John Pym

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The English statesman John Pym (1584-1643) led the House of Commons in the opening years of the English civil war.

John Pym was the son of a lesser landowner of Somerset. When he was a boy, Pym's views on religion were molded by his stepfather, Sir Anthony Rous, who was a devout Puritan. The defeat of the Spanish Armada was his first memory of public events, and the Gunpowder Plot occurred when he reached his majority. These high points of foreign and domestic Catholic aggression were determinants of Pym's public career. In 1599 he entered Oxford and in 1602 took up his legal studies at Middle Temple. He entered Parliament in 1614, probably in the interest of the Earl of Bedford. The earl's family had long favored the Pyms, and the 4th earl remained John Pym's patron until the earl's death in 1641.

In the Parliament of 1614 and again in 1621, Pym was most active in the matter of enforcing penalties against Catholics. He advocated an oath of loyalty by all Englishmen. A popular defense of English liberties was also a hallmark of Pym's political life.

After Charles I dissolved Parliament in 1629, Pym became treasurer of the Providence Company, which projected colonies in Connecticut and then on Providence Island (Isla de Providencia) off the coast of Central America. Although the company had religious and economic ends, its chief importance was as a political rallying point for the opposition during Charles I's personal government.

When Charles called Parliament in 1640, Pym was the most experienced leader of the Commons, and he immediately assumed leadership of that body. In the "Short" Parliament, Pym stressed the desire of the Commons for legal security, but when Parliament was summarily dissolved by the King, Pym keynoted the "Long" Parliament with a speech which stressed that the country was in danger because of its Catholic queen and its proto-Catholic clergy. It was an inflammatory call for the widest popular support for Parliament in a mortal struggle with the King. Pym's first order of business was the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford.

Charles went to Scotland in August 1641 in order to find evidence of the complicity of Pym and others in the 1638 Scots invasion of England. When Charles returned to England in November 1641, Pym faced his greatest trial as leader of the Commons. There was a wave of support for the King, and the rebellion of the Irish in October gave Charles an excuse to raise an army which might have destroyed Parliament before it suppressed the Irish. Pym narrowly gained approval for the Grand Remonstrance, which recited the old faults of the King. Then, on Jan. 4, 1642, he maneuvered the King into making an unconstitutional entry into the House of Commons in order to arrest Pym and the other "Five Members." In that moment popular initiative returned to Pym and Parliament. They, not the King, were able to raise troops to suppress the Irish and prepare to meet the inevitable attempt of Charles to forcibly regain political mastery, which came on Aug. 14, 1642.

Pym secured the passage of the militia and assessment ordinances by Parliament despite their flagrant violation of strict legality. He also secured the passage of the unpopular excise tax to finance the parliamentary war effort and organized associations of counties to administer the war; Cromwell's Eastern Association became the most famous and effective of these. Politically, he was also able to keep persons of such diverse values as the Earl of Essex, Oliver Cromwell, and Oliver St. John steady in their combined defense of Parliament. Pym's last act was to arrange for the entry of the Scots into the war on the side of the hard-pressed parliamentary forces in September 1643. That alliance was sealed by the covenant which bound all Englishmen to support Parliament. With that final program of popular unity, Pym succumbed to cancer and was buried in Westminster Abbey on Dec. 15, 1643.

Further Reading

Jack H. Hexter, The Reign of King Pym (1941), is the best study. A standard biography of Pym is Sidney Reed Brett, John Pym, 1583-1643: The Statesman of the Puritan Revolution (1940).

Additional Sources

MacDonald, William W., The making of an English revolutionary: the early parliamentary career of John Pym, Rutherford N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1982.

Pym, John (1584-1643). Parliamentarian. One of the few members of the Commons who realized that poverty was driving Charles I into arbitrary rule, Pym consistently argued the case for restoring the crown's finances. But his attitude towards the king hardened with the conviction that Charles, by patronizing the Arminians, was opening the door to catholicism. When the Long Parliament met in November, Pym was the driving force behind the impeachment of Charles's chief minister Strafford. The revolt of the Irish catholics in 1641 confirmed Pym in his belief that the king was involved in a ‘popish plot’ to destroy English religion and liberties, and he pushed through the Grand Remonstrance. Not surprisingly, he was one of the five members whom the king sought to arrest in January 1642. Pym's major contribution to the parliamentary cause came in 1643 when he persuaded members to impose an excise to meet the costs of war and to accept the Solemn League and Covenant as the price of Scottish support.

Quotes:

"A Parliament is that to the Commonwealth which the soul is to the body. It behooves us therefore to keep the facility of that soul from distemper."

John Pym.

John Pym (1584 – 8 December 1643) was an English parliamentarian, leader of the Long Parliament and a prominent critic of James I and then Charles I.

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Political life 3 English Civil War 4 External links

Early life and education

Pym was born in Brymore, Cannington, Somerset, into minor nobility. His father died when he was very young and his mother re-married, to Sir Anthony Rous. Pym was educated in law at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College, Oxford) in 1599 and went on to the Middle Temple in 1602.

Political life

He entered politics through the influence of the Earl of Bedford, working for the Exchequer in Wiltshire before entering Parliament for Calne, Wiltshire in 1614. Despite his Puritanism he gained a good reputation in Parliament, although he was relentless in his campaigning against Roman Catholics. In 1614 he married Anne Hooke who bore five of his children. After the dissolution of Parliament in 1621 he was one of those placed under house-arrest in January 1622. In 1624 he changed his seat, representing Tavistock, Devon, for the rest of his career.

In 1626 he was one of the main movers of the attempted impeachment of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, an action that led to the dissolution of that Parliament. He also supported Edward Coke who presented the Petition of Right to Charles in 1628. At the 1628 parliament, Pym led the charge against Roger Maynwaring and Robert Sibthorpe, two clergymen who had published sermons at the behest of Charles I in which they argued in favor of the divine right of kings and passive obedience. Pym believed that Maynwaring and Sibthorpe's sermons were part of an attempt to introduce absolute monarchy in England and he therefore had them censured for preaching against the established English constitution. Charles I later granted Maywaring and Sibthorpe royal pardons and signaled his support by naming Sibthorpe a royal chaplain.

In the interval between Parliaments he was treasurer of the Providence Island Company from 1630, linking him to a small, intense group of Puritan opponents to the King.

In the Short Parliament of 13 April to 4 May 1640 he made one of the speeches that led to its dissolution and "appeared to be the most leading man" according to Clarendon. What would become the Long Parliament first met in November 1640—Pym had avoided an accusation of treason and rose to leader of the opposition to the king.

He was notable in defending the powers of Parliament; he initiated the legal attacks on the Earl of Strafford and William Laud, and attacked the operation of the Star Chamber. It is probable that he even used popular supporters to stage riots, attempting to prevent the House of Lords from vetoing the abolition of episcopacy. When control of the army became an issue, concerning the Irish Rebellion from September to October 1641, Pym directed the house's defiance and helped draft the Grand Remonstrance of grievances presented to the King on 1 December 1641. However, many moderate Members of Parliament were alienated by the radical momentum, led by the Puritan opposition to Charles I.

Thus Pym lost the unity of the House of Commons, which had allowed him to oppose the King from a firm platform; previously the King had had to agree to demands because he could not raise an army alone to fight the Irish rebels. Pym was one of five members sought for arrest when the King entered the House of Commons on 5 January 1642 but, forewarned, they had already fled, to return to some acclamation a week later. This shows how great an emphasis Charles placed on Pym's leadership of the Puritan opposition group and how closely he was identified with the Parliamentary cause.

English Civil War

When the English Civil War began in 1642, Pym became involved in the financial problems, heading the Committee of Safety from 4 July 1642. He was a key organizer of the loans and taxes that Parliament needed, to fund its army and fight the King, and he negotiated the Solemn League and Covenant that gained the support of Scottish Presbyterians. These two things laid firm foundations for Parliament's success in 1645-6 because it now had financial and military resources far beyond those of the Royalists. Pym died, probably of cancer, at Derby House in 1643 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Following the Restoration of 1660 his remains were exhumed, despoiled and finally re-buried in a common pit.

External links

• http://www.bookrags.com/biography/john-pym/

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