The Royal Martyr

Tomorrow, 30th January, is the commemoration in the Anglican calendar of the Martyrdom of King Charles I. It was a liturgical event of some controversy in post-1688 Anglicanism. It was loathed by whigs as "the general madding day", while tories relished the opportunity to articulate a theological critique of whig doctrines. S.J Connolly provides us with an example of one tory Anglican preacher on 30th January in Ireland in 1704 attacking the whig belief in the 'original contract':

"[the doctrine] that the people, as they first made over themselves chief governors and magistrates, so they can unmake them at their pleasure, destroys all the obligations of oaths and compacts, for it makes the solemnest bonds of allegiance signify nothing when the people think fit to declare it; it makes every prosperous rebellion just".

Connolly summarises the difficulties 30th January posed for post-1688 Anglican political theology:

"a preacher who approached the occasion by expounding his church's traditional teaching on the duty of submission to temporal authority and the sin of rebellion had thus to consider how his words might seem to reflect on the legitimacy of the Revolution settlement".

Both the Royal Martyr and the controversies surrounding the commemoration are an important reminder that Anglicanism's relationship with the temporal authority has not been always marked by a lazy latitudinarianism. Charles, William Laud, the Non-jurors and the penal laws endured by Scottish Episcopalians throughout the 18th century tell of how Anglicanism's relationship with the monarchy was used in the economy of God to ensure that the Anglican tradition knew what it was to shed blood and endure exclusion.

The awkward embarrassment that much contemporary Anglicanism experiences with regards to the history of establishment results in little theological, liturgical or devotional reflection on the Royal Martyr. Rowan Williams' Why Study the Past? provides a helpful corrective to such awkward embarrassment with regards to the Christian past. He says:

"the primitive Christian may be and should be a source to use in questioning later tradition; but he or she does not cease to be a stranger. They are helpful to us not because they are just like us but in fancy dress, but because they are who they are in their own context".

And it was in his own context, a context strange to us, that Charles I endured martyrdom. As for his commemoration, it would be difficult to find better words than a collect written by one of the Restoration bishops, Brian Duppa:

O Lord we offer unto thee all praise and thanks for the glory of Thy grace that shined forth in Thine anointed servant Charles; and we beseech Thee to give us all grace by a careful studious imitation of this Thy blessed Saint and Martyr, that we may be made worthy to receive benefit by his prayers, which he, in communion with the Church Catholic, offers up unto Thee for that part of it here Militant, through Thy Son, our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ.

(From a Liturgical Manual published by the Society of King Charles the Martyr.)