The English in America

Written by Mark Summers

Part Two: Life, Liberty, and a Dispute with “Popery”: America during the Stuart Age

In 1625, as King James I lay dying in his bedchamber, two English colonies, Massachusetts and Virginia, were growing from wilderness outposts to thriving “miniature Englands”. The new king, Charles I and his Stuart successors oversaw the rapid expansion of colonial English America. But their political ideologies shook the very foundations of England. This political turmoil also crossed the Atlantic. As the Stuart Age closed in 1689, the seeds of American independence were sown. The various Anglo-American colonies guarded their liberties in an English Civil War, and yet laid a foundation from which an American Civil War sprang two centuries later.

Although Charles I was raised as an Englishman unlike his Scottish father James I, he did inherit the Stuart belief in the “divine right of kings”. By 1629 Charles I was attempting to rule as an absolute monarch. Religious Puritans (increasingly dominant in Parliament) defended the rights of the legislature and criticised Charles’ growing tolerance of Roman Catholicism. By the 1640’s Civil War raged in England. Although most Englishmen remained neutral during the war (or wars), the supporters of the King, often called Cavaliers, were dominant in Northern England and among the rural elite, while the supporters of Parliament, often called Roundheads were dominant in Eastern England and among the London merchants. By 1649 an effective radical military leader named Oliver Cromwell won the war for the Roundheads, and for Parliament. Cromwell sealed his victory with the beheading of King Charles I in 1649. Cromwell abolished the monarchy and created the Protectorate. American colonial opinion was divided.

In 1641 Charles I appointed Sir William Berkeley to the post of colonial governor of Virginia. Berkeley was a rising star in Charles’ court and saw his Virginia post as an opportunity for personal advancement. Although primarily a tobacco growing colony, Berkeley won respect through his efforts to diversify Virginia agriculture. Berkeley ingratiated himself with the wealthy Virginia tobacco planters who dominated Virginia politics. He saw these planters as useful allies during the English Civil War. Consequently Berkeley denounced the execution of his patron King Charles I in 1649. He declared Virginia to be loyal to the monarchy and to the exiled prince (the future Charles II).

Virginia remained loyal to the crown until 1652. Oliver Cromwell sent a force to Jamestown to demand the surrender of Berkeley and his royalist Royalist forces. Berkeley backed down and surrendered his governorship. When the Protectorate ended with the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, Berkeley’s actions were not forgotten. Berkeley was later reappointed governor by King Charles II. The new king also referred to Virginia as his “Old Dominion”, in honour of its loyalty to the crown. The “Old Dominion” is still the official nickname for the state of Virginia.

During Cromwell’s rule significant social changes also occurred in Virginia. Royalist refugees of “Cavalier” stock fled to Virginia and Governor Berkeley’s protection. While a planter elite had always dominated Virginia, the society in the early days of the colony was more mobile. Now, new families of Royalist stock, like the Carters, Randolphs, Washingtons, and Lees would form the nucleus of the super planters who politically controlled the Colony throughout the War of Independence and beyond. Virginia, and the rest of the South would increasingly rely on slave labour and plantation economics. The name “cavalier” continues in Virginia to this day, as the official nickname of the sports teams from the University of Virginia.

The northern American colonies went a different course from Virginia. First with Plymouth Colony in 1620 and later with Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, which later united as present day Massachusetts, the northern colonies became the centre of religious individualism and political radicalism in America. During the reign of Charles I, thousands of Puritan dissidents flocked to “New England” under threat of persecution and hatred of the Stuart monarchy. The vast majority of American Northerners supported Cromwell in his overthrow of the monarchy during the English Civil War. Many of these colonists hailed from East Anglia. Along with religious Puritanism, these immigrants inherited an economic and urban tradition from their homeland. These things were embodied in the Massachusetts capital of Boston. Boston became not only America’s first big city, but also the heart of American political radicalism. Within 150 years, Boston would become the scene of growing tensions between America and the “Mother Country”.

With the return of the monarchy in 1660, came a renewed English enthusiasm for American colonisation. During the reign of Charles II, new colonies were founded in the North. From Massachusetts emerged new religious colonies such as Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. Pennsylvania by the end of the 17th century was established by Quaker William Penn. New Amsterdam was captured from the Dutch in 1664 and renamed New York. Conversely from the royalist South would emerge Maryland, established by the king’s confidant Lord Baltimore as a home for English Catholics, and Carolina (now the two states of North and South Carolina), “humbly” named by the king for himself. Two English economic philosophies were slowly developing and competing in America: an urban, sea-faring, capitalist North, and an agrarian, semi-feudal, plantation South.

By the close of the Stuart Age, the Northern and even the Southern colonies became increasingly hostile to the monarchy. This hostility was not confined to the Americans. In 1685 Charles II died and was succeeded by his brother King James II. The new King James (who was Catholic) continued in his brother and father’s footsteps. He continued to press for more monarchial power over Parliament. Englishmen from all walks of life were increasingly upset at the decline of their “English liberties”. James II’s fatal mistake came in 1688. There was widespread fear the king was pressing for England to return to the Catholic fold abandoned by King Henry VIII. Parliament removed King James II from the throne in 1688, in what was called “the Glorious Revolution”. Protestant monarchs King William and Queen Mary were placed on the throne. Parliament was supreme in England. In 1689, an English Bill of Rights was established. Writing to defend the “revolution”, Englishman John Locke would help popularise the phrase, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property”.

In America, the colonists celebrated the removal of King James II. The Massachusetts colony would remove its governor in 1688. Governor Andros, a friend of King James, tried to dissolve the Massachusetts Assembly. Parliament accepted the decision of Massachusetts and had the colony send Andros over for trial. Unwittingly Parliament’s acceptance of the Massachusetts Assembly would be turned against them by the colony in the 1760’s. Even Virginia got in on the act. Berkeley and the later Virginia governors of the 17th century began siding with their own Assembly rather than the monarchy. This has often been called the process of “Americanisation”, a transformation of Englishmen into Americans, in habit, dress, and politics that was to become more distinct in the 18th century.

Americans of English stock had grown from two tiny frontier settlements to a population of 250,000 at the close of the Stuart Age. New colonies were forming. Cities and towns were emerging. Colleges such as Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary were established. America was becoming more English and yet less English at the same time. Americans had lived through and opposed one another in an English Civil War. As the English Parliament emerged supreme, Americans began to view their own assemblies as miniature Parliaments. A king was deposed by popular will and the Americans would not forget it. The cry of “English liberties” would echo along the Atlantic coast for generations, and nowhere more so than Boston, Massachusetts. In the end the lessons learned in 17th century England would reemerge outside that town of Boston, as a group of Massachusetts colonials met the king’s army on a field in Lexington Green.

The English in America Part 3.....