The Stuart Era

the Stuart Era

James I

James I. Elizabeth was followed to the throne by James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England. James believed in the absolute power of the monarchy, and he had a rocky relationship with an increasingly vociferous and demanding Parliament. It would be a mistake to think of Parliament as a democratic institution, or the voice of the common citizen. Parliament was a forum for the interests of the nobility and the merchant classes (not unlike today, some would say).

The Gunpowder Plot- James was a firm protestant, and in 1604 he expelled all Catholic priests from the island. This was one of the factors which led to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. A group of Catholic plotters planned to blow up Parliament when it opened on November 5. However, an anonymous letter betrayed the plot and one of the plotters, Guy Fawkes, was captured in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament with enough gunpowder to blow the place sky high. Most of the plotters were captured and executed.

The Rise of the Puritans: During James' reign radical Protestant groups called Puritans began to gain a sizeable following. Puritans wanted to "purify" the church by paring down church ritual, educating the clergy, and limiting the powers of bishops. King James resisted this last. The powers of the church and king were too closely linked. "No bishop, no king," he said. The Puritans also favoured thrift, education ,and individual initiative, therefore they found great support among the new middle class of merchants, the powers in the Commons.

James' attitude toward Parliament was clear. He commented in 1614 that he was surprised his ancestors "should have permitted such an institution to come into existence....It is sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power".

The King James Bible: In 1611 the King James's version of the Holy Bible was issued, the result of seven years of labor by the best translators and theological minds of the day. It remained the authoritative, though not necessarily accurate, version of the Bible for centuries.

Charles I (1625-49) continued his father's acrimonious relationship with Parliament, squabbling over the right to levy taxes. Parliament responded with the Petition of Right in 1628. It was the most dramatic assertion of the traditional rights of the English people since the Magna Carta. Its basic premise was that no taxes of any kind could be allowed without the permission of Parliament.

Charles finally had enough, and in 1629 he dissolved Parliament and ruled without it for eleven years. Some of the ways he raised money during this period were of dubious legality by the standards of the time.

Between 1630-43 large numbers of people emigrated from England as Archbishop Laud tried to impose uniformity on the church. Up to 60,000 people left, 1/3 of them to the new American colonies. Several areas lost a large part of their populations, and laws were enacted to curb the outflow.

Ship Money: In 1634 Charles attempted to levy "ship-money", a tax that previously applied only to ports, on the whole country. This raised tremendous animosity throughout the realm. Finally Charles, desperate for money, summoned the so-called Short Parliament in 1640. Parliament refused to vote Charles more money until its grievances were answered, and the king dismissed it after only three weeks. Then a rebellion broke out in Scotland and Charles was forced to call a new Parliament, dubbed the Long Parliament, which officially sat until 1660.

Civil War: Parliament made increasing demands, which the king refused to meet. Neither side was willing to budge. Finally in 1642 fighting broke out. The English Civil War (1642-1646) polarized society largely along class lines. Parliament drew most of its support from the middle classes, while the king was supported by the nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry. Parliamentary troops were known as Roundheads because of their severe hair style. The king's army were known as Cavaliers, from the French for "knight", or "horseman".

Introduction

The wars were intermingled inextricably with and formed part of a linked series of conflicts and civil wars between 1639 and 1651 in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, which at that time shared a monarch but formed distinct countries with otherwise separate political structures. Those recent historians who aim to have a unified overview (rather than treating parts of the other conflicts as background to the English Civil War) sometimes call these linked conflicts the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Some have also described them as the "British Civil Wars", but this terminology can mislead: the three kingdoms did not become a single political entity until the Act of Union 1800.

The wars led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son Charles II, and the replacement of the English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England (1649Ð'-1653) and then with a Protectorate (1653Ð'-1659) under the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England came to an end, and the victors consolidated the already established Protestant aristocracy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established a precedent that British monarchs could not govern without the consent of Parliament.

Unlike other civil wars in England which focused

on who ruled, this war also concerned itself with the manner of governing the British isles. Accordingly, historians also refer to the English Civil War as the English Revolution and (especially in 17th-century Royalist circles) as the Great Rebellion.

Background

The King's Aspirations

Contemporaries must have found it unthinkable that a civil war could result from the events taking place. It was less than forty years since the death of the popular Elizabeth I. At the accession of Charles I, England and Scotland were relatively peaceful, and had been so in their relations with each other, in living memory. Charles had real hopes of fulfilling the dream of his father, James I of England (James VI of Scotland), of uniting the whole British Isles in a single kingdom. Charles shared his father's feelings in regard to the power of the crown, which James had described as "little Gods on Earth", or the "Divine Right of Kings". Although pious and with little personal ambition, Charles demanded outright