My 1820 copy of the Book of Common Prayer of the United Church of England and Ireland reminds me that today is the anniversary of the execution of King Charles I. (It is also a lovely book and as usable today as then. . . the latter being something I doubt will be said of any bit of technology now in my office.)
Whatever his merits as secular ruler, killing Charles was a bad idea that helped undue any long term chance his opponents would prevail.
Only rarely can good come from revolution, there is no peace that begins in regicide, and greater tyranny results from those who in vanity try to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth by force of arms. Who can measure the value of yearly repentance for this “bloody murder” by praying men in England in avoiding an even more hideous revolution like that of France?
Killing, as the Irish could note after the death of Charles and all of France would learn after the murder of Louis, never stops with the death of the King.
It may do some good in Earth, if not in Heaven, when men “pray to implore the mercy of God, that neither the Guilt of that sacred and innocent Blood, nor those of other sins, by which God was provoked to deliver up both us and our King into the hands of cruel and unreasonable men, may at time hereafter be visited upon us or our posterity.”
Christians must always avoid a revolutionary zeal that seeks in a rapid and revolutionary social change to do by force what they cannot win by persuasion and patience.
It was a lesson Shakespeare tried to teach in his history plays. It was a lesson England learned at last.
My old Prayer Book service containing this preface of repentance for the bloody martyrdom of Charles was part of a Prayer Book published when the threat of a second Stuart restoration was not such a distant memory in the United Kingdom.
Charles II had been restored to the throne of his father, but at his death his brother James had proven too intent on bringing rapid, revolutionary religious change to Britain from the top.
The Glorious Revolution removed James II from the throne, but tried to do so “decently and in order.” It placed his daughter Mary II on the throne and retained as much as possible the best of the old system.
It was a non-Utopian “revolution” which brought needed change, but within bounds that the social structure could survive. As Locke would argue, it was a risk worth taking, because in one way it was a reaction to a deeper, more intolerable revolution.
The Prayer Book demonstrates that it was also a risk run by men who did not want to go too far. They prayed against regicide and total revolution, but not seventy-five years before they had been willing to fight to keep a Stuart heir from the throne of England. They were opposed to bloody revolution from beneath, but also from too rapid social change pressed on unwilling men from a monarch.
It is good to remember these moderate men on this day who knew their evil well enough to fear unleashing tyranny on their fellow men.
We can pray with them:
“Teach us also hereby so to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. And grant, that neither the splendor of any thing that is great, or the conceit of any thing that is good in us, may withdraw our eyes from looking upon ourselves as sinful dust and ashes . . .”
