‘’Tis for kings, / Not for their subjects, to have such rare things’: The Triumph of Peace and Civil Culture

Abstract

Writing of the Civil War the Earl of Clarendon puzzled how ‘a small discernible cloud’ that ‘arose in the north’ could have disrupted the ‘blessed conjuncture’ of the Caroline peace with ‘such a storm that never gave over raging … until it had rooted up the greatest and tallest cedars of the three nations’.1 Others were less surprised: as early as 1626 the Earl of Arundel had reportedly questioned whether Charles could avoid seeing his ‘house overturned’.2 Indeed, by the late 1620s Charles’ early bellicosity collapsed in a humiliating withdrawal from European warfare and concluded in a series of political and personal crises including the suspension of Parliament in 1629.