Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (93 page)

National Covenant
See
Covenant, National, 1638
.

Navigation Acts, 1651, 1660, 1663
Parliamentary legislation which required that goods shipped to and from the English colonies in America be transported in English vessels through English ports. These measures precipitated several trade wars with the Dutch, but eventually helped to ensure England’s commercial supremacy. After the Act of Union of 1707 (see Union, Acts of), these terms applied to Great Britain as a whole.

Nonconformists
See
Dissenters
.

Nonjurors
Anglican clergymen who refused to take the oaths of allegiance to William III and Mary II.

Northern Rebellion
Revolt in 1569 that started out as a plot by the duke of Norfolk to marry Mary Queen of Scots and replace William Cecil in Elizabeth’s councils. When he hesitated, the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland raised the North for Catholicism and marched south to Durham. The rebellion lost steam and was suppressed brutally.

Occasional conformity
The practice by officeholding Dissenters of receiving communion at Anglican services in order to qualify under the Test Act. The Tories attempted legislation to ban the practice repeatedly under Anne. They succeeded in securing a statute in 1711, only to see it repealed in 1719.

Overbury Scandal
The scandal which emerged in 1615 when it became apparent that, two years before, Frances Howard, countess of Somerset, had plotted the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower of London. She did so to stop him from revealing embarrassing personal information which might have endangered her marriage to James I’s current favorite, the duke of Somerset. Both she and the duke fell from favor and were imprisoned, but later pardoned.

Pale
The small area around Dublin in which direct English rule was effective in Ireland.

Parliamentary Presbyterians
see
Presbyterians
.

Petition of Right 1628
Legislation guaranteeing that no subject could be forced to pay a tax not voted by Parliament, imprisoned without charge, have soldiers billeted upon his house, or be subject to martial law. Charles I agreed to it with great reluctance in order to secure five new subsidies (taxes).

Pilgrimage of Grace
Uprisings in the North in 1536-7. Ostensibly in reaction to Henry VIII’s innovations in religion, they also had economic and social causes. After promising concessions, the Henrician regime crushed the movement, executing its most prominent leader, Robert Aske, and about 180 rebels.

Poor Laws, 1536, 1563, 1572, 1598, 1601, 1662
Statutes designed to provide relief for the “deserving” poor, i.e., those who could not work because of gender, age, or illness, out of taxes - the poor rate - collected and distributed on a parish-by-parish basis. Some of these laws also had punitive provisions for “sturdy beggars,” i.e., those who would not work. The 1598 act was the basis for poor relief for 200 years. That of 1662 allowed parishes to send itinerant poor back to their parishes of origin.

Popish Plot
Generically, refers to the widespread belief in seventeenth century England that the pope and the Catholic powers were working, possibly with the assistance of the Stuarts and the Irish, to overthrow the Protestant religious settlement and the English constitution. When used specifically, refers to the accusation, fabricated in 1678 by Titus Oates and others, that Catholics, specifically the Jesuit order, were plotting with the papacy and France to overthrow Charles II, place James, Duke of York on the throne and repeal the laws against Catholics. The resulting widespread panic led to the judicial murder of a number of prominent Catholics and the Exclusion Crisis.

Poynings’s Law, 1494
Named for Sir Edward Poynings, lord deputy of Ireland 1494-6, this statute of the Irish Parliament gave the English Privy Council the right to approve the summoning and legislation of that Parliament. Statutes passed by the English Parliament applied to Ireland.

Praemunire, Statutes of, 1353, 1365, 1393
Statutes which prohibited English subjects from acknowledging papal jurisdiction in certain cases.

Prerogative
Royal discretionary power.

Presbyterians
Theological
Calvinists
who, in sixteenth-century Scotland, established a Church government (the Kirk) in which doctrine and practice were determined by a hierarchy of synods culminating in a general assembly; or those in England who favored such a form of Church government. Parliamentary Presbyterians wanted to apply a version of this model to England during and after the Civil Wars (see
Puritans
). They tended to be among the more conservative Puritans, favoring an accommodation with the king prior to 1649, and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

Pride’s Purge
On December 6, 1648, Colonel Thomas Pride and his troops, under orders from the Council of the Army, purged those remaining members of the Long Parliament who wished to continue negotiations with the king. Their removal paved the way for the trial and execution of Charles I by the remnant, known as the Rump Parliament.

Proclamation
Royal decree (similar to the modern presidential executive order) which does not carry quite the same force as statute law.

Prophesyings
Meetings of Protestant clergy and some laymen intended to improve preaching and apply Biblical texts to everyday life. Elizabethan Puritans and most bishops approved of them, but the queen did not and suppressed them as potentially disruptive and seditious.

Public school
Original term for an endowed grammar school, has come to be associated with the wealthiest and most exclusive examples, such as Eton, Harrow, and Winchester. Offering a curriculum emphasizing the Latin classics, public schools have long been famous as the training grounds for England’s elite.

Purgatory
Roman Catholic belief that, at death, souls who are not damned but not of sufficient perfection to merit Heaven go to this place of punishment to become so. Catholics believe that the prayers of the faithful and the indulgences granted by the Church for good deeds in life are efficacious in reducing the amount of time a soul spends there. The sale of indulgences provoked Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers to question whether
any
good works by sinful man could affect salvation (thus questioning the very existence of Purgatory).

Puritans
Protestants who sought the continued reform of the Church of England after its establishment in 1559-63. Puritans tended to be
Calvinists
, favoring plain Church ritual consistent with Scriptural injunction. Many, though not all, favored a
Presbyterian
form of Church government. After a brief moment in the sun following the Civil Wars, most were driven out of the Church of England by the
Clarendon Code
and so are known after the Restoration as
Dissenters
.

Quakers
Large religious sect emerging out of the toleration following the Civil Wars. They believed that each human being possessed God’s inner light in equal measure, regardless of gender or social rank. This inclined them, notoriously, to flout gender roles, denounce professional clergy, deny deference to social superiors, refuse to swear oaths, and “quake” with their inner light at services. Harshly suppressed at the Restoration, they became more quietist.

Ranters
Religious radicals emerging out of the toleration following the Civil Wars who believed that those in tune with God, who is pure good, can commit no sin. Many others at the time feared them and blamed them for all manner of debauchery, though their writings suggest mainly a rigorous questioning of then dominant Calvinist theology (see Puritans).

Recusancy
Failure to conform to the established church after the Reformation, notably refusal to attend Anglican church services; recusants were penalized £20 per month from 1581 Act.

Regency Act, 1706
Statute of Parliament guaranteeing that that body would continue to sit for six months after the death of Queen Anne, the realm administered by a council ofregency to ensure the smooth accession of the elector of Hanover as king of England in keeping with the
Act of Settlement, 1701
. Its implementation in 1714 did precisely that.

Ridolfi Plot
Plot engineered in 1571 by Robert Ridolfi and supported by Philip II and the pope to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. Foiled by the government.

Roundheads
Cant name for Parliamentarians during the Civil Wars, it was a pejorative reference to London apprentices who protested the king’s policies in 1641. Apprentices, like all working people in England, tended, for practicality’s sake, to cut their hair short –hence "roundheads" –in contrast to courtiers who had the time and assistance of servants to dress long hair.

Rump Parliament
Popular nickname for the radical remnant of the Long Parliament which continued to sit after
Pride’s Purge
(see
Long Parliament
) in December 1648. The Rump was the effective legislature of the Commonwealth. It was dissolved by Cromwell in 1653, but briefly revived in 1659 -60 during the chaos leading to the Restoration

Ryswick, Treaty of, 1697
Treaty ending the Nine Years’ War, by which Louis XIV recognized William III as the rightful king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, gave back European territory taken since 1678, and agreed to work out with William a partition of the Spanish Empire after the death of Carlos II.

Settlement, Act of, 1701
Statute which established the Hanoverian succession after William III and Queen Anne. It passed over dozens of Catholic claimants in favor of the Protestant descendants of James I’s youngest daughter Elizabeth, namely Sophia, electress of Hanover, and her successor, Georg Ludwig. The act also restricted the power of future monarchs.

Sheriff
Originally the shire reeve, an unpaid officer of the Crown in the localities, responsible for collecting taxes, impaneling juries, and, early in the period, raising the militia.Considered an onerous office to be avoided if possible.

Ship Money
Tax levied on coastal counties to pay for ships to rid the sea of pirates and other threats. Charles I’s extension of the tax to the entire country in the 1630s to fund the whole Royal Navy was financially lucrative, but highly resented, leading to Hampden’s Case, which the king barely won. Abolished by the
Long Parliament
, 1641.

Shrovetide
The three days before Ash Wednesday, which begins the season of Lent in the Church calendar. Prior to the Reformation in England, a time for confession and absolution.

Solemn League and Covenant
See
Covenant, Solemn League and, 1643
.

Star Chamber
The council acting as a court of law in matters involving riot and disorder. Its rules were few, its justice quick, which made it popular initially with the Crown and litigants. Its use to enforce Charles I’s program of “Thorough” in the 1630s led to its abolition in 1641.

Statute
Act of Parliament; that is, legislation passed by the Houses of Commons and Lords and approved by the monarch.

Statutes of Praemunire, 1353, 1365, 1393
See
Praemunire, Statutes of, 1353, 1365, 1393

Suspending power
The customary, if always controversial, right of English kings to suspend the operation of the laws in a time of national emergency. Condemned in the Declaration of Rights of 1689 and extinct thereafter.

Test Acts, 1673, 1678
Statutes introduced in response to the Declaration of Indulgence of 1672 requiring all civil officeholders and members of either house of Parliament to take communion in the Church of England and to take oaths of supremacy and allegiance and repudiating transubstantiation. These requirements “flushed out” many Catholics in government but were less effective against
Dissenters
because of the practice of
occasional conformity
.