Adrian Goldsworthy’s biography of Augustus is long, thorough and consistently interesting, shedding light not only on the man himself but containing an immense amount of background information on the customs, traditions, laws and so on of the Rome of his time and how he set about reforming and remodelling them so decisively.
It’s impossible to summarise the achievements of the longest-serving and most impressive Roman emperor, Augustus (reigned 31 BC to 14 AD), without ending up repeating long Wikipedia article. Instead, here is an impressionistic list of themes and achievements which emerge from Adrian Goldsworthy’s impressive book.
Peace
Above all everyone wanted peace after decades of chaos, war, disruptions to trade, impressment, deaths and injuries and proscriptions. Once Antony was defeated and had committed suicide (in 30 BC), Goldsworthy repeatedly describes the widespread desire for peace to explain the absence of opposition to let alone rebellion against Augustus (pages 199, 200, 211, 282).
Temple of Janus Germinus
The Janus Geminus (to reflect his twin faces) was a small shrine that held an archaic bronze statue of the god, said to have been dedicated by Numa, Rome’s second king (Plutarch, Life, XX.1-2). Pliny (XXIV.33) relates that its fingers were arranged to indicate the 355 days of the year. Ovid in his Fasti, I.99 says that one hand held a key (as the god of entrances), the other, a staff (to signify his authority and as a guide).
The doors of the Janus Geminus were opened to indicate that Rome was at war and closed during times of peace. Since the time of Numa, the doors were said to have been closed only in 235 BC, after the first Punic war; in 30 BC, after the battle of Actium; and several times during the reign of Augustus (for example, when the Cantabrians were defeated in 25 BC, supposedly ending the Spanish wars (pages 200, 239)
Victories
For Romans peace came through conquest and victory: it was always an imposed peace. Thus, having defeated and eliminated Mark Antony and become ruler of the entire Roman Empire, Augustus still had work to do. Campaigns followed:
- Egypt was formally annexed to the empire
- to pacify the north-west of Spain (pages 241 to 245, 254 to 255), final embers stamped out in 19 BC (p.322)
- Illyria (pages 174 to 178)
- the Alps, pages 339 to 341 (surprising it took the Romans so long to pacify their own back yard)
Parthia
The Romans never defeated the Parthians. A great achievement was a negotiated settlement with the great Parthian Empire which resulted in the return of the legionary standards lost by Crassus at Carrhae in 53 and then by Antony in 36. This was painted as a great victory. The compliant senate voted Augustus even more honours and a triumph (all of which he rejected). Coins were minted showing the standards, and they are depicted on the breastplate Augustus is wearing in the most famous statue of him, the one found at the suburb of Prima Porta (p.303).
Statue of Augustus wearing a breastplate depicting the return of the legionary standards from the Parthians
Army reorganisation
Augustus reorganised the army, reducing it from 60 or so legions down to 28 (p.247 to 256) making it more professional. Huge scope was opened up for posts for aristocrats and promotions and Octavius made sure to retain control of all appointments and ensure all senior officers were loyal to him.
In 13 BC he carried out more reforms, regularising the period of service for a legionary to 16 years and defining other periods and terms of service. He made auxiliary units more permanent. Many of them were now raised from the provinces, from Gaul, Spain or Thrace and service in them allowed provincial aristocrats the opportunity to acquire citizenship and work their way into the hierarchy of empire (p.349). He laid down regulations for the constructions of camps and forts (p.366).
Building works
Augustus completed Julius Caesar’s forum with its massive temple to Venus Genetrix at one end. Then designed and built his own forum with a massive temple to Mars Ultor, in 2 BC and dedicated to the god Mars in his guise as avenger.
Mausoleum
The huge circular mausoleum Augustus built for himself and his family was one of the first building projects he began after victory at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. It consisted of several concentric rings of earth and brick, faced with travertine on the exterior, and planted with cypresses on the top tier. It measured 295 feet in diameter and 137 feet in height. He built it for himself but many of his close family were to find resting places there before him, including: Marcus Claudius Marcellus (son of Octavia Minor), Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (Augustus’s right-hand man and husband of Julia the Elder), Nero Claudius Drusus (son of Livia Drusilla), Octavia Minor (sister of Augustus), Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar (his grandsons).
The saepta
The saepta or ‘sheepfolds’ were the traditional structures on the Campus Martius which hosted elections. Augustus turned them from wooden into permanent stone structures. Year after year the whole area was transformed into a giant monument to his glory (p.357). Agrippa, in effect Augustus’s number two, accumulated a vast fortune and spent it nearly as lavishly as his master on public works. The diribitorium was a public voting hall situated on the Campus Martius in Ancient Rome. Agrippa paid for the building called the Diribitorium, where votes were counted by diribitores (election officials). It was begun by Marcus Agrippa but after his death in 12 BC was finished by Augustus (p.385).
The Pantheon
The Pantheon was a part of the complex created by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa on the Campus Martius in 29 to 19 BC, which included three buildings aligned from south to north: the Baths of Agrippa, the Basilica of Neptune, and the Pantheon. It was rebuilt by Hadrian in the 120s AD, it was later adapted to be a Catholic church and so well maintained, thus ending up being the best preserved building we have from ancient Rome.
The provinces
The restoration of peace led to the revival of trade and, wherever he went or had influence, Augustus encouraged local elites to mimic him and build, refurbishing and improving their cities and towns, building theatres, reviving festivals and games. He dangled offers of citizenship or administrative posts as an incentive to provincial leaders (p.292).
Large numbers of people resident in provincial towns and cities won citizenship. The benefits of Roman citizenship came to be seen as valuable, itself an incentive for powerful or aspiring men to keep the peace in order to gain it (p.298). Every town and city in the empire was encouraged to be rebuilt along Roman lines, in a grid system, with roads converging on an open forum (p.343).
Roman roads
One of the most clichéd achievements of the Romans was building roads. Goldsworthy describes the creation of a network of roads across Gaul, linking the new-look Roman towns (p.341). Good, navigable roads which didn’t flood or wash away in winter led to hugely expanded trade and thus prosperity (pages 342 to 343).
Colonies
Colonae is the term the Romans gave to new settlements or towns. They had been building them for centuries, mainly as places to house the large numbers of men continually being demobilised from their armies. Augustus increased the number of colonies or new towns built in newly pacified Spain and Gaul, including the forebears of modern Zaragoza and Merida (p.347). Most Gauls had lived in defendable hilltop settlements. Now they came down off their hills and lived in towns joined by direct, well-maintained roads. Trade thrived. Prosperity (p.348).
Tours
To aid the process Augustus spent more of his rule away from Rome than in it, systematically touring all the provinces. Anecdotes suggest he went out of his way to make himself very accessible to all who had a grievance or issue (p.324). In his absence from Rome he left administration to loyal subordinates such as Agrippa (p.353) and Statilius Taurus. He increased the grain dole (p.224).
The constitution
The restoration of the constitution is a massive and subtle subject as Augustus spent 45 years restoring then tinkering with the constitution to make it appear as if the Republic had been restored while maintaining a firm grip on power. Thus he restored the post of consul and held annual elections for the consulship, as per tradition – except that he made sure that he was always elected one of the consuls.
In 27 BC, Octavian made a show of returning full power to the Roman Senate and relinquishing his control of the Roman provinces and their armies. But he retained control of the ‘grand provincial command’ whose importance Goldsworthy explains in detail (p.381).
The consulships
Augustus held one of the consulships every year from 31 BC to 23 BC, when he entered his eleventh consulship.
The senate
In practical terms Augustus tried to reform the senate, reducing its numbers from the unwieldy 1,000 it had grown to. Augustus tried to separate senators from the equestrian class with which they overlapped and imposed a minimum wealth requirement of 1 million sestercii (p.320).
He struggled with the problem that quite a few scions of the great houses didn’t even want to sit in the senate but were quite happy with their wealthy lives as equites (p.353). In 9 BC Augustus had another go at reform, determining that the senate would meet on fixed dates, ensuring they didn’t overlap with court cases and other obligations, and requiring all senators to attend, anyone absent being fined. But bribery and corruption persisted. In the consul elections of 8 BC, all the candidates including the winners bribed voters on such a heroic scale that Augustus insisted in future all candidates must pay a deposit which they would forfeit on conviction of bribery (p.383).
His tinkering with various rules and initiatives to get just what he wanted, and the continual stymying of his reforms by a corrupt ruling class, remind me of Oliver Cromwell’s forlorn attempts to get just the right kind of House of Commons, free but also high-minded and responsible.
Titles
He began with the name Gaius Octavius, son of Caius Octavius. When Julius Caesar’s will was read in March 44 he immediately took his adoptive father’s name to become Gaius Julius Caesar, with or without the legacy name Octavianus. From 38 BC at the latest, Octavian officially dropped all of his names except Caesar and began using the victory title imperator (‘commander’) in place of the traditional Roman forename, so Imperator Caesar. In 27 BC the Senate granted him the additional name ‘Augustus’, making Imperator Caesar Augustus.
Awards
Previous Romans were awarded days of thanksgiving when they secured a victory. Augustus’s were off the scale. He was awarded a staggering 51 thanksgivings, adding up to a total of 590 days (p.357).
The month of August
Julius Caesar had reformed the Roman month which had, until then, consisted of ten months (hence the way in our English months September, October, November and December, the first syllable indicates the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months, respectively). Because the old calendar only contained 355 days it quickly went out of sync with the seasons and required the addition of an extra, or intercalary, month every so often. Caesar consulted astronomers and devised a new calendar of 365 days, adding a few days to each month and inventing an entirely new month, modestly named after himself, which gives us the English ‘July’ (French ‘Juillet’, Spanish ‘Julio’). His reforms came into force on 1 January 45 BC.
Augustus followed in his adoptive father’s footsteps and received yet another honour from the Senate, the renaming of a month in his name. Some wanted him to have September, the month he was born in. But Augustus chose the sixth month or Sextilis, when he had first been elected consul and won many of his victories. So in 8 BC the month was renamed August and remained so in European calendars including English.
Religion
Augustus embarked on a policy of rebuilding or beautifying temples and reviving, restoring and encouraging the practice of traditional rituals, not only in Rome but throughout Italy and the provinces.
Games and festivals
For example, he created the rather factitious ludi saecularii, supposedly to celebrate the return of what the Romans called ‘the Great Year’ (p.330).
Poets
Augustus prided himself on his association with only the greatest writers. During his rule flourished the three greatest Roman poets:
- Publius Vergilius Maro, known in the English-speaking world as Virgil (70 to 19 BC)
- Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace (65 to 8 BC)
- Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō, a generation younger, known as Ovid (43 BC to 18 AD)
Goldsworthy devotes a significant passage to describing Virgil and then summarising the themes and importance of his great poem, The Aeneid. This is an epic poem telling the story of the flight of Prince Aeneas from Troy after it had been captured by the Greeks at the climax of the Trojan War. It describes his extended dalliance with Dido Queen of Carthage, before piety and duty forces him to abandon her and sail on to Italy, where he is caught up in a series of brutal conflicts with various tribes before conquering them all to establish Alba Longa, the settlement near what would, centuries later, become Rome and to which Roman antiquarians attributed the origin of their city and race (pages 307 to 317).
Breeding
Augustus became concerned about the disastrous impact the civil wars and the proscriptions had than on aristocratic and knightly families, with many lines going extinct. Therefore he passed the lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus to encourage the upper classes to reproduce, granting benefits to fathers of three or more children and penalising the unmarried or childless (p.325).
Succession
This is the issue which Mary Beard identifies as the single biggest political problem for the emperors: who was to succeed? (See my summary of her discussion of the various options.)
What the reader of this book notices is that the first hundred pages describe the traditional republican constitutional forms of consuls and tribunes and so on; the middle 200 describe how Augustus attempted to keep the façade of all these elections and structures, while continuing to hold all the reins of power; how he vehemently denied in the 20s that he was grooming any of his close family to ‘succeed’ because he was not a monarch.
But how, during the last 100 pages or so, the issue of Augustus’s family becomes more and more pressing, with the narrative focussing more and more on the marriages of his extended family and the health or otherwise of his various stepsons and nephews and so on.
In his endeavours to ensure a smooth transition of power Augustus was ill-fated and the labyrinthine complexities of his extended family and the bad luck and/or conspiracies among them are amply recorded in Robert Graves’s best-selling novels I, Claudius and Claudius the god.
Livia
Goldsworthy devotes extended passages to profiling Augustus’s wife, Livia (e.g. pages 377 to 379). She was his third wife. There was a whiff of scandal about their marriage, because she had first been married to Tiberius Claudius Nero around 43 BC, and they had had two sons, Tiberius and Drusus. Octavian saw her, liked her, and compelled her to divorce Nero and marry him in 38 BC.
When the Senate granted Octavian the title Augustus, Livia automatically became Augusta, prototype of all future empresses. Just as Augustus used propaganda tools to depict himself as the ideal Roman male and ruler, Livia was portrayed as the ideal Roman matron.
Rumour surrounded her machinations to get her eldest son Tiberius into position as heir to Augustus, and it’s these rumours Robert Graves used as the central theme of I Claudius. Tiberius was fast-tracked through military education and the old cursus honorem (p.336). Through Tiberius she was grandmother of the emperor Claudius, great-grandmother of the emperor Caligula, and the great-great-grandmother of the emperor Nero.
She liked dwarves and freaks (p.378).
Heirs
Augustus’s ultra-reliable number two, Agrippa, was married to Augustus’s daughter, Julia (p.321). A dynasty was taking shape (p.322).
It is a small indicator of the shift in emphasis that the last ever old-style triumph was awarded to the Younger Balbus in 19 BC. Thereafter, triumphs were only awarded to members of the imperial family (p.305). Something similar happened a few years later when, in 12 BC Augustus had himself appointed head priest or pontifex maximus. No civilian was ever to hold this post again. From now till the fall of Rome in 410 AD this title and post was only held by the emperor (p.350).
Augustus arrogated unprecedented powers and privileges to himself (p.356) but there were never any indications he planned to nominate a sole heir (p.359). He appears to have expected to be succeeded by a college of colleagues, all with advanced power but who would work collaboratively. In other words, he gave no indication of realising that what would happen would be rule by a series of single individuals, kings in all but name (p.360).
Thoughts
Augustus is an awesome figure. Rarely can one man have had such an impact on an entire civilisation.
Reading the book is overwhelming because of the extraordinarily hectic nature of the times Gaius Octavianus lived through and mastered, and then the dizzying list of his achievements.
But it left me with one dominating thought: The book is like a doorway between two eras. For the first hundred pages we are solidly in the world of the Roman Republic, with its complex constitution, its squabbling senate, its fiercely competitive elections to the consulship and the tribunate and the jostling for power of a host of larger-than-life characters including Crassus, Caesar, Pompey, Cicero and so on.
But in the last 100 pages (380 to 480) we are in a completely different world, one of peace and stability, where elections continue but are essentially hollow, where no public figures at all come anywhere close to the wielding the power and significance of Augustus, and where, increasingly, the only people of interest are the members of his own family: Livia, Drusus, Tiberius, Julia and so on.
By around page 390 all his old friends have died off – Agrippa, Maecenas, Virgil and Horace – the old generation has departed, and the narrative becomes evermore focused on the palace intrigues and manoeuvring over who will replace the princeps when he finally dies. These are now the palace intrigues of an emperor in all but name, completely unlike anything which existed under the Republic.
So reading the book gives a slightly vertiginous, Alice-through-the-looking-glass feel, of transitioning the reader, without you quite realising it, without you being aware precisely when it happens, from one world to another, completely different one.
I wonder if people at the time were aware that they were living through such a fundamental transition; or whether it’s just the effect of reading a modern account which, by its nature, tends to focus on what changed and maybe neglects the vast continuities which most people probably experienced in their day-to-day lives.
Augustus: From Revolutionary to Emperor is a thorough, solid, continually interesting and, in the end, rather mind-bending read.
Credit
Augustus: From Revolutionary to Emperor by Adrian Goldsworthy was published in 2014 by Weidenfeld and Nicholson. All references are to the 2015 paperback edition.
Books & Boots 
Political documents of the British civil wars
Political documents of the civil wars
What follows are summaries of some of the key political documents produced between the start of Charles I’s conflict with Scotland in 1637 and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Instead of a chronological or thematic approach to the period, this is a different angle from which to consider events, a record of the proliferation of plans and constitutions cooked up by all sides in their attempts to find a solution to the nation’s deep divisions.
Lining them up like this brings out one of the central ideas of Mark Kishlansky’s history of the 17th century, namely the collapse of consensus, the collapse of belief in a central set of political and religious values which characterised the era, and the countless attempts made by different political players to rebuild it.
In the last few documents of the series you can see the realisation emerging that the late-medieval idea of a hierarchical and completely homogeneous society was permanently broken and that only a system which allowed for some measure of tolerance and pluralism could replace it.
The question of just how much pluralism and tolerance could be permitted and society remain, in some sense, united or coherent, remained an open question – in fact, arguably, it’s one of the main threads of British social and political history right up to the present day.
To me what this proliferation of documents indicates is how very difficult it is, once you abandon tradition and precedent, to draw up a new political constitution in a period of crisis. It’s one of the reasons revolutions are so tumultuous. Getting rid of the ancien regime, especially if it’s embodied in one hated ruler (Charles I, Louis XVIII, Czar Nicholas II, the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi) is relatively easy. Finding a successor system which all the competing factions can unite behind… almost impossible.
Which is why revolutions often become uncontrollable by all except the most ideological, ruthless and uncompromising: Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin, Ayatollah Khomeini. Or collapse into civil war: Iraq, Libya.
I’m aware that the documents are in a broad range of genres – from constitutions enacted by central government to the manifestos of fringe groups (the Levellers and even more so, the Diggers), from religious oaths to political treaties. A proper study would take this more into account. I am concerned simply to give an indication of a) the sheer number of them b) their range and variety, and – as said above – the way they show how, once a shared consensus has collapsed, it is so very difficult to create a new one.
1638 The Scottish National Covenant
In 1637 King Charles I and Archbishop Laud tried to bring the separate churches of England and Scotland closer together, firstly by the introduction of a new Book of Canons to replace John Knox’s Book of Discipline as the authority for the organisation of the Kirk, and secondly by the introduction of a modified form of the Book of Common Prayer into Scotland. Charles and Laud consulted neither the Scottish Parliament or the Assembly of the Kirk with the inevitable result that the proposals met with outrage from Scots determined to preserve their national and religious identity.
At the first service where they were introduced, on 23 July 1637 in St Giles’s cathedral in Edinburgh, Jenny Geddes flung her prayer stool at the dean as he read from the book, and started a riot. Similar demonstrations took place in churches all across Scotland where the new liturgy was introduced.
This spontaneous protest was soon organised by Presbyterian elders and aristocrats into a campaign of petitions denouncing the Laudian prayer book and the power of the bishops. These coalesced into a committee which drew up a National Covenant to unite the protesters. The Covenant called for adherence to doctrines already enshrined by Acts of Parliament and for a rejection of untried ‘innovations’ in religion.
In February 1638, at a ceremony in Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, large numbers of Scottish noblemen, gentry, clergy and burgesses signed the Covenant, committing themselves under God to preserving the purity of the Kirk. Copies were distributed throughout Scotland for signing on a wave of popular support. Those who hesitated were often intimidated into signing and clergymen who opposed it were deposed. By the end of May 1638, the only areas of Scotland where the Covenant had not been widely accepted were the remote western highlands and the counties of Aberdeen and Banff, where resistance to it was led by the Royalist George Gordon, Marquis of Huntly.
An Assembly was held at Glasgow in 1638 where the Covenanter movement became the dominant political and religious force in Scotland.
In 1643 the objectives of the Covenant were incorporated into the Solemn League and Covenant which formed the basis of the military alliance between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters against the Royalists.
1641 The Grand Remonstrance
A Remonstrance against King Charles I was first proposed by George Digby, MP for Dorset, soon after the Long Parliament assembled in November 1640. The idea was taken up by John Pym in 1641. Pym planned to use it as part of his campaign to transfer control of the armed forces to Parliament by undermining confidence in the King and his ministers and by demonstrating the integrity of Parliament.
The Remonstrance was drafted between August and November 1641 by Pym and his supporters. These included John Hampden, John Glynn, Sir John Clotworthy, Arthur Goodwyn and others who later formed the ‘Middle Group’ that was associated with Pym’s efforts to bridge the parliamentarian ‘War’ and ‘Peace’ parties during the early years of the English Civil War.
The Grand Remonstrance was a long, wide-ranging document that listed all the grievances perpetrated by the King’s government in Church and State since the beginning of his reign. Rather than blaming the King himself, the Remonstrance emphasised the role of bishops, papists and ‘malignant’ ministers and advisers who were alleged to have deliberately provoked discord and division between King and Parliament.
In contrast, the Remonstrance described the measures taken by the Long Parliament towards rectifying these grievances during its first year in office, including the abolition of prerogative courts and illegal taxes, legislation for the regular summoning of Parliament, and a partial reform of the Church. Thus the House of Commons was presented as the true defender of the King’s rightful prerogative, of the Protestant faith, of the privileges of Parliament and the liberties of the people.
In order to continue its work, the Remonstrance called for the setting up of an Assembly of Divines, nominated by Parliament, to supervise ongoing reform of the Church; furthermore, it demanded that the King’s ministers should be approved by Parliament, with the right of veto over those it considered unsuitable.
On 22 November 1641, after a stormy debate that lasted long into the night, the House of Commons passed the Remonstrance by a narrow margin of 159 votes to 148. The King’s supporters who tried to enter a protest were shouted down in a bad-tempered confrontation that almost ended in a riot. Oliver Cromwell is said to have remarked that if the Remonstrance had not been passed he would have sold all he had and gone overseas to America.
Opponents of the Remonstrance, who included Viscount Falkland and Edward Hyde, formed what was, for the first time, a recognisable Royalist party in Parliament. The Remonstrance was presented to the King on 1 December 1641. He ignored it for as long as possible, so Parliament took the unprecedented step of having it printed and circulated in order to rally outside support. On 23 December, the King finally presented his reply. Drafted by Edward Hyde, it rejected the Remonstrance but in reasoned and conciliatory tones calculated to appeal to moderate opinion.
1643 The Solemn League & Covenant
The alliance between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters was sealed with the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant by both Houses of Parliament and the Scottish commissioners on 25 September 1643. It was a military league and a religious covenant. Its immediate purpose was to overwhelm the Royalists, who in 1643 seemed in a strong position to win the English Civil War.
An alliance between Parliament and the Scots was first proposed by John Pym early in 1643. Parliament was anxious to secure military help from Scotland in order to counter Royalist victories in England. The Convention of Estates in Edinburgh favoured the alliance after the discovery of the Earl of Antrim’s conspiracy to bring over an Irish Catholic army to support a projected uprising of Scottish Royalists. However, the Covenanters regarded the alliance principally as a religious union of the two nations. They hoped to unite the churches of Scotland and England under a Presbyterian system of church government.
In August 1643, the four commissioners appointed by the House of Commons arrived in Edinburgh. They were Sir Henry Vane, Sir William Armyne, Thomas Hatcher and Henry Darley. They were accompanied by two clergymen, the Presbyterian Stephen Marshall and the Independent Philip Nye. Although the House of Lords had voted in favour of the alliance, no peers were prepared to go to Scotland to take part in the negotiations. Sir Henry Vane emerged as the leading spokesman of the English delegation.
Both sides were eager to defeat the Royalists so the negotiations proceeded quickly. The Westminster Parliament ratified the new covenant within two weeks of receiving it at the end of August 1643. Certain alterations were made to avoid an immediate commitment to strict Presbyterianism and these were accepted by the Convention of Estates.
The Scots agreed to send an army into England on condition that Parliament would co-operate with the Kirk in upholding the Protestant religion and uprooting all remaining traces of popery. Although it was implied that Presbyterian forms of worship and church government would be enforced in England, Wales and Ireland, the clause was qualified to read that church reform would be carried out ‘according to the Word of God’ – which was open to different interpretations.
Reform of the Anglican church was debated at the Westminster Assembly, but a Presbyterian religious settlement for England was strongly opposed by Independents and others. The settlement that was eventually imposed was regarded as a compromise by the Covenanters.
In January 1644, the Army of the Covenant marched into England to take the field against the Royalists. Parliament decreed that the Covenant was to be taken by every Englishman over the age of eighteen. Although no penalty was specified, the names of those who refused to sign were to be certified to Parliament. Signing the Covenant became a prerequisite for holding any command or office under Parliament until King Charles I made his own alliance with the Scots in 1648.
After the execution of Charles I, Kirk leaders pressed the Solemn League and Covenant on his son Charles II at the Treaty of Breda (1650). However, the defeat of the Royalist-Scots alliance at the battle of Worcester in September 1651 ended all attempts to impose Presbyterianism in England.
1646 The Newcastle Propositions
The Newcastle Propositions were drawn up by the Westminster Parliament as a basis for a treaty with King Charles I in July 1646 after the defeat of the Royalists in the First Civil War. The King had surrendered to Parliament’s Scottish allies rather than to Parliament itself and was held in semi-captivity at Newcastle.
There was resentment among English Parliamentarians that the King was in the hands of the Scots, and tension had increased after an intercepted letter revealed that secret negotiations had passed between the King and the Scots earlier in the year. Fearing that the alliance with Parliament was under threat, the Committee of Estates in Edinburgh instructed the Scottish commissioners in London to consent to Parliament’s proposals, even though they fell short of the Covenanters’ ideals in the settlement of religion.
The Propositions put to the King consisted of nineteen clauses. The main points were:
1647 The Heads of the Proposals
These were a set of propositions intended to be a basis for a constitutional settlement after King Charles I was defeated in the First English Civil War. The document was drafted by Commissionary-General Henry Ireton and Major-General John Lambert. during the summer of 1647 when the Army was engaged in a political power struggle with Presbyterian MPs over the settlement of the nation. The proposals were termed the ‘Heads’ to indicate that they were a broad outline, to be negotiated in detail later.
Although the Army proposals were more lenient than the terms offered in Parliament’s Newcastle Propositions, the King regarded them as too restrictive and rejected them outright. During the negotiations, Ireton and Cromwell lost the support of the Army radicals, who were disappointed that the proposals made no concessions to Leveller demands for a wider franchise, and who criticised the Grandees’ ‘servility’ in their dealings with the King.
Meanwhile, Charles continued his attempts to play off the Army and Parliament against one another. He also began secretly negotiating with a faction among the Scots, which was to lead to the Second Civil War in 1648.
At the Putney Debates (October-November 1647), where the Army Council discussed a new constitution for England, Ireton promoted the Heads of the Proposals as a moderate alternative to the Leveller-inspired Agreement of the People.
Six years later, elements of Ireton’s proposals were incorporated into the Instrument of Government – the written constitution that defined Cromwell’s powers as Lord Protector. The religious settlement proposed by Ireton in 1647 was virtually identical to that finally adopted in the Toleration Act of 1689.
1647-49 An Agreement of the People
The Agreement of the People was the principal constitutional manifesto associated with the Levellers. It was intended to be a written constitution that would define the form and powers of government and would also set limits on those powers by reserving a set of inalienable rights to the people. It would take the form of a contract between the electorate and the representative, to be renewed at each election. The Agreement developed over several versions between October 1647 and May 1649.
Original Draft, 1647 An Agreement of the People for a firm and present peace upon grounds of common right was first drafted in October 1647 when Agitators of the New Model Army and civilian Levellers collaborated to propose an outline for a new constitution in the aftermath of the First Civil War. It was probably drafted by John Wildman though its authorship is not known for certain. Stating that sovereign power should reside in the people of England rather than with the discredited King or Parliament, the original Agreement consisted of four clauses:
Certain constraints were placed on Parliament: it was not to interfere with freedom of religion; it was not to press men to serve in the armed forces; it could not prosecute anyone for their part in the recent war; it was not to exempt anyone from the ordinary course of the law; all laws passed by Parliament should be for the common good.
The proposals were debated at the Putney Debates of October and November 1647 where the Grandees Cromwell and Ireton tried to curb Leveller extremism, particularly over a proposal to extend the franchise to all adult males. Parliament denounced the Agreement as destructive to the government of the nation and ordered Fairfax to investigate its authorship. Attempts to gain wider Army support for the Agreement at the Corkbush Field rendezvous were forcibly suppressed by the Grandees.
The Whitehall Debates, 1648-9 During 1648, civilian and military supporters of the Agreement continued to debate and refine its proposals. The Armies Petition or a new Engagement was drafted by a group of Agitators at St Albans in April 1648 and was published in tandem with a related civilian broadside, A New Engagement, or Manifesto. These documents expanded upon the original Agreement to include more specific proposals for legal and economic reform.
After the King’s defeat in the Second Civil War, John Lilburne promoted an extended version of the Agreement which was discussed by a committee of Levellers, London Independents, MPs and army Grandees at Whitehall in December 1648. These discussions took place in the aftermath of Pride’s Purge when the King’s trial was imminent.
Lilburne wanted to secure Parliament’s acceptance of the Agreement before the King was brought to trial so that the trial would have a basis in a legitimate and legal constitution. However, Lilburne and his colleague Richard Overton walked out of the discussions when Army officers led by Henry Ireton insisted upon making further modifications to the Agreement before it was presented to Parliament.
The discussions continued in Lilburne’s absence. While Ireton appeared to make concessions to the Levellers over the franchise, it is probable that he was playing for time to distract the Army Levellers while preparations for the King’s trial went ahead. The revised Agreement was finally presented to the House of Commons as a proposal for a new constitution on 20 January 1649, the very day that the public sessions of the High Court of Justice began. As Ireton had calculated, MPs postponed discussion of the Agreement until after the trial, and it was never taken up again by Parliament.
Final version, May 1649 The Grandees’ modification of the Agreement of January 1649 was the Army’s last official involvement in its evolution. However, Lilburne and the civilian Levellers regarded Ireton’s intervention as a betrayal and continued to refine their proposals. A fully developed version of the Agreement – An Agreement of the Free People of England, tendered as a Peace-Offering to this distressed Nation – was published in May 1649, signed jointly by John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn and Thomas Prince. Its proposals included:
The final version was published after the Leveller leaders had been imprisoned by order of the Council of State and a few weeks before the suppression of the Army Levellers at Burford on 17 May 1649, after which the Leveller movement was effectively finished.
1648 The Army Remonstrance
The Remonstrance of General Fairfax and the Council of Officers was a manifesto adopted by the New Model Army in November 1648 to justify its intention to abandon treaty negotiations with King Charles and to bring him to trial as an enemy of the people. Although it was issued under the authority of Fairfax and the Council of Officers, the Remonstrance was primarily the work of Henry Ireton.
In September 1648, Parliament opened negotiations for a settlement with King Charles at the Treaty of Newport. However, Army radicals demanded that the negotiations should be abandoned and the King brought to justice for inflicting the Second Civil War upon the nation.
Ireton wrote to General Fairfax proposing that the Army should purge Parliament of MPs who supported the Treaty. After Fairfax rejected the proposal, Ireton began drafting the Remonstrance. Several petitions from radical regiments demanding justice against the King were presented to Fairfax during the following weeks, possibly under Ireton’s direction. Under pressure from the radicals, Fairfax agreed to call a meeting of the General Council of the Army at St Albans to discuss the situation. In contrast to the Putney Debates of the previous year, representatives of the common soldiers were excluded from the discussions.
The General Council convened in St Albans Abbey on 7 November 1648. After discussion of the petitions and general grievances of the soldiers, Ireton presented the draft of the Army Remonstrance on 10 November. It was initially rejected by Fairfax and the moderate officers but their opposition evaporated after 15 November when the House of Commons voted to allow the King to return to London on completion of the Newport Treaty and to restore his lands and revenues.
Fearing that Parliament intended to grant an unconditional restoration, the Army united behind Ireton’s Remonstrance. After some last-minute amendments to ensure the support of the Levellers, the Remonstrance was adopted by the General Council on 18 November 1648.
Under the maxim salus populi suprema lex (‘the safety of the people is the supreme law’), the Remonstrance proclaimed the sovereignty of the people under a representative government. Divine providence would prove the righteousness or otherwise of the government’s actions, and would also thwart unjustified rebellion against authority. Thus, the defeat of King Charles in the Second Civil War vindicated the actions of the Army as the defenders of the people. It was argued that the King should be brought to account because he had broken the sacred covenant with his people and attempted to place himself above the law.
The Remonstrance also proposed a set of Leveller-inspired constitutional reforms, including the possibility of an elective monarchy. Parliament was to set a date for its own dissolution, to be followed by annual or bi-annual Parliaments elected on a reformed franchise. There was to be a written constitution with a declaration of parliamentary authority over the King and Lords. All office-holders, including the monarch, were to subscribe to the Levellers’ Agreement of the People.
A delegation of officers headed by Colonel Ewer presented the Remonstrance to Parliament on 20 November. After an initial flurry of opposition led by William Prynne, Parliament postponed further discussion until treaty negotiations with the King at Newport were completed. Meanwhile, the Army moved its headquarters from St Albans to Windsor. On 28 November, the General Council of the Army resolved to march into London. With Parliament still refusing to discuss the Remonstrance and apparently intent on implementing the Treaty of Newport, Ireton initiated the train of events that led to Pride’s Purge in December 1648.
1649 England’s New Chains Discovered
On 26 February one of the leading radicals in the army, John Lilburne, published this attack on the new Commonwealth, in which he asserted the illegality of the High Court of Justice, the Council of State (which, he pointed out ,rested solely on the diminished or Rump Parliament) and the Council of the Army, which he accused of having become an instrument for the rich officers against the rank and file.
His agitation did not go unnoticed. In March 1649, Lilburne and other Leveller leaders were arrested. In October, Lilburne was brought to trial at the Guildhall, charged with high treason and with inciting the Leveller mutinies. He conducted his own defence, during which he raised strong objections to all aspects of the prosecution and quoted directly from Sir Edward Coke’s Institutes, or commentaries on the laws of England. The jury found Lilburne Not Guilty, to enthusiastic cheers from crowds of his supporters and well-wishers.
April 1649 The True Levellers Standard Advanced
This was the manifesto of the splinter group of Levellers who decided to put theory into practice and claimed a patch of common land near Weybridge in Surrey and began digging it. It was written by their leader Gerard Winstanley who has gone down as a hero to Marxists and left-leaning liberals. They thought all hierarchy should be abolished, wealth should be redistributed to abolish poverty, that the land was a common treasury and all the land parcelled out to households who would have equal rights to cultivate them and share the proceeds. As a result they were nicknamed the Diggers. Within months they’d been driven from the original site by the local landowners, and attempted their communal experiment in various other locations until fading away.
1650 The Treaty of Breda
After the execution of Charles I in January 1649, the Scottish Parliament proclaimed his son the new king, Charles II. However, the government of Scotland was dominated by the covenanting Kirk Party, which was determined that Charles should take the Covenant and agree to impose Presbyterianism throughout the Three Kingdoms before he could be crowned King of Scots or receive Scottish help to regain the throne of England.
Initial negotiations between Charles and representatives of the Scottish government were held at The Hague in March 1649 but broke down because Charles did not accept the legitimacy of the Kirk Party régime. However, his hopes of using Ireland as a rallying ground for the Royalist cause were thwarted by Cromwell’s invasion in August 1649. Various European heads of state offered sympathy but no practical help for regaining the throne, so Charles and his council were obliged to call for another round of negotiations with the Scots.
Negotiations between Charles II and a delegation of Scottish commissioners opened at Breda in the Netherlands on 25 March 1650. Aware of Charles’ desperate situation, the demands made by the Scottish Parliament were harsh:
Bad-tempered wrangling continued through March and April. Charles tried to gain concessions that would allow a reconciliation with the Engagers, who were excluded from office in Scotland by the Act of Classes. He would not impose Presbyterianism in England nor would he annul the Irish treaty. But to the dismay of English Royalists, Charles finally agreed to take the Oath of the Covenant. Other contentious issues were to be discussed upon his arrival in Scotland. He signed the Treaty of Breda on 1 May 1650 and took the Covenant immediately before landing in Scotland on 23 June 1650.
Charles then led a Scottish army into England which was comprehensively crushed at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, the final engagement of the war in England which had started in 1642. Charles escaped the battlefield and was on the run for 45 days till he managed to take ship to France and nine years of exile.
1653 The Instrument of Government
England’s first written constitution, the Instrument of Government was a constitutional settlement drafted by Major-General John Lambert during the autumn of 1653 and adopted by the Council of Officers when the Nominated Assembly surrendered its powers to Oliver Cromwell in December.
Lambert’s original intention had been that the old constitution of King, Lords and Commons should be replaced by one of King, Council and Parliament. In discussion with a few trusted advisers after the abdication of the Nominated Assembly, Cromwell amended the Instrument to avoid reference to the royal title, which was likely to be unacceptable to the Army.
Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, executive power passed to an elected Lord Protector, in consultation with a Council of State numbering between thirteen and twenty-one members. Cromwell was declared Lord Protector for life, though it was stressed that the office was not hereditary. He was required to call triennial Parliaments consisting of a single House of 400 members from England and 30 each from Scotland and Ireland, to remain in session for at least five months.
Parliamentary constituencies were re-arranged in an attempt to lessen the influence of the gentry in favour of the emerging middle class who, it was hoped, would be more inclined to support the Protectorate government. The number of MPs from towns and boroughs (where voting was traditionally influenced by the local gentry) was significantly reduced and representation of the universities was limited. To balance the representative, the number of MPs from the counties was correspondingly increased.
In a direct repudiation of Leveller ideas, the county franchise was restricted to persons with land or personal property valued at £200 or more. The borough franchise remained with aldermen, councillors and burgesses. Furthermore, Roman Catholics and known Royalists were declared ineligible to vote or seek election.
Under the Instrument, Parliament was charged with raising revenue for establishing and maintaining a standing army of 10,000 horse and dragoons and 20,000 foot for the defence of England, Scotland and Ireland.
Liberty of worship was granted to all except Roman Catholics and those guilty of ‘licentiousness’ (i.e. the extreme sectarians).
The Instrument of Government was England’s first written constitution. It was adopted by the Council of Officers on 15 December 1653 and Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector the next day. The First Protectorate Parliament duly assembled on 3 September 1654. However, the abrupt termination of Parliament in January 1655 meant that MPs never finished revising the Instrument of Government and so it was never legally endorsed. Doubts regarding its legal authority led to the resignation of the Lord Chief Justice Henry Rolle in June 1655.
The Instrument was superseded in 1657 by the Humble Petition and Advice.
1657 Humble Petition and Advice
The Humble Petition and Advice was a constitutional document drawn up by a group of MPs in 1657 under which Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell was offered the Crown. It represented an attempt by civilian Parliamentarians to move back towards traditional forms of government after the imposition of various army-led constitutional experiments, in particular the unpopular Rule of the Major-Generals.
The offer of the Crown was intended to limit Cromwell’s power rather than extend it, because as King his power would be defined by precedent. The Humble Petition aimed to legitimise the constitution since it came from an elected Parliament, unlike its predecessor the Instrument of Government.
The first version of the Humble Petition was known as the Humble Address and Remonstrance. It was drafted by a small group which included Lord Broghill, Edward Montagu and Oliver St John. The Remonstrance was brought before the Second Protectorate Parliament on 23 February 1657 by Sir Christopher Packe, a former lord mayor of London. It included proposals for the re-introduction of a second House of Parliament and for the establishment of a national church regulated by a Confession of Faith, but its most controversial proposal was that the Protector should be invited to assume the office and title of King.
This proposal was supported by most lawyers and civilian MPs but was fiercely opposed by Major-General Lambert and other army officers as well as by republicans and religious radicals.
Cromwell agonised over the decision for several months and finally declined the offer of the Crown on 8 May. A revised version of the proposal, which avoided reference to the royal title, was adopted on 25 May. Cromwell was re-installed as Lord Protector in a ceremony still reminiscent of a royal coronation on 26 June 1657.
Under the new constitution, Cromwell was to remain Lord Protector for life and could now choose his own successor. He was required to call triennial Parliaments which were to consist of two chambers: the elected House of Commons and a second chamber, or Upper House (referred to only as the ‘other house’), of between forty and seventy persons nominated by the Protector but approved by Parliament. The Upper House was intended to mediate between the Lower House and the Protector. It had the right to veto any legislation passed in the Lower House and was roundly condemned by republicans as too reminiscent of the old House of Lords. The Council of State was to become the Protector’s privy council, consisting of 21 members chosen by the Protector and approved by Parliament.
After the Instrument of Government, the Humble Petition and Advice was England’s second – and last – written constitution. It differed significantly from the Instrument in that it was drawn up by civilian parliamentarians rather than by army officers and also in that it was legally endorsed by Parliament. It remained in force throughout the remainder of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell and during the brief jurisdiction of his successor Richard Cromwell.
1660 The Declaration of Breda
This was a manifesto issued in April 1660 by the exiled Charles II in which he outlined his initial terms for the Restoration of the monarchy. The Declaration was drawn up by Charles himself and his three principal advisers, Sir Edward Hyde, the Marquis of Ormond and Sir Edward Nicholas.
In March 1660, shortly after the final dissolution of the Long Parliament, General George Monck entered into secret negotiations with Charles’ representative Sir John Grenville regarding the possibility of the King’s return to power. Grenville was authorised to offer Monck high office in return for his help, while Monck himself claimed to have always been secretly working towards the Restoration – a view that came to be widely accepted later.
Monck’s terms were geared primarily towards satisfying the material concerns of the army:
Following Monck’s advice to move from Spanish territory to Breda in the Protestant Netherlands, Charles and his principal advisers prepared a conciliatory declaration that touched upon the major issues of indemnity, confirmation of land sales and the religious settlement. A free pardon and amnesty was offered to all who would swear loyalty to the Crown within forty day of the King’s return.
However, Charles skirted around all points of contention by referring the final details of the Restoration settlement to a future Parliament. Charles was aware that any legislation passed by the forthcoming Convention Parliament would have to be confirmed or refuted by a later Parliament summoned under the King’s authority, and that the blame for inevitable disappointments in the Restoration settlement would then be borne by Parliament rather than by the Crown.
Smart thinking.
The Declaration was signed by Charles on 4 April 1660. Copies were prepared with separate letters to the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the army, the fleet and the City of London. Monck was offered a commission as commander-in-chief of the army. When Sir John Grenville delivered the Declaration to the newly-elected Convention Parliament on 1 May, both Houses unanimously voted for the Restoration.
Sources
The period 1649 to 1658 is covered by pages 189 to 212 of A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603 – 1714 by Mark Kishlansky. I’ve also sourced information from Wikipedia. But the main source for a lot of this information was the excellent British Civil Wars, Commonwealth & Protectorate website, which covers all aspects of the subject and includes really excellent maps.
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Posted by Simon on August 30, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/political-documents-of-the-civil-wars/