Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England

9. THE HALCYON REIGN

9 THE HALCYON REIGN Side by side with the creed of divine ... right monarchy there developed in the 1630S a secular cult of Charles and Henrietta Maria. Its central theme was the peace bestowed by the monarchs upon England, often symbolized by the halcyon, a mythical bird who builds her nest upon the ocean and possesses a magical power to calm the waves. As Albion's Triumph, the king's masque of 1631, proclaimed: Arms are laid by: early and late The traveller goes safe to bed: Men eat and drink in massie plate And are with dainties daily fed Why should this isle above the rest Be made (great God) the Halcyon's nest? 1 In this peaceful reign the arts flourish, manners grow civilized, and the realm fills with innocent revelry, from the dances of the court to the frolicking of country folk around their maypoles. Over it all presides a royal couple who have tamed their own passions, purged the court of ill humors, shouldered the burdens of the realm's affairs, and established a polity based on love: . . . The people fix their eyes upon The King; admire, love, honor him alone. 246 THE 1 6 3 °s In him, as in a glass, their manners view And frame, and copy what they see Him do That which the murdering Cannon cannot force, Nor plumed Squadrons of steel..glittering Horse Lovecan .... 2 Today this vision seems more than a little ironic. Charles began his reign with wars against France and Spain and, after a disastrous civil conflict, ended it on the scaffold. Whatever blame his enemies and im... personal historical forces may share in these calamities, he certainly brought more strife than tranquility to his kingdom. Yet to many con ... temporaries his reputation as a gentle, loving sovereign only grew stronger after the events of the 1640S. Parliament's army might de... nounce the defeated monarch as a man of blood and execute him for crimes against the people, but to his followers he appeared to be a hapless victim of usurpation, destroyed because he was too good for an evil world. From the majestic image of God the Father, holding abso... lute sway over the commonwealth, he turned into a martyr surrender ... ing his throne and his life with the meekness of God the Son: He nothing common did, nor mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try; Nor called the gods with vulgar spite To vindicate his helpless right; But bowed his comely head Down as upon a bed. 3 The frontispiece of Eikon Basilike,the little treatise claiming to give Charles's thoughts during "his solitudes and suffering" which began to circulate on the day of his execution, showed him kneeling in prayer, grasping a crown of thorns, the royal diadem on the ground by his side. If the king's execution reminded royalists of the crucifixion, the 1630S looked, in retrospect, like a lost paradise destroyed by a great po... litical tragedy symbolically recapitulating man's fall from grace: Oh thou, that dear and happy isle, The garden of the world erewhile, Thou Paradise of the four seas Which heaven planted us to please, But to exclude the world did guard The HalcyonReign 247 With watery if not flaming swordWhat luckless apple did we taste, To make us mortal, and thee waste? 4 This imagery sometimes spread beyond the writings of cavaliers. Per, haps the most remarkable thing about the verses quoted in the last two paragraphs, both by Andrew Marvell, is that they occur in poems dedi, cated to Oliver Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax. So firmlyhad Charles become associated with civility and peace that even his enemies occasionally recognized these qualities in him. If we could discover how this iconography developed and what ideas and aspirations it conveyed, we might learn something important about the political culture of the period. THE CULT OF PEACE AND ITS POLITICAL CONTEXT The earliest development of the Caroline cult is shrouded in obscurity, because of the disappearance of all the masques performed between 1625 and 1630.5 We cannot now determine how far the wars led to a break with the peaceful cultural traditions of the previous reign. It is clear, however, that even before the wars ended the theme of peace reasserted itself as the royal cult of the 1630S began to emerge. In...