John Pym (1584-1643) pivotal Parliamentary figure and opponent of the King
[00.00]
Andy Hopper: Hello everyone. It’s my pleasure to introduce you today to Stephen Roberts – Hello everyone. It’s my pleasure to introduce you today to Stephen Roberts, the Emeritus Director of the History of Parliament Trust and Editor of the House of Commons 1640-1660 section, which was recently published. We are going to talk to Stephen today about John Pym, a critical figure in the opposition to Charles I. It is often considered, wrongly, that Cromwell was the foremost opponent of Charles I right from the outset and outside academia, John Pym is somewhat relegated to a more minor role. So we are here today to find out a bit more about this individual and also how, how historians have changed in their approach to him over the recent generations. So welcome, Stephen.
Stephen Roberts: Thank you very much, Andy, it’s a pleasure to be here.
[01.00]
Andy Hopper: Perhaps you could get us started please with just telling us a little bit about who was John Pym?
Stephen Roberts: Well John Pym was a Somerset gentleman whose roots were very much in the West Country, although, like many gentry of the time, he went to Oxford and the Middle Temple in London. But his significance is as one of the leaders of the opposition to Charles I, first of all in the Short Parliament and then in the Long Parliament until his death in December 1643. So he is really the parliamentary powerhouse of opposition to Charles I.
[01.51]
So he is really the powerhouse of opposition to Charles I in the Short Parliament and then in the Long Parliament, and he had a very distinguished parliamentary background. He had been in all the Parliaments of the 1620s, so if anyone was able to use – [dog barking].
[02.10]
So he was the powerhouse of opposition to Charles I, first of all in the Short Parliament and then in the Long Parliament in 1640, but he had a distinguished record of service in Parliament in the Parliaments of the 1620s. So of all the MPs in opposition to Charles I in the Short and Long Parliament, Pym was very important and quite outstanding.
[02.37]
Andy Hopper: So when was Pym first elected as an MP and what role did he play in the Parliaments of the 1620s?
Stephen Roberts: He was first elected to Parliament in 1621 for the Borough of Calne in Wiltshire, and the reason he was elected there is that he had contacts with the town, the borough, because of his job at the time as a receiver of Crown revenues, and this brought him into contact with towns and the gentry of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and other places. So it was natural that he should be elected really to a borough like that which already knew Pym and had had dealings with him.
His role in the Parliaments of the 1620s was as an assiduous MP, making many speeches in Parliament, not necessarily in a position of leadership but in a position of prominence in his opposition to Charles I, or at least to Charles I – some of Charles I policies, he was quite outspoken, he made lots of recorded speeches. What we should consider Pym was doing in the 1620s was really building up a parliamentary profile but, in the abrupt dissolution of the last of Charles I Parliaments in January 1629, Pym played no part at all, so we shouldn’t think of him as being a marked man as it were in the 1620s.
[04.07]
Andy Hopper: So during the 1630s, of course, Charles I ruled without Parliament and he provoked two wars with Scotland in 1639 and 1640, which are now known as the First and Second Bishops’ Wars. During that time, in what ways was Pym able to oppose Charles I?
Stephen Roberts: Yes, Andy, the 1630s were a difficult time for the opposition really, because there was no focus there being no Parliament, but Pym’s activities in the 1630s was partly as a businessman. He was involved in lots of schemes involving colonial activity abroad in the Providence Island Company, the Saybrook Company, he was involved in the French Company, he was an investor in that and more locally, local to home, he was also an investor in the Coventry collieries which were owned by Coventry City Council. So he was active as a businessman but these are not ordinary business interests because his fellow investors, his fellow businessmen in these ventures, were leaders of the opposition themselves: some of them in the House of Lords, some of them prominent among the gentry, who all shared a similar view of Protestantism, so he was active with prominent other leaders of what was to become the opposition in Parliament to Charles I policies, some of them in the House of Lords, some of them leading gentry figures.
So in the 1630s, the – his business activities really provided a kind of informal way in which the opposition of Charles – to Charles I policies could be sustained, developed by discussions and by business contacts.
[06.04]
Andy Hopper: How involved was John Pym then with the correspondence that some of the leaders of the opposition were engaged in with the Scots covenanters during the Bishops’ Wars?
Stephen Roberts: Well, I think we – it is thought, that is we can assume I think that Pym was involved in these contacts with the Scots, though hard evidence of Pym’s involvement is difficult to come by. One of the problems we have with Pym is that he – he leaves behind him no significant body of letters, there is not much by way of speeches and so forth of Pym’s that really survive of an informal kind. We piece together Pym’s activities largely from the official record, which makes him a bit of a puzzle in some ways for the biographer, so we – I think we have to assume that Pym was involved in the Scots, the intrigues with the Scots as it were, collaborations with them, but we can’t be absolutely sure.
[07.06]
Andy Hopper: After the Long Parliament met in November 1640, what was Pym’s role in driving forward its religious reforms?
Stephen Roberts: Well, before we get to the Long Parliament, I think we ought to perhaps have a quick mention about the Short Parliament, which met in the earlier part of – the spring of 1640, in which Pym was able to hone some of his political skills. Pym gave perhaps one of the most – probably the most impressive speech of all in the Short Parliament, which rehearsed a lot of the oppositional principles to Charles I government. And when Charles abruptly dissolved the Short Parliament after only a three-week sitting, it was in hindsight, of course, a great training ground for what came in the Long Parliament. So when the Long Parliament did meet in 1640, Pym’s political skills were extremely well honed and he’d had this rehearsal period of how to launch an attack on Charles I, although it didn’t begin particularly abruptly. It was a slow and steady and rather subtle attack on the King, it was rather a roundabout attack, because it, first of all, criticised the King’s ministers and, initially, not even them by name. Pym’s initial opening salvo in the Long Parliament was to do with the principles of a global popish conspiracy that was coming closer and closer to home. Then as he got going in the Long Parliament after only a few weeks really, this started to home in on individuals and the King personally was never criticised at that point.
[08.50]
Andy Hopper: So, of course, one of those individuals became Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. What was Pym’s role in the attack on the King’s favourite?
Stephen Roberts: Pym’s role was central to the attack on Strafford and there is no more significant manager of the impeachment and trial of Strafford than Pym; he devoted huge amounts of time to the Strafford trial. Although he wasn’t the man who devised the arguments necessarily and he certainly wasn’t a lawyer and didn’t play any significant role in the legal case that was being devised against Strafford, he was the principal manager of it. And it was a key skill of Pym’s that he was able to bring people together to work collaboratively on projects. That is one of Pym’s outstanding skills really as a politician, this capacity to reach out and get people to work to a common end, and that’s visible in the Strafford trial. He worked tirelessly to bring Strafford to trial and eventual, of course, execution.
[10.00]
Andy Hopper: Why do you think he was so tireless in pursuit of that?
Stephen Roberts: Because Strafford came to embody everything that was wrong about the government of Charles I. He could detect in Strafford the manifestation of the global Catholic conspiracy that fired Pym up very much. He could see in Strafford an attempt to use the different constituent parts of the British kingdoms, as it were, against England, and so Strafford became really a focal point for all the opposition that had been building up for a long time.
[10.40]
Andy Hopper: So after the execution of Strafford, we then, of course, have the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion and the passage of the Grand Remonstrance through the House of Commons. What was Pym’s role in that?
Stephen Roberts: Well, the Grand Remonstrance was a summary of all the oppositional – yet another summary of all the oppositional ills of the kingdom. What was significant about the Grand Remonstrance was that it went into enormous detail and, of course, it wasn’t written by Pym, although he would have had a hand in it and certainly approved it. The significance of Pym in that episode is that he wanted to widen – widen it to include a kind of broadcasting, if you like, to the kingdom. He wanted to involve people outside Parliament and that was quite a significant episode really, because it clashed in some ways with the culture of Parliament, which was to keep things within the bounds of Parliament rather than appeal to the people. And it was, again, another skill of Pym that he was able, on occasion when it suited him, to appeal to the people of England to support his policies and work with him, as it were, against Parliament. He knew when to turn that particular tap on and turn it off on occasion too. So that was Pym’s particular part in that. It was a useful tactic by which all the ills of the kingdom could be brought into one document that could then be submitted to Charles I, because the Grand Remonstrance was really a big petition, a huge petition of Charles and it ran to many, many paragraphs.
[12.18]
Andy Hopper: So we are beginning to see some of the reasons why Charles I tried to arrest John Pym and four other members of the House of Commons on 4 January 1642. Perhaps you could talk us through what the King’s motives were and perhaps who might have shaped his plan?
Stephen Roberts: To understand that really, we’ve got to go back to the late September period of 1641 when Charles I, despite the petitions and pleas of the people in Parliament in both Houses, decided to go to Scotland. They were afraid of Charles going to Scotland, because they thought he would be able to stir up forces there against Parliament itself. And when Parliament – when King Charles in fact … let’s go back. When Charles – when Charles did go to Scotland against the advice of his subjects, Pym was crucial in devising a device in Parliament called the Recess Committee, and the Recess Committee of September and October 1641 claimed executive authority in a way that Parliament had never done before. Charles was out of the kingdom and, while he was out, the Recess Committee effectively ran the country. It claimed all sorts of powers and Pym was in charge of it. Pym was the head of the Committee, the chairman of the Committee, nobody was more significant in it than Pym, nobody was more active and keen on its existence than Pym. And it was in that period that the people started to talk of King Pym, not least because he, with the King out of the, out of the country as it were in Scotland, Pym was the obvious source of authority in London in charge of the Recess Committee. So Charles had begun to consider by now that Pym was dangerous and, of course, not only Pym but his other fellow leaders of the opposition.
[14.27]
And things came to a head in the December of 1641 when there was disorder on the streets, there was an attempt by the King to take over the Tower of London, or claim the Tower of London rather and put in a Governor of the Tower of London that Parliament had deep suspicions about. So you’ve got in December 1641 a deepening crisis and on 4 January 1642, as you say – so in January 1642, Charles I decides to nip this growing plot, as he sees it, in the bud, and invades the House of Commons as is well known to arrest not only Pym but other leaders of the opposition and it goes drastically wrong.
They have already fled to the City of London by the time Charles arrives but he arrives with an armed retinue, and things could have got extremely nasty had he found Pym and the others there. So this is a turning point really in the poor relations between – growing poorer relations between the King and Parliament.
[15.35]
Andy Hopper: So for what reason do you think the attempt to arrest the Five Members was so politically damaging to Charles?
Stephen Roberts: Well, for one thing, it – it was the first sign or first indication that violence could be used on either part, on either side, as it were, to achieve political ends, and it’s not just the politically-committed men like Pym who feared what happened in January ’42. Even some of the King’s supporters were very disturbed and alarmed by what Charles was trying to do.
[16.21]
Even some of the King’s supporters were alarmed and disturbed by what Charles was trying to do and someone like Sir Simonds D’Ewes, who was quite neutral and well disposed towards the King in many ways, wrote in his diary about the alarm and anxiety that he felt when the King invaded the Chamber. So it heightened the atmosphere in a way that was politically unhelpful but also, from Pym’s personal point of view, we have to remember what this really meant, because had Pym been arrested on that occasion, he was going to be charged with high treason and no doubt would have been found guilty, and the fate of traitors was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. So this for Pym, personally, marked a huge turning point. It meant that he was politically a marked man from henceforth, and you can begin to see from this point the disappearance of what goodwill Pym had harboured previously towards the King. If somebody tries to take your life, which is effectively what was happening there, you – it would be bound to change your outlook, and it certainly did with Pym.
[17.36]
Andy Hopper: So perhaps that’s a good explanation for why all the attempts to find a peaceful settlement in the opening months of 1642 didn’t, did not, didn’t materialise. So moving on now to the outbreak of war, how much do you feel the Long Parliament system of – so moving on now to the outbreak of war, how much do you feel the Long Parliament system of governance, county committees in the shires, and standing committees at Westminster – how much did that owe to Pym’s vision and architecture?
Stephen Roberts: Probably not quite as much as is often thought. The device of the committee, which is only just a group of people with delegated authority, was well understood and well used by Parliaments long before 1640, so the committee as an institution as such was not new but, as when we were discussion the Recess Committee, that was an innovation: giving committees extensive executive power was certainly something new and something that Pym supported.
But when we think of all the big legislative committees like the – sorry, let’s go back there. When we think of all the executive committees like the Committee for Sequestration and the device of assessments that were imposed on the country, taxation imposed on the country, in which committees were used, Pym was not the driving force behind that. If we think, for example, about the assessment and about sequestration, and about the excise, probably the most important figure in all of those things was a Droitwich man called John Wilde, who was really quite crucial in developing those particular mechanisms by extending Parliament’s power.
But what was significant about Pym was his commitment, of course, to extending parliamentary authority by whatever means. You can’t necessarily attribute practical devices like that to Pym but he is certainly there very much in favour of extending Parliament’s authority.
[19.54]
Andy Hopper: So is that how you would reflect on what Pym’s main achievements were: was it that sort of transfer of executive power towards Parliament?
Stephen Roberts: When we come to assess Pym’s main importance, I think we – the main – I suppose the biggest thing of all about Pym is his capacity to bring together particular groups of people. He does this, first of all, for example, with the Scots, he is an architect of the alliance with the Scots. He is an architect of the alliance between the City of London and Parliament. He is an architect of the close relations really between both Houses of Parliament, the House of Lords and the whole – and the House of Commons. He is very much in favour of another alliance which is between the Parliament and the Westminster Assembly of Divines, that big conference of ministers, ministers of religion, Pym is keen to see that happen. So what Pym is very good at as a politician is to have a vision and to be excellent – very, very skilled at bringing together people who will support his vision. I think that is the overarching contribution of Pym: to have the vision, to have the capacity of reaching out in the – in the – with the aim of creating unity.
[21.24]
He said, himself, that as far as he was concerned – and he says this quite early on in the Long Parliament – the aim of his policy is to achieve a situation where they had united brethren under one God in one religion, faithful subjects under one sovereign. The sense of unity there, of course, is far from the case, of course, with the Civil War and so forth but the principles of unity, trying to create unity by whatever means, is what Pym was always trying to do. He is not sectarian really despite the appearance of being so in the Civil War as being the leader of Parliament. Within the concept of opposition to Charles I, he is quite a broad unifying figure so far as he can be, so far as he was able to be.
[22.15]
Andy Hopper: So Pym died on 8 December 1643, possibly from bowel cancer. What do you think was the legacy that he left the Parliamentary cause?
Stephen Roberts: I think a great legacy of cooperation between the City and the Scots, some of these things didn’t work in the long term but his particular legacy is in these uniting – this capacity to reach out and unite the people. Can we stop there, can I have a think about that one a bit? We’re talking about legacies.
[22.57]
Andy Hopper: What do you consider were Pym’s main achievements – no we’ve done that! John Pym died on 8 December 1643, possibly from bowel cancer. What was the legacy he left the Parliamentary cause?
Stephen Roberts: The main legacy I suppose is in the – the work with the Scots, the Solemn League and Covenant which he had worked tirelessly for long outlived – in Scotland long outlived Pym’s, Pym’s life, and in England even had a kind of viability long after Pym’s death and was a factor being discussed even in the late 1650s by some people as a political commitment, so there’s that. His legacy of making sure that Parliament worked very, very closely with the City is a legacy, the City of London, and his work for religious uniformity so far as it was possible is a legacy as well. There was nothing sectarian about his religious interests. He can’t be sort of pinpointed as a particular – member of a particular sect. Had he survived, had he lived longer, I think he would have been probably a political Presbyterian in his outlook but we can’t even be sure about that.
He would have worked for unity if he had lived longer, and I think everyone recognised after Pym’s death that he had worked for unity between the Houses and across the political divisions. Had he lived, it’s possible that the sectarianism that we see in the later 1640s might not have happened. It is hard to think necessarily of Pym as being part of the Presbyterian independent fighting in the late 1640s. His legacy really is a lot of ‘might have beens’ I suppose with Pym.
[25.00]
Andy Hopper: And how the Royalists react to his death?
Stephen Roberts: Well, of course, they were delighted and they produced all sorts of theories about how he had died to imply that he had been consumed by horrible, flesh-eating creatures or something. They were delighted, of course, at the death of King Pym; it suited them fine that he was no longer around.
[25.25]
Andy Hopper: So he was buried a week after his death in Henry VII’s chapel in Westminster Abbey but what happened to his body after the Restoration of Charles II?
Stephen Roberts: Well along with all the other leaders of Parliament who have been buried in the Abbey, his remains were flung into the common pit, we don’t know precisely where so there is no grave, as it were, marking Pym’s final resting place. His legacy is one of his ideas and his contribution to parliamentary history.
[25.58]
Andy Hopper: Looking back on his life, how would you characterise his long-term impact on the later history of Britain and its parliamentary government?
Stephen Roberts: Well that’s a very big question, of course, but I think, I think he is – he does deserve to be remembered. He’s not an easy figure to pin down and he’s not necessarily an attractive figure. He was an elderly man when he really got going in the Long Parliament. The pictures we have of him show him as a rather elderly, slightly overweight, chubby character. He leaves no exciting legacy of battles or beautiful quotations, so we have to work hard, as it were, to recover the John Pym but I think he’s a man well worth remembering really as an architect of the modern Parliament and, arguably, because he owed nothing to a major patron. He wasn’t dependent on anybody and he worked full-time and tirelessly for Parliament. I think he’s got a claim to be considered England’s first professional politician.
[26.59]
Andy Hopper: Thank you very much indeed, Stephen. You’ve really helped to bring him out of the shadows for us and to help us appreciate and understand his contribution and legacy.
Stephen Roberts: Thank you very much, Andy.
[27.15]
Andy Hopper: This question will slot in between the questions – wait a minute, I didn’t even ask question 4 did I?
Stephen Roberts: No, you didn’t because you asked me about the Long Parliament and I answered it by starting about the Short Parliament, remember?
Andy Hopper: So after that one.
Stephen Roberts: After 4, between 4 and 5 isn’t it?
[27.43]
Andy Hopper: Once the Long Parliament was sitting, was there anything which particularly marks Pym out as different from other MPs?
Stephen Roberts: I think the main thing about Pym compared to other MPs is quite how busy he was and what vision he had really for the Parliament. He told Edward Hyde, who later became the Earl of Clarendon, at the start of Parliament: “they must not only sweep the House clean below but must pull down all the cobwebs that they might not breed dust and make a foul House hereafter”. Pym very much made good on that promise to reform and some statistics can give some sense of how busy he was. Between November 1640 and October 1643 when Pym fell sick, he reported from the House of Lords, or between the Commons and the Lords, 146 times. He managed 191 conferences between the Commons and the Lords. Between January and July 1642, he proposed 90 motions in the House of Commons of one kind or another, and between November 1640 and his death, he was named to no fewer than 226 parliamentary committees. So there was no-one more active really in the Long Parliament than Pym.
The Commons Journal, which is the official record of that Parliament, for the first couple of years the pages of the journal run to over 1,000 pages and Pym’s name is on virtually every page, so he was extremely busy and that was really what marked him out.
[29.25]
Andy Hopper: So he is a shining example to MPs with second jobs and newspaper columns today?
Stephen Roberts: Absolutely, absolutely! He lived in Parliament quite literally, he never went from there really.
[29.42]
Andy Hopper: This would slot in, I think, right after the execution of Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, so between 6 and 7 on our current list here. Between Strafford and before the Grand Remonstrance.
So in May 1641, Parliament decided to enact a pledge to protect the Protestant religion, protect the privileges of Parliament and the safety of the King’s person, and it became know as the Protestation. What was Pym’s role in bringing that about?
Stephen Roberts: Well, Pym was certainly behind the Protestation, he wasn’t the only one behind it and we don’t think that Pym actually wrote it. I think Sir Robert Harley was probably quite important in that but it was a very Pymian idea, this idea of getting people to sign a kind of pledge as an oath, a kind of expression of loyalty. There are two particular Pymian things about that. One is that it brings in people on board, it is a way of dividing the sheep and the goats, or the way of bringing people on side as it were, a definition of who’s for you and who’s against you. And it is also Pymian in the sense that it wasn’t, as you rightly say, an oath, because to impose an oath on people would cause difficulties with people’s religious consciences. So it’s quite important that it wasn’t an oath. It was devised in such a way that most – it was devised in such a way such that most people could sign up to it, as it were, without causing them difficulties. And most members of the House of Commons did take the Protestation in May 1641, even the future Royalists, as it were, and then in January 1642 the Protestation is extended throughout the country, again as a way of galvanising support or indicating expressions of support in the country for Parliament. And that’s a very Pymian idea too: extending it outside of Parliament.
[32.02]
With Pym there was always a kind of backward-looking element in his thinking, and he was harking back in some respects to the Oath of Association that was taken under Queen Elizabeth, so it’s not a new device and it’s rather typical of Pym that he should look backwards, as it were, for something that’s been used before. But the idea of getting people to sign up and extend outwards, and bring people in as far as you can and to take the temperature of the political situation by asking people to sign up for a particular device or project is entirely Pym’s outlook, so it is characteristic of the man.
[32.39]
Andy Hopper: And when the Protestation was tendered to the whole country, of course, this in some cases brought women into the political sphere as women subscribed to the Protestation and in some parishes lists of refusers were drawn up with the aim of marginalising and exposing Roman Catholics. So I guess that had quite a divisive – I imagine that would have had quite a divisive impact upon the country at large?
Stephen Roberts: Yes and by that time, things are beginning to get out of control really in terms of the relations between the King and Parliament and, given the difficulties that faced both the House of Commons and the King politically at that time, this was a deepening of the political crisis really.
[Ends]