King Charles I, Christianity, and Politics

In 1641, [King Charles I] deliberately confirmed the Scotch Declaration, which stated that the government of the church by archbishops and bishops was contrary to the Word of God.  In 1645, he appears to have offered to set up Popery in Ireland.  That a king who had established the Presbyterian religion in one kingdom and who was willing to establish the Catholic religion in another should have insurmountable scruples about the ecclesiastical constitution of the third is altogether incredible.  He himself says, in his letters, that he looks on Episcopacy as a stronger support of monarchical power than even the army.  From causes which we have already considered, the Established Church had been, since the Reformation, the great bulwark of the prerogative.  Charles wished, therefore, to preserve it.  He thought himself necessary both to the Parliament and to the army.  He did not foresee, till too late that, by paltering with the Presbyterians, he should put both them and himself into the power of a fiercer and more daring party.  If he had foreseen it, we suspect that the royal blood, which still cries to heaven every thirtieth of January for judgments only to be averted by salt-fish and egg-sauce, would never have been shed.  Only one who had swallowed the Scotch Declaration would scarcely strain at the Covenant. – Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) in his essay, “Hallam,” originally published in the Edinburgh Review (September, 1828)