Recent Acquisitions, the Bounds Law Library

Recent Library Acquisitions, the Bounds Law Library

Today we announce some recent additions to our Special Collections holdings. In particular we’d like to call attention to some titles associated with the troubles, execution, and printed afterlife of England’s King Charles I (reigned 1625-1649).

This monarch, the second of the House of Stuart, inherited from his father James I an ongoing controversy with the House of Commons. Charles’ willingness to collect taxes not passed by Parliament, to jail intransigent taxpayers without trial, to impose martial law and to billet soldiers in civilian houses led both houses of Parliament to assert—in 1628, by means of the “Petition of Right”—that such practices violated the rights of Englishmen. Charles, for his part, maintained that as monarch he had the Divine Right to rule according to his conscience. In 1629 he prorogued Parliament, following which he ruled without it for eleven years. During this time Charles was increasingly associated with arbitrary government—and with the suppression of the religious movement known as Puritanism, carried out by his authoritarian archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. By 1642, Charles and his royalist followers were at war with Parliament and its Puritan/Presbyterian supporters. After the battle of Naseby (1645) the fortunes of war turned against the royalists; by the end of 1647 the king was in captivity. A year later, Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army had secured effective power in England. On January 20, 1649, the House of Commons (a much-reduced “Rump” Commons) put Charles on trial for his life before a specially created “High Court of Justice,” which convicted him of high crimes. He was beheaded on January 30, 1649.

The first of Bounds’ recent acquisitions to be presented is The Regall Apology, or, The Declaration of the Commons, Feb. 11. 1647, Canvassed: Wherein Every Objection, and Their Whole Charge Against His Majesty is Cleared, and for the Most Part, Retorted (1648). This small quarto volume of just under one hundred pages was published anonymously, and wisely so, since neither Cavaliers nor Cromwellians scrupled to persecute authors or publishers. As its subtitle declares, the Regall Apology is an answer to charges recently endorsed by the Commons—namely, that the king had shown numerous instances of negotiating in bad faith and that he had supported “papists” at home and in foreign lands, notably in Ireland.[1]

The king’s execution did not snuff out devotion to his cause; indeed it made him a martyr. This is shown by another Special Collections title, the anonymous Reliquae Sacrae Carolinae, or, The Works of that Great Monarch and Glorious Martyr, King Charls [sic] the I, printed safely in The Hague in 1650. Bound in duodecimo (perfect for carrying in a pocket, discreetly), this volume is a collection of letters, speeches and proclamations, together with Charles’ answer to the charges that the House of Commons had brought against him in February 1647.[2] After the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Charles’ admirers did not have to exercise caution. Indeed, the king’s cult proved its durability; 1894 saw the formation of the Society of King Charles the Martyr, still in existence today.[3]

A second recent addition to our Special Collections is Thomas Manby’s An Exact Abridgment of all the Statutes, as Well Repealed as in Force,  Made in the Reigns of King Charles I and King Charles II, Until the End of the Sessions of Parliament the 29th of March 1673. This small format volume was printed in London by Henry Twyford, John Streater, and Elizabeth Flesher in 1674, and it quietly provides some telling evidence. For one thing, it skips from “Anno Decimo Septimo” (the 17^th year, i.e., 1642) of Charles I, to “Anno Duodecimo” (the 12^th year) of Charles II.[4] The latter acceded to the throne in 1660, the year of Stuart “Restoration”; but Manby, like with other royalists, counted Charles II’s years as king from the murder of his father in 1649. Thus his duodecimo year would have been 1661. Thereby Manby effectively skipped over the English Civil War, the Commonwealth (proclaimed in 1649), Cromwell’s Protectorate (1653-1659), the brief Protectorate of Cromwell’s son Richard, and the ad hoc measures that followed. To Royalists, the enactments of those years were null and void, simply not worthy of discussion.

Lest it be thought that Bounds’ Special Collections purchases only royalist titles, consider our recent acquisition of Baron George Nugent Grenville’s Memorials of John Hampden, His Party and His Times (London: George Bell and Sons, 1899). This reprint of a biography first published in the 1830s tells of the life and exploits of a Puritan hero fatally wounded in 1643—whose name lives on in the history of Hampden Sydney College in Virginia.

PMP

Our cataloger for these titles is Dr. Julie Griffith. The catalog records of the above works are as follows:

[1] The charges, which also included accusations that Charles had in effect murdered his father James I, can be found in A Declaration of the Commons of England, in Parliament Assembled, Expressing Their Reasons and Grounds of Passing the Late Resolutions Touching No Farther Address or Application To Be Made to the King, (London: Printed for Edward Husband, [February 15,] 1647).

[2] For the charges, see supra, note 1, A Declaration of the Commons of England, in Parliament Assembled.

[3] For a Wikipedia article on the society, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_King_Charles_the_Martyr. See also Andrew Lacey, The Cult of King Charles the Martyr (Rochester, New York: Boydell Press, 2003).

[4] Thomas Manby, An Exact Abridgment of all the Statutes, as Well Repealed as in Force, Made in the Reigns of King Charles I and King Charles II . . . (London: Printed by Henry Twyford, John Streater, and Elizabeth Flesher, 1674), [vi-viii], [ix].