Loyalty, Disloyalty, and the Coronation of Charles II

Legon, Edward

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_12

Edward Legon³

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Abstract

The coronation of Charles II in 1661 was a remarkable spectacle and, as historians have shown, elicited an extraordinary outpouring of loyalty to the new king across the Stuart realms. Not everyone shared this enthusiasm, however. This chapter offers an overview of evidence of hostility to the celebrations and seeks to identify the origins of such sentiment. While, in many cases, dissent connotes the ‘disloyalty’ which was ascribed to it by the new regime, this was clearly not always an accurate interpretation. To be sure, as the reign of Charles II unfolded, there was increasing potential for expressions of alienation from the political and religious settlements to be construed as sedition.

I am very grateful to the following for their advice and support: Ian Atherton, Richard Bell, Alden Gregory, Catherine Hinchliff, Wendy Hitchmough, Jason Peacey, Elaine Tierney, and Sarah Ward. I am particularly grateful to Jack Sargeant, who commented on a draft of this work, and to the anonymous reviewer.

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Notes

1.
The Manner of Electing and Enstalling the Knights of the Most Noble Order of St George called the Garter (London, 1661); and A True Relation of the Ceremonies at the Creating of the Knights of the Honourable Order of the Bath, the 18 & 19 April 1661 (London, 1661). For an account of the events on 22 and 23 April, see J. Ogilby, The Entertainment of his Most Excellent Majestie Charles II, in his Passage through the City of London to his Coronation, etc. (London, 1662).
2.
S. Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription, ed. R. Latham and W. Matthews, 11 vols. (London, 1983), ii, p. 83.
3.
Ogilby, The Entertainment.
4.
The Form of his Majesties Coronation-Feast to be Solemnized and Kept at Westminster-Hall Upon the 23 of April 1661 (London, 1661).
5.
R. Strong, Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy (London, 2005), p. 288.
6.
Calendar of State Papers, Venice, 1659–1661, ed. A. B. Hinds, 38 vols. (London: HMSO, 1931) (afterwards, CSP, Venice), xxxii, p. 294.
7.
A. Wood, The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary of Oxford, 1632–1695, ed. A. Clark, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1891–1900), i, p. 399.
8.
J. Nicoll, A Diary of Public Transactions and other Occurrences, Chiefly in Scotland, from January 1650 to June 1667 (Edinburgh, 1836), p. 327.
9.
Pepys, Diary, ii, p. 37.
10.
CSP, Venice, xxxii, pp. 255–6.
11.
TNA, SP 29/34/48.
12.
TNA, SP 29/32/136.
13.
A. Fanshawe, Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, Wife of Sir Richard Fanshawe, Bart. (London, 1830), p. 133.
14.
W. Dugdale, The Life, Diary, and Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale, Knight, Sometime Garter Principal King of Arms, ed. W. Hamper (London, 1827), p. 108.
15.
CSP, Venice, xxxii, p. 294.
16.
For an account that has emphasised loyalty to the monarch, see L. Madway, ‘“The Most Conspicuous Solemnity”: The Coronation of Charles II’, in The Stuart Courts, ed. E. Cruickshanks (Stroud, 2000), pp. 141, 57.
17.
K. Sharpe, Rebranding Rule: The Restoration and Revolution Monarchy, 1660–1714 (New Haven and London, 2013), p. 160.
18.
Strong, Coronation, p. 279.
19.
M. Jenkinson, Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II, 1660–1685 (Woodbridge, 2010), p. 48.
20.
Ibid.; C. Stevenson, The City and the King: Architecture and Politics in Restoration London (New Haven and London, 2013).
21.
B. Klein, ‘“Between the Bums and the Bellies of the Multitude”, Civic Pageantry and the Problem of the Audience in Late Stuart London’, The London Journal 17 (1992), 18–26; E. Tierney, ‘Strategies for Celebration: Realising the Ideal Celebratory City in London and Paris, 1660–1715’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 2012); and J. Peacey, ‘The Street Theatre of State: The Ceremonial Opening of Parliament, 1603–60’, Parliamentary History 34 (2015), 155–72.
22.
R. Hutton, The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658–1667 (Oxford, 1985).
23.
M. Neufeld, The Civil Wars after 1660: Public Remembering in Late Stuart England (Woodbridge, 2013).
24.
See, for instance, R. L. Greaves, Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–1663 (Oxford, 1986); R. L. Greaves, Enemies under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–1677 (Stanford, California, 1990); and R. L. Greaves, Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688–1689 (Stanford, California, 1992).
25.
J. Peacey, ‘Radicalism Relocated: Royalist Politics and Pamphleteering of the Late 1640s’, in Varieties of Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism in Context, ed. A. Hessayon and D. Finnegan (Farnham, 2011), pp. 51–68.
26.
Pepys, Diary, ii, pp. 87–8.
27.
CSP, Venice, xxxii, p. 286.
28.
A. Halkett, The Autobiography of Anne Lady Halkett, ed. J. Gough Nichols (Westminster, 1875), p. 114.
29.
TNA, SP 29/33/53.
30.
TNA, SP 29/34/54.
31.
By the King: A Proclamation, Requiring all Cashiered Officers and Souldiers of the late Army, to depart, and not come within Twenty Miles of the Cities of London and Westminster, until the Twentieth day of May next (London, 1661).
32.
CSP, Venice, xxxii, p. 286.
33.
H. Townshend, Diary of Henry Townshend of Elmley Lovett, 1640–1663, ed. J. W. Willis Bund, 2 vols. (London, 1930), ii, p. 72.
34.
Ibid., p. 71.
35.
A True Discovery of a Bloody Plot Contrived by the Phanaticks Against The Proceedings of the City of London, in Order to the Coronation of the High and Mighty King, Charles the Second… (London, 1661), p. 2.
36.
CSP, Venice, xxxii, p. 284.
37.
Bradrip was accused of saying ‘the day ha[s] been ours & why not againe[;] I hope it will’. Somerset Heritage Centre (afterwards SHC), Q/SR99, f. 16r.
38.
Ibid., f. 13r.
39.
Ibid., f. 14r. See also ff. 13r, 15r, 16r.
40.
TNA, SP 29/34/88a.
41.
Depositions from the Castle of York, Relating to Offences Committed in the Northern Counties in the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. Raine (Durham, 1861), p. 85.
42.
Ibid., p. 94.
43.
Ibid., pp. 86–7; and J. Hodgson, ‘An Account of the Troubles that befel me, after the month of October 1660, about my Imprisonments’, in H. Slingsby, Original Memoirs, Written During the Great Civil War; Being the Life of Sir Henry Slingsby, and Memoirs of Capt. Hodgson (Edinburgh, 1806), p. 168.
44.
Ibid., pp. 167–8.
45.
For speculation about the delays, see CSP, Venice, xxxii, pp. 223, 244–5; and Stevenson, The City and the King, p. 86.
46.
L. Von Ranke, The History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1875), iii, p. 363.
47.
See, for instance, D. Cressy, Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England (Oxford, 2010), p. 93.
48.
Essex Record Office, Q/SR 388/38.
49.
Howell, State Trials, vi, p. 111.
50.
Hertford County Records, Notes and Extracts from the Sessions Rolls, 1581–1698, ed. W. J. Hardy, 4 vols. (Hertford, 1905), i, p. 137.
51.
TNA, SP 29/40/10.
52.
TNA, SP 29/32/104.
53.
E. Ludlow, A Voyce from the Watch Tower, Part Five: 1660–1662, ed. A. B. Worden (London: Camden Society, 1978), p. 286. For a discussion of the bishops’ failure to join the cavalcade, see Jenkinson, Culture and Politics, p. 69.
54.
TNA, SP 29/33/97.
55.
Z. Crofton, Berith Anti-Baal; Or, Zach Croftons Appearance Before The Prelate-Justice of the Peace, Vainly pretending to binde the Covenant and Covenanters to their good Behaviour (London, 1661), p. 42. Ironically, Crofton later petitioned the crown from prison, speaking of his wish to ‘partake of that generall joy [of] your approaching happy Coronacon’, TNA, SP 29/33/23.
56.
See, for instance, R. Dowglas, The Form and Order of the Coronation of Charles the II, King of Scotland, together VVith the Sermon then Preached, by Mr Robert Dowglas &c. and the Oath then taken, with several Speeches made (Aberdeen and London, 1660); and A Phenix; Or, the Solemn League and Covenant (London, 1661).
57.
Townshend, Diary, ii, p. 71.
58.
E. Vallance, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation, 1553–1682 (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 181.
59.
‘An Act for Safety and Preservation of His Majesties Person against Treasonable and Seditious practices and attempts’, in The Statutes of the Realm, 10 vols. (London, 1810–28), v, pp. 304–6.
60.
Memoirs of the Verney Family, ed. M. M. Verney, 4 vols. (London, 1899), iv, p. 10.
61.
TNA, SP 29/33/73. For the account, see Ogilby, The Entertainment.
62.
M. Foucault, ‘Film and Popular Memory: An Interview with Michel Foucault’, trans. M. Jordin, Radical Philosophy 11 (1975), 24–9.
63.
Ludlow was referring here to publications such as Henry Bold’s, On the Thunder happening after the Solemnity of the Coronation of Charles the II, on St George’s Day, 1661 (London, 1661). For a further account of sympathetic interpretations of the storm, see G. Reedy, ‘Mystical Politics: The Imagery of Charles II’s Coronation’, in Studies in Change and Revolution: Aspects of English Intellectual History, 1640–1800, ed. P. J. Korshin (Menston, 1972), pp. 19–42.
64.
Ludlow, A Voyce, pp. 286–7.
65.
R. L. Greaves, ‘The Tangled Careers of Two Stuart Radicals: Henry and Robert Danvers’, The Baptist Quarterly 29 (1981), pp. 34–5.
66.
Eniautos Terastios Mirabilis Annus; Or, the Year of Prodigies and Wonders (London, 1661), p. 31.
67.
Mirabilis Annus Secundus; Or, the Second Year of Prodigies (London, 1661), p. 59.
68.
W. E. Burns, An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England 1657–1727 (Manchester, 2002), pp. 35–7.
69.
Ludlow, A Voyce, p. 286.
70.
Halkett, The Autobiography, p. 115.
71.
For a short account of the first anniversary of the coronation, see W. Shellincks, The Journal of William Schellinks’ Travels in England 1661–1663, ed. and trans. M. Exwood and H. L. Lehmann (London: Camden Society, 1993), p. 83.
72.
TNA, SP 29/250/96.
73.
TNA, SP 29/259/75.
74.
See, for instance, G. Burnet, A Modest and Free Conference Betwixt a Conformist and Non-conformist, about the Present Distempers of Scotland (Edinburgh(?), 1669), pp. 9–10.
75.
The Speeches, Discourses, and Prayers, of Col. John Barkstead, Col. John Okey, and Mr Miles Corbet; Upon the 19th of April, being the Day of their Suffering at Tyburn (London, 1662), p. 43.
76.
R. Josselin, The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683, ed. A. Macfarlane (Oxford, 1991), p. 23.
77.
Ibid., p. 478.
78.
R. Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae (London, 1696), p. 303.
79.
P. Henry, Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry of Broad Oak, Flintshire, 1631–1696, ed. M. H. Lee (London, 1882), p. 87.
80.
Ibid., p. 85.
81.
In his sermon before the Convention Parliament in 1660, Richard Baxter encouraged MPs to ‘stop not here, but proceed to Reformation, or else all the rest is but hypocrisie’: R. Baxter, A Sermon of Repentance: Preached before the Honourable House of Commons, Assembled in Parliament at Westminster, at their late solemn Fast for the settling of these Nations, 30 April 1660 (London, 1660), p. 39.
82.
Henry, Diaries, p. 84.
83.
See E. Legon, Revolution Remembered: Seditious Memories after the British Civil Wars (Manchester, 2019), chapter 7.
84.
‘An Act of Free and Generall Pardon Indempnity and Oblivion’, in Statutes of the Realm, v, pp. 226–34.
85.
The Manner of Electing, sig. A1v.
86.
Ogilby, The Entertainment, pp. 18–24.
87.
Josselin, The Diary, p. 479.
88.
Ibid., p. 480.
89.
Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies, ed. C. Jackson (Durham, 1877), p. 153.
90.
E. Boteler, Gods Goodnesse in Crowning the King. Declared in a Sermon in the Church of Kingston Upon Hull, on the Happy Day of the Coronation of His Sacred Majesty Charles the Second, April the 23d, 1661 (London, 1662), sigs. A4r-v.
91.
Yorkshire Diaries, ed. Jackson, p. 160.
92.
SHC, Q/SR99, f. 15r.
93.
Ibid., f. 13r.
94.
Depositions from the Castle of York, ed. Raine, pp. 86–7.
95.
Hodgson, ‘An Account of the Troubles’, pp. 167–8.
96.
J. Tilley, The Old Halls, Manors, and Families of Derbyshire: Volume 3, The Scarsdale Hundred (London, 1849), p. 79.
97.
TNA, SP 29/32/145.
98.
Ludlow, A Voyce, p. 286.
99.
T. Woodcock, Extracts from the Papers of Thomas Woodcock (Ob. 1695), ed. G. C. Moore Smith (London: Camden Society, 1907), pp. 62–3.
100.
Ludlow, A Voyce, p. 286.

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Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
Edward Legon

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Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Matthew Ward
Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Matthew Hefferan

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Legon, E. (2020). Loyalty, Disloyalty, and the Coronation of Charles II. In: Ward, M., Hefferan, M. (eds) Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c.1400-1688. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_12

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_12
Published: 01 July 2020
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