The Lamp of Experience

Chapter III. The Colonial Perspective: Tudors, Stuarts, and Hanoverians

LAMP_001-050.indd 48 5/27/11 1:16 PM CHAPTER III The Colonial Perspective: Tudors) Stuarts) and Hanoverians If for their time Americans were well informed on antiquity and medieval English history, they were no less aware of their more recent past. Appearing more immediate to present problems, recent history embraced the multitude ofsins recorded since Magna Charta -those contained in the history of the Reformation, the history of the religious and political developments which impelled Englishmen to establish the American colonies. It was a history which examined England's colonial behavior and described her emerging imperial consciousness. It paid close attention to the seventeenthcentury struggle with the Stuart princes and to eighteenth-century Hanoverian politics. I The Tudors had certain undeniable attractions for the colonists. Henry VII, to be sure, was unlovable, if only because he was the first monarch to establish a standing army. But his son Henry VIII sundered the English ties with Rome and brought his people to Protestantism . Henry VIII may have been an arbitrary and capricious despot; still, "with all his Crimes and Exorbitancies he was one of LAMP_001-050.indd 49 5/27/11 1:16 PM The Colonial Perspective: Tudors, Stuarts, and Hanoverians the most glorious Princes of his Time." Because Henry brought the Reformation to England, he represented an inscrutable Divine Will. "Providence often brings about the noblest Designs by the most exceptionable Instruments," the historian Laurence Echard reflected. Even the judicious Rapin confessed that while Henry was "to be numbered among the ill Princes," he could not be ranked among the worst.1 Henry VIII's daughters were subjects for wider historical disagreement . Queen Mary's efforts to restore England to the Catholic fold meant that few Protestants could view her reign with equanimity . A sympathetic comment came from the royalist historian Sir Richard Baker, who claimed for Mary "a merciful disposition," since she "oftentimes pities the person, where she shed the blood." Baker thought her religion "a deformity," but admired Mary's devotion to it.Z Few other writers were as kind: Rapin described her temper as "cruel and vindictive," and Echard observed that "God thought fit to punish her with a·Barren Womb and an untimely Death." Robert Dodsley in his Chronicle summed up Mary's unhappy reign as one which "stinketh ofblood unto this day"; her name was "an abomination ," and "the vengeance of the Lord overtook her." 3 Elizabeth could hardly avoid improving this record. Sufficiently intelligent to have been born of a Protestant mother, she sensibly waged war on the Spanish Catholics. Bolingbroke gazed upon Elizabeth with reverence, and likened her to a patriot king-or queensince "she united the great body of the people in her and their common interest, and she inflamed them with one national spirit."4 Others praised Elizabeth's sense and judgment: this "good and illustrious I. Laurence Echard, The History of England, 3d ed., 3 vols. (London, 1720), I, 298; Rapin, History ofEngland, I, 849 n. 2 . Sir Richard Baker, A Chronicle ofthe Kings ofEngland . . . (London, 1670), 324· 3· Rapin, History of England, II, 49; Echard, History of England, 327; Robert Dodsley, The Chronicle ofthe Kings ofEngland (Philadelphia, 1774), 54· 4· Bolingbroke, On Patriotism, 62. 49 LAMP_001-050.indd 50 5/27/11 1:16 PM ENGLISH HERITAGE AND COLONIAL HISTORICAL VIEW Queen" had the virtues and none ofthe vices ofher "mighty Father." 5 Sir Richard Baker admired a Queen who "declined being a Mother of Children, to the end she might be a Mother of her Country." Elizabeth did not need the love of a husband since "she delighted in nothing so much, as in the love of her people," which she earned "by ordaining good Magistrates, and forbearing Impositions." 6 Some historians had reservations about Elizabeth's political perfection : Thornhagh Gurdon in his widely read History of Parliament reminded readers that the Elizabethan House of Commons attempted to extend their privileges, but the Queen had seemingly forgotten their historical grounds, and nipped these "new Claims" in the bud. David Hume, on the other hand, saw in Elizabeth's popularity evidence that she had not encroached upon any liberties of the people.7 There was room for uncertainty about the virtues of the Elizabethan era; but most sources consulted by eighteenth-century Americans were favorably disposed to the Virgin Queen, in part because the reign of Mary was so bleak, in part because the succeeding...