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War or Peace? Jacobean Politics and the Parliament of 1621*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2009

Brennan Pursell
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Extract

When the Parliament of 1621 convened, it had been seven years since the dissolution of the so-called ‘Addled Parliament’ of 1614, which had foundered on a fundamental disagreement between King James I and the House of Commons about the legality of impositions. The Parliament of 1621 faced more than unresolved domestic issues; it met under the shadow of the gravest international crisis of the early modern era. The defenestration of Prague in 1618 had marked the beginning of the Bohemian rebellion and the Thirty Years' War, and in the following summer James's son-in-law, Elector Palatine Friedrich V, accepted the Bohemian crown from the rebels, who had just deposed their Habsburg monarch, Ferdinand of Styria. Two days later Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor, and he was determined to retake the Bohemian dirone from the new Palatine occupant. In the autumn of 1620, the emperor's Spanish cousins aided his cause by dispatching a large portion of the Spanish Army of the Netherlands to invade the Lower Palatinate, Friedrich's rich patrimonial estates on the Rhine.

Type
Research Article
Information
Royal Historical Society Camden Fifth Series , Volume 17 , July 2001 , pp. 149 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2001

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References

1 In the autumn of 1620 Sir Horace Vere led a small force of only 2,250 volunteers to the Lower Palatinate to assist in its defence. Weiss, Elmar, Die Unterstützung Friedrichs V. von der Pfalz durch Jakob I. und Karl I. von England im Dreiβigjährigen Krieg (1618–1632) (Stuttgart, 1966), pp. 24–5Google Scholar. This force was intended to deter war, not to precipitate it. Neither the English nor the union forces engaged the Spanish troops in a serious battle during this time. Egler, Anna, Die Spanier in der Linksrheinischen Pfalz, 1620–1632 (Mainz, 1971), p. 48.Google Scholar

2 See Hebb, David Delison, Piracy and the English Government, 1616–1642 (Aldershot, 1994)Google Scholar for an account of this expedition.

3 Zaller, Robert, ‘“Interest of State”: James I and the Palatinate’, Albion vi (1974), pp. 144–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See Carter, Charles H., ‘Gondomar: Ambassador to James I’, HJ vii (1964), pp. 189–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, The Secret Diplomacy of the Habsburgs, 1598–1625 (New York, 1964), pp. 120–33Google Scholar. Also see Mattingly, Garrett, Renaissance Diplomacy (Boston, 1955), pp. 255–68Google Scholar. An outdated view is that Gondomar controlled James. See Gardiner, S. R., History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War (10 vols, 1883), iii and ivGoogle Scholar; Lyon, F. H., Diego de Sarmiento de Acuña, Conde de Gondomar (Oxford, 1910)Google Scholar; and Don Wenceslao Ramirez de Villa-Urrutia, La Embajada del Conde de Gondomar á Inglaterra en 1613 (Madrid, 1913)Google Scholar. Francisco Javier Sanchez Canton, Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Conde de Gondomar, 1567–1626 (Madrid, 1935)Google Scholar, relies more on primary sources than either Lyon or Villa-Urrutia but has more to relate about Gondomar's personal state of mind than about his negotiations in England and Spain. José Maria Castroviejo and Francisco de P. Fernández de Cordoba, El Conde de Gondomar, un Azor entre Ocasos (Madrid, 1967)Google Scholar, is a general biography based almost entirely on printed sources and offers no citations.

5 Ministerio de Educación y Cultura de España, Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, Libro 374. fol. 304: 26 Oct./5 Nov. 1621, Gondomar to Infanta Isabella. Gondomar, not given to exaggeration, rarely used this kind of superlative.

6 This fact demands an alteration in the interpretation of this dissolution. The king's famous outburst against the Commons over their invasion of his royal prerogatives was a mere screen for his political and diplomatic goals. See Pursell, Brennan C., ‘James I, Gondomar, and the Dissolution of the Parliament of 1621’, History lxxxviii (2000), pp. 428–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Kyle, Chris R., ‘Prince Charles in the Parliaments of 1621 and 1624’, HJ xli (1998), pp. 603–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which the preceding article modifies slightly.

7 The degree of belligerence in this Parliament has been the subject of an interesting debate. See Cogswell, Thomas, ‘Phaeton's Chariot: The Parliament-men and the Continental Crisis in 1621’Google Scholar, and Russell, Conrad, ‘Sir Thomas Wentworth and anti-Spanish Sentiment, 1621–1624’, The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 1621–1641, ed. Merritt, J. F. (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 24–46, 47–62.Google Scholar

8 Ministerio de Educación y Cultura de España, Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, Libro 374, fols 307–14. This document is not transcribed in full. The Infanta Isabella was the ruler of the Spanish Netherlands following the death of her husband, Archduke Albert, on 15 July 1621. By order of the King of Spain, Felipe IV, and the Spanish Council of State, Gondomar kept the Infanta abreast of developments in England during the Palatine war. For a reference to this order see Biblioteca Real, Madrid, MS II/2108, fol. 112: 2 January 1622, Gondomar to Felipe IV.

9 Ernst, Count of Mansfeld, was a mercenary general commissioned by Elector Palatine Friedrich V during the first stages of the Thirty Years' War.

10 Sir Horace Vere was the general of the roughly 2,200 English volunteers defending the Lower Palatinate.

11 Because this word is capitalized, I take it to be an abbreviation for ‘Países Bajos’.

12 The letter continues with Gondomar's advice about what measures should be taken next in the Palatine crisis. Neither the Infanta nor the King of Spain followed it.

13 James I.

14 Friedrich V, the Elector Palatine and dispossessed King of Bohemia. Through his marriage to Elizabeth Stuart, he was also the son-in-law of James I. Gondomar refers to Friedrich as both the ‘Count’, the ‘Elector’, and the ‘Prince’ Palatine.

15 Felipe IV.

16 Archduke Albert. See n. 2.

17 Literally, ‘may he have glory’.

18 Frankenthal.

19 Maximilian I had occupied Upper Austria as a pledge for his expenses in the war on the emperor's behalf against the rebellions in Bohemia, Austria, and Germany.

20 Because Prince Charles did not have to power to dissolve Parliament, this passage shows that Gondomar misheard or otherwise misunderstood the king's words. James had probably said that Charles would give his father a signal for the dissolution.

21 Felipe IV.

22 Felipe IV.

23 Ministerio de Educación y Cultura de España, Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, Libro 374, fols 369–73.

24 21 Nov./1 Dec. 1621.

25 4/14 Dec. 1621.

26 3/13 Dec. 1621.

27 5/15 Dec. 1621.

28 21 Nov./1 Dec. 1621.

29 In the summer of 1620 Louis XIII led an army into southwestern France to force Protestants to restore all church properties seized since 1569 to the Catholic church.

30 The King of Spain.

31 4/14 Dec. 1621.

32 Here Gondomar refers to the king's plan to dissolve Parliament.

33 Gardiner says that James had invited Gondomar to join him at Newmarket, and cites this letter, but there is no such invitation in this version. See History of England, iv. 248Google Scholar. Gardiner seems to take Gondomar's joke as insolence. According to Gardiner, Gondomar wrote that his leaving the kingdom ‘would have been my duty to do, as you would have ceased to be a king here, and as I have no army here at present to punish these people myself’, p. 249. Gardiner should have translated ‘si no fuera Rey’ as a counterfactual phrase and not as a potential condition. James and Gondomar had repeatedly discussed, in seriousness and in jest, the rebelliousness of the English, and it was common for Gondomar to use such counterfactuals in his correspondence.

34 3/13 Dec. 1621.

35 Friedrich V and his court-in-exile resided in The Hague as guests of the States-General of the United Provinces.

36 Literally, ‘may he have glory’.