Charles Stuart, King and Martyr
Homily preached at Thursday Noon Healing Eucharist
Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland Oregon
The Very Rev. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
Rector and Convocation Dean
January 31, 2019
Sirach 2:12-18, Psalm 20, 1 Tim 6:12-16, Matt 20:25-28
O God, give us hearts to feel and
love. Take away our hearts of stone and
give us hearts of flesh.
“King of Kings and Lord of lords, whose
faithful servant Charles prayed for those who persecuted him and died living in
the hope of your eternal kingdom: grant
us by your grace so to follow his example that we may love and bless our
enemies, through the intercession of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is
alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and
for ever. Amen.” (CoE Collect
for the Feast of Charles Stuart, King and Martyr)
Yesterday,
January 30, in the calendars of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church
of Scotland, is the commemoration of Charles Stuart, King of England and Scotland,
executed in 1649 by the Puritan-controlled Parliament and its Army. Charles, considered a “man of blood” and
traitor against the English people by those who tried him, was immediately
hailed as a “royal martyr to the faith” by his supporters, and declared a saint
when the Prayer Book, bishops, and the monarchy itself were restored after 10
years of rule by the Puritan Commonwealth and Protectorate (military junta). The Episcopal Church has never added him
to its calendar because the “cult of the royal martyr” was seen as monarchist
propaganda undermining proper American patriotic republicanism. Tories and Anglicans have always loved
Charles; Whigs and radical protestants, hated him.
Charles’
trial has provided the legal precedents for most trials since of sovereigns
accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, whether at Nuremburg against
the Nazi leadership, or at the Hague against Serbian war-lords behind “ethnic
cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia.
Charles for his part never recognized the authority of the court, and
defended his actions as the unfortunate but legitimate and necessary acts of a
sovereign faced with mutiny and treason by the political elites of his
people. War broke out after he tried
to bring religious uniformity to his two realms (Scotland and England) by
trying to impose Prayer Book worship and bishops on Scotland. This forced him to call a Parliament to raise
funds, which promptly sided with the Calvinists in Scotland, voted to make
itself independent of the King’s pleasure by refusing to disband on royal
orders alone, and began raising an army to pressure the King to abandon his
devotion to Arminian, or anti-Calvinist, religion. The House of Commons was motivated in part by
opposition to Charles’ even-handed approach to Roman Catholic-Protestant
warfare on the continent as well as his marriage to a French Roman Catholic
(Marie-Henriette, after whom Maryland is named).
When
finally Charles was captured, radical Calvinists wanted to try him and abolish
the monarchy. They could only do this,
however, if they controlled the Parliament. So they staged a palace coup by arresting and
excluding from chambers a little more than half of the House of Commons: the moderate
MPs comprising the majority. Oliver
Cromwell and the remaining “Rump” Parliament offered Charles a choice: undergoing capital trial for his part in the
war or granting the “Rump” Parliament everything it asked for, including a limited
constitutional monarchy with few royal prerogatives, banning the Prayer Book,
abolishing Bishops, and enforcing conformity to Calvinism. Though Charles had previously shown (with the
Scots) a willingness to negotiate some of these things on a temporary basis, he
was unwilling, as he said, to accept Cromwell’s final offer and turn his back
on the “True Religion” in order to save his earthly crown and his head. So he was tried, found guilty, and was
beheaded at Whitehall on January 30, 1649.
Though
I live in a Republic that gained its birth through violent revolt against the
British crown, and firmly support the legal principle of trying rulers for
crimes against humanity, I commemorate and honor Charles Stuart the Martyr each
year as a form of familial penance: one
of my ancestors, Col. John Hutchinson, governor of Nottingham Castle, was one
of the “commissioners” (jury members) in the trial who signed Charles’ death
warrant, one of the “regicides.” After
the restoration of the monarchy, Hutchinson publicly confessed his error and
sin in the execution of the King, and expressed his deepest remorse for the
action. Though exempted from Charles
II’s Act of Indemnity and Oblivion pardoning Civil War actions, Hutchinson did
not suffer execution as a traitor: his
early break with Cromwell, his refusal to order reprisal killings of Cavalier
prisoners, and his wife Lucy’s family ties to the men who brought the monarchy
back meant he was allowed to die in prison rather than being drawn, hanged, and
quartered.
In
our Church calendars, we honor both Protestant martyrs under Queen Mary and
Roman Catholic martyrs under Elizabeth I.
If we are to honor in our calendars the sacrifices and faithful
Christian witness of Calvinists, we need to honor the sacrifices and witness of
Anglicans like Charles as well.
Before
his death, Charles wrote a letter to his son, crowned as Charles II after the
monarchy, greatly reduced in its powers, was restored following ten years of
rule by the Puritans, who proved to most Englishmen that they could be every
bit as tyrannical and incompetent as a bad king. In part, he said:
“Above
all, I would have you, as I hope you are already, well grounded and settled in
your religion, the best profession of which I have ever esteemed that of the
Church of England…. I may, without
vanity, turn the reproach of my sufferings, as to the world’s censure, into the
honor of a kind of martyrdom, as to the testimony of my conscience—the
troublers of my kingdoms have nothing else to object against me but this, that
I prefer religion and laws established before those alterations they
propounded. And so indeed I do, and ever
shall, till I am convinced by better arguments that what hitherto have been
chiefly used against me—tumults, armies, and prisons. …I cannot despair, either of [God’s] mercy,
or of my people’s love and pity. At
worst, I trust I shall go before you to a better kingdom, which God hath
prepared for me, and me for it, through my Savior Jesus Christ, to whose mercy
I commend you, and all mine. Farewell,
till we meet, if not on earth, yet in heaven.”
Grace
and Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment