Talk:Good Old Cause

Clean up
This article could easily be made a precise and clear explanation of its subject. It need not be exceedingly long, but its current lack of references, easily comprehensible sentences etc. means it could be drastically improved. -- Hestemand 10:15, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree - I will have a go at it in the next few days. Greycap 13:29, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Conscious that I haven't done anything on this but will try to do so soon. Greycap 23:13, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Some notes
Some years ago I put together some sources that could be used to expand this article, but never got around to doing so. I am removing them from my sandbox placing them here so that others can use them if they so wish:

Wallingford House Party (Officers in the army):
 * "see Godfret Davies, The various petitions were: the Wallinford House party's conditions for restoring the Rump, 2 May (76-77); the Petition and Address of the army 12 May(97-98); Lambert's Derby petition of September; and Desbrough's of 5 October (147-50) -- Copied from Footnote 40 Page 209 of Milton in Government, by Robert Thomas Fallon"

The British Magazine, v. 36. By Hugh James Rose, Samuel Roffey MaitlandnPublished by John Turrill, 1849 p. 602, 631

The above volume shows that "the good cause" was a term used by parliament during the civil war.


 * Plots and counterplots by Richard Lewis Braverman p. 62


 * History of Richard Cromwell and the Restoration of Charles II, by Guizot (François), Andrew Richard Scoble, Antoine de Bordeaux, Jules Maz p. 136


 * Calvinism and Arminianism compared in their principles and tendency: vol. 2, by Laurence Womock, James Nichols, Published by Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1824. p. 778,779

on the 12th of May 1659, the Officers of the Army presented "their humble Petition and Address." The following extract from it will shew, that they were exceedingly jealous of a second Calvinistic attempt to infringe the religious liberty, (if such it may be called,) which they had long enjoyed, and from the benefits of which they still excepted their old enemies, Popery and Prelacy :—

"Weighing with ourselves how, in the several late changes in government, that public spirit which appeared in that work hath since that time been discouraged; and another raised up, drawing back to the same things you had contended against, even to the hazarding the essentials of that cause, we did, upon serious thoughts of heart, think it our duty once more to appear against those backsliding ways: And providence having brought the state of affairs to the condition they were in some few days before your sitting, we found it necessary to assert amongst ourselves some of the F UNDAMENTALS of our Good Old Cause, with some other things conducing to the preservation thereof, with a full and fixed resolution, through the assistance of God, effectually, even to THE HAZARD OF OUR LIVES, to endeavour the recovery and security of the same. And the same good providence holding forth an opportunity to us to open unto you a way for the further discharge of your remaining trust in Parliament, we did, by our Declaration of this instant May, humbly desire that you would be pleased to return to the exercise and discharge thereof ..."

After other observations of a similar tendency, these men of war, who considered themselves as well qualified to settle affairs of state as articles of religion, produced the following as the sixth F UNDAMENTALS of the Good Old Cause: "That all persons who profess faith in God the Father,—and in Jesus Christ, his eternal Son, the true God,—and in the Holy Spirit, God co-equal with the Father and the Son,—one God blessed for ever,—and who do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the revealed or written word or will of God, shall not be restrained from their profession, but have due encouragement and equal protection in the profession of their faith and exercise of religion, whilst they abuse not their liberty to the civil injury of others, or disturbance of others in their way of worship: So that this liberty be not extended to Popery or Prelacy, nor to such as shall practise or hold forth licentiousness or profaneness under the profession of religion: And that all laws, statutes, or ordinances, and clauses in any laws, statutes, or ordinances to the contrary, may be declared null and void."

These Fundamental preliminaries, more tolerant on the whole than those devised by Dr. Owen and his thirteen Calvinistic associates, possessed the advantage of being enforced by sword-logic, broad intimations of which are contained in the preceding extract.

Not only did the Fanatics in the army, from a selfish principle, prevent the imposition of the novel Fundamentals invented by Cromwell's fourteen divines; but "the sons of reason," the deistical members of the senate, Algernon Sidney, Harrington, Martin, and others who with less daring but with greater hypocrisy concealed their loose principles under the garb of a strict religious profession, all concurred in discountenancing this unwieldy and impracticable scheme of religious toleration.—Few men ever enjoyed such an opportunity of evincing the genuine catholicism of their sentiments, as " this Committee of Fourteen appointed to consider what were Fundamentals:" And there is not, I believe, an instance on record in which men of such vast professions more egregiously disap-, pointed the just expectations of their admirers. If enlarged ideas about religious toleration had existed in any of their breasts, they would have been displayed in one form or other while the religious tests were under discussion; but their sole anxiety in all the dehates seems to have been, to frame the terms of qualification for religious indulgence on as higoted a basis as possible, and to exclude all who did not admire the doctrine of Calvin.


 * British literature 1640-1789 By Robert DeMaria, p. 46 On Milton and Paradise lost and what was the Good Old Cause.

Good Old Cause

Thomas Bayly Howell, Thomas Jones Howell, William Cobbett, David Jardine. A complete collection of state trials and proceedings for high treason and other crimes and misdemeanors from the earliest period to the year 1783. Vol 5. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1816. "205. The Trials of Twenty-nine Regicides, at the Old Bailey, for High Treason, which began the 9th Day of October, A. D. 1660: 12 Charles II." p. 1287, 1289 "Some Particulars of the Behaviour and of the Execution of Colonel DANIEL AXTELL, and Col. FRANCIS HACKER, the 19th day of October, 1660, at Tyburn."

"and tell them [in Ireland] that for that Good Old Cause which we were engaged in, under the parliament; I am now going to be their martyr; ... ... afterward sitting on his bed-side clapping his hands, said, if I had a thousand lives, I could lay them all down for the Cause. Whereupon another godly minister then present, asked him, What he meant by the Cause? Col. Axtell replied, Sir, I tell you, I mean that Cause which we were encouraged to, and engaged in under the parliament, which was for common right and freedom, and against the Surplice and Common-Prayer Book: and I tell you, that Surplice and Common-Prayer Book shall not stand long in England, for it is not of God. ... Then calling for his Bible, he hugged it, saying, This hath the whole Cause in it, and I may carry this without offence [to carry it to Tyburn his place of execution]."


 * "The Mystery of the Good Old Cause" pamphlet
 * "Notes and Queries no. 143" By Inc Chadwyck-Healey p. 74
 * "First Among Friends" By H. Larry Ingle p. 170-
 * "Literature and Utopian politics in seventeenth-century England" By Robert Appelbaum p.189
 * "Literature and politics in Cromwellian England" By Blair Worden p. 326 (Chapter 14) "Milton and the Good Old Cause"
 * "Commonwealth principles" By Jonathan Scott p. 304 -- good description of linking the commonwealth to the good old cause.
 * John Locke By John Marshallp.6 "Essay in defence of the good old cause."
 * "Britain in revolution, 1625-1660" By Austin Woolrych 715 a good chapter that looks at many of 600 pamphlets. Also p. 769 Annulment of the the "Engagement to be faithful to the commonwealth without King or house of Lords".

-- PBS (talk) 11:06, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

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