Favorites and Parliaments (Parlements) in
the 1640's:
Strafford and Mazarin
This paper was presented in
January 2008, at conference held at Villetaneuse (Université de Paris13):
"Interactions and Transfers between France and the British Isles, 1640-1660"
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford,
Lord Deputy of Ireland, was attainted on May 9, 1641. King Charles I
consented to his execution the next day, May 10; and Strafford was beheaded
two days later. (1) On January 8, 1649, Jules
Mazarin, Cardinal and Principal Minister of Her Majesty Anne of Austria,
Queen Regent, was declared "criminel de lèse-majesté"
(2): he was ordered to leave the realm, and a price of 50,000
livres was put on his head.In both
cases, the judgments came down from venerable and legitimate institutions:
the king and Parliament in the case of Strafford, the Parlement of Paris in
the case of Mazarin. Why and how did such eminent and trusted royal
officials fall into such terrible straits? In answering this question, I
hope to reveal the principal characteristics of monarchy as a political
phenomenon, that is, to discern what is deeper, different, and common in
mid-seventeenth-century English and French kingship.
Finding the balance between chronological
narrative and schematic approaches is particularly difficult in comparative
literature. Part I of this paper introduces the surface events through which
the two "representative" bodies, Parliament and the Parlement, acted. Part
II centers on the biographical, in order to suggest why Strafford and
Mazarin generated so much animosity. Part III, and its subdivisions, centers
on the legal-culture aspects, in England and in France, in which Parliament
and the Parlement functioned, and compares the themes in their public
declarations of grievances to their respective crowns in the form of
remonstrances.
Lastly, some attention is given to the
pressures of urban and aristocratic factions on the two bodies, prior to
recounting the denouement: in Strafford's case, execution; and in Mazarin's,
return to Paris in near triumph.
I. Some Surface Events
At the opening of the Commons in the Long
Parliament in 1640, John Pym submitted a bill to impeach the Earl of
Strafford. The Earl had long since ceased to be simply an opponent, as he
had been in earlier Parliaments. He had become an enemy to be destroyed. A
Whiggish narrative need not be constructed on belief of inevitability.
Participants may sense just when a shift occurs from words to action — in
this case, from temporizing and negotiating with the Scots, to military
action in civil war — but interpretations founded on bad timing fail to
satisfy. Was it Strafford's hubris which caused him to advise his sovereign
to call Parliament?
Like the stability of the English narrative
of events for 1640-41, that of the French narrative in 1649, and again in
1651, is so well-established that no new major approach is possible. Let us
emphasize 1651. The urban populations' rise against Condé augured well for a
general settlement. Mazarin's decision to enter the realm at the head of an
army, aroused once more the divisions within the Parlement and the Parisian
elites. (3)
The Reason-of-State program for the
British Monarchy, as practiced by Charles I rested on the elimination of
Parliament, and this was known and understood by the English governing
elite, particularly those who remembered both James I's later Parliaments,
and those of Charles, because they had sat in them.
(4)
Memories of previous impeachments of royal
councilors (Monpesson and Bacon in 1621, Cranfield in 1624, Buckingham in
1626, and Manwaring in 1628), like wars with the Scots, were framed by
political-philosophical principles such as the appeal to the ancient
constitution, fundamental law, "mixed" constitution of monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy. Not all the impeachments ended in executions,
but Parliament increasingly undermined the royal prerogative to appoint
councilors. King Charles had not only endangered the balance of powers
within the Monarchy, it also seemed that he wished to do so by not calling
Parliaments, and by altering the Henrician Establishment in the Church.
Memory can trail off into nostalgia for the good old days of Elizabeth's
reign and, in France, for those of Henry IV. The phrase "Reason of State"
became an epithet in England, and a moral ideal in France. Defeated in
England when Strafford and Charles I were executed, it would triumph when
Mazarin returned at the head of an army that he had put together in the name
of Louis XIV, now of age.
There was also a Whiggish interpretation of
seventeenth-century French history. Like the English Parliament, the French
Parlements were courts of law, but Parlements, including provincial ones,
sat permanently, except when the death of the sovereign automatically
interrupted their service. Unlike the English stability under the Tudors,
the French had descended into a series of civil wars that had left both king
and Parlement wary: the king had the upper hand on powers to tax, although
the judges claimed that no fiscal measure was legal if they did not register
it. Despite stormy relations between Louis XIII and the Parlement in the
1630's, it seems never to have occurred to anyone that the Parlement could
be definitively suspended or decreed out of existence. Again, memory and
history informed action. In a Regency government, the Parlement would play a
key role in determining where sovereignty lay. Memories of the regencies of
Catherine de Médicis and Marie de Médicis weighed on all those who
participated in the lit de justice of May 18, 1643, that abrogated
the king's testament and gave unique, sovereign, and absolute power to Anne
of Austria, to govern in the name of her four year-old son, Louis XIV, who
wept in shame when he forgot the very brief speech he had learned for the
occasion. (5) The Parlement of Paris could
remonstrate against the king's policies, but it possessed only oblique
weapons to attack directly any royal councilor. As a court of law, the
English Parliament could try and sentence to death any of his Majesty's
subjects. Impeachment, and attempts to impeach royal councilors, had become
almost as frequent as Parliaments, occasions prompted by the virtual
bankruptcy of the Crown. Procedure for impeachment involved prosecution,
possible legal representation by an attorney in the House of Commons,
judgment by the House of Lords, and a signed warrant accepting the king's
judgment. Pym started an impeachment against Strafford, then switched,
several months later, to an old law not used since 1459: "attainder," which
did not require a full trial, and in which the king could not pardon the
guilty person: he had to consent to the judgment. Later legal commentators
refer to attainder as "Barbaric." The attainted person could neither inherit
nor bequeath lands, was deemed "corrupt in his blood," and was sentenced to
be hanged until almost dead, at which point he was disemboweled and
destroyed by fire.
The Parlement of Paris had powers to
declare a death sentence for treason and for numerous other crimes, to order
a hanging or a beheading, a drawing and quartering, or destruction by fire
followed by the scattering of the ashes to the winds at the four cardinal
gates of Paris. The first general action against Mazarin occurred on
September 22, 1648. The Grand'Chambre would soon vote a reinstatement of its
arrêt of 1617 forbidding foreigners to serve on the Council of
State. (6) This had been a strong signal to
Marie de Médicis that her favorite, the Florentine, Concini, lacked support
in the Parlement; but in fact neither she, nor young Louis XIII, nor the
royal councilors would accept any restriction on the sovereign's power to
nominate whomever they pleased to his council. Concini was subsequently shot
down by royal guards, on the king's order. In one Mazarinade, Louis XIV is
encouraged to emulate his father and have Mazarin shot.
(7)
Opposition to Mazarin continued to smolder,
then burst into flames in 1651. The move to exclude all cardinals from the
Council of State received support from Condé's followers in the Parlement,
but then there were second thoughts. Two Frondeurs, Paul de Gondi, known as
"Retz," and Charles de Laubespine de Châteauneuf were both pressing the
Queen Regent to nominate them for cardinalates, and both hoped to become at
least royal councilors, and possibly principal minister. Their supporters in
the Parlement effectively delayed the proposal to exclude cardinals; and
around the same time, a proposal came forth to ask Anne to send Mazarin away
(l'éloigner), not only from the Council but from the realm as well.
This proposal was voted up in an intense atmosphere created by the arrest of
the princes, Condé and Conti. Anne and young Louis XIV were virtually
prisoners in the Palais-Royal, as plans for their escape broke down. Late on
February 6, 1651, Mazarin simply walked out a city gate, went to Le Havre
where he freed Condé and Conti in the Queen Regent's name, and tried to
negotiate with these rebel princes, but failed. He would spend several
months along France's borders, going from army camp to army camp. The royal
commanders had largely been appointed by him, and they remained faithful.
Back in Paris, the Parlement became
enraged by its own failure to stop Mazarin's influence over royal policy. In
December 1651, it voted that he was a "perturber of the public peace," a
well-known Roman law tag that was as familiar to schoolboys as to jurists,
because the Senate had voted the same law against Caesar at a critical
moment for the survival of the Republic, namely the war between Pompey and
Caesar (Commentaries, Book I). A price of 50,000 livres would also
be voted for Mazarin's head; his painting collection, furniture, and library
were confiscated, and the proceeds went to the Frondeur army.
(8)
Back in Westminster, Strafford would be
taken prisoner by the guards already under the command of the House of
Commons; but Mazarin could not be caught. Some Frondeur nobles rode up to
the convent of Val de Grâce, where Mazarin's nieces had been staying, in
hopes of taking them hostage. The Cardinal had anticipated such a move, and
faithful supporters had taken the girls to safety.
Strafford had been confident that he could
persuade the Commons not only of the legitimacy of his service to the king,
but of his personal integrity as protégé-councilor to Charles. The months of
imprisonment prior to his trial and execution served to break nearly all the
affective bonds that might have tied Strafford to members of Parliament. The
seeds of demonization had been there all along, and they would be cultivated
by collective fears of Popery, tyranny, and by strong party bonds linking
Pym's "Junto" in the Commons to Strafford-hating merchants and crowds in
London. In fact, the fears extended to Whitehall Palace: Charles feared for
himself and his queen.
Condé and his supporters invaded Paris
after attacking the Porte Saint-Antoine in early July of 1652, and
terrorized Parisians by making violent attempts to take over the city
government and to raid whatever money and weapons the municipality
possessed. Condé's reputation for brutality and intimidation increased as he
used desperate measures to supply his dwindling army, camped outside the
city. Having allied with Anne and Mazarin during the Parlementary Fronde,
the prince assumed the characteristics of the "over-mighty subject." Wanting
governorships, admiralties, and huge sums to pension his clients and
relatives, Condé listened to plots to capture the little king (his cousin),
and to rule in his name while the legitimate regent would be under virtual
arrest in a convent. But Condé never went that far. He defied Anne and
escaped Mazarin's power, because he could not be satisfied until he
controlled all that was sovereignty, except the name.
In England, the only great personage to
play a similar role was Francis Russell, fourth earl of Bedford, scion of a
landed family, who shifted back and forth on the great questions regarding
the royal prerogative, the powers of Parliament, church reform, and
relations with the Scots. Bedford had a visceral dislike of favorites.
(9) After supporting Pym in his plans to destroy Strafford,
Bedford made some late attempts to have Strafford's life spared. Bedford
would seem to be the classic type of leader-broker who possessed great power
but who unleashed circumstances that went way beyond his imagination and
control. His death shortly before Strafford's condemnation, cut short a
trajectory that probably would have included exile to the Continent.
II. The Biographical
Perspective
Some salient facts about Strafford's and
Mazarin's social rank, education, and beliefs framed, but did not determine,
their political careers.
Thomas Wentworth, created Earl of Strafford
in 1640, was thirty-eight when he was beheaded, by order of the king and
Parliament, on May 12, 1641. Born into a middling landed family of the North
Country, he spent four years reading law at the Inner Temple and attending
St. John's College, Cambridge. He then toured France and the Rhineland with
a tutor from Oxford. Back in Yorkshire, Wentworth efficiently managed
estates that produced an annual income of £ 5,000. His father had angled for
a peerage in a period when titles were increasingly up for sale, but he did
not receive one. He died leaving Thomas with nine brothers and sisters to
place and marry off.
Elected to the House of Commons for the
so-called "addled" Parliament of 1614, the gridlock that prevailed and that
would intensify between the Crown and the House of Commons, would lead
Wentworth to abandon the "party" that sought to limit the royal prerogative
and assure the "ancient constitution" of the English Monarchy. His election
was contested in 1621, but he prevailed by being elected by a borough rather
than a shire — certainly a sign of someone in a hurry. By the end of eleven
years without Parliament, Wentworth had become an articulate and influential
voice for "reform," a program consisting of strong royal administration that
enforced the rights of the Crown. Not cautious in speech, Wentworth spent
years as Lord President in the North of England, and then as Lord Deputy in
Ireland, where his policy of "thorough" consisted of enforcing the letter of
the law, largely as it had been under the Tudors. Nominations to local
offices, and recovering rights to property — especially to confiscated
monastic lands for the Crown — brought him into conflict with some of the
wealthiest and most powerful of the landowning aristocracy. Using special
royal commissions to investigate claims to ownership, put Wentworth on a
collision course with administrators and judges, who were generally beholden
to the same powerful landowning aristocracy. Wentworth was an administrator,
not a favorite. Only by rapidly accumulating high office in Ireland and
military powers over an army (small, but impressive since there was no
other) and fortifications, did he begin to confirm the historical image of
the favorite: the over-mighty subject. Not until late in his career did he
receive personal compliments from his sovereign, and some degree of
intimacy. The newly created Earl of Strafford not only held, but practiced
administratively, an ideal of kingship unshackled by the English Parliament,
and he seemed successful in Ireland. His perceived success — especially his
getting the Irish Parliament to vote financial support and his creation of a
five-thousand-man Irish army — not only aroused suspicions in the minds of
John Pym and his allies in the House of Commons, it contributed to his
downfall.
Although a sincere friend of William Laud,
Archbishop of Canterbury, whose efforts to establish uniformity of
liturgical practice throughout Scotland and England aroused growing
opposition, Wentworth stayed on the sidelines. He knew that Laud's reforms
were not Roman Catholic, and he seems not to have become engaged in debates
over predestination. That he was buying land in Ireland and hoped that his
son might one day become a leading owner-gentleman there, sheds light on his
politics. His commissions to Van Dyck — a portrait of him alone, another
with a faithful secretary, and a third of Queen Henrietta Maria — suggests
some understanding of the life-style favored by King Charles.
Jules Mazarin was forty-eight when the
Parlement of Paris set a price of 50,000 livres on his head. Born in
Piscina in the Abruzzi, of a Roman family that had been clients of the great
Colonna family for at least two generations, Mazarin grew up in Rome and
attended the famous Jesuit Collegio Romano from age seven to seventeen. He
then set off as a companion to a young Colonna, for a two-year stay in
Alcala, Spain. Though well-connected, the Mazarini had little if any landed
wealth; they rented their residences; and they possessed no office or
business for Jules to inherit. Being the client of a great family, but not
being housed by them, meant marginal status and few if any chances for
promotion. Increasingly competent at diplomacy, and possessing plain old
charm, Mazarin moved through the labyrinthian networks of the Colonna,
Saccheti, and ultimately the Barbarini families, and became indispensable to
Cardinal Antonio Barbarian, the weaker and less intelligent nephew of Pope
Urban VIII. Charged with keeping Antonio informed about diplomatic and
military affairs in North Italy, while in Milan Mazarin became familiar with
virtually every aspect of the Hapsburg, essentially Spanish-French policies
and rivalries during the years when a European war was looming on the
horizon over the Mantuan succession. As papal envoy, he rode between two
armies about to engage in battle at Casale (October 1630), and although this
won him acclaim, he knew that high office in Rome could not be had by merit
alone.
Mazarin met Cardinal Richelieu during these
negotiations of 1630; and as he later put it to a friend, he "immediately
decided to attach himself to him." Agreeable, always agreeable, and poised
in manner if not affected, Mazarin would never doubt his ability to
establish, with someone else, a degree of intimacy that would permit him to
influence or to advise. In fact, he charmed Richelieu, as he would charm
Louis XIII a few years later. And he then charmed the Regent, Anne of
Austria. He established very strong ties to Chavigny, a secretary of state,
and he became a kind of paternal friend to Michel Le Tellier, teaching him
the ways of the world. Mazarin's great pupil in the art of friendship and
politics would be, of course, Louis XIV, for whom he was a father in every
way, except biologically. Mazarin practiced favoritism as the most subtle of
political arts.
At some point in the late 1620's, Mazarin
realized that he would never become truly influential in the Church without
a cardinal's hat, and that the best way to procure one would be through
nomination by a foreign head of state. Would he opt for France? Or for
Spain? His encounter with Richelieu, and his subsequent appointment as
nuncio to Paris, pretty much decided Mazarin's future. The death, in 1638,
of Father Joseph, the French candidate for a cardinalate, opened the way for
Mazarin's eventual appointment in December 1641.
In France, Mazarin carried out diplomatic
and political affairs that showed his personal skills to advantage. He
quickly earned Richelieu's total confidence, and Louis XIII saw in him not
only someone he could trust, but someone from whom he felt easy accepting
advice. In fact, Mazarin was already filling Richelieu's place in the King's
heart and mind prior to Richelieu's death in December 1643.
Mazarin had become a naturalized citizen of
France in 1639, probably to protect any property that might be subject to
confiscation by law, should he die in France as a foreigner. Very soon
thereafter, Louis XIII and Richelieu began assigning revenues to him from
rich abbeys; but until that time Mazarin had lived on quite meager canonries
in the Papal States. In a famous letter accompanying France's ambassadors to
the peace conference at Munster in 1648, Mazarin described himself as a
person of very modest means, and he affirmed that lack of wealth implied
lack of self-interest, an advantage in politics. This was a pose.
Dealing with the office- and
pension-grabbing of the great nobles, made him realize that his own modest
wealth was a disadvantage. So he decided to become wealthy, very wealthy. He
bought a superb palazzo in Rome that he could not yet afford; he built a
large residence in Paris and another at Vincennes, had them decorated; but
unlike Strafford, he did not buy land.
Richelieu had learned, while young, about
the importance of what would later be called "public opinion." He tried to
inform it, shape it. Mazarin either had a deaf ear, or else he discounted
criticism of his policies — particularly the war that he had inherited, and
the high fiscal demands it brought. He found "étrange" the ad hominem
attacks on his person, and on the Queen Regent. Anne's subjects were
well-disposed toward her until Mazarin came to be perceived as a favorite, a
foreigner, an evil councilor, and a seducer. While apparently so stable,
monarchy quickly became vulnerable when sovereign power appeared to shift
from the crowned head to someone else. So perceptive, so seductive with
individuals, Mazarin remained blind to the crucial dynamics that linked
sovereigns and peoples. Probably only a mature and intelligent king would
have succeeded in bridling Condé.
III. Institutions and Legal
Cultures
It must be recalled that the English
Parliament was every bit as much a court of law as the French parlements
were. Procedures for civil cases and criminal cases were fixed and grounded
in historical precedent, although it appears that the so-called cas
royaux were more deeply integrated into general court procedure than in
Westminster. If, in both courts, the laws of treason were grounded on Roman
law, cases were recently just about as frequent in France as in England.
As corporate bodies that never quite split
off from the Curia Regis, Parliament and Parlement shared the divine aura of
the crowns in whose name they spoke and acted. Here is what the great jurist
Sir Edward Coke said about Parliament and impeachment procedures in 1621,
regarding relations between the two Houses:
I thank God for unities of this
Parliament: 1, betwixt our sovereign and us; 2, betwixt the Lords and us; 3,
betwixt ourselves. This is as weighty as any case in my time, because it
concerns not only us but the Lords also. Therefore we are resolved according
to former precedents to address ourselves to the Lords, for so it was in
Henry the Sixth's time [1422-1471], in whose reign we have two precedents
.... (10)
But the controversy over the uniformization
of religious spaces and practices certainly spawned disaffection and
bewilderment in the Parliament. In conflicts with Parliament, James I,
Charles's father, frequently spoke of his divine authority, raising the
suspicion that it might not radiate down to his subjects assembled in
Westminster.
A Parliament could not assemble without a
royal summons. In 1640, the lords spiritual (the Archbishop of Canterbury
and twenty-four bishops) and the lords temporal, plus the great officers of
state and the dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, and barons — some 123 in
all — constituted the Lords.
The knights of the shire (two from
each county in England, and one from Wales), and two burgesses from each
borough, constituted the Commons, a total membership of 507 in 1640. The
Parlement of Paris, in 1652, consisted of about 222 justices, including lay
and spiritual councilors and presidents.
(11)
On first thought, the differences between
the Paris Parlement and the Westminster Parliament seem so great that
comparing the two would not yield interesting results. In Paris, the
councilors held venal and heritable offices, but in Westminster members of
the House of Commons were elected, and the Lords sat by right of their
titles. In actual fact, however, the Paris Parlement was less a single
chamber than it would seem. The judges did most of their work in the
Enquêtes and Requêtes chambers. General sessions of the entire Parlement,
sitting in the Grand'Chambre with the peers by right (including spiritual
peers), resembled a general session of the King in Parliament in
Westminster.
This said, I now wish to explore the
similarities in the way that has been pioneered by specialists in political
culture. Claims to uniqueness are strongly articulated in the general
British and French narratives; but similarities have received little
attention. We shall combine evidence of what was said and evidence of what
was practiced, no doubt to the consternation of historians who make imperial
claims for the one or the other.
What could be more similar than the
virtually sacred spaces on which the two bodies met? One space is near the
Thames, in a centuries-old building where Plantagenet, Lancastrian, Yorkist,
and Tudor coats of arms could be viewed, to inspire wonder and thoughts
about the past. The massive Palais de Justice sits along the Seine, in an
ancient royal residence dominated by the Sainte-Chapelle. The great
fifteenth-century Crucifixion hanging in the Grand'Chambre reminded the
judges of their duty to render justice in conformity with their faith.
Suffice it to recall how the Londoners
intimidated members of Parliament by lining up along their way to taunt and
to goad them into ordering Strafford's execution. (12)
In Paris, crowds of several hundred gathered to intimidate the Parlement,
shouting epithets against Mazarin. On 26 August 1648, the Day of the
Barricades, the city was shut down and the streets were blocked by some
275,000 people, until the Parlement won the release of the beloved judge,
Broussel. (13) To be sure, some in the crowd
had been paid to shout, but Omer Talon tells of the dire poverty into which
so many Parisians had sunk, and the judges' decision to donate 100 livres
each to charity (150 livres from each president). The crowds that
showed up to support Condé had mostly been paid to do so. Thoughts of the
angry crowd were not far from his mind. In Westminster, the London M.P.'s
were linked to the street protesters by a cause, not by money or poverty.
For both institutions, speeches by the
president or the sovereign included claims to represent the nation. The
parlementaires expressed this theme very strongly whenever appeals for an
Estates-General rose up in response to some deep contestation or a risk of
civil war. Back in Westminster, the elected House members rarely specified
whom they represented, but they often evoked "this kingdom" or "this
nation," its health, its ills, its fears. Popular petitions characterized
Strafford as "an enemy of the people." The potential contradiction about the
origins of sovereignty was not yet apparent: God through the king, or God
through the nation.
In addition, members of Parlement and
members of Parliament alike, believed themselves to be the guarantors of the
"fundamental laws" that governed the realm. To be sure, the laws of
succession differed in the two kingdoms, but the vigilance as to their
enforcement was the same in both institutions. On both sides of the Channel,
the theme of a balance of powers, or a mixed constitution, involving kings
and their councilors on one side and the Parliament/Parlement on the other,
would frequently be repeated in Paris during the Fronde, and certainly in
all of James's later Parliaments and in all of Charles's. These themes are
what I have characterized as "what was said," that is, claims couched in
rhetoric, with allusions to histories, the Bible, and a tradition of
political thought with Aristotelian foundations. In both instances, claims
to govern by divine-right Absolutism sustained opposition to the claims
being made by the Parlement and the Parliament to have the right to advise
the sovereign as respectful councilors. In both instances, the theme of the
evil councilor and favorite lay just below the surface. As Thomas May wrote,
"These are the ones that put themselves between the sovereign and his
subjects, breaking down the love that usually exists between them."
(14) Here we are close to the specific charges made against both
Strafford and Mazarin. Was breaking that love an act of treason in England,
according to the statute of 1352?
Remonstrances
To counter the perceived danger to the
powers of government so constituted, the Parliament in 1641, and the
Parlement in 1648, held debates that culminated in lengthy texts known as "remonstrances."
Here again, it is the procedure that was similar, not the substance,
although each remonstrance was addressed to the sovereign, in November 1641
and July 1648 respectively. Couched in the language of respectful
advice-giving, the Commons warned of a faction or party within the sate that
sought to destroy the Church of England by introducing "opinions and
ceremonies as are fittest for accommodation with Popery." Article 176 claims
that "that whole kingdom [has been] totally subverted, rooted out religion,
and destroyed all the Protestants ...." (15)
There is also a complaint about the exportation of gold and silver to
foreign countries, and the weakness of herring-fishing (articles 141-42),
but the text as a whole claims that there is a gigantic conspiracy by
Papists of all sorts, to subvert religion and the kingdom. Although
Parliament had been protesting for decades about the Crown's resort to what
it considered to be extra-legal commissions, among them the Star Chamber,
this issue is not stressed in the Grand Remonstrance.
The Grand Remonstrance of the Parlement of
Paris (and other sovereign courts joined to it), are more demanding in tone:
they want the intendants to be suppressed. (16)
By arbitrarily raising taxes, these officials in the Ile-de-France were
assuming the duties of other officials. The judges voted a 25-percent
reduction in the taille, the principal tax collected from the rural
population. Attempts to draft clauses that would prohibit the arrest or
exile of members of the Parlement were linked to a law of habeus corpus
that limited the length of time one could be imprisoned without having been
indicted. There is no mention of religious issues, or of any issues
involving Church administration.
Anne of Austria, Mazarin, and the First
President Molé argued that the Crown gave appointees the requisite powers,
and that the power to arrest any subject in compliance with a royal order,
was an indispensable feature of monarchy. During the weeks and months that
followed, some of the articles were accepted and became law; but Mazarin
wrote to Anne that these constraints on sovereign power would have to be
abrogated. A politics of dissimulation would be practiced over the next
three years, to the point that royal legislation, royal letters, and the
combating parties no longer considered Mazarin's word to be meaningful.
As Strafford's trial before the Commons
dragged on for seven-weeks during the spring of 1641, the prosecution sought
to assemble all the charges. Strafford sought to have them be ad
seriatum, (17) but he failed. This
permitted a charge that there had been a general intent or design to subvert
the fundamental laws of the realm. Conrad Russell remarks that, in
Strafford's fate, Charles's other councilors sensed a threat to themselves,
and willingly "ditched" him. (18) By
contrast, Condé and Gaston d'Orléans pressed the Regent to disgrace Le
Tellier and Lionne, two secretaries of state known to support Mazarin. The
charges against Strafford also shifted away from his alleged support of
Popery to his alleged intention to employ the Irish army to intimidate
Parliament. Strafford had appointed the officers in that army, hence they
were beholden to him. Charles's refusal to disband the army seemed to
confirm the plot theory, and it was largely the charge about the army that
would prompt the Lords to vote the attainder. Pressured by crowds, on April
20, 1641, the Commons voted 204 to 59 to condemn Strafford. Then, on May 8,
in an atmosphere of plots and counter-plots — and with one of their leading
members, Bedford, having died — the Lords, in a very sparsely-attended
session, voted 51 to 9 to condemn Strafford.
(19)
On the French side of the Channel, after
the initial re-enactment of the arrêt against Concini, the charge
that Mazarin had either bungled or blocked the peace negotiations with Spain
was frequently aired in the Grand'Chambre. Mazarin was also alleged to have
shipped massive amounts of gold and silver to Italy. Broussel, the venerable
Frondeur judge, read aloud to the court the account books of Mazarin's
banker, Contarini, which had been confiscated by warrant. The debate over
excluding cardinals set off a display of Gallican eloquence and
hair-splitting only a parlementaire could indulge in or understand:
Did oaths taken by cardinals violate Gallican Liberties? Ought French
cardinals be excluded along with the foreign ones? What if a French bishop
became a cardinal while serving on the council? And last but not least: Do
cardinals have precedence over foreign princes? Historical precedents from
the sixteenth century were cited, and the effort to establish uniform
language between acts of previous Parlements, and the current one, occupied
the judges for hours, and for weeks. (20)
Various high-ranking clergy immediately warned against insulting or in any
way indicting a prince of the Church. And while Mazarin was not on good
terms with the pope, the nuncio nevertheless warned that His Eminence had
the protection due his rank.
Factions and Parties
We have already noted Condé's "party" in
the Parlement, and Pym's possible allies with Bedford in Westminster. Next,
let us look at the questions of factionalism within the two bodies. In
effect, the House of Commons charged that there was a Catholic faction
within the realm. The Catholics in both houses of Parliament lacked the
strength to dispel this central charge of the Grand Remonstrance. They were
known, but quite silent, especially in the Commons, where they were
confronted by a zealous Puritan clique led by John Pym. Conrad Russell
prefers the term "allies," for the members of the Commons who generally
voted with Pym. (21) Other historians have
referred to Pym's "Junto," For Pym, the religious issue — that is, the
danger of Popery — remained more important than limiting the royal
prerogative; and not a few in the Commons shared this priority, as did some
London merchants and some Scots. Conrad Russell concludes that Strafford
would have been found guilty of treason by a number of peers that exceeded
the number participating in any faction linked to Pym. The same seems to
have been true for the vote on the bill of attainder in the Commons.
The Parlement of Paris, during the months
when Mazarin was being pursued, had also become something of a "rump." That
is to say, Anne and Mazarin's usual supporters simply stayed away. Thus
Condé's supporters in the Parlement — headed by Viole, Nesmond, and
Longueil-Maisons — sought to mobilize their colleagues against Mazarin in
every possible way, and to vote subsidies to pay the prince's half-starved
army. Condé's appearances and speeches in the Grand'Chambre generally
offended by their arrogant and intimidating tone. Neither Strafford nor
Condé spoke effectively to collective bodies. At one point, Mazarin attended
a session of the Parlement and spoke, then listened to harsh, rude,
tumultuous speeches attacking him. He revealed no emotions under attack.
Approximately 1,600 pamphlets or
Mazarinades were distributed in 1651, most of which attacked the Cardinal
for seducing the Queen Regent, perverting the boy king, and stealing from
the royal treasury. Several of the most scabrous writers were in Condé's
pay, and their works were printed at his residence, on his presses.
(22)
It was truly unthinkable for any member of
the Parlement to be ideologically opposed to Condé -- who was a legitimate
prince of an illegitimate branch of the French royal family, and the victor
over the Spanish at Rocroy. But as Condé sought to intimidate first the city
government and then the Parlement, a majority coalesced and stood up firmly
against the Condé faction. The Parlement's unwillingness to subsidize an
army led by a royal rebel struck a resonant chord in virtually all
Parisians, fed up as they were with the brigandage of the troops and the
violence of civil war. The Parisians changed their opinions; but Londoners
supporting Pym stood firm. Aware that Condé had offered his services to
Spain, a treasonable offense, support for him in the Parlement was reduced
to a few ineffectual die-hards. Strafford, too, had communicated with the
Spanish, and John Pym was aware of it during the trial; but did he not want
to accuse further an enemy he could not understand?
For Seneca, a gift is something that
pleases, that is not sought, and that has no quid pro quo to it.
For Mazarin, major gifts to all participants were essential to every
diplomatic negotiation: he believed that the distribution of grâces,
as he called them, would bind recipient to benefactor and create a sense of
being beholden. Virtually all of Mazarin's opponents who were in positions
of leadership, were offered abbeys for their children, pensions, and offices
in the royal service throughout the realm. Some eminent judges in the
Parlement expressed outrage at Mazarin's attempts to "win" (gagner)
them; others accepted what was offered and continued to oppose the
Cardinal's policies. Mazarin considered this behavior to be "étrange,"
his preferred adjective for describing the events of the Fronde. Some
Frondeur judges became deeply engaged in the deeper constitutional issues,
to the point that they did not perceive the descent into humiliation
experienced by the Parlement, as a result of its gridlock and its inability
to enforce its decisions. Condé had a certain number of offices that he
could distribute in order to persuade someone to become a client; but he
wanted many more offices, and Mazarin seemed to be the only person in his
way. Charles I raised Strafford to an earldom at a most impolitic time. It
confirmed the image of him as a favorite and deprived him of a voice in the
Commons.
Strafford's service, first as Law President
in the North, and then as Lord Deputy in Ireland, gave him considerable
patronage power. Judgeships and other administrative posts, as well as
commands in the Irish army, were almost entirely in his gift. Thus, in
addition to recovering royal rights over lands, his powers of appointment
vexed and threatened leading aristocrats, among them the Earls of Cork and
Clanricarde.
Military and Police Powers
The Parlement of Paris had raised an army
in 1648-49, to defend Paris against the army loyal to the Regent and Mazarin
-- an army then commanded by Condé! Never effectively mustered, and never
defeated, the Parlement's army dwindled away after negotiations made it
superfluous. The Parlement had been quick to appoint the son of one of its
most rebellious members, as commander of the Bastille. In fact, the
Parlement's powers to arrest, try, and execute anyone it wished, continued
throughout the Fronde. The Regent, the young king, and the Cardinal had
companies of royal guards and Swiss at their command. Anne and Mazarins'
sole fear was that a rebel force might attempt to kidnap the king, or that
the Parisian populace might storm the Palais-Royal in order to lynch
Mazarin.
In Westminster, there were tensions between
Charles I and Parliament over control of small companies of guards and
command over the Tower of London. Charles and his queen feared for their
lives during Strafford's trial, for they were virtually without troops to
protect them; and it was feared that the London mob, or the trained bands or
the city militia, might capture the royal family should Charles refuse to
sign the Bill of Attainder ordering Strafford's execution.
Perhaps of more consequence were the rumors
and plots that regularly drifted through Parliament concerning Charles's
plan to arrest members such as Pym, or to capture Strafford in order to save
him. Accompanying these rumors was Strafford's alleged plan to use the Irish
army he had raised — not to put down rebellion in Scotland, but to march on
London and intimidate Parliament. The Commons suspected that Strafford, in
counsel to Charles, had perhaps said "England," instead of "Scotland" This
question swayed the deliberations during Strafford's trial, and turned the
Lords against him.
Comparing and
Understanding the Consequences of the Strafford-Mazarin Trials
The British descent into civil war, after
the conflict between Parliament and the Crown over Strafford, depended on
the use of impeachment by both Parliament and the Crown. The Parliament
gained the upper hand, as bishops and Catholics were purged from Parliament,
the queen journeyed to the Continent in order to pawn her jewels, and the
opinion strengthened that only military force would establish which was
supreme, Parliament or the Crown.
In Paris, Mazarin had been driven into
exile by an act of the Parlement; but as he traveled along the northern
border, it became evident that he was supported by most, if not all army
commanders. With funds scraped together by Colbert, he raised troops in
order to impose his return by force. His return enraged the Parlement, now
under Gaston's and Condé's control. Moods were changing too, as a result of
the king's approaching majority.
A round of ministerial changes announced by
Anne opened the door to calling the Parlement to assemble in Pontoise,
thereby splitting the judges into loyalists versus Condéists. A plan was
hatched whereby the Parlement would demand that Mazarin be exiled a second
time -- which occurred. However, Condé's strength declined, and Mazarin's
increased, especially after he returned at the head of a small but effective
military force. Once the king's majority had been declared, and after yet
another ministerial shuffle had taken place, first Louis XIV, and then
Mazarin, triumphantly entered the capital on February 3, 1653. A humiliated,
purged, but reunited Parlement remonstrated against the exile of its
Condéist members, but support for civil war had evaporated. Mazarin would
govern, as Anne withdrew and Louis learned about governance from the
Cardinal. Condé was charged with treason in absentia: he was commanding the
Spanish armies against the French, and would not return to France until the
general Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659. Mazarin died in his bed on March 9,
1661.
Last Thoughts
1) Threats and fears of war pervaded the
daily political lives of the British in the mid-century, though there were
no disciplined, professional armed forces at the Crown's disposal. The near
absence of loyal companies of foot soldiers and horse guards left the king,
his family, and his councilors under the threat of raucous or violent
crowds.
2) The cohesive force of religious zeal,
combined with a xenophobic climate centered on Popery, pervaded Westminster
and some of London at the time of Strafford's trial. The only religious
issue faced by Mazarin's enemies was the protection conferred on him by his
dignity as prince of the Church.
3) The distribution of powers in the two
monarchies was destabilized by similar things that brought similar
consequences — that is, the attempt to strengthen kingly powers to meet the
fiscal demands of war-making. Favorites and "evil councilors" were in the
vanguard of these efforts, and they were the immediate objets to be attacked
and removed from power by Parliament and by the Parlement.
4) Kingly ineptitude would not, on its own,
have brought a civil war. The equilibrium of powers in the British Monarchy,
the "mixed" constitution, would be contested by Parliament's frequently
expressed desire to vet royal councilors and, by statute, to hold regular
sessions, thereby diminishing the royal prerogative. In Paris, two princes,
Gaston and Condé — not the Parlement — fought to be royal councilors by
right. Their resignations in protest of Anne's decisions, which often had
been inspired by Mazarin, weakened but, until the princes rebelled, did not
in fact undermine princely rights to be counselors.
5) Mazarin reminded his opponents of King
Charles's fate, which resulted from having accepted the attainder and
execution of Strafford. The parallel was direct and telling. The Parlement
voted 20,000 livres as monthly support for Queen Henrietta Maria, who was
politely threatening to leave Paris: her joining the court would have meant
changing sides in the Princely Fronde. On the Day of the Barricades she had
strongly advised Queen Anne to receive a delegation from the rebellious
Parlement — advice inspired by earlier experience in Westminster.
In his Six Books of the Republic
(1583), Jean Bodin makes neither reasoned nor judicial-historical arguments
in favor of absolute sovereignty. Rejecting "mixed" constitutions,
oligarchy, and democracy, he insists on exactly what monarchy means — that
is, full power invested in one person. All across early-modern culture a
refrain welled up from the French, in favor of government by one person, a
sovereign king, without a favorite or intimidation by over-mighty subjects.
Bodin's Republic was written at a very low moment in the life of
the French Monarchy. Understanding the Republic as strong advice
given to his fellow countrymen, suggests Bodin's engagement in the active
political life: he advised excluding mothers and favorites from power.
Hobbes fled to France in 1640. The
Long Parliament had already begun its work. He would return from Paris a
decade later, after publishing the Leviathan, a work that argues on
behalf of absolute sovereignty. Cromwell did not need such advice.
(23)
(The Notes follow the Bibliography)
Brief Bibliography
The classic studies are S.R. Gardiner,
History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of Civil
War, 1603-1642, 10 vols. (London, 1883-1884); and A. Chéruel,
Histoire de France pendant la Minorité de Louis XIV, 4 vols. (Paris,
1879-188).
The classics in biography are C.V.
Wedgwood, First Earl of Strafford, 1593-1641 (New York, 1962); J.F.
Merritt, ed., The Political World of Thomas Wentworth (Cambridge,
1996), is very strong and has no equivalent for Mazarin; but see S. Bertière,
Mazarin (Paris, 2007); G. Dethan, Mazarin, un homme de paix à
l'âge Baroque, 1602-1661 (Paris, 1981); and M. Laurain-Portemer,
Une tête à gouverner quatre empires: Études Mazarines (Nogent-le-Roi,
1997). G. Treasure, Mazarin (London, 1995), is sound and balanced
but lacking in sensitivity to the specifically Italian political ways of the
Cardinal, which are better perceived by Dethan and Laurain-Portemer.
Articles by C. Russell on Bedford and Pym,
R.G. Asch on Strafford, and A. Milton on Laud, in the Dictionary of
National Biography (Oxford, 2004), are authoritative and contain
lengthy bibliographies. There is no satisfactory biography of Condé. Ruth
Kleinman's Anne of Austria (Columbus, 1985) is sensitive and sound.
The numerous recent specialized studies on
Parliament are remarkably authoritative and readable, with D.L. Smith,
The Stuart Parliaments, 1603-1689 (London, 1999) being an excellent
introduction. The works of C. Russell loom over the whole subject,
particularly The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637-1642 (Oxford,
1991), and his Unrevolutionary England, 1603-1642 (London, 1990),
which consists of articles published elsewhere, including the Theory of
Treason in the trial of Strafford. See also D.L. Smith, Constitutional
Royalims and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640-1649 (Cambridge, 1994);
C. Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, 1983); L.J.
Reeve, Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge, 1989);
and L.L. Peck, "Kingship, Counsel and Law in Early Stuart Britain," in
The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500-1800, ed. J.G.A.
Pockcock (Cambridge, 1993); and the indispensable J.P. Kenyon, The
Stuart Constitution (Cambridge, 1966).
On the Parlement, E.H. Kossman, La
Fronde (Leiden, 1954) still merits reading for argument; A.L. Moote,
The Revolt of the Judges, The Parlement of Paris and the Fronde,
1643-1652 (Princeton, 1971) is the standard work. More recent, Jean Le
Boindre, Débats du Parlement de Paris pendant la Minorité de Louis XIV,
vol. II, ed. I. Storez-Brancourt (Paris, 2002), includes short biographies
of all the judges; and J. Cornette, La Mélancolie du Pouvoir, Omer Talon
(Paris, 1998). BnF, mss. fr. 25025-25026, newsletters, Dec. 25-1648-Aug. 25,
1653, has been transcribed by P.M. Ranum and is available online at: http://www.ranumspanat.com/newsletters.htm.
The history of the law of treason still awaits its historian, but useful are
M. Sbriccoli, Crimen Laesae Maiestatis (Milan, 1974); and r. Giesey,
L. Haldy, and J. Milhorn, "Cardin Le Bret on Lèse-Majesté," Law and
History Review, 4, (1986), pp. 23-55.
Among the pioneering works that compare the
English Parliament and the French Parlement, the classic is P. Knachel,
England and the Fronde (Ithaca, 1967).
On the specifically biographical as an
explanation or "cause" for the personal tragedies, E.S. Cope, Politics
without Parliaments, 1629-1640 (London, 1987) resumes most of the
imperious or arrogant evidence about Strafford (p. 184). Forcing the Earl of
Cork to demolish a funeral monument seems to be the nec plus ultra
incident. On Mazarin's wealth, see C. Dulong, "Le Processus d'enrichissement
du cardinal Mazarin d'après l'inventaire après décès de l'Abbé Mondin,"
Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes, tome. 148-II, 1990, pp. 355-425;
and on his image as a sexual predator, J. Merrick, "The Cardinal and the
Queen: Sexual and Political Disorders in the Mazarinades," French
Historical Studies, 18 (spring 1994), pp. 667-99.
1.
C.V. Wedgwood, The First Earl of Strafford, 1593-1641
(New York, 192), pp. 390-99.
2.
Biographies do not stress these points, but see S. Bertière's
Mazarin (Paris, 2007), and Dubuisson-Aubenai, Journal, ed.
by G. Saige (Paris, 1883), I, p. 64.
3.
L. Moote, The Revolt of the Judges (Princeton,
1971), p. 325.
4.
The term is controversial, but see K. Sharpe, The
Personal Rule of Charles I (London, 1992), and L.J. Reeve, Charles
I and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge, 1989).
5.
S. Hanley, The Lit de Justice (Princeton, 1983), p.
307.
6.
Dubuisson-Aubenai, I, p. 64; O. Ranum, The Fronde
(New York, 1993).
7.
H. Carrier, Le Labyrinthe de l'État (Paris, 2004),
p. 38.
8.
Dubuisson-Aubenai, I, pp. 105, 122; property seized, p. 119;
search for his silver, p. 139; portrait of him hanged, p. 337; and II,
orders to him to leave the realm, p. 12; a price on his head, pp. 140-44;
sale of his personal property, p. 160.
9.
C. Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies
(Oxford, 1991), p. 149n; and his article in the Dictionary of National
Biography. Wedgwood speculates on the maneuvers of April 30, p. 371.
10.
J.P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution (Cambridge,
1966) p. 98.
11.
This is a simplified count. See D.L. Smith, The Stuart
Parliaments (London, 1999), pp. 19-26.
12.
V. Pearl, London at the Outbreak of the Civil War
(Oxford, 1961), p. 216; and K. Kindley, Popular Politics and Religion in
Civil War London (London, 1997), p. 23. Was Parliament "free or
forced?" in Strafford's attainder?
13.
Ranum, Chap. 5; and R. Descimon, "Les barricades de la Fronde
parisienne," Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 45
(1990), pp. 397-422.
14.
J.G.A. Pocock, "Thomas May and the Narrative of Civil War,"
in Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England,
ed. D. Hirst and R. Strier (Cambridge, 1999), p. 124.
15.
J.P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution (Cambridge,
1966), pp. 232-40.
16.
Moote, Chapter V.
17.
Kenyon, p. 94.
18.
Russell, The Fall, p. 284
19.
Russell, The Fall, pp. 290-97.
20.
Some of the issues were no doubt raised by Mazarin's
supporters to gain time. See J. Le Boindre, Débats du Parlement de Paris
pendant la Minorité de Louis XIV, ed. I. Storez-Brancourt (Paris,
2002), p. 173.
21.
The late Earl Russell searched time after time, and in every
possible source, for evidence of a strong political link between Bedford and
Pym. Like Warwick, Bedford was certainly a patron not only of Pym but of
several others in the Commons and the Lords as well. In his D.N.B.
article, Russell notes Bedford's hostility toward favorites (p. 245), and
Bedford very probably saw Strafford as an evil counselor; but this does not
qualify as a relationship in which the client does the bidding of the leader
of a faction. Had Pym been strongly linked to Bedford, would not some source
confirm it? Various sources mention Nesmond, Viole, and Longueil de Maisons
as Condé's supporters in the Parlement. Further research may indication not
only shifts, by actual "betrayals," notably by Nesmond.
22.
Carrier, Le Labyrinthe, pp. 97-102, 237-40; and
Les Mazarinades (Geneva, 1991), I, pp. 104-45.
23.
See Carrier, Le Labyrinthe, pp. 96-191, and for
Hobbes, p. 94 and passim.
