CHARLES I (1600–1649), King of England, Scotland and Ireland. A contemporary manuscript copy of the King’s speech to the newly assembled Long Parliament, headed “His Ma[jes]ties speech in Parliam[en]t 5° Novemb. 1640.” It is written in a fine secretary-italic hand across two red-ruled pages of a folio bifolium, and docketed on the blank leaf “The Kings Speech the 5° November 1640.”
Two days after opening the Parliament that would eventually take his crown and his head, Charles addressed the Speaker to explain his words of the previous session, when he had called the invading Scottish Covenanters “rebels”:
“I told you that the rebels were to be put out of this kingdom. I must needs call them so, so long as they have an army to invade us… Now there are two ways to do it, by force or by fair means, but the last is that I wish and hope may be effected.”
He recounts calling his Great Council of Lords at York in the hope of “an end of our Northern troubles.” But “my subjects of Scotland did find out such shifts and delays as it was not possible for us to end this treaty there.” He says he must thank the lords who went to Ripon, agrees to a cessation of arms, and transfers the treaty from Ripon to London, “where I shall conclude nothing without your knowledge.” He ends with a warning: the Scots must either “know their duties by submitting to what is reason, or if they shall still persist in their rebellious humour, by your powerful advice to make them return home whether they will or not. And so Mr Speaker I pray God direct and prosper your consultations.”
The speech was delivered in the aftermath of the Bishops’ Wars, with a Scottish army occupying Northumberland and Durham under the Treaty of Ripon. Manuscript copies like this one circulated widely among members and their correspondents as news of the King’s words spread. It is a vivid first-hand record of the opening days of the Long Parliament and the crisis that led, within two years, to the English Civil War.
Condition: two pages, folio, ruled in red, with docket on the blank conjugate leaf. Central horizontal fold; general toning; chipping and losses along the upper and right edges, not affecting the sense; small red stains in the lower margin. Unsigned; a contemporary scribal copy.
This item will be accompanied by a Letter of Authenticity from One of a Kind Collectibles. This item will be accompanied by a Letter of Authenticity from One of a Kind Collectibles.
This item will be accompanied by a Letter of Authenticity from One of a Kind Collectibles.