Table Of ContentHUGH
TREVOR-ROPER
FROM
COUNTER-
REFORMATION
TO
GLORIOUS
REVOLUTION
Seeker & Warburg
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Hugh Trevor-Roper's historical essays
have been pubHshed over many years in
widely different forms and are now
difficult to find. This is the third
collection to be published.
The fifteen essays range from an
account oftheJesuit Matteo Ricci's
mission in China in the sixteenth century
to a discussion ofthe Anglo-Scottish
Union. They include essays on medicine
at the early Stuart Court, on the plunder
ofartistic treasures in Europe during the
wars ofthe seventeenth century, on the
plans ofHugo Grotius to create a new
universal Church on an Anglican base,
on the Glorious Revolution of1688 and
religious toleration thereafter. There are
also biographical studies ofArchbishop
Laud, Matthew Wren, the Earl of
Clarendon and Prince Rupert.
As Noel Annan wrote in OurAge,
Hugh Trevor-Roper has 'perfected the
historical essay as the most beguiling
form ofenlightening readers about the
past. He is the most eloquent,
sophisticated and assured historian ofOur
Age, and has never written an inelegent
sentence or produced an incoherent
argument.'
pC25.00
BY HUGH TREVOR-ROPER
Archbishop Laud (1940; 2nd edition 1962;
3rd edition 1988)
TheLastDays ofHitler
(1947; 5th edition 1978; 6th edition 1987)
The Gentry 1540-1640 (1953)
HistoricalEssays (1957)
TheRise ofChristian Europe (1965)
Religion, the Reformation andSocial Change
(1967; 3rd edition 1984)
The PhilbyAffair {li^^^)
The PlunderoftheArts in theSeventeenth Century (1970)
Princes andArtists (1976)
HermitofPeking: The Hidden Life ofSirEdmundBackhouse
(1986. First published as A Hidden Life:
The Enigma ofSirEdmundBackhouse 1976)
Renaissance Essays (1985)
Catholics, Anglicans andPuritans:
Seventeenth-Century Essays (1987)
EDITED BY HUGH TREVOR-ROPER
Hitler's Table Talk 1941-4 (1953)
TheBormann Letters (1954)
ThePoems ofRichard Corbett
(withJ. A. W. Bennett) (1955)
Hitler'sPolitical Testament (i960)
The GreatHistories: Edward Gibbon (1963)
Essays in British History,
presentedto SirKeith Feiling (1964)
Hitler's WarDirectives 1939-45 (1964)
TheAge ofExpansion (1968)
The GreatHistories: Macaulay (1968)
From
Counter-Reformation
to
Glorious Revolution
Hugh Trevor-Roper
Seeker & Warburg
London
First published in Great Britain in 1992
by Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited
Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road, London SW3 6rb
Copyright (C) 1992 by Hugh Trevor-Roper
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN o 436 42513 o
The author has asserted his moral rights
Phototypeset by Wilmaset Ltd, Birkenhead, Wirral
Printed by
Clays Ltd, St Ives pic
Contents
Introduction vii
1 A Spiritual Conquest? Matteo Ricci in China i
2 Sustaining an Empire: Two Spanish Imperial Statesmen 15
3 Medicine at the Early Stuart Court 27
4 Hugo Grotius and England 47
5 The Church ofEngland and the Greek Church
in the Time ofCharles I 83
6 The Plunder ofthe Arts in the Seventeenth Century 1 13
7 Archbishop Laud in Retrospect 131
8 'Little Pope Regulus': Matthew Wren,
Bishop ofNorwich and Ely 151
9 Edward Hyde, Earl ofClarendon 173
10 Prince Rupert, the Cavalier 195
11 The Continuity ofthe English Revolution 213
12 The Glorious Revolution of 1688 231
13 Our First Whig Historian: Paul de Rapin-Thoyras 249
14 Religious Toleration in England after 1688 267
15 The Anglo-Scottish Union 287
Sources 303
Index 317
The sources ofthese essays are as follows:
1 'A Spiritual Conquest?': New York Review ofBooks, 13June
1985-
2 'Sustaining an Empire': New York Review ofBooks, 27
September 1984.
3 'Medicine at the Early Stuart Court': Lecture at an
international conference celebrating the 400th anniversary of
the birth ofWilliam Harvey, in the Royal College of
Physicians, London. Published in Developments in Cardiovascular
Medicine, ed. C.J. Dickinson andJ. Marks (MTP Press 1978).
4 'Hugo Grotius and England': Paper to the i ith Anglo-Dutch
Historical Conference 1991. Now first published.
5 'The Church ofEngland and the Greek Church': Lecture to
the Ecclesiastical History Society. Published in Studies in
Church History, ed. Derek Baker, vol. 15 (1978).
6 'The Plunder ofthe Arts in the Seventeenth Century': 2nd
Walter Neurath Lecture. Published separately by Thames &
Hudson
(1970).
7 'Archbishop Laud in Retrospect': Lecture to Friends of
Lambeth Palace Library. Published in Annual Bulletin ofthe
Friends ofLambeth Palace Library (1978).
8 'Little Pope Regulus': Neil Lecture at Pembroke College,
Cambridge, 1985. Printed in The Pembroke Gazette (1978).
9 'Edward Hyde, Earl ofClarendon': Commemorative
(tercentenary) lecture at Oxford, 1974. Published separately
by Clarendon Press (1975).
10 'Prince Rupert, the Cavalier': Lecture in Munich. Published
(in German) in Das Haus Wittelsbach und die Europdische
Dynastien [Zeitschriftfur Bayerische Landesgeschichte, Band 44, Heft
I, Munich 1981).
1 1 'The Continuity ofthe English Revolution': Lecture to the
Royal Historical Society, 1990. Published in Transactions ofthe
Royal Historical Society (1990).
12 'The Glorious Revolution of 1688': Lecture at a historical
conference on the subject in the British Academy, April 1989.
Published in The Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious
Revolution and its World Impact, ed. Jonathan Israel (Cambridge
1990)-
I.
13 'Our First Whig Historian': Lecture to the Historical
Conference ofthe Huguenot Society, September 1985.
PubUshed in Huguenots in Britain and their French Background^ ed.
Irene Scouloudi (1987).
14 'Rehgious Toleration in England after 1688': Lecture to a
conference under the William and Mary Tercentenary Trust
at the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, London, on 1 1 November
1988. Published in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious
Revolution and Religion in England, ed. Ole Peter Grell, Jonathan
Israel and Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford 1991).
15 'The Anglo-Scottish Union': Rickman Godlee Lecture at
University College, London. Published in The New Review
(February 1977).
Introduction
A century is not much longer than a single human life-span, but it is
a long time in history. How different is the world today from the
world in the 1890s! And how different, in spite ofthe slower pace of
life, between 1600 and 1700! In 1600 the Catholic Church, re-
animated by the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation,
had moved from conciliation to defiance ofProtestantism, and the
greatest secular power in the world, the Spanish empire, having
absorbed Portugal with its empire in Brazil and the East, both
provided that Church with material and drew from it spiritual
strength. In the first thirty years of the seventeenth century the
formidable combination of Habsburg power and papal influence,
after some temporary rebuffs in Europe, reasserted itself Having
already subjected Italy and Flanders, it proceeded to take over
Bohemia and the Rhineland. There seemed no end to its expansion.
Spanish friars were conquering the souls, while Spanish colonists
exploited the bodies, ofthe American Indians, and ItalianJesuits,
under Portuguese and Spanish protection, had insinuated them-
selves into the heart ofthe Mogul and Ming empires of India and
China, the Shogunate ofJapan.
Against this spectacular advance, what resistance w^as possible?
Where could it begin? The rulers ofthe majorWestern monarchies,
even Protestant monarchies, were dazzled, and sometimes seduced,
by the spectacle ofsuch success. They saw the model ofan ordered
monarchy, socially and spiritually guaranteed by an infallible
Church. German Lutheranism offered now no challenge. For fifty
years it had been quiescent, and the Habsburgs ofVienna, faced by
X From Counter-Reformation to Glorious Revolution
Ottoman power, and lacking the resources oftheir Spanish cousins,
had not sought to disturb it. But now Ottoman powerwas in retreat
and both Holy Roman Empire and Holy Catholic Church were
pressing eastward too. The Greek Orthodox Church would feel the
pressure: it would be undermined at its centre in Constantinople;
part of it would be taken over in Ruthenia and the Ukraine; and
after Bohemia, Poland, hitherto the model of religious toleration,
would succumb to theJesuit missionaries.
Perhaps fortunately, every system creates its own antithesis:
against a world empire, nationalism; against a universal Catholic
Church, particular Protestant Churches. But how could such
disparate forces be mobilized for action? In the early years of the
new century, the most radical and determined articulators of
opposition, the antithesis of the Jesuits, were the Calvinists, and,
among them, especially, their original hard core, the French
Huguenots. It was they who had preached the doctrine ofrevolt in
the sixteenth century, they who inspired the resistance of the
Scottish Lords ofthe Congregation against Mary Stuart, ofWilliam
ofOrange against Philip II, ofGeneva against Savoy, ofthe Electors
Palatine - the permanent trouble-makers in the Empire - against
the Habsburgs of Vienna. It was the Huguenots who forced the
Bourbon dynasty on France - although here too, as so often, the
seduction of the Spanish model would periodically undermine the
spirit of resistance. It was a Huguenot, Pierre Asselineau, who
mobilized support for Venice against the power ofthe Papacy and
Spain. It was a Calvinist from Geneva, Jean Diodati, who would
animate the abortive international coalition against Spanish domi-
nation in the West in 1610, and another, Antoine Leger, who would
seduce the Patriarch ofConstantinople and persuade him to carry
the Greek Orthodox Church to the Protestant side in the 1620s.
Another triumph ofHuguenot diplomacy had even more dramatic
consequences. This was the marriage, in 1613, of the King of
England's daughter to theyoung Elector Palatine: a marriagewhich
was planned by the Elector's Huguenot uncle, the machiavellian
Due de Bouillon, and whose sequel, the Calvinist usurpation ofthe
throne ofBohemia, would threaten to subvert the whole Habsburg-
Catholic system.
A brilliant coup in the short run; but alas, there are no short cuts
How
in politics. often has a perfectly calculated Blitzkrieg led to a
longand uncalculated war, disastrous to thecalculators! TheThirty
