seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Category Archives: Early Modern Ireland (1536-1691)


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Birth of Valentine Greatrakes, Faith Healer

valentine-greatrakes

Valentine Greatrakes, Irish faith healer also known as “Greatorex” or “The Stroker,” is born on February 14, 1628, at Affane, County Waterford. He toured England in 1666, claiming to cure people by the laying on of hands.

Greatrakes is the son of William Greatrakes and Mary, daughter of Sir Edward Harris, Chief Justice of Munster, who are English Protestants settlers. He goes to the free school at Lismore until he is 13 years of age and is designed for the college of Dublin. However, when the Irish Rebellion of 1641 breaks out, he and his mother flee into England, where he is received by his great uncle, Edmund Harris. After Harris dies, his mother places him with John Daniel Getsius, a German minister, of Stoke Gabriel, in Devonshire.

After five or six years in England, Greatrakes returns to his native country, which he finds in a distracted state, and therefore spends a year in contemplation at the Castle of Cappoquin. In 1649 he is a lieutenant in Lord Broghill‘s regiment in the English Parliamentary army in Ireland, then campaigning in Munster against the Irish Royalists. In 1656, with a great part of the army being disbanded, Greatrakes retires to Affine, his native place, and is made clerk of the peace for County Cork, Register for transplantation, and a Justice of the Peace. However, he loses these positions after the Restoration.

Greatrakes seems to have been very religious. His outlook is grave but simple. He says himself, that ever since the year 1662 he has felt a strange impulse or persuasion that he has the gift of curing the King’s evil. This suggestion becomes so strong, that he strokes several persons, and cures them.

Three years afterwards, an epidemical fever is raging in the country, he is again persuaded that he can also cure the fever. He makes the experiment, and he affirms to his satisfaction that he cures all who come to him. At length, in April 1665, another kind of inspiration suggests to him, that he has the gift of healing wounds and ulcers. He even finds that he cures convulsions, the dropsy, and many other distempers.

On April 6, 1665, Robert Phayre, a former Commonwealth Governor of County Cork, is living at Cahermore, in that county, when he is visited by Greatrakes, who had served in his regiment in 1649. Greatrakes cures Phayre in a few minutes of an acute ague. John Flamsteed, the famous astronomer, then aged 19, goes to Ireland in August 1665 to be touched by Greatrakes for a natural weakness of constitution, but receives no benefit. Crowds flock to him from all parts, and he performs such extraordinary cures, that he is summoned into the bishop’s court at Lismore, and, not having a licence for practising, is forbidden to lay hands on anyone else in Ireland.

In 1665, Greatrakes is invited to England by his old commander, Lord Broghill, now Earl of Orrery, to cure Anne, Viscountess Conway of an inveterate headache. He arrives in England in early 1666 but fails to cure the Viscountess. Undaunted, he travels through the country healing the sick.

King Charles II, being informed of it, summons Greatrakes to Whitehall. While unpersuaded that Greatrakes has miraculous power, the king does not forbid him to continue his ministrations.

Every day Greatrakes goes to a place in London where many sick persons, of all ranks in society, assemble. Pains, gout, rheumatism, convulsions, and so forth are allegedly driven by his touch from one body part to another. Upon reaching the extremities, all symptoms of these ailments cease. As the treatment consists entirely of stroking, Greatrakes is called The Stroker. He ascribes certain disorders to the work of evil spirits. When persons possessed by such spirits see Greatrakes or hear his voice, the afflicted fall to the ground or into violent agitation. He then proceeds to cure them by the same method of stroking. While many are skeptical, Greatrakes does find zealous advocates for the efficacy of his healing powers.

In 1667, Greatrakes returns to Ireland and resumes farming in 1668 on £1,000 a year. Although he lives for many years, he no longer keeps up the reputation of performing the strange cures which procured him a name. But in this his case is very singular, that on the strictest enquiry no sort of blemish is ever thrown upon his character, nor does any of those curious and learned persons, who espouse his cause, draw any imputation upon themselves.

Greatrakes dies on November 28, 1682, at Affane, County Waterford. It is believed that he may be buried in Lismore Church or under the aisle of the old Affane Church near to his father.


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Birth of John Stearne, Founder of Irish College of Physicians

john-stearne

John Stearne, Irish academic and founder of the Irish College of Physicians, is born at Ardbraccan, County Meath, on November 26, 1624.

At the time of Stearne’s birth, his grand-uncle, James Ussher, is Bishop of Meath. His father, John Stearne of Cambridge, who settled in County Down and married Mabel Bermingham, a niece of Ussher, is remote relation of Archbishop Richard Sterne.

Stearne enters Trinity College, Dublin at the age of fifteen in 1639, and obtains a scholarship in 1641. On the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Stearne leaves for England, and in 1643 goes to Cambridge, where he studies medicine at Sidney Sussex College, and collects material for his first work, Animi Medela. He remains at Cambridge about seven years, and then spends some time at Oxford, where he is welcomed by Seth Ward, then fellow of Wadham College. He is elected a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin in 1643, a position from which he is ejected by order of the Rump Parliament. Upon his return to Ireland in 1651 he is restored to his fellowship by Henry Cromwell, with whom he is on good terms, and to whom he dedicates one of his books.

In 1656 Stearne is appointed the first Hebrew lecturer in Trinity College, Dublin, receiving the degree of M.D. in 1658, and that of LL.D. in 1660. In 1659 he resigns his fellowship but is appointed to a senior fellowship in 1660, after the Restoration, receiving a dispensation from the statutes of the university respecting celibacy. He becomes in the same year professor of law. During his tenure of these various offices, Stearne practises as a physician in Dublin, obtaining special permission to reside outside the walls of the college.

Stearne is best known as the founder of the Irish College of Physicians. In 1660 he proposes to the university that Trinity Hall, situated in Back Lane, Dublin, then affiliated to the university, of which he has been constituted president in 1654, should be a college of physicians. The arrangement is sanctioned, and Stearne, on the nomination of the provost and senior fellows of Trinity College, in whom the appointment is vested, becomes its first president. No students are to be admitted who do not belong to Trinity College.

In 1662 Stearne is appointed for life professor of medicine in the university. In 1667 a charter is granted to the College of Physicians, under which a governing body of fourteen fellows is constituted, of whom Sir William Petty is one, with Stearne at their head as president for life.

Stearne dies in Dublin on November 18, 1669, and is buried, by his own request, in the chapel of Trinity College, where his epitaph, by his friend Henry Dodwell the elder, describes him as Philosophus, Medicus, summusque Theologus idem.


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Accused Witch Ann Glover is Hanged in Boston

ann-glover

Goodwife “Goody” Ann Glover is hanged by the Puritans in Boston on November 16, 1688. She is the last person to be hanged in Boston as a witch, although the Salem witch trials in nearby Salem, Massachusetts, occur primarily in 1692.

Glover is born in Ireland as a Roman Catholic although her birth date and much of her background information is unknown. During Oliver Cromwell‘s invasion of Ireland where he rounds up thousands of Irish and Scots, Glover and her husband are transported as indentured servants to Barbados to work on the sugar plantations. Her husband is executed in Barbados for refusing to renounce his Catholic faith. Historians do not know the context but, at his death, he says that his wife is a witch.

By 1680, Glover and her daughter are living in Boston where they work as housekeepers for John Goodwin. In the summer of 1688, 13-year-old Martha Goodwin accuses Glover’s daughter of stealing laundry. This causes Glover to have a fierce argument with Martha and the Goodwin children which then supposedly causes them to become ill and start acting strange. The doctor that is called suggests it is caused by witchcraft because he could not diagnose or heal the children.

Glover is arrested and tried for witchcraft. It is unclear whether she cannot speak English or just refuses to speak it. It is more likely that she simply does not know English. Instead, she speaks her native language, Irish, and Latin. Reverend Cotton Mather writes that Glover is “a scandalous old Irishwoman, very poor, a Roman Catholic and obstinate in idolatry.” At her trial it is demanded of her to say the Lord’s Prayer. She recites it in Irish and broken Latin, but since she has never learned it in English, she cannot recite it in English. There is a belief that if someone cannot recite the Lord’s Prayer then they are a witch. Her house is searched and “small images” or doll-like figures are found. When Mather is interrogating her, she supposedly says that she prays to a host of spirits and Mather takes this to mean that these spirits are demons. Two Puritan men who supposedly speak Irish say that she confessed to using them for witchcraft. The identity of these men and whether they actually speak Irish is unknown. Many of the accusations against Glover use spectral evidence, which cannot be proven. Cotton Mather visits Glover in prison where he says she supposedly engages in nighttime trysts with the devil and other evil spirits. It is considered that Glover might not be of sound mind and could possibly be mentally ill. Five of six physicians examine her and find her to be competent, so she is then pronounced guilty and put to death by hanging.

On November 16, 1688, Glover is hanged in Boston amid mocking shouts from the crowd. When she is taken out to be hanged, she says that her death will not relieve the children of their malady. There are several testaments of what her final words are. According to some, she says that the children will keep suffering because there are other witches besides her who have been involved with bewitching the children and when asked to name the other witches, she refuses. Another account says that Glover says that killing her will be useless because it is someone else that has bewitched the children. Either way, Ann Glover does believe in witches. A Boston merchant who knows her, Robert Calef, says that “Goody Glover was a despised, crazy, poor old woman, an Irish Catholic who was tried for afflicting the Goodwin children. Her behavior at her trial was like that of one distracted. They did her cruel. The proof against her was wholly deficient. The jury brought her guilty. She was hung. She died a Catholic.”

Three hundred years later in 1988, the Boston City Council proclaims November 16 as Goody Glover Day. She is the only victim of the witchcraft hysteria in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to receive such a tribute. Although Ann Glover’s accusations and death take place before the commonly known Salem Witch Trials, she is the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts and becomes the basis for many of the cases in the 1692 Salem witch trials.


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Founding of the Pontifical Irish College in Rome

pontifical-irish-college

The Pontifical Irish College, a Roman Catholic seminary for the training and education of priests, is founded in Rome, Italy, on November 6, 1628.

Towards the close of the sixteenth century, Pope Gregory XIII sanctions the foundation of an Irish college in Rome and assigns a large sum of money as the nucleus of an endowment. However, the pressing needs of the Irish chieftains make him think that, under the circumstances, the money might as well be used for religion by supplying the Irish Catholics with the sinews of war in Ireland as by founding a college for them at Rome.

The project is revived in 1625 by the Irish bishops, in an address to Pope Urban VIII. Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, who is Cardinal Protector of Ireland, resolves to realize at his own expense the desire expressed to the pope by the Irish bishops. A house is rented opposite Sant’Isodoro a Capo le Case, and six students go into residence January 1, 1628. Eugene Callanan, Archdeacon of Cashel, is the first rector, Father Luke Wadding, OFM being a sort of supervisor. Cardinal Ludovisi dies in 1632 and as he is of a princely family with a large patrimony, he makes provision in his will for the college. It is to have an income of one thousand crowns a year, a house is to be purchased for it, and he leaves a vineyard as Castel Gandolfo where the students might pass their villeggiatura. The cardinal’s will directs that the college should be placed under the charge of the Jesuits. Both the heirs and Wadding suspect that provision and disputed it. A protracted lawsuit is finally decided in 1635 in favour of the Jesuits.

On February 8, 1635, the Jesuits take charge of the college and govern it until financial difficulties force them to give up control in September 1772. An Italian priest, Abbate Luigi Cuccagni, is made rector. The rectorate of Cuccagni comes to an end in 1798, when the college is closed by order of Napoleon.

Dr. Michael Blake, Bishop of Dromore, who is the last student to leave the college at its dissolution in 1798, returns a quarter of a century later to arrange for its revival, which is affected by a brief of Pope Leo XII, dated February 18, 1826. He becomes the first rector of the restored college, and among the first students who seek admission is Francis Sylvester Mahony of Cork, known to the literary world as Father Prout. Having set the college well to work, Blake returns to Ireland and is succeeded by Dr. Boylan, of Maynooth, who soon resigns and dies in 1830. He is succeeded by a young priest, later Cardinal Paul Cullen.

Dr. Cullen is succeeded by Dr. Tobias Kirby, known for his holiness of life. He governs the college for more than forty years. His successor is Michael Kelly, later coadjutor to the Archbishop of Sydney.

In 2011, under orders from Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, leads a root and branch review of all structures and processes at the college. He is assisted in the visitation report by then Archbishop of Baltimore and now Cardinal Edwin O’Brien and Msgr. Francis Kelly of the Northern American College in Rome. The report is highly critical of the college and, as a result of which, three Irish members of the staff are sent home and a fourth resigns.

In 2012, four Irish archbishops, Cardinal Seán Brady, Archbishop of Armagh, Dr. Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Michael Neary, Archbishop of Tuam, and Dr. Dermot Clifford, Archbishop of Cashel, are sent a copy of the visitation report by the Vatican. A response prepared for them says “a deep prejudice appears to have coloured the visitation and from the outset and it led to the hostile tone and content of the report.”

Today the Pontifical Irish College serves as a residence for clerical students from all over the world. Every year over 250 Irish couples choose the college chapel as a means to marry in Rome. It organises events for the Irish and wider international community who are currently residing in Rome and has over the years become an unofficial centre for Irish visitors to Rome seeking advice and information.


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The Sack of Wexford

sack-of-wexford

The Sack of Wexford takes place on October 11, 1649, during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, when the New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell takes Wexford town in southeastern Ireland. The English Parliamentarian troops break into the town while the commander of the garrison, David Synnot, is trying to negotiate a surrender, massacring soldiers and civilians alike. Much of the town is burned and its harbour is destroyed. Along with the Siege of Drogheda, the sack of Wexford is still remembered in Ireland as an infamous atrocity.

Wexford is held by Irish Catholic forces throughout the Irish Confederate Wars. In the Irish Rebellion of 1641, over 1,500 local men muster in the town for the rebels. In 1642, Lord Mountgarret, the local Commander of the Confederate Catholic regime, orders Protestants to leave Wexford.

Wexford is also the base for a fleet of Confederate privateers, who raid English Parliamentary shipping and contribute 10% of their plunder to the Confederate government based in Kilkenny. In 1642, Parliamentary ships begin throwing captured Wexford sailors overboard with their hands tied. In reprisal, 150–170 English prisoners are kept in Wexford and threatened with death if such killing continued.

In 1648, the Confederates and Royalists in Ireland sign a treaty joining forces against the English Parliament. After Cromwell’s landing in Ireland in August 1649, therefore, Wexford is a key target for the Parliamentarians, being an important port for the Royalist alliance and a base for the privateers.

Cromwell arrives at Wexford on October 2, 1649 with about 6,000 men, eight heavy siege guns, and two mortars. The town’s garrison initially consists of 1,500 Confederate soldiers under David Synnot. However, the morale of the town is low and many of the civilians in Wexford want to surrender. Synnot, however, strings out surrender negotiations with Cromwell insisting on several conditions for surrender that Cromwell does not countenance, including the free practice of the Catholic religion, the evacuation of the garrison with their arms, and the free passage of the privateer fleet to a friendly port.

Negotiations are reopened when Cromwell’s guns blast two breaches in the walls of Wexford castle, opening the prospect of an assault on the town. However, while negotiations are still ongoing, the town is unexpectedly stormed and sacked on October 11, 1649.

Stafford, the English Royalist captain of Wexford Castle, surrenders the castle for reasons that have never been determined. The troops of the New Model Army, on their own initiative, immediately assault the walls of the town, causing the Confederate troops to flee in panic from their positions. The Parliamentarians pursue them into the streets of Wexford, killing many of the town’s defenders. Several hundred, including David Synnot, the town governor, are shot or drowned as they try to cross the River Slaney. Estimates of the death toll vary. Cromwell himself believes that over 2,000 of the town’s defenders have been killed compared with only 20 of his troops. Several Catholic priests, including seven Franciscans are killed by the Roundheads. Much of the town, including its harbour, is burned and looted. As many as 1,500 civilians are also killed in the sacking. This figure is difficult to corroborate but most historians accept that many civilians are killed in the chaos surrounding the fall of Wexford.

The destruction of Wexford is so severe that it can not be used either as a port or as winter quarters for the Parliamentarian forces. One Parliamentarian source therefore describes the sack as “incommodious to ourselves.” Cromwell reports that the remaining civilians have “run off” and asks for soldiers to be sent from England to repopulate the town and reopen its port.


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The Battle of the Yellow Ford

battle-of-the-yellow-ford

The Battle of the Yellow Ford is fought in western County Armagh, near the River Blackwater on August 14, 1598, during the Nine Years War. It is fought between the Gaelic native Irish army under Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Hugh Roe O’Donnell and a crown expeditionary force from Dublin under Henry Bagenal. The crown forces are marching from Armagh to resupply a besieged fort on the Blackwater when they fall into an ambush and are routed with heavy losses.

The crown forces are organized in six regiments — two forward, two centre, and two rear, and with cavalry at centre. As soon as they leave Armagh garrison, they are all harassed with gunfire from rebel forces concealed in the woods. As a result, the different regiments become separated from one another as they pause to deal with the hit and run attacks. The problem is accentuated when one of their ox-drawn artillery pieces becomes stuck in the bog with a damaged wheel and a rear regiment stays behind to guard it as it is slowly coaxed through the bog. The regiment at the front of the march encounters a mile-long trench, 4 feet wide and 5 feet deep. The regiment succeeds in crossing the trench but then comes under heavy attack from large forces and decides to retreat back across the trench, suffering significant losses during the retreat. This regiment then merges into the ranks of the other forward regiment.

At this point, Henry Bagenal is killed by a shot through the head. Command of the army is assumed by Thomas Maria Wingfield. Further demoralising the crown troops and causing chaos, their gunpowder store explodes, apparently ignited accidentally by the fuse of a matchlock musket. Daunted, Wingfield decides to retreat to Armagh. The commander of the forward part either doesn’t get the command or refuses to obey it or is unable to execute an orderly retreat and judges it necessary to maintain his forward position. Seeing their enemy in confusion, the O’Neill cavalry rushes at the head of the forward part, followed by swordsmen on foot. Crown troops in this part of the field are cut to pieces and any wounded left on the field after the battle are slain as well. The rest of the crown forces have to struggle their way back to the Armagh garrison. They reach it largely intact but are harried all the way by the Irish.

Crown forces lose approximately 1,500 men in the battle, including 18 “captains” or officers. Three hundred soldiers desert to the rebels including two English recruits. Out of 4,000 soldiers who set out from Armagh, just over 2,000 reach the town after the battle and become virtual prisoners inside. The cavalry breaks out and dashes south escaping the Irish.

After three days of negotiations, it is agreed that the crown troops can leave Armagh as long as they leave their arms and ammunition behind and that the garrison of the Blackwater Fort surrenders. O’Neill’s forces suffer perhaps 200 to 300 casualties in the battle, though sources for the number lost on O’Neill’s side are very scanty. In light of the battle’s outcome, the court at London greatly and rapidly increase its military forces in Ireland. Simultaneously, many in Ireland who have been neutral on the sidelines begin to support the rebellion. Thus, the ultimate outcome of the battle is an escalation of the war.


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The Siege of Limerick

cittie-of-limerick

Siege of Limerick commences on August 9, 1690, when William of Orange and his army of 25,000 men reach Limerick and occupy Ireton’s fort and Cromwell’s fort outside the city. His siege cannons are still making their way from Dublin with a light escort so all he has available is his field artillery. The siege train is intercepted by Patrick Sarsfield’s cavalry at Ballyneety in County Limerick and destroyed, along with the Williamites‘ siege guns and ammunition. This forces William to wait another ten days before he can start bombarding Limerick in earnest while another siege train is brought up from Waterford.

By this time, it is late August. Winter is approaching and William wants to finish the war in Ireland so he can return to the Netherlands and proceed with the main business of the War of the Grand Alliance against the French. For this reason, he decides on an all-out assault on Limerick.

His siege guns blast a breach in the walls of the “Irish town” section of the city and William launches his assault on August 27. The breach is stormed by Danish grenadiers, but the Jacobite’s French officer Boisseleau has built an earthwork or coupure inside the walls and has erected barricades in the streets, impeding the attackers. The Danish grenadiers, and the eight regiments who follow them into the breach, suffer terribly from musketry and cannon fire at point blank range. Jacobite soldiers without arms and the civilian population, including women, line the walls and throw stones and bottles at the attackers. A regiment of Jacobite dragoons also make a sortie and attack the Williamites in the breach from the outside. After three and a half hours of fighting, William finally calls off the assault.

William’s men suffer about 3,000 casualties, including many of their best Dutch, Danish, German, and Huguenot troops. The Jacobites lose only 400 men in the battle. Due to the worsening weather, William calls off the siege and puts his troops into winter quarters, where another 2,000 of them die of disease. William himself leaves Ireland shortly afterwards, returning to London. He subsequently leaves London to take command of Allied forces fighting in Flanders and leaves Godert de Ginkell to command in Ireland. The following year Ginkell wins a significant victory at the Battle of Aughrim.

Limerick is to remain a Jacobite stronghold until it surrenders after another Williamite siege the following year. Following the loss of this last major stronghold, Patrick Sarsfield leads the army into exile in the Flight of the Wild Geese to the Continent, where they continue to serve the cause of James II and his successors.


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Birth of Francis Fowke, Engineer & Architect

francis-fowke

Francis Fowke, engineer, architect, and a Captain in the Corps of Royal Engineers, is born in Ballysillan, Belfast, on July 7, 1823. Most of his architectural work is executed in the Renaissance style, although he makes use of relatively new technologies to create iron framed buildings, with large open galleries and spaces.

Fowke studies at The Royal School Dungannon, County Tyrone, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He obtains a commission in the Royal Engineers and serves with distinction in Bermuda and Paris. On his return to England, he is appointed architect and engineer in charge of the construction of several government buildings.

Among his projects are the Prince Consort’s Library in Aldershot, the Royal Albert Hall and parts of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Royal Museum in Edinburgh, and the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. He is also responsible for planning the 1862 International Exhibition in London. The Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition of 1851 being a hard act to follow, the International Exhibition building is described as “a wretched shed” by The Art Journal. Parliament declines the Government’s proposal to purchase the building. The materials are sold and used for the construction of Alexandra Palace.

Before his sudden death from a burst blood vessel on December 4, 1865, Fowke wins the competition for the design of the Natural History Museum, although he does not live to see it executed. His renaissance designs for the museum are altered and realised in the 1870s by Alfred Waterhouse, on the site of Fowke’s Exhibition building.

Francis Fowke is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.

A medal is issued by the Royal Engineers in 1865, as a memorial prize for architectural works carried out by members of the corps. With the demise of great architectural works, the prize has transformed into the prize awarded to the top student on the Royal Engineers Clerks of Works course.


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The Barebone’s Parliament of 1653

Oliver Cromwell

The Barebone’s Parliament, also known as the Little Parliament, the Nominated Assembly, and the Parliament of Saints, comes into being on July 4, 1653, and is the last attempt of the English Commonwealth to find a stable political form before the installation of Oliver Cromwell (pictured) as Lord Protector. It is an assembly entirely nominated by Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army‘s Council of Officers. It acquires its name from the nominee for the City of London, Praise-God Barebone. The Speaker of the House is Francis Rous. There are a total of 140 nominees – 129 from England, five from Scotland, and six from Ireland. The Barebone’s Parliament is preceded by the Rump Parliament and succeeded by the First Protectorate Parliament.

The assembly, inspired by the Jewish Sanhedrin, meets for the first time on July 4 in the council chamber at Whitehall. Cromwell opens proceedings with a speech around two hours long. He begins by summing up the “series of Providences” that have brought them to this point, starting with the Short Parliament and singling out 1648 as the “most memorable year that ever this nation saw.”

The assembly then adjourns before sitting in full on the following day. On that day they elect Francis Rous, initially as chairman. He is not known as Speaker until a month later. Henry Scobell is appointed as Clerk. On July 12, the assembly publishes a declaration declaring itself to be the parliament of the Commonwealth of England. This is the first time that it has been formally described as a parliament.

By early September, Cromwell is said to be growing frustrated with the assembly’s in-fighting between different groups. Attendance also begins to fall. Over one hundred members are present at most votes in July, dropping to an average turnout of 70 by October. Various bills inflame conflict between the radical and moderate members – bills to abolish the Court of Chancery, regulate legal fees, tithes, and speeding up the settlement of cases in the Court of Admiralty all become bogged down in conflict. At this point, however, radical members are still mainly outnumbered in votes by moderate and conservative members.

This changes during November and December when debate returns to the question of tithes. On December 6, the committee appointed to consider the question presents their report, covering the question of how unfit ministers are to be ejected, naming commissioners who will have the job of enacting this, and retaining support for tithes in prescribed circumstances. In a defeat for the moderates, the first clause is voted down 56 to 54. Two days later, moderates come to the House and demand that the assembly abdicate its powers, criticising radical members for threatening the well being of the Commonwealth by fomenting disagreement. Rous and around 40 members walk out and go to Cromwell at Whitehall, presenting a document signed by nearly 80 members that declares: “Upon a Motion this day made in the House, that the sitting of this Parliament any longer as now constituted, will not be for the good of the Commonwealth.” Those left in the house are soon confronted by troops requesting that they leave. On December 12, 1653, the members of the assembly vote to dissolve it.


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James I Ascends to King of England and Ireland

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James VI of Scotland ascends to King of England and Ireland as James I on March 24, 1603. The kingdoms of Scotland and England are individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciary, and laws, though both are ruled by James in personal union.

James is born on June 19, 1566, at Edinburgh Castle, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and a great-great-grandson of Henry VII, King of England and Lord of Ireland, uniquely positioning him to eventually accede to all three thrones. He is baptised “Charles James” on December 17, 1566, in a Catholic ceremony held at Stirling Castle.

James succeeds to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother is compelled to abdicate in his favour. Four different regents govern during his minority though he does not gain full control of his government until 1583. On March 24, 1603, he succeeds his cousin, Elizabeth I, upon her death, uniting the crowns of Scotland and England, while also gaining possession of the Kingdom of Ireland, then an English possession.

James continues to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625 at 58 years of age. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, he bases himself in England, which is the largest of the three realms, and styles himself “King of Great Britain and Ireland.” He returns to Scotland only once in 1617. He is a major advocate of a single parliament for England and Scotland. During his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonisation of the Americas begins.

At 57 years and 246 days, James’s reign in Scotland is longer than those of any of his predecessors. He achieves most of his aims in Scotland but faces great difficulties in England, including the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and repeated conflicts with the English Parliament. Under James, the “Golden Age” of Elizabethan literature and drama continues, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture. James himself is a talented scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie (1597), True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), and Basilikon Doron (1599). He sponsors the translation of the Bible that is named after him – the Authorised King James Version.

In early 1625, James is plagued by severe attacks of arthritis, gout, and fainting fits. In March, he falls seriously ill with tertian ague followed by a stroke. He dies at Theobalds House on March 27 during a violent attack of dysentery. James is buried in Westminster Abbey, but the position of the tomb is lost for many years. In the 19th century, following an excavation of many of the vaults beneath the floor, the lead coffin is found in the Henry VII vault.