71 In essence, this is what they thought. But as we have seen, many of them would not accept the term. Despite the generally consistent agreement on the nature and powers of the monarchy, there was a deep division on the use of the term 'absolute'. Nathaniel Johnston could use the work of Sheringham and Mackenzie as easily as that of Ferne and Nalson; the ideas were the same, but one label at least was at issue.

A similar lack of agreement can be found among some later whig writers, where there was not yet unanimity on the evil of absolutism. Next to Locke, the most important critics of Filmer's Patriarcha were James Tyrrell and Algernon Sidney. Sidney took the position one might expect from an aristocratic republican; absolute monarchy meant despotism, whereas any government worthy of the name was limited, based on a contract with its subjects, and resistible if that contract was

68 That the lawful successor cannot be debarr'd (I684), p. I3. Mackenzie especially emphasized the obligation of the crown to respect property rights, which it had not created and could only supervise. Jus regium, pp. 50-2.

69 George Hickes, Jovian (I683), pp. I93, 208-I2, 243-5, 252.

70 Thomas Goddard, Plato's demon (I684), p. I97. The motto is found on page I95.

71 Thomas Parrott (ed.), The plays of George Chapman: the tragedies (New York, reprinted I96I), ii, 637.

244 JAMES DALY

broken.72 Tyrrell thought very differently, and virtually accepted the kind of royalist interpretation which men like Sheringham had held. A monarch could be absolute and yet limited, provided that his limitation sprang from within his own power. Law was his 'declared Will', made in parliament and unalterable outside of it. Such a monarch was truly sovereign and absolute. Filmer's absolute and arbitrary sovereignty (of which more below) he held to be the kind known in Eastern despotisms; all Western monarchies were limited in some way, and yet could be absolute.73 In a later work, he asserted that there was a right of resistance even against absolute monarchs.74 That two such distinguished whigs could take such substantially different stands on absolutism is only typical of the age's variety of meaning.

One may well speculate on the attitude of whigs in general. The word 'absolute' does not occur frequently in the exclusion debates, where it is 'popery and arbitrary government' which is the bugbear.75 The whigs, unlike their predecessors of the i640s, were not arguing for a right of rebellion against monarchy; they wanted to change the succession to it, and cut down its legal powers at the same time if they could. Their wholesale attack on the strict hereditary principle involved arguments outside the normal purview of debate on absolutism, and they did not wish to appear as enemies of monarchy in general. But they could safely attack arbitrary government, which no one could defend. Despite the image of Louis XIV's absolutism, Spain and France (and the duke of York) could be more safely lumped together as examples of the dreaded arbitrary popery; absolutism was not yet automatically identified with it.

It took a royalist to make the identification much easier. Sir Robert Filmer, whose newly published Patriarcha was the common target of Tyrrell and Sidney, was seldom anything but a unique royalist, but he was a royalist all the same. Virtually alone in his party, he not only equated absolute with arbitrary monarchy, but he heartily approved of the result. He was at pains to reiterate this identity, which he adopted in conscious disagreement with other royalists of his day.76 This was to

72 Algernon Sidney, Discourses of government. His use of the term is frequent, and can be investigated in the indexes which are included in all the early editions.

73 James Tyrrell, Patriarcha non monarcha (i 68 i), pp. I 28-9. See also 95, I I 6*, I 29-30*, I35*, 259. The pagination of the edition used is incorrect; it goes from I to I36, then 97-i60, then 209-60, leaving a duplication between 97 and I36. The asterisk means that the page will be found in the second group of pages between 97 and I36.

74 Bibliotheca politica (i 692, etc.), pp. I 24-5.

75 Both Anchitell Grey's and William Cobbett's records of the parliamentary debates are remarkably sparse in their mentions of the term. Perhaps the best source for an understanding of the prevalent whig theory is 0. W. Furley, 'The whig Exclusionists: pamphlet literature in the Exclusion campaign, I679-8I ', Cambridge Historical Journal, xiii

(I959), I9 -36. 76 Sir Robert Filmer, The anarchy of a limited or mixed monarchy, in Patriarcha and other

political works of Sir Robert Filmer, ed. Peter Laslett (Oxford, I949), pp. 29I, 294, 306,

308.

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 245

abandon any notion of limitation on the sovereign, and to avow proudly what so many anti-royalist writers were affirming, and other royalists were denying. Thus Filmer, much more than Hobbes, could only end by encouraging a massive distrust of the notion of absolute monarchy, which he boasted was arbitrary and incompatible with the liberty which he despised and practically everyone else admired.

This identity of absolute with arbitrary proved vital, since it gave John Locke the chance to establish what was to become the enduring inter- pretation of seventeenth-century absolutism. Scarcely concealing his glee, Locke seized on Filmer's identity of arbitrary with absolute as a peg on which to hang his sweeping dismissal of absolute monarchy. Acidly pointing out that Filmer's definition would make oppressed and ravaged Turkey the best monarchy in the world, he used the universal detestation of Turkish tyranny as the very definition of absolutism. He could casually equate 'Absolute Power and Tyranny', and asserted that absolute mon- archy was not only bad, but 'inconsistent with civil society'.77 But Locke was no crude scribbler; he was careful to give some credit to earlier 'absolutists' like James I and Barclay, whose reputations as at least intelligent writers might make it imprudent to dismiss them. He found something to be said for them, and blended them into his own theory.78 Given the bases of that theory, there could be no place for anyone's definition of absolutism, regardless of how powerful the executive might be in Locke's scheme. Whatever might be said for some absolutist authors, Locke regarded absolutism as incompatible, not only with liberty, but with civil society itself.

One can hardly imagine a more sweeping condemnation, and Locke's reputation guaranteed it a continuing, indeed a growing, currency. The Revolution of i688 assured him an immediate audience; hardly anyone was interested in the finer points of understanding where a discredited system was concerned. Whigs could scarcely be expected to worry about them, and tories preferred to forget the whole problem. Filmer's follower Bohun found it easy to forget his former protestations, and justify the Revolution on the grounds that James II had tried to erect 'an absolute and unlimited Sovereignty'. Even non-resistance could not justify so horrid an enterprise!79 So quickly had a disputed term become an axiomatic evil. Locke's use of absolutism is typical of the changed situa- tion; absolute monarchy can be dismissed out of hand because it is a discarded relic, a thing of the past. The nation had passed out of the stage where it was necessary to take it seriously, and it could lapse into

7 John Locke, Twtio treatises of government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 182-3, 208, 344.

78 On Locke's skilful handling of such men, see M. Seliger, The liberal politics of John Locke (London, 1968), pp. 39, 252-6.

79 Edmund Bohun, The history of the desertion or an accoutnt of all the putblic affairs in England from i688... (1689), p. iii.

246 JAMES DALY

the condition of a concept which was as irrelevant as it was distasteful, only appearing occasionally as a kind of code-word for the bad old days, now forever gone.

The suddenness of the collapse of absolutism as a serious point of discussion is remarkable, but the way had been prepared before I688.

Not only had opposition and many royalist writers regarded the term with opprobrium since I 642. The wider and non-political use of the term 'absolute' had been undergoing a subtle change as well, in the form of a contraction. One of the reasons for the favour with which absolute monarchy was viewed early in the century was the wide spectrum of favourable meanings of the term absolute. When a thing was absolute, it was both without superior ('an absolute master at sea') and magnificently good ('absolute lady', 'absolute courtier'). Both of these general meanings continue to occur in Restoration letters, but it is the power connotation which predominates, with that of perfect goodness or accomplishment much less in evidence. Milton's poetic usage ex- emplifies this. In one case 'absolute' meant complete or entire, in six, unconditional, unrestricted or unlimited, and in only three is perfect goodness implied.80 Indeed, in only one case is the last usage completely similar to that of the earlier period; here, Eve, as a perfect woman, is said to be absolute. In the other two, the word modifies 'perfection '.8

A half-century earlier this might have been considered redundant, as meaning perfect perfection, and if used would have been deliberately meant as a conceit, which it does not seem to do in Milton. With Dryden the same process has been at work. In twelve uses, Dryden only implies perfection once ('beauty absolute'), and even there he is punning on absolute power.82 His common use is that of certainty or political supremacy. When he sarcastically hails Flecknoe as acknowledged 'Thro' all the realms of Nonsense, absolute', he is putting the discussion into the context of the Exclusion crisis; it is Flecknoe's monarchy that the unfortunate Shadwell will inherit.83 Pope was to take this development to its logical, and modern, conclusion; he used the word only in the political sense.84

This was a powerful and soon triumphant trend in the language, but the older usage did not disappear so quickly. The century ended with Congreve using the word almost exclusively in the older mode, with

80 A concordance to Milton'spoetry, ed. William Ingram and Kathleen Swaim (Oxford, 1972). 81 Paradise lost, bk 8, 547; IO, 483; Paradise regained, pp. 2, 138. 82 Concordance to the poetical works of John Dryden, ed. George Montgomery et al. (New

York, I957). 83 MacFlecknoe, 1. 5-6. It is possible that he was referring to lines of Flecknoe's where

'absolute' had involved both notions of perfection and of power; if so, Dryden was intentionally narrowing towards the political implications. The works ofJohn Dryden (Berkeley, etc., I972), II, 3I4.

84 A concordance to the poems of Alexander Pope, ed. E. G. Bedford and Robert J. Dilligan (Detroit, I974), vol. I.

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 247

lovers, wits and courtiers as absolute.85 There are also occasional uses of the mode of perfection in the more serious literature, including some works previously mentioned here.86 But the relative absence of the term, compared with Jacobean usage, is evident. It is approaching modern usage, losing its identity with something self-evidently good, becoming more and more an adjectival or adverbial indication of degree or power in goodness or anything else. Instead of being absolute, people or things are apt to be absolutely perfect.87 Or else they are absolute in power, which usually means in sheer magnitude of power, not in a condition of morally justified authority. Inevitably registering such subtle changes, the late seventeenth-century ear would not have the same predisposition to a favourable image of things that were absolute. Increasingly associated first and foremost with government, the term would lack, in that context, the automatic benefit of favourable non-political 'echoes', it would have to stand on its own political feet, and they were seen more and more as feet of clay. Robbed since 1640 of much more than half its earlier acceptance, deprived more intangibly of the association with the notion of perfection which had shored up its favourable political connotations, it was acquiring its modern associations with musty despotism, at once tyrannical and outmoded. This was a long fall indeed from the time of Shakespeare, or even Sir Anthony Weldon.

It is a fall which does not appear to be sufficiently understood among historians. Full and careful treatment in a clearly elaborated context can increase our understanding of ages and disputes in which absolutism figures, and a lot of good work has been done by such treatment.88 Even when one might quarrel with important statements in a detailed study, the depth and breadth of treatment is bound to suggest its own corrective, or at least modify any damage done.89 The real problem comes in more general works which invoke absolutism in passing, as a handy concept which nearly everyone assumes everyone else will understand. When one comes across references to 'Tudor absolutism', one sometimes finds it contrasted to Stuart absolutism, but when the same work later lumps them

85 A concordance to the plays of William Congreve, ed. David Mann (Ithaca and London, I 973). 86 Bramhall, The serpent-sabre, Works, III, 492. Peter Heylyn, Microcosmos (i621), p. 249.

Captain Edmund Hill, Digitus testium, or a dreadful alarm to the whole kingdom (i 650). Starkey, The dignity of kingship, p. io6. (Anon.), A letter from a gentleman of quality (I679), pp. 3, I I.

87 Sir Ralph Hopton had called his royalist comrade Sidney Godolphin 'as perfect, and as absolute a piece of virtue as ever our country bred'. A half-century later Godolphin would probably have been 'as absolutely perfect a piece of virtue. ..'. Sir Ralph Hopton, Bellum civile: Hopton's narrative of his campaign in the west (1642-44) and other papers, ed. C. E. H. C. Healey, Somerset Record Society, XVIII (I902), 33.

88 Good examples of such work are: Julian H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the rise of absolutist theory (Cambridge, I973); G. R. Elton, introduction to the Harper Torchbook edition of J. N. Figgis, The divine right of kings (New York, etc., i965), pp. vii-xxxviii; J. P. Cooper, 'Differences between English and continental governments in the early I 7th century', in J. S. Bromley and E. H. Kossman (eds.), Britain and the Netherlands (London, I 964), pp. 62-9o.

89 E.g. Plamenatz, Man and society, i, ch. v, and Judson, Crisis, ch. Iv.

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together, almost all precision is lost.90 A reader's perplexity is increased when he is told that such absolutism did not really exist, because there were two Stuart attempts at absolutism which failed. The perplexity is not relieved when Filmer's Patriarcha is described as 'the epitome of absolutist theory', since Filmer was not at all a typical absolutist.91

Some very good works indeed can indulge in this sort of carelessness. To assert, for example, that when James I said that he was commanding as an absolute king, that he meant that his power was arbitrary, is to assume an identity of terms which hardly anyone in I604 would have granted.92 James had used the same word in asserting his right to name Scottish councillors in defiance of Elizabeth's preferences: an absolute king had no superiors, was independent.93 (To make the matter more ironic, James agreed to a reduction in the prerogative power over parliamentary elections in the very case in which he had commanded so absolutely.) It has also been thought possible to say that the first Charles attempted absolutism, and the second initially failed, and then succeeded, in establishing a 'veiled absolutism', which apparently means either independence of parliament or the organization of it by a party which would guarantee support for the king's policies.94 The former meaning might or might not be absolutist; a lot would depend on what the king was trying to do independently - trying to raise ship-money, or trying to conduct a foreign policy as it was the king's undoubted prerogative right to do. As to the second meaning, it was very much what Walpole did for the first two Georges, and Charles I would have found that a very veiled absolutism indeed. Much the same problem appears in lumping together, as absolutist, the Cabal's policies and James II's efforts to pack a parliament to obtain repeal of the anti-Catholic laws.95 The indicated policies overlap, especially as trying to use the royal prerogative to advance religious toleration, but the people and circumstances are very different, and high-handedness, deviousness or even defiance of public opinion do not necessarily constitute absolutism. Nevertheless, such questionable terminology is preferable to simplifying everything by using 'absolute' and 'arbitrary' quite interchangeably.96

A somewhat more sophisticated use finds England 'moving inexorably towards absolutism' after i68o, only to be saved from this fate in i688,

90 Michael Walzer, The revolution of the saints (London, I966), pp. I99, 228.

91 Zera Fink, The classical republicans (Evanston, I 962), pp. 27, n. I I 3, I49.

92 W. H. Greenleaf, Order, empiricism and politics (Oxford, I964), p. 4 I. The same author elsewhere appears to identify absolute monarchy with the divine right of kings: 'The Thomasian tradition and the theory of absolute monarchy', English Historical Review, LXXIX (I964), 748.

93 D. H. Willson, King James VI and I, p. 51.

94 Maurice Lee Jr., The cabal (Urbana, I968), pp. 3, 254.

95 J. R. Jones, The revolution of i688 in England (New York, I972), pp. 4, I2, I7.

96 J. H. Plumb, The growth of political stability in England 1675-1725 (London, I969),

pp. 29-3 I .

THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 249

and supplies some clarity to the assertion: even absolute monarchs like Louis XIV are admitted to be limited in some respects, and James II was absolute at least 'in the restricted sense of being independent: able to govern and interpret the laws to his liking despite the disapproval of most, perhaps, of his subjects '.9 One could quarrel with the usage here, but at least there is an attempt to grapple with the element of limitation, and the result is recognizable in contemporary terms. The late Professor Western's commendable effort to supply a clear frame of reference is not common enough among historians.98 This is perhaps understandable, since, whatever absolutism was, it was never a possibility after i688. Knowing this, historians do not seem very interested in trying to ascertain very clearly what it might have been before the revolution. We are apt to be more concerned with ideas that triumph than with those that fail, forgetting that ideas that fail were once as important as those which supplanted them. We must try to understand them not only for the importance they once had, but because, without such understanding, we will not really know what was supplanted.

Works such as those just cited do not themselves suffer from the misuse of terms like absolutism; their value stands quite clear of such con- siderations, resting firmly on a large body of evidence and analysis. The problem comes from repeated encounters with such books by students who are building up an understanding of political forms, and perhaps looking for a shortcut. The general notion of absolutism which most students of English history possess is based on a conflation of undefined and/or frequently incompatible applications. As the student matures into the scholar and continues his own research, it is natural to integrate contemporary uses of the term into the framework which has already been so securely though inaccurately established. Historical vocabulary will always include terms which are not capable of precise (could one say absolutely precise?) definition. The use of the term 'absolute' is especially important in the study of the Stuart monarchy, however, since our understanding of it will condition what is done with a lot of vital contemporary evidence where that term occupies a key place. When men could speak of absolute powers wielded by a monarch who was not absolute, or of an absolute monarch presiding over a government which was not absolute, the warning-signs ought to be carefully heeded.

When one comes across the notion in a contemporary source, what does the user mean? In what part of the century is he speaking? What party, or faction within a party, does he belong to? Does he mean that a

97 J. R. Western, Monarchy and revolution: the English state in the i68os (London, I972),

PP. 3, 47-8. 98 Though not many are apt to follow the Marxist tendency to see rule by great

landowners as the hallmark of absolutism. On this see Cooper, 'Differences between English and Continental governments', and, more recently, Betty Behrens, 'Feudalism and absolutism', Historical Journal, xIx (I 976), 245-50.

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monarchy is a model of its kind? That the king has no superior? Or is not elected? Or cannot be resisted? Does 'absolute' refer to the king's right to occupy the throne, or to the extent of the power which the throne gives him? Does it refer to a particular legal right, or to the form of government? Does it denote a monarch's right to raise taxes and make law without consent? Or does it only mean that he is trying to enforce a legal right against opposition? Or that he is trying to stretch such a right to questionable lengths? Many historians take such questions seriously, but the habit is not widespread enough. Terms like absolutism and absolute monarchy often mean little more than this, that the historian who uses them is thinking of a regime where the king has or would have more power than twentieth-century scholars think a seventeenth-century king ought to have had. That is not a very careful terminology. It risks reading an essentially modern opinion back into historical evidence, a rash form of historical retrospection. To avoid such traps, historians must strive for sharper understanding of a term 'which is indeed a point rather controverted, than clearly decided by any author, that I have yet met withal'.