methods to get pounds such as sale of office, sale of tnonopolies, and forced loans. This made Court corruption very much worse and in1uriated Parliament. James I died in 1625 leaving his son, Charles I, to cope with a problem which was to be resolved by his own violent death.
VII. Charles 1 (1625-1649) and the Parliament
Charles I's relations with the Parliament were from the start disastrous. He, like his father, thought of his right to rule as God-given —\Right of Kings\not be challenged by anyone. This was an inflexible stand, and it encouraged confrontation with Parliament, whose members had become increasingly Puritan in sympathy. Charles encouraged the growth of a school of thought within the Church of England which Puritans believed to be very close to the old Roman Catholicism and found deeply offensive on religious and nationalist grounds. This Arminianism became popular with the high officials of the Church. It wished to restore some of the old medieval Church's customs, and gave the bishop of the Church great respect and power. Puritanism in Elizabethan times had been a reform tendency of Elizabeth's churchmen. As these men were removed from their positions by the Stuarts, they left the Church of England. Puritanism, as a result, quickly became a mass movement of communities up and down the country, noted for simple dress, high moral standards and very egalitarian attitudes. As the Puritans had always been the most outspoken about threats to England from Roman Catholicism they were also respected nationalists.
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Increasingly Charles l's personal views on religion confirmed Puritans' Suspicions: Catholics were again worshipping at Court! The climate of the times was such that toleration of Catholicism and admiration of European Catholic countries' culture was regarded as madness.
Charles I called his first Parliament in 1625. When he asked Parliament to vote him the usual import duties, it granted them for one year only instead of for life. The King responded by dissolving Parliament, collecting the customs duties, raising a forced loan and threatening those who refused to pay with imprisonment, Forced once more by shortage of money to call another Parliament (his third Parliament) in 1628, he found himself faced by a powerful opposition led by Sir John Eliot. It was at this Parliament that the King was forced to accept the Petition of Right, regarded as the second Magna Carta, which forbade arbitrary arrest and imprisonment and requested that no taxes should be raised without consent of Parliament; no more billeting of soldiers in private houses; and no person be tried by martial law. But a year later Charles dissolved Parliament. He managed by various financial measures (e. g. Ship-money was extended to all inland towns and counties in 1635) to survive for ii years without calling another until 1640 when, hav-ing tried to impose his High Church practices (the English Book of Common Prayer) on the Scottish Church, a rebellious Scottish army marched. into England - The Scots defeated the royal forces at Newburn, and Charles was forced to conclude a treaty with the Scots at Ripon, by which it was agreed that the Scots should abstain from all acts of hostility and Charles should pay 850 pounds a day for the maintenance of the Scottish army, until the differences between them and the King should be settled.
Charles, being still in want of money and fearing a second invasion of the Scots, called his Fifth Parliament, sometimes called the Long Parliament (1640-1660). Immediately Parliament ordered the arrests of
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the King's most ruthlessly efficient ministers, Strafford and Laud. Then a whole series of measures were introduced by the Long Parliament limiting the authority of the Crown while increasing its own. The Militia Bill proposed the transfer of military command from the Crown to Parliament, and a Grand Remonstrance urged radical reforms in the Church, including the limitation of the power of bishops, and the replacement of the King's counselors by ministers approved by Parliament. While the King and the Commons were at each other's throats in 1641, discontented Irish Catholics took advantage of this situation to attack the settlers who had taken their land. Thousands were killed and the outcry in England was heightened by a belief that Charles had backed the Irish Catholic side. Having hesitated too long, Charles began to take action in 1642. Leading a party of swordsmen, he marched to the Commons to arrest Pym and four other Members. When he arrived there, he discovered that \the birds [were] flown\They had escaped to the City where the authorities refused to deliver them up. War was now inevitable.
VII The Civil Wars
It was very reluctantly that the Parliament concluded that the only way it could impress its views on such a king would be to defeat him in battle, and then impose legal conditions upon him before allowing him to reign again. This idea was important until 1645.
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On August 22, 1642 in a field near Nottingham King Charles raised his standard beneath a glowering sky, and bade all his supporters to join him. Thus the First Civil War (1642-46) began. At that time there were scarcely more than a thousand men at his command. Charles gained the support of the north and west of the country and Wales. Parliament, on the other hand, derived its strongest support from south-east England and London. Many nobles and gentry gathered round the King, while the Parliamentary army was made up of yeoman farmers, middle-class townspeople, and artisans. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Church party, were on the side of the King, the Presbyterians on the side of the Parliament. The King's men were called Cavaliers, and the supporters of Parliament were called Roundheads because of their short haircuts.
In the first major battle, Charles' army held back Parliamentarian troops under Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, at Edgehill near Warwick (1642). This enabled Charles to establish headquarters at Oxford. Thereafter the fortunes of the Royalists began to decline and the tide turned in favour of the Parliamentarians. Prince Rupert, the King's young nephew, lost to Oliver Cromwell's \regiment at Marston Moor (1644). So the King lost the north. Largely responsible for vxctory at Marston Moor, Oliver Cromwell became lieutenant general of the New Model Army. On June 14, 1645, Fairfax and Cromwell destroyed the Royalist army at Nasby, and by autumn 1646 Parliament held most of England. Charles left Oxford in disguise and gave himself up to the Scottish army at Neward on May 5, 1646. Jn
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January, 1647, Charles was surrendered by the Swts to the Parliamentary Commissioners at Newcastle for a payment of ￡400,000. In February, 1647, Parliament moved the King to Holmby House, Northants. In June, William Joyce, a Cornet of Horse, with a troop of horse, took possession of the King and brought him to Newmarket. ?The Grandees did not repudiate the coup. It seems likely that the Army was behind this scheme to remove Charles from Parliament's control. In October, 1647, Cromwell allowed the regiments to elect Agitators and he discussed with them their post war settlement—the Leveller-inspired Agreement of the People—in the Putney Debates (Oct-Nov 1647), opposing their democratic ideas as a threat to property. In November, 1647, the King escaped from the Army to Cansbrook Castle, Isle of Wight, and made a deal with the Scots. Induced by Charles, the Scots rose in his favour under
Flamilton,
and invaded England, but were defeated by
Cromwell at Preston (1648). This was the beginning of the Second Civil War. On November 30, 1648, the Army took possession of the King and advanced on London. Charles was tried by a High Court of Justice, found guilty of having levied war against his kingdom and the Parliament, con-demned to death, and executed on a scaffold outside the windows of the Banqueting House at Whitehall on January 30, 1649. Oliver Cromwell, who had signed the death warrant of the royal \Traitor, Murderer and Public Enemy\
The English Civil War is also called the Puritan Revolution, because the King's opponents were mainly Puritan, and his supporters chiefly Episcopalian
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