Thanks. Yeah Britain will directly take part in ATL 30 years war analogue.See, THAT is some interesting stuff!
The Union of Crowns: A Timeline
- Thread starter Sarthak
- Start date
Awesome start dude and I'm really lookibg forward to my favourite era of british history being turned on its head. One thing though, I don't like the flag you've proposed, I think you're better off using the interregnum flag. Remember Wales is part of England and has been seen as such up until the very recent devolution in the UK.
Attachments
This one leaves out Ireland though, and from what I understand, Ireland is supposed to be an equal part of this Great Britain, which would be reflected in the flag
well more equal than otl with the gaelic nobility not decimated (so far) but still not equal, you could have the irish harp or a cross pattee for st patrick
thank you!
more conflict with other colonial powers is a given
Actually James I was very favorable to Wales, and did include the Welsh cross and dragon in his early attempt at a union flag. So it wouldn't really go amiss.
Really? Sorry I never knew, can you link me a source on that if its not too much trouble?
Chapter 4: The Plot
Chapter 4: The Plot
***
From The Union of Crowns by Robert William Johnson
“Perhaps the greatest problem that arose between James I and Parliament was that of money. This is perhaps James I’s greatest controversial part of his history and the fact that he often went through questionable means of receiving funds was quite frowned down upon by the parliament, who deemed it a fundamental right of the parliament to collect funds for the country and the not the monarchy, beside their own royal holdings which generated some income. And while many dissenters against the monarchy during the time of James I liked to portray James I’s bellicose stance during 1604 as going against his own ideals of peace and pacifism, one must not forget that keeping war as a last resort, didn’t mean that James I wasn’t afraid of using the
military potential of England and Scotland combined. James pacifism definitely had very definite limits that was forgotten by many due to his rather proud proclamations that he wanted to become a peacemaker and not a warmonger.
A coin commemorating the Treaty of London 1604
James I had signed the Treaty of London (1604) with Spain, however the hatred that Protestant England had for Catholic Spain was intense, and the multigenerational conflict had imbued deep seated hatred for anything Spanish. Strategically too, the prime purpose of war between Spain and England, the defense of the Dutch against Spanish invasion, was not abandoned despite the popular image that it was. English supplies still made their way into Dutch hands and the rather big loophole that the Treaty of London left unexplained was exploited, as English commercial relations with the Dutch expanded after the treaty was written down and signed on the initiative of James I. James I knew very well that Spain had only signed the treaty because of the fact that the 9 Years War in Ireland was over, and with no proxies to aid them fight England directly, there was no point in further fighting. The Treaty of London had therefore extricated England from a very costly war that was nearly ruinous to the English economy without harming the interests of her Dutch allies. Even the contemporary critic of James I had to admit that the Scottish King of England had committed himself to a masterful diplomatic stroke.
James’s reputation as the peacemaker was also enhanced by the fact that he had not only led to greater accord between England and Scotland, but he had also brought peace into Ireland, a place which for the past nine years had been a virtual death sentence to any poor English lad who had to be pressed into the armies of England. By surrendering in the last months of Elizabeth I’s reign, the principal leader of the Irish rebels in Ulster, the Earl of Tyrone, had not totally destroyed his power. In fact James I rehabilitated the old rebellious Gaelic lords of Ireland, keeping in favor of the crown in case the other Anglo-Norman lords of Ireland got too rebellious against the English crown. Ironically Lord Tyrone and the Earl of Tyrconnel, both of whom had been hardline English opponents, soon became the court favorites of James I from Ireland and both of them became staunch allies of the English crown.
Hugh O'Neil, the Earl of Tyrone
Both Tyrone and Tyrconnel became allies of James I to such an extent, that they became the principal advocates of a full union between England and Ireland, in the same manner as the movement of unifying England and Scotland was starting to form. Both Tyrconnel and Tyrone understood that as things stood, some sort of Catholic relief for the Catholics of Ireland was by and large impossible. Despite James I’s rather tolerant views towards Irish Catholicism, the English Parliament would only entertain views of some kind of Irish Catholic Emancipation if the Irish finally subjected themselves to full English rule. Tyrone and Tyrconnel decided to exploit that. They wanted Irish Catholics to be able to inherit land, own property, allow the continuation of their schools in Ireland and allow the Roman Catholics, based on property and income, be allowed to vote for the Irish House of Commons, and retain their access to middle class professions such as legal society and grand jurors. Throughout 1604 and 1605, the idea that union with England would save the Irish Catholic Code swept throughout Ireland, and the English government was slightly caught up in the mess, as James I encouraged the feeling.
Among the English, the idea that the Irish were also pushing for union came as a surprise and astounded the English government on how to act. They liked the fact that they would be able to consolidate their hold on the Irish, and subject them to English Law, however of course the issue of retaining the old Irish rights remained a particular issue in the Parliament, and while many were willing to accept union with Scotland, even advocates of Union with Scotland were reluctant to endorse any idea of union with Ireland. Nonetheless, the Irish began to stage campaigns, associations and meetings with Lord Tyrone at its head for what Lord Tyrone called ‘An Equal…..and Tolerant Union’. During a meeting of the Irish Association for Union and Crown, or in Irish as it was called back then, Cumann Aontas Agus Coronach na hEirann, Lord Tyrone would state a catchy phrase which would eventually become the Motto of the Kingdom of Great Britain. ‘Unum in Pace, Secundas res Uel Aduersas’ which roughly translates as ‘Unified in Peace, Prosperity and Adversity’.
And like stated above, there were many fears that James I’s pacifism would endanger English commercial, diplomatic and geopolitical interests in the long run. James I proved to be more than willing to keep limits on the pacific rhetoric that he had adopted. During the Ottoman-Safavid War of 1603-1618, the English East India Company meddled in the war in the Persian Gulf to secure trading rights in the Pirate Coast of Bahrayn and Safavid pirates were extinguished from the Indian Ocean. English privateers were dispatched in secret to deal with the Portuguese who were acting Spanish proxies in the Portuguese-Dutch War, and English ships routinely flew Dutch flags to aid the Dutch in several naval battles against the Spaniards and Portuguese. This unhidden war that was developing between England and Spain inflamed tensions, but made sure to steer clear of expensive open conflict and made sure that James was seen adhering to English interests in parliament and for the country, and the hit that his popularity took in the public due to his endorsement of the Treaty of London 1604 took started to recover.
An English Ship in the Persian Gulf in the service of the East India Company during the Ottoman-Safavid War of 1603-18
James also finally got what he wanted from parliament in late 1604 and early 1605, when the English Parliament, finally agreed to allow the Commission of English and Scottish Delegates For Union, under the leadership of the 1st Earl of Haddington and Sir Francis Bacon to be established to find a proper compromise to seek Union between the Kingdom of Scotland and Kingdom of England. Haddington represented the Scottish delegation and Sir Francis Bacon represented the English delegation. The very essence of the commission was to ‘perform and accomplish the real and effectual union already inherent in His Majesty’s Royal Blood and Person.’ After the acceptance of Parliament to at least create a commission for seeking union, James took every step that he could to further the union. By a proclamation on the 20th of November, 1604, he declared himself the ‘King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc’ and on the 28th of December, 1604 he began discussion in parliament to unite the English Pound and the Scottish Pound Scots to make sure the monetary transition of union would be able to be more smooth. On the 12th of January, 1605, all British ships were ordered to carry a new union flag devised by the College of Arms.
Sir Francis Bacon.
James I was also not above less than favorable methods of currying favor in Parliament to make sure that many MPs voted in favor of the union. Edwin Sandys, the MP for Kent, was the most fiercest critic of union between England and Scotland during the issuance of the commission, however the relief of the debts that he owed to the Royal Crownlands, and the quiet promise that the Sandys family estate would be expanded, suddenly made Sandys one of the most fiercest proponents of the union by the time the issuance of uniting the English Pound and Scots Pound came forward. William Maurice, the most prominent Welsh politician at the time remarked ‘The King is getting us into union……through money.’”
Edwin Sandys, the bribed unionist.
***
From A History of Catholics in Great Britain by Sean O’Connell.
“Most English Catholics had since the Reformation, been loyal subjects of the crown. Especially in the 1570s and 1580s however, a minority led by more militant Catholic exiles such as William Allen and Robert Parsons had been active in organizing propaganda occasionally aimed at the English crown. Allen for example, spent most of his adult life in the Continent as an exile, especially in France and Spain, who were England’s most steadfast enemies, while Parsons, a Catholic sympathizer whose views were cemented when he went abroad and became a Catholic priest and a Jesuit, led a brief mission to England in the early 1580s and then spent the rest of his life in exile, plotting against Elizabeth I and trying to woo James VI and I into granting toleration for Catholics. But the decade of the 1590s, with its feuding among English Catholics and the death of Allen, by then a cardinal, marks the end of ‘the heroic age’ of English Catholicism. ‘What was most obviously new about the English Catholic body after 1603’, writes John Bossy, ‘was its retreat from the political engagement which had marked the Elizabethan period.’ In 1603 there were even high hopes among Catholics, fostered by James before his accession, that they would be allowed some relief from the penal laws. Not all were as misguided as one Oxfordshire Catholic lady who rejoiced on Elizabeth’s death, ‘now we have a Kinge who ys of our religion and will restore us to our rightes’. But James was prepared to make a distinction between Catholics who were ‘quiet and well-minded men, peaceable subjects’ and those who were ‘factious stirrers of sedition and perturbers of the commonwealth’; as to the former, he ‘would be sorry to punish their bodies for the error of their minds’. Not all Protestant Englishmen, however, would go this far in extending toleration to Catholics; anti-Catholicism was as deep-rooted and widespread in seventeenth-century England.
And while many have derided James I that he was soft on Catholics during the early part of his reign, there is ample evidence that James saw the political dangers of a ‘soft’ policy towards Catholics. One of his earliest proclamations, in May 1603, ordered the collection of recusancy fines. In the 1604 session of parliament he encouraged the progress of legislation against Jesuit priests. Probably to counter suspicions raised by an unofficial embassy to the pope led by Sir James Lindsay, and by Catholic involvement in the Main and Bye Plots – two minor and abortive predominately Catholic plots hatched in England in summer 1603 aimed at abducting or assassinating James, which led to a small number of executions, though most of the leading figures were either pardoned or had their death sentences commuted to imprisonment – in February 1605 James inaugurated a purge against recusants. Gardiner estimated that 5,560 in all were convicted of recusancy as a result. And in November 1605 came the infamous Plot Against James.
The plotters.
On 5 November, a group of thirteen conspirators, led by Sir Robert Catesby and including Guy Fawkes, plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament when it was in session. However a defector from the conspirators told Cecil of the impending plot, which if successful would destroy the entire legislative council of the country and would kill the king, leaving the country in absolute administrative chaos. Usually when the King wasn’t there, the Parliament administered the country and when the Parliament wasn’t available, the King administered the country. It was a good failsafe and if both were destroyed, then the country was likely to fall into anarchy as partisanship destroyed the country. The rest of the conspirators were executed and imprisoned by the government, with the defector, Thomas Wintour had his sentence commuted to house arrest for a year.
Thomas Wintour, the defector.
When Parliament convened during the ending months of 1605, on December 21, 1605, two severe penal laws against Catholics were passed as a result of the plot going public. By the terms of one of them, all recusants were required to take an oath of allegiance that asserted that the papal claim to depose monarchs was impious and immoral as well as heretical. Somewhat smartly, both James I and Parliament refused from applying these penal laws with Ireland, where talks regarding union were still ongoing.”
***
From The Confession of Faith of York by Robert Jenkins
“While Catholic plots and political intrigues continued to ravage the English political arena with James I, the man hadn’t forgotten about the still drafted York Confession of Faith, being written down in York, Northern England.
On December 29, 1605, the writers of the draft of the confession of faith declared that after a year of writing and editing, the confession of faith was finished, and prepared for publication. The confession is a systematic exposition of Calvinist theology, influenced by Puritan, Convenant, and Congregationalist theologies. Puritan doctrines such as minimalism and a neo-sabbatarianism was present in the confession of the faith to get the Puritans to support the confession. It openly states that the Pope is the Anti-Christ, and stated that a Roman Catholic Mass was a form of idolatry that the magistrates and legal authorities of the state have the divine authority to punish and it also rules out marriage with non-christians.
The declaration of the York Confession of Faith.
The confession begins with its own interpretation and definition of the Bible’s contents and it also defines the role of the Church of national states with the Roman Catholic Church. It states that all of the old theological books, mainly the Bible, Old and New Testaments were the words of God, and the Bible was to considered to be the ultimate rule of faith and life, and that the scriptures were said to have possessed infallible truth and divine authority. Because of this declaration, it also stated that the holy scriptures were to be the Church’s final authority in all Religious disputes that may erupt in the country. It openly stated that the Holy scriptures were the ‘Supreme Judge of all Disputes’.
The reformist doctrine of pre-destination was affirmed by the confession, and it also recounted the Genesis Creation Narrative and the Fall of Man. According to the confession, all other sins are foreordained by the divine providence, and that all sinners were guilty before God under the divine wrath and the curse of law. It also dealt with the Convenant Theology, Salvation, Christian Liberty and Worship and Civil government and marriage. Church Government and Discipline is however the most interesting of the confession of the faith. Appeasing people who wanted to keep bishops, bishops were retained as the Holy Ministers of God, however their powers were to be kept in check and balanced out by a General Assembly and Synod, which were to be extremely decentralized though under a proper order of governance from top to bottom. It essentially combined the Presbyterian polity and Episcopal Polity of England and Scotland under the ruminations of compromise between the two. This was perhaps the greatest feat of the Confession of Faith of York, as it allowed the framework for the unification of the Church of Scotland and Church of England to take place.
By doing so, James I had laid the foundations for the 1608 Union of Churches after five years of hard negotiations and tensions. As the Scottish had been one half of the delegation who wrote down the York Confession of Faith, the Scots passed it into law into the Kirk as well, and soon after so did the English within the Church of England. With both of them serving under the new hybrid doctrine of the two countries, it provided for a slightly weird situation, and one full of uneasiness as people were now confused on future course of actions.
Nonetheless, in early 1606, the King, and led by Richard Vaughan, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop James Nicholson, the Moderator of the Kirk, began working towards a final resolution that would now unify the Church of England and Scotland into the Church of Britain.”
***
From The Great Matches of Europe by Philip de Klerk
“Henry Frederick, the Duke of Cornwall, and future Prince of Wales of England and Scotland, by 1605 was now at the age of 11, and by the next few years it was deemed necessary to find the young heir to the British throne a suitable spouse. James I, in accordance with his ideals of peace and becoming a peacemaker wanted to tie his family to another family which would be able to make sure that England’s security on the continent would be secured and looked after.
The two most likely candidates - Maria Elizabeth of Sweden and Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg.
Henry Frederick was to become the King of England, Scotland and Ireland, ruled and governed by protestants, and as a result, a protestant match was required as stated by Parliament and by the will of James I. The three most looked after candidates for the marriage would be Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, Charlotte Louise of Hanau-Muzenberg, or her sister, Amalie Elizabeth of Hanau Munzenberg. They were all younger than Henry Frederick, but not by much. Another prime candidate was Princess Maria Elizabeth of Sweden, the daughter of King Charles IX of Sweden and Christina of Holstein-Gottorp. Though Anne of Denmark, who was Henry Frederick’s mother, was loathe to marry her son to a Swede, the political advantages of marrying into Sweden was there for all to see, as it would allow the English to increase their trading presence in the Baltic, which was by all rights a Dano-Swedish lake by the early 17th century.
In the end negotiations with both Brandenburg and Sweden were opened by Anne of Denmark, who was to take a lead role in finding Henry Frederick a suitable bride. Meanwhile as a failsafe, negotiations through Anne of Denmark also opened roads of avenues for negotiations with Holstein-Gottorp regarding Dorothea Augusta of Schleswig Holstein Gottorp who was also regarded as a potential spouse for the Prince of Wales.”
***
***
From The Union of Crowns by Robert William Johnson
“Perhaps the greatest problem that arose between James I and Parliament was that of money. This is perhaps James I’s greatest controversial part of his history and the fact that he often went through questionable means of receiving funds was quite frowned down upon by the parliament, who deemed it a fundamental right of the parliament to collect funds for the country and the not the monarchy, beside their own royal holdings which generated some income. And while many dissenters against the monarchy during the time of James I liked to portray James I’s bellicose stance during 1604 as going against his own ideals of peace and pacifism, one must not forget that keeping war as a last resort, didn’t mean that James I wasn’t afraid of using the
military potential of England and Scotland combined. James pacifism definitely had very definite limits that was forgotten by many due to his rather proud proclamations that he wanted to become a peacemaker and not a warmonger.
A coin commemorating the Treaty of London 1604
James I had signed the Treaty of London (1604) with Spain, however the hatred that Protestant England had for Catholic Spain was intense, and the multigenerational conflict had imbued deep seated hatred for anything Spanish. Strategically too, the prime purpose of war between Spain and England, the defense of the Dutch against Spanish invasion, was not abandoned despite the popular image that it was. English supplies still made their way into Dutch hands and the rather big loophole that the Treaty of London left unexplained was exploited, as English commercial relations with the Dutch expanded after the treaty was written down and signed on the initiative of James I. James I knew very well that Spain had only signed the treaty because of the fact that the 9 Years War in Ireland was over, and with no proxies to aid them fight England directly, there was no point in further fighting. The Treaty of London had therefore extricated England from a very costly war that was nearly ruinous to the English economy without harming the interests of her Dutch allies. Even the contemporary critic of James I had to admit that the Scottish King of England had committed himself to a masterful diplomatic stroke.
James’s reputation as the peacemaker was also enhanced by the fact that he had not only led to greater accord between England and Scotland, but he had also brought peace into Ireland, a place which for the past nine years had been a virtual death sentence to any poor English lad who had to be pressed into the armies of England. By surrendering in the last months of Elizabeth I’s reign, the principal leader of the Irish rebels in Ulster, the Earl of Tyrone, had not totally destroyed his power. In fact James I rehabilitated the old rebellious Gaelic lords of Ireland, keeping in favor of the crown in case the other Anglo-Norman lords of Ireland got too rebellious against the English crown. Ironically Lord Tyrone and the Earl of Tyrconnel, both of whom had been hardline English opponents, soon became the court favorites of James I from Ireland and both of them became staunch allies of the English crown.
Hugh O'Neil, the Earl of Tyrone
Both Tyrone and Tyrconnel became allies of James I to such an extent, that they became the principal advocates of a full union between England and Ireland, in the same manner as the movement of unifying England and Scotland was starting to form. Both Tyrconnel and Tyrone understood that as things stood, some sort of Catholic relief for the Catholics of Ireland was by and large impossible. Despite James I’s rather tolerant views towards Irish Catholicism, the English Parliament would only entertain views of some kind of Irish Catholic Emancipation if the Irish finally subjected themselves to full English rule. Tyrone and Tyrconnel decided to exploit that. They wanted Irish Catholics to be able to inherit land, own property, allow the continuation of their schools in Ireland and allow the Roman Catholics, based on property and income, be allowed to vote for the Irish House of Commons, and retain their access to middle class professions such as legal society and grand jurors. Throughout 1604 and 1605, the idea that union with England would save the Irish Catholic Code swept throughout Ireland, and the English government was slightly caught up in the mess, as James I encouraged the feeling.
Among the English, the idea that the Irish were also pushing for union came as a surprise and astounded the English government on how to act. They liked the fact that they would be able to consolidate their hold on the Irish, and subject them to English Law, however of course the issue of retaining the old Irish rights remained a particular issue in the Parliament, and while many were willing to accept union with Scotland, even advocates of Union with Scotland were reluctant to endorse any idea of union with Ireland. Nonetheless, the Irish began to stage campaigns, associations and meetings with Lord Tyrone at its head for what Lord Tyrone called ‘An Equal…..and Tolerant Union’. During a meeting of the Irish Association for Union and Crown, or in Irish as it was called back then, Cumann Aontas Agus Coronach na hEirann, Lord Tyrone would state a catchy phrase which would eventually become the Motto of the Kingdom of Great Britain. ‘Unum in Pace, Secundas res Uel Aduersas’ which roughly translates as ‘Unified in Peace, Prosperity and Adversity’.
And like stated above, there were many fears that James I’s pacifism would endanger English commercial, diplomatic and geopolitical interests in the long run. James I proved to be more than willing to keep limits on the pacific rhetoric that he had adopted. During the Ottoman-Safavid War of 1603-1618, the English East India Company meddled in the war in the Persian Gulf to secure trading rights in the Pirate Coast of Bahrayn and Safavid pirates were extinguished from the Indian Ocean. English privateers were dispatched in secret to deal with the Portuguese who were acting Spanish proxies in the Portuguese-Dutch War, and English ships routinely flew Dutch flags to aid the Dutch in several naval battles against the Spaniards and Portuguese. This unhidden war that was developing between England and Spain inflamed tensions, but made sure to steer clear of expensive open conflict and made sure that James was seen adhering to English interests in parliament and for the country, and the hit that his popularity took in the public due to his endorsement of the Treaty of London 1604 took started to recover.
An English Ship in the Persian Gulf in the service of the East India Company during the Ottoman-Safavid War of 1603-18
James also finally got what he wanted from parliament in late 1604 and early 1605, when the English Parliament, finally agreed to allow the Commission of English and Scottish Delegates For Union, under the leadership of the 1st Earl of Haddington and Sir Francis Bacon to be established to find a proper compromise to seek Union between the Kingdom of Scotland and Kingdom of England. Haddington represented the Scottish delegation and Sir Francis Bacon represented the English delegation. The very essence of the commission was to ‘perform and accomplish the real and effectual union already inherent in His Majesty’s Royal Blood and Person.’ After the acceptance of Parliament to at least create a commission for seeking union, James took every step that he could to further the union. By a proclamation on the 20th of November, 1604, he declared himself the ‘King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc’ and on the 28th of December, 1604 he began discussion in parliament to unite the English Pound and the Scottish Pound Scots to make sure the monetary transition of union would be able to be more smooth. On the 12th of January, 1605, all British ships were ordered to carry a new union flag devised by the College of Arms.
Sir Francis Bacon.
James I was also not above less than favorable methods of currying favor in Parliament to make sure that many MPs voted in favor of the union. Edwin Sandys, the MP for Kent, was the most fiercest critic of union between England and Scotland during the issuance of the commission, however the relief of the debts that he owed to the Royal Crownlands, and the quiet promise that the Sandys family estate would be expanded, suddenly made Sandys one of the most fiercest proponents of the union by the time the issuance of uniting the English Pound and Scots Pound came forward. William Maurice, the most prominent Welsh politician at the time remarked ‘The King is getting us into union……through money.’”
Edwin Sandys, the bribed unionist.
***
From A History of Catholics in Great Britain by Sean O’Connell.
“Most English Catholics had since the Reformation, been loyal subjects of the crown. Especially in the 1570s and 1580s however, a minority led by more militant Catholic exiles such as William Allen and Robert Parsons had been active in organizing propaganda occasionally aimed at the English crown. Allen for example, spent most of his adult life in the Continent as an exile, especially in France and Spain, who were England’s most steadfast enemies, while Parsons, a Catholic sympathizer whose views were cemented when he went abroad and became a Catholic priest and a Jesuit, led a brief mission to England in the early 1580s and then spent the rest of his life in exile, plotting against Elizabeth I and trying to woo James VI and I into granting toleration for Catholics. But the decade of the 1590s, with its feuding among English Catholics and the death of Allen, by then a cardinal, marks the end of ‘the heroic age’ of English Catholicism. ‘What was most obviously new about the English Catholic body after 1603’, writes John Bossy, ‘was its retreat from the political engagement which had marked the Elizabethan period.’ In 1603 there were even high hopes among Catholics, fostered by James before his accession, that they would be allowed some relief from the penal laws. Not all were as misguided as one Oxfordshire Catholic lady who rejoiced on Elizabeth’s death, ‘now we have a Kinge who ys of our religion and will restore us to our rightes’. But James was prepared to make a distinction between Catholics who were ‘quiet and well-minded men, peaceable subjects’ and those who were ‘factious stirrers of sedition and perturbers of the commonwealth’; as to the former, he ‘would be sorry to punish their bodies for the error of their minds’. Not all Protestant Englishmen, however, would go this far in extending toleration to Catholics; anti-Catholicism was as deep-rooted and widespread in seventeenth-century England.
And while many have derided James I that he was soft on Catholics during the early part of his reign, there is ample evidence that James saw the political dangers of a ‘soft’ policy towards Catholics. One of his earliest proclamations, in May 1603, ordered the collection of recusancy fines. In the 1604 session of parliament he encouraged the progress of legislation against Jesuit priests. Probably to counter suspicions raised by an unofficial embassy to the pope led by Sir James Lindsay, and by Catholic involvement in the Main and Bye Plots – two minor and abortive predominately Catholic plots hatched in England in summer 1603 aimed at abducting or assassinating James, which led to a small number of executions, though most of the leading figures were either pardoned or had their death sentences commuted to imprisonment – in February 1605 James inaugurated a purge against recusants. Gardiner estimated that 5,560 in all were convicted of recusancy as a result. And in November 1605 came the infamous Plot Against James.
The plotters.
On 5 November, a group of thirteen conspirators, led by Sir Robert Catesby and including Guy Fawkes, plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament when it was in session. However a defector from the conspirators told Cecil of the impending plot, which if successful would destroy the entire legislative council of the country and would kill the king, leaving the country in absolute administrative chaos. Usually when the King wasn’t there, the Parliament administered the country and when the Parliament wasn’t available, the King administered the country. It was a good failsafe and if both were destroyed, then the country was likely to fall into anarchy as partisanship destroyed the country. The rest of the conspirators were executed and imprisoned by the government, with the defector, Thomas Wintour had his sentence commuted to house arrest for a year.
Thomas Wintour, the defector.
When Parliament convened during the ending months of 1605, on December 21, 1605, two severe penal laws against Catholics were passed as a result of the plot going public. By the terms of one of them, all recusants were required to take an oath of allegiance that asserted that the papal claim to depose monarchs was impious and immoral as well as heretical. Somewhat smartly, both James I and Parliament refused from applying these penal laws with Ireland, where talks regarding union were still ongoing.”
***
From The Confession of Faith of York by Robert Jenkins
“While Catholic plots and political intrigues continued to ravage the English political arena with James I, the man hadn’t forgotten about the still drafted York Confession of Faith, being written down in York, Northern England.
On December 29, 1605, the writers of the draft of the confession of faith declared that after a year of writing and editing, the confession of faith was finished, and prepared for publication. The confession is a systematic exposition of Calvinist theology, influenced by Puritan, Convenant, and Congregationalist theologies. Puritan doctrines such as minimalism and a neo-sabbatarianism was present in the confession of the faith to get the Puritans to support the confession. It openly states that the Pope is the Anti-Christ, and stated that a Roman Catholic Mass was a form of idolatry that the magistrates and legal authorities of the state have the divine authority to punish and it also rules out marriage with non-christians.
The declaration of the York Confession of Faith.
The confession begins with its own interpretation and definition of the Bible’s contents and it also defines the role of the Church of national states with the Roman Catholic Church. It states that all of the old theological books, mainly the Bible, Old and New Testaments were the words of God, and the Bible was to considered to be the ultimate rule of faith and life, and that the scriptures were said to have possessed infallible truth and divine authority. Because of this declaration, it also stated that the holy scriptures were to be the Church’s final authority in all Religious disputes that may erupt in the country. It openly stated that the Holy scriptures were the ‘Supreme Judge of all Disputes’.
The reformist doctrine of pre-destination was affirmed by the confession, and it also recounted the Genesis Creation Narrative and the Fall of Man. According to the confession, all other sins are foreordained by the divine providence, and that all sinners were guilty before God under the divine wrath and the curse of law. It also dealt with the Convenant Theology, Salvation, Christian Liberty and Worship and Civil government and marriage. Church Government and Discipline is however the most interesting of the confession of the faith. Appeasing people who wanted to keep bishops, bishops were retained as the Holy Ministers of God, however their powers were to be kept in check and balanced out by a General Assembly and Synod, which were to be extremely decentralized though under a proper order of governance from top to bottom. It essentially combined the Presbyterian polity and Episcopal Polity of England and Scotland under the ruminations of compromise between the two. This was perhaps the greatest feat of the Confession of Faith of York, as it allowed the framework for the unification of the Church of Scotland and Church of England to take place.
By doing so, James I had laid the foundations for the 1608 Union of Churches after five years of hard negotiations and tensions. As the Scottish had been one half of the delegation who wrote down the York Confession of Faith, the Scots passed it into law into the Kirk as well, and soon after so did the English within the Church of England. With both of them serving under the new hybrid doctrine of the two countries, it provided for a slightly weird situation, and one full of uneasiness as people were now confused on future course of actions.
Nonetheless, in early 1606, the King, and led by Richard Vaughan, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop James Nicholson, the Moderator of the Kirk, began working towards a final resolution that would now unify the Church of England and Scotland into the Church of Britain.”
***
From The Great Matches of Europe by Philip de Klerk
“Henry Frederick, the Duke of Cornwall, and future Prince of Wales of England and Scotland, by 1605 was now at the age of 11, and by the next few years it was deemed necessary to find the young heir to the British throne a suitable spouse. James I, in accordance with his ideals of peace and becoming a peacemaker wanted to tie his family to another family which would be able to make sure that England’s security on the continent would be secured and looked after.
The two most likely candidates - Maria Elizabeth of Sweden and Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg.
Henry Frederick was to become the King of England, Scotland and Ireland, ruled and governed by protestants, and as a result, a protestant match was required as stated by Parliament and by the will of James I. The three most looked after candidates for the marriage would be Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, Charlotte Louise of Hanau-Muzenberg, or her sister, Amalie Elizabeth of Hanau Munzenberg. They were all younger than Henry Frederick, but not by much. Another prime candidate was Princess Maria Elizabeth of Sweden, the daughter of King Charles IX of Sweden and Christina of Holstein-Gottorp. Though Anne of Denmark, who was Henry Frederick’s mother, was loathe to marry her son to a Swede, the political advantages of marrying into Sweden was there for all to see, as it would allow the English to increase their trading presence in the Baltic, which was by all rights a Dano-Swedish lake by the early 17th century.
In the end negotiations with both Brandenburg and Sweden were opened by Anne of Denmark, who was to take a lead role in finding Henry Frederick a suitable bride. Meanwhile as a failsafe, negotiations through Anne of Denmark also opened roads of avenues for negotiations with Holstein-Gottorp regarding Dorothea Augusta of Schleswig Holstein Gottorp who was also regarded as a potential spouse for the Prince of Wales.”
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James I: Scotland's English King mentions how James I was found of Welshmen due to their similarities to the Scottish Gaelic lords.
I like it. Nice to see a Union of thr Church of Britain, it will help further seal the future political Union.
Also I’m wondering how Britain can make Ireland Protestant, basically make the whole thing like Northern Ireland because the York Confession’s views on Catholics aren’t gonna get them any points there.
Ireland going protestant isn't really happening though a large minority can be made through evangelizing measures at this point. I was more looking towards a proto-Quebec Act for Ireland.
Ahh yes. A Quebec style tolerance will definitely make the Irish happy and relatively loyal. That sounds good.
yeah it would be a good idea but actually having something like that come around is the hard part.
I’m looking forward to seeing who Henry Frederick ends up with! As a Dane, I must agree with Queen Anne that I am loath to see a Swedish match disturb the British-Danish relations, but Maria Eleonora wasn’t exactly a stable person either from what I gather. The Gottorp match is interesting. Henry Frederick and her would be first cousins, but it would be a decent match. Gottorp also hadn’t evolved into the Danish ulcer it would later become at this point.
yeah Anne won't like the Swedish match. The Gottorp match is a contingency. They are 1st cousins through Frederick II, however 1st cousin marriages, whilst going out of favor, was still used during this time.
that said, not everyone will like the union which seems likely ittl. The Highlander Lords will certainly not like it in Scotland and neither will a good Englishmen.
On the Irish situation, i intend to make sure that the Gaelic Lords, well at least a good amount of them, survive ittl in Ireland. Which will have interesting butterflies.
On the Irish situation, i intend to make sure that the Gaelic Lords, well at least a good amount of them, survive ittl in Ireland. Which will have interesting butterflies.
I'm not sure he was very fond of Gaelic speakers considering he played a big role in that whole culture's destruction with the establishment of the statutes of Iona
The survival of the native Irish nobility will have huge ramifications since one of the main driving factors behind Irish discontent with the union is the fact that they were relegated to a second class citizen status in their own country with the anglo-scottish protestant ascendancy.
A surviving Irish nobility is a massive deal, after all there's a reason why the flight of the earls is such a culturally significantly event in Irish history.