When William of Orange Came to Hungerford
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When William of Orange came to Hungerford When William of Orange came to Hungerford – Dr Hugh Pihlens Thank you, Helen, for your kind introduction! Tonight, I am going to talk about the most important piece of national history to have taken place in Hungerford – the story of William of Orange, and his visit to The Bear in 1688. I am going to explain quite a lot of the background history leading up to his visit – and indeed something about what happened after it. (**) The Bear Hotel, Hungerford The Bear in Charnham Street is, of course, Hungerford’s most historic hotel. It started in the 13th century as a lodging house associated with the adjacent Priory of St John the Baptist for travellers along the King’s Way – the ancient and important east-west route that became the Bath and Bristol road. (**) The Bear Hotel, Hungerford (**) On the wall of the Bear Inn is a round slate commemorative plaque – to an event that took place here 330 years ago - in 1688. It says…. (**) “William and Mary. On 7th December 1688 William of Orange arrived at The Bear on his march from Torbay to London Meeting here on the morning of the 8th James II’s Commissioners Lords Halifax Godolphin and Nottingham. Hungerford Celebration 1688-1988” As I have said, this event was Hungerford’s most important contribution to our British national history. My task this evening is to explain exactly what the plaque commemorates, but we need to start the background story right back in the 16th century. (**) Britain in the 16th and 17th century Most countries around the world have endured periods of strife and conflict at some stage of their history. Sometimes this has involved wars with their neighbouring countries, sometimes with themselves – civil war. Britain is no exception. Fights with neighbouring countries were largely about power, influence and territory. But underlying so much of this internal conflict was… (**) religion – the source of much conflict. Let’s look at our Tudor royal family, who started it all! (**) The Tudor Royal Family Henry VIII was born near the start of the 16th century in 1509. The Reformation was soon spreading across Europe – started by Martin Luther in 1517. In the 1530s, as part of his efforts to divorce Catherine of Aragon who had failed to give him his much-wanted son and heir, he famously broke away from the Pope and the Catholic Church and established the Church of England in 1531. He began the Dissolution of the Monasteries. I doubt he ever imagined that that this schism with Rome would have ongoing repercussions in England for centuries to come, with ongoing conflicting loyalties to the two religions. (**) Edward VI: His son Edward VI was an even more fanatical Protestant. He completed the dissolution of the monasteries and priories (including our own Priory of St John in Bridge Street). (**) Mary I, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, was an ardent Catholic – “Bloody Mary”. She had at least 280 key dissenters burned at the stake. (**) Elizabeth I, daughter of Anne Boleyn, was Protestant again! Never having married, she died with no heir. She had relied heavily on her trusty advisor William Cecil, and after his death in 1598, on William Cecil’s son Robert. Robert schemed to set up James VI of Scotland to succeed Elizabeth, but…James was the son of Elizabeth’s Catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots, who Elizabeth eventually had beheaded as Mary had plotted to take the English throne. …there was trouble ahead! (**) James I, 1603-1625 So, when Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603 the crown went to James VI of Scotland. He was a great-great-grandson of Henry VII of England and became King James I of England. Despite his mother having been a staunch Catholic, James was a protestant, and only partly tolerant of Catholics. There were ongoing religious problems – exemplified by The Gunpowder Plot of 5th November 1605, when dissident Catholic Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up parliament. (**) After the Gunpowder Plot, James sanctioned harsh measures to control non- conforming English Catholics. The Popish Recusants Act of 1605 • forbade Roman Catholics from practising the professions of law and medicine • it allowed magistrates to search their houses for arms • it provided a new oath of allegiance, which denied the power of the Pope to depose monarchs, and • any recusant was to be fined £60 or to forfeit two-thirds of his land if he didn’t receive the sacrament at least once a year in his Church of England parish church. • The Act also made it high treason to obey the authority of Rome rather than the king But James was conciliatory towards all Catholics who took the Oath of Allegiance and he tolerated crypto-Catholicism even at court. There were very few prosecutions under this Act. James I married Anne of Denmark – and they had three children. The elder son died, but on the death of James I in 1625, the next son became king – as Charles I (**)Charles I, 1625-1649 Now Charles was a different kettle of fish! He was a covert (hidden) Catholic. He married the Catholic Henrietta Maria of France. His own Catholic leanings caused increasing tension. Charles believed in the Divine Right of Kings to govern. There were ongoing battles with parliament which sought to curb his royal prerogative. Underlying the unrest was absolutism – the supremacy of the Crown over all individuals and interest in the state, over parliament, the law, the church and the nobility. As time went on, Charles wanted Catholicism to be imposed on England by absolutism. But Catholicism and Absolutism were out of date in England by this time. The Reformation, nearly a century earlier, had resulted in the majority of the country being Protestant – but some Puritans felt it was not Protestant enough, and some Roman Catholics continued to support Rome. The situation deteriorated to such an extent that the country found itself in a major Civil War – Crown v Parliament. (**)The English Civil War, 1642-1649 Crown versus Parliament. Catholic versus Protestantism. The war dragged on – tearing families apart up and down the country. In the end about 100,000 people were killed. Eventually, in 1649 the Parliamentarians won – and King Charles I was killed… (**) Charles I beheaded, 30 Jan 1649 … in a very public beheading at the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London on 30th Jan 1649. (**) The Commonwealth, 1649-1660 There then followed a period of “Commonwealth”, with the Puritans led by Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector. (**) But after his death in 1658, when his son Richard took over, things were less well organised. People grew tired of rule by the Puritans, and support for the Crown grew again. The monarchy was restored in 1660 with the crowning of a new king - Charles I’s son became Charles II. (**) Charles II, 1660-1685 So.. Charles II was the eldest son of Charles I. He returned from exile in France and landed at Dover on 29th May – his 30th birthday! The country breathed a sigh of relief when the monarchy was restored under Charles II. With Charles II on the throne, they felt things were getting “back to normal”. But there were problems – Charles spent money in great excess. The court was extravagant, spending huge sums on buying back lost art collections, and in general profligate living. Furthermore, Charles II still believed in absolutism and the Divine Right of Kings. (**) And there were other problems. This was the time of the Great Plague in London in 1665, when around 100,000 people died in London, and of the Great Fire of London, that destroyed so much of the city in 1666. What about religion? (**) The Church of England was re-established as the national religion, although Charles himself favoured religious tolerance. Indeed in 1672 he passed a Declaration of Indulgence in an attempt to extend religious liberty to both Protestant nonconformists and to Roman Catholics in his realms, by suspending the Penal Laws that punished Catholic recusants. However, this was withdrawn by Parliament the following year – and replaced by the 1673 Test Act, which required anyone entering public service in England to deny the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and take Anglican communion. Despite Charles being popular, the underlying old problems persisted – many of them religious, and others related to Charles’ ongoing belief in the “divine right of Kings” – at the expense of parliament. (**) In the end he dissolved the English Parliament in 1681 and ruled alone until his death on 6 February 1685. (Interestingly, he was received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed). (**) Charles II and his wife Catherine of Braganza had no legitimate children, although Charles himself acknowledged at least twelve illegitimate ones! On his death the throne of England passed to his younger brother, who became King James II. (**) King James II, 1685-1688 The trouble is that James had definite Catholic leanings – he was pro-Catholic and had actually converted to Catholicism in 1668…., and he was pro-French. And he still believed in the Divine Right of Kings to govern! His first wife, Anne Hyde, was Anglican, but she died in 1671, and he then married the staunch Catholic Mary of Modena (in Italy). But whilst Mary of Modena had many pregnancies, none of the babies survived. (**) Across the country there was increasing opposition to his Catholic ways. Parliament grew restless, and James suspended it - and two years later he dissolved it. But these were sensitive times. On 4th April 1688, King James passed his Declaration of Indulgence, allegedly a first step at establishing freedom of religion in the British Isles, although the king's intention was really to promote his own minority religion, Catholicism, reviled by the majority of his subjects.