The Personal Rule of Charles I.

Covering the whole of the period of personal rule, Sharpe's book addresses the problems of government, finance and personnel in London and in the provinces, the Church and the Laudian reformation, foreign policy, and finally the Scottish question. It is a prodigious undertaking, perhaps too much for one volume. With its magnificently reproduced Van Dyke family portrait on the cover, and its well-designed pages and illustrated text, the book promises more than it delivers. Purporting to give a "wholly fresh picture of Charles" in a book that takes its agenda "less from the debates of historians than from the issues that emerged from the archives" (xxii) we find ourselves at the outset caught up in a litany of references to Thomas Cogswell, Anthony Fletcher, John Morrill, L.J. Reeve, Conrad Russell and others as well as the old standards, Dietz, Gardiner, and Rushworth. There is some notice of archival work in the citations to Herriard, Ellesmere, Hastings, Tanner, and other collections. Also one is heartened to see at least the Hamilton collection and the Denmilne papers cited, but one wonders if the author looked at the State Papers Domestic at all, as the references without exception are to the calendars. Perhaps this is a stylistic problem. The reader is also left to wonder why England's foreign policy must be seen predominantly through the Doge's reports to Venice and SP 80 (Germany and the Empire). Where are the other State Papers Foreign? Indeed, how can one explain policy of the 1630's without them?

A reasonable general study of the decade of Charles the First's personal rule, this book is therefore a retelling and solid synthesis of known history. Its size notwithstanding, it is not a detailed account of the problems of the period. Much of the text is background material from standard sources and offers the reader virtually no new insights about the King, the court, or the government. The author provides little extensive analysis of the issues he addresses. For example, two paragraphs (269-271) out of this immense work are devoted to the operation of the committee system within the Privy Council during the years immediately following the dissolution of parliament in 1629, which the author tells us is "the principal means by which the Council coped with its vastly increased business." With regard to the Household we are told that "strictest of all were the rules governing entree to the royal bedchamber" (213), with no mention of the fact that the marriage of Charles and Henrietta Maria was the first English royal conjugal union of any normalcy since one or the other of the marriages of Henry the Eighth.

In addition, Sharpe's handling of the history of the church, the puritan question and Arminianism will prove controversial. The revisionist perception of Laud's determination for peace and unity leaves much open to question. Regarding Arminianism it is odd that Richard Montagu's Gagg and Appeale are seriously discussed in this book without reference to the extensive and detailed debates and reports on those works compiled by the committee of religion in the parliament of 1628 (292-300).

It is remarkable that given the quantity of material covered the prose is generally fluid and readable. Now and again, however, the reader is jarred by the author's current vocabulary and reference. It is hard to believe, for example, that Edward Rossingham informed Viscount Scudamore about the "short-listed candidates" for office. (118) Was Laud truly "an ayatollah" of rigid theological views? (276) Did Henrietta Maria really possess a "Princess Diana-like" skittishness? And did Charles I, "like his modem namesake" rarely stay home for his wife's informal dinner parties? (170) Of more serious concern, however, is the occasional factual inaccuracy. When he summoned the parliament of 1625, "the abortive assault on the Spanish treasure fleet at Cadiz" (8) could not have been one of the King's immediate problems because it had not yet occurred. The parliament met in two sessions at London and Oxford and was dissolved in August that year amidst rumors of a planned naval expedition which got off the following month and arrived in Cadiz in October, i.e., after the parliament had met. Consequently it cannot be argued that the financial problems facing Charles early in 1625 were a result of the Cadiz experience. And we read on that in 1629 the Speaker was held in the chair "while Sir John Eliot passed resolutions" (55) - a procedural impossibility to be sure. Unfortunately a general sloppiness in writing not only affects one's desire to praise what is good in this book but leaves one suspect about much of the material.

The author's perception of a need to provide a history of the period without parliament is certainly valid. Perhaps, though, it would be more appropriate for general use to have a textbook half the size of the one being reviewed, with detailed discussion and analysis left to monographs yet unwritten.

MAIJA JANSSON Yale University