125-665: The Grand Remonstrance was a list of grievances presented to King Charles I of England by the English Parliament on 1 December 1641, but passed by the House of Commons on 22 November 1641, during the Long Parliament . It was one of the chief events which was to precipitate the English Civil War . Relations between King and Parliament had been uneasy since 1625, when Charles I, King of England married
250-593: A Roman Catholic , generated antipathy and mistrust from Reformed religious groups such as the English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters , who thought his views too Catholic. He supported high church Anglican ecclesiastics and failed to aid continental Protestant forces successfully during the Thirty Years' War . His attempts to force the Church of Scotland to adopt high Anglican practices led to
375-642: A Parliament, are known as the Personal Rule or the "eleven years' tyranny". Ruling without Parliament was not exceptional, and was supported by precedent. But only Parliament could legally raise taxes, and without it Charles's capacity to acquire funds for his treasury was limited to his customary rights and prerogatives. A large fiscal deficit had arisen during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. Notwithstanding Buckingham's short-lived campaigns against both Spain and France, Charles had little financial capacity to wage wars overseas. Throughout his reign, he
500-567: A bride and to a rapturous and relieved public welcome, he and Buckingham pushed the reluctant James to declare war on Spain. With the encouragement of his Protestant advisers, James summoned the English Parliament in 1624 to request subsidies for a war. Charles and Buckingham supported the impeachment of the Lord Treasurer , Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex , who opposed war on grounds of cost and quickly fell in much
625-736: A clandestine attempt to aid Catholicism's resurgence. Rather than direct involvement in the European land war, the English Parliament preferred a relatively inexpensive naval attack on Spanish colonies in the New World , hoping for the capture of the Spanish treasure fleets . Parliament voted to grant a subsidy of £140,000, an insufficient sum for Charles's war plans. Moreover, the House of Commons limited its authorisation for royal collection of tonnage and poundage (two varieties of customs duties) to
750-526: A compromise whereby the king would agree to forfeit ship money in exchange for £650,000 (although the cost of the coming war was estimated at £1 million). Nevertheless, this alone was insufficient to produce consensus in the Commons. The Parliamentarians' calls for further reforms were ignored by Charles, who still retained the support of the House of Lords. Despite the protests of the Earl of Northumberland,
875-665: A controversial anti-Calvinist ecclesiastic, Richard Montagu , who was in disrepute among the Puritans . In his pamphlet A New Gag for an Old Goose (1624), a reply to the Catholic pamphlet A New Gag for the New Gospel , Montagu argued against Calvinist predestination , the doctrine that God preordained salvation and damnation . Anti-Calvinists—known as Arminians —believed that people could accept or reject salvation by exercising free will . Arminian divines had been one of
1000-717: A critic of the king, Strafford defected to royal service in 1628, in part due to the Duke of Buckingham's persuasion, and had since emerged, alongside Laud, as the most influential of Charles's ministers. Bolstered by the failure of the English Short Parliament, the Scottish Parliament declared itself capable of governing without the king's consent, and in August 1640 the Covenanter army moved into
1125-584: A defence against innovation and disorder. Parliament quickly seized London, and Charles fled the capital for Hampton Court Palace on 10 January, moving two days later to Windsor Castle . After sending his wife and eldest daughter to safety abroad in February, he travelled northwards, hoping to seize the military arsenal at Hull . To his dismay, he was rebuffed by the town's Parliamentary governor , Sir John Hotham , who refused him entry in April, and Charles
1250-516: A man who had great influence over the prince, travelled incognito to Spain in February 1623 to try to reach agreement on the long-pending Spanish match. The trip was an embarrassing failure. The infanta thought Charles little more than an infidel, and the Spanish at first demanded that he convert to Catholicism as a condition of the match. They insisted on toleration of Catholics in England and
1375-563: A new departure for Irish politics whereby all sides joined to present evidence against him. In a similar manner to the English Parliament, the Old English members of the Irish Parliament argued that while opposed to Strafford they remained loyal to Charles. They argued that the king had been led astray by malign counsellors, and that, moreover, a viceroy such as Strafford could emerge as a despotic figure instead of ensuring that
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#17327662255341500-436: A platform for popular protest, and the judges found against Hampden only by the narrow margin of 7–5. Charles also derived money by granting monopolies, despite a statute forbidding such action , which, though inefficient, raised an estimated £100,000 a year in the late 1630s. One such monopoly was for soap, pejoratively referred to as " popish soap " because some of its backers were Catholics. Charles also raised funds from
1625-658: A secret marriage treaty with his brother-in-law Louis XIII of France . Moreover, the treaty loaned to the French seven English naval ships that were used to suppress the Protestant Huguenots at La Rochelle in September 1625. Charles was crowned on 2 February 1626 at Westminster Abbey , but without his wife at his side, because she refused to participate in a Protestant religious ceremony. Distrust of Charles's religious policies increased with his support of
1750-573: A venture. Both the English and Irish parliaments were summoned in the early months of 1640. In March 1640, the Irish Parliament duly voted in a subsidy of £180,000 with the promise to raise an army 9,000 strong by the end of May. But in the English general election in March, court candidates fared badly, and Charles's dealings with the English Parliament in April quickly reached stalemate. The earls of Northumberland and Strafford attempted to broker
1875-516: A year, although previous sovereigns since Henry VI had been granted the right for life. In this manner, Parliament could delay approval of the rates until after a full-scale review of customs revenue. The bill made no progress in the House of Lords past its first reading . Although no act of Parliament for the levy of tonnage and poundage was obtained, Charles continued to collect the duties. A poorly conceived and executed naval expedition against Spain under Buckingham's leadership went badly, and
2000-573: The Bishops' Wars , strengthened the position of the English and Scottish parliaments, and helped precipitate his own downfall. From 1642, Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments in the English Civil War . After his defeat in 1645 at the hands of the Parliamentarian New Model Army , he fled north from his base at Oxford. Charles surrendered to a Scottish force and after lengthy negotiations between
2125-637: The Electoral Palatinate were invaded by a Habsburg force from the Spanish Netherlands . James, however, had been seeking marriage between Prince Charles and Ferdinand's niece, Infanta Maria Anna of Spain , and began to see the Spanish match as a possible diplomatic means of achieving peace in Europe. Unfortunately for James, negotiation with Spain proved unpopular with both the public and James's court. The English Parliament
2250-410: The English Parliament , which sought to curb his royal prerogative . He believed in the divine right of kings , and was determined to govern according to his own conscience. Many of his subjects opposed his policies, in particular the levying of taxes without Parliamentary consent, and perceived his actions as those of a tyrannical absolute monarch . His religious policies, coupled with his marriage to
2375-739: The First Bishops' War in 1639. He did not seek subsidies from the English Parliament to wage war, instead raising an army without parliamentary aid and marching to Berwick-upon-Tweed , on the Scottish border. The army did not engage the Covenanters , as the king feared the defeat of his forces, whom he believed to be significantly outnumbered by the Scots. In the Treaty of Berwick , Charles regained custody of his Scottish fortresses and secured
2500-567: The Grand Remonstrance of 1641, called for his imprisonment. Laud was imprisoned in the Tower of London , where he remained throughout the early stages of the English Civil War . Apart from a few personal enemies like William Prynne (and possibly Archbishop Williams), Parliament showed little eagerness to proceed against Laud; given his age (68 in 1641), most members would probably have preferred to leave him to die of natural causes. In
2625-472: The Grand Remonstrance , a long list of grievances against actions by Charles's ministers committed since the beginning of his reign (that were asserted to be part of a grand Catholic conspiracy of which the king was an unwitting member), but it was in many ways a step too far by Pym and passed by only 11 votes, 159 to 148. Furthermore, the Remonstrance had very little support in the House of Lords, which
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#17327662255342750-672: The Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand of Austria , a Catholic , was elected king of Bohemia . The next year, the Bohemians rebelled , defenestrating the Catholic governors . In August 1619, the Bohemian diet chose Frederick, who led the Protestant Union , as their monarch, while Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor in the imperial election . Frederick's acceptance of the Bohemian crown in defiance of
2875-647: The Kirk . Although it had been written, under Charles's direction, by Scottish bishops, many Scots resisted it, seeing it as a vehicle to introduce Anglicanism to Scotland. On 23 July, riots erupted in Edinburgh upon the first Sunday of the prayer book's usage, and unrest spread throughout the Kirk. The public began to mobilise around a reaffirmation of the National Covenant , whose signatories pledged to uphold
3000-575: The Short Parliament (as it came to be known) was dissolved in May 1640, less than a month after it assembled. By this stage the Earl of Strafford, Lord Deputy of Ireland since 1632, had emerged as Charles's right-hand man and, together with Archbishop Laud, pursued a policy that he termed " Thorough ", which aimed to make central royal authority more efficient and effective at the expense of local or anti-government interests. Although originally
3125-624: The mint in the Tower of London , promising its later return at 8% interest to its owners. In August, after the East India Company refused to grant a loan, Lord Cottington seized the company's stock of pepper and spices and sold it for £60,000 (far below its market value), promising to refund the money with interest later. Throughout Charles's reign, the English Reformation was in the forefront of political debate. Arminian theology emphasised clerical authority and
3250-449: The personal rule of Charles I began in 1629 and Laud shortly became a key part of it, in alliance with Thomas Wentworth . Historian Mark Perry argues that by 1626 in private consultations with the king and Buckingham, and in his public role in the House of Lords, Laud was a highly effective parliamentarian and a key adviser and policy-maker. Laud distrusted parliamentary bargaining, and was always determined to resist all encroachments upon
3375-530: The plantation of Ulster , coupled with resentment at moves to ensure the Irish Parliament was subordinate to the Parliament of England, sowed the seeds of rebellion. When armed conflict arose between the Gaelic Irish and New English in late October 1641, the Old English sided with the Gaelic Irish while simultaneously professing their loyalty to the king. In November 1641, the House of Commons passed
3500-582: The "Distraint of Knighthood", in abeyance for over a century, which required any man who earned £40 or more from land each year to present himself at the king's coronation to be knighted. Relying on this old statute, Charles fined those who had failed to attend his coronation in 1626. The chief tax Charles imposed was a feudal levy known as ship money , which proved even more unpopular, and lucrative, than tonnage and poundage before it. Previously, collection of ship money had been authorised only during wars, and only on coastal regions. But Charles argued that there
3625-458: The "wicked counsels" of Charles's "arbitrary and tyrannical government". While those who signed the petition undertook to defend the king's "person, honour and estate", they also swore to preserve "the true reformed religion", Parliament, and the "rights and liberties of the subjects". Fearing for his family's safety in the face of unrest, Charles reluctantly assented to Strafford's attainder on 9 May after consulting his judges and bishops. Strafford
3750-457: The Chapel services to privilege prayer over preaching, since King Charles's views were the opposite of his father's. In July 1628 Laud was translated from Bath and Wells to become Bishop of London , in moves that followed on from the death of Andrewes. After this breakthrough in church politics, it becomes meaningful to define "Laudians" or "Lauders" as his followers. On the political stage,
3875-518: The Commons launched a direct protestation attacking Buckingham, stating, "We protest before your Majesty and the whole world that until this great person be removed from intermeddling with the great affairs of state, we are out of hope of any good success; and do fear that any money we shall or can give will, through his misemployment, be turned rather to the hurt and prejudice of this your kingdom than otherwise, as by lamentable experience we have found those large supplies formerly and lately given." Despite
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4000-720: The Commons passed the bill as an ordinance, which they claimed did not require royal assent. The Militia Ordinance appears to have prompted more members of the Lords to support the king. In an attempt to strengthen his position, Charles generated great antipathy in London, which was already fast falling into lawlessness, when he placed the Tower of London under the command of Colonel Thomas Lunsford , an infamous, albeit efficient, career officer. When rumours reached Charles that Parliament intended to impeach his wife for supposedly conspiring with
4125-399: The Commons' walls, demanding war with Spain and a Protestant princess of Wales . Like his father, Charles considered discussion of his marriage in the Commons impertinent and an infringement of his father's royal prerogative . In January 1622, James dissolved Parliament, angry at what he perceived as the members' impudence and intransigence. Charles and Buckingham, James's favourite and
4250-596: The Earl of Strafford. Laud was buried in the chapel of St John's College, Oxford , his alma mater . Laud is remembered in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church of the United States with a commemoration on 10 January. His collected works in seven volumes were published between 1847 and 1860 in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology . The English diplomat Sir Thomas Roe , told
4375-703: The English and Scottish parliaments he was handed over to the Long Parliament in London. Charles refused to accept his captors' demands for a constitutional monarchy , and temporarily escaped captivity in November 1647. Re-imprisoned on the Isle of Wight , he forged an alliance with Scotland, but by the end of 1648, the New Model Army had consolidated its control over England. Charles was tried, convicted , and executed for high treason in January 1649. The monarchy
4500-566: The English county of Northumberland . Following the illness of Lord Northumberland, who was the king's commander-in-chief, Charles and Strafford went north to command the English forces, despite Strafford being ill himself with a combination of gout and dysentery. The Scottish soldiery, many of whom were veterans of the Thirty Years' War, had far greater morale and training than their English counterparts. They met virtually no resistance until reaching Newcastle upon Tyne , where they defeated
4625-558: The English forces at the Battle of Newburn and occupied the city, as well as the neighbouring county of Durham . As demands for a parliament grew, Charles took the unusual step of summoning a great council of peers . By the time it met, on 24 September at York , Charles had resolved to follow the almost universal advice to call a parliament. After informing the peers that a parliament would convene in November, he asked them to consider how he could acquire funds to maintain his army against
4750-631: The French Roman Catholic Henrietta Maria . In 1626 Charles had dissolved Parliament in order to prevent it impeaching his favourite, the influential Duke of Buckingham . Being in need of money to carry on a war with Spain as part of his strategy for intervention in the Thirty Years War , Charles resorted to means of uncertain lawfulness to raise the necessary funds, imprisoning without charge those who refused to pay. This had resulted in Parliament presenting
4875-538: The French with English ships as a condition of marrying Henrietta Maria, in 1627 he launched an attack on the French coast to defend the Huguenots at La Rochelle. The action, led by Buckingham, was ultimately unsuccessful. Buckingham's failure to protect the Huguenots—and his retreat from Saint-Martin-de-Ré —spurred Louis XIII's siege of La Rochelle and furthered the English Parliament's and people's detestation of
5000-482: The Garter . Eventually, Charles apparently conquered his physical infirmity, which might have been caused by rickets . He became an adept horseman and marksman, and took up fencing. Even so, his public profile remained low in contrast to that of his physically stronger and taller elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales , whom Charles adored and attempted to emulate. But in early November 1612, Henry died at
5125-520: The Grand Remonstrance summarised all of Parliament's opposition to Charles's foreign, financial, legal and religious policies, setting forth 204 separate points of objection and calling for the expulsion of all bishops from Parliament, a purge of officials, with Parliament having a right of veto over Crown appointments, and an end to sale of land confiscated from Irish rebels . The document was careful not to make any direct accusation against
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5250-487: The House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here." Charles abjectly declared "all my birds have flown", and was forced to retire empty-handed. The botched arrest attempt was politically disastrous for Charles. No English sovereign had ever entered the House of Commons, and his unprecedented invasion of the chamber to arrest its members was considered a grave breach of parliamentary privilege . In one stroke Charles destroyed his supporters' efforts to portray him as
5375-446: The House of Commons began proceedings for the impeachment of the duke. In May 1626, Charles nominated Buckingham as Chancellor of Cambridge University in a show of support, and had two members who had spoken against Buckingham— Dudley Digges and Sir John Eliot —arrested at the door of the House. The Commons was outraged by the imprisonment of two of their members, and after about a week in custody, both were released. On 12 June 1626,
5500-742: The Incident , Charles's credibility was significantly undermined. Ireland's population was split into three main sociopolitical groups: the Gaelic Irish , who were Catholic; the Old English , who were descended from medieval Normans and also predominantly Catholic; and the New English , who were Protestant settlers from England and Scotland aligned with the English Parliament and the Covenanters. Strafford's administration had improved
5625-507: The Irish army to subdue England was not corroborated, and on 10 April Pym's case collapsed. Pym and his allies immediately launched a bill of attainder, which simply declared Strafford guilty and pronounced the sentence of death. Charles assured Strafford that "upon the word of a king you shall not suffer in life, honour or fortune", and the attainder could not succeed if Charles withheld assent. Furthermore, many members and most peers opposed
5750-458: The Irish economy and boosted tax revenue, but had done so by heavy-handedly imposing order. He had trained up a large Catholic army in support of the king and weakened the Irish Parliament's authority, while continuing to confiscate land from Catholics for Protestant settlement at the same time as promoting a Laudian Anglicanism that was anathema to presbyterians. As a result, all three groups had become disaffected. Strafford's impeachment provided
5875-501: The Irish rebels, he decided to take drastic action. Charles suspected, probably correctly, that some members of the English Parliament had colluded with the invading Scots. On 3 January 1642, Charles directed Parliament to give up five specific members of the Commons—Pym, John Hampden , Denzil Holles , William Strode and Sir Arthur Haselrig —and one peer, Lord Mandeville , on the grounds of high treason. When Parliament refused, it
6000-613: The King himself, or any other named individual, instead blaming the state of affairs on a Roman Catholic conspiracy, made easier by the King's reconciliation with Spain and marriage to Henrietta Maria, a Roman Catholic. In tone it was strongly against the Church of Rome, taking the side of the Puritan party in the English church in opposition to William Laud , whom Charles had appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 and who, by implication,
6125-732: The King in Yorkshire upon his release). Toward the end of his life, Charles I admitted that he had put too much trust in Laud, and allowed his "peevish humours" and obsession with points of ritual to inflame divisions within the Church: he warned his son not to rely on anyone else's judgment in such matters. Laud, on his side, could not forgive the king for allowing Strafford's execution and dismissed his royal master as "a mild and gracious Prince, that knows not how to be, or be made, great". The Long Parliament of 1640 accused Laud of treason and, in
6250-591: The King with the Petition of Right in 1628, in response to which Charles had again dismissed Parliament and for the next eleven years governed without it. In 1640, the situation had become desperate enough for Charles to summon Parliament again: faced with the Bishops' War in Scotland, he attempted to raise money for a new royal army and immediately dismissed the Parliament in May when it refused to accede. He attempted to send an army anyway, but starved of funds,
6375-565: The Lord Keeper and 12 peers to summon Parliament if the king failed to do so. The Act was coupled with a subsidy bill, and to secure the latter, Charles grudgingly granted royal assent in February 1641. Strafford had become the principal target of the Parliamentarians, particularly John Pym , and he went on trial for high treason on 22 March 1641. But the key allegation by Sir Henry Vane that Strafford had threatened to use
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#17327662255346500-602: The Protestant cause abroad effectively. In 1633, Charles appointed William Laud Archbishop of Canterbury . They initiated a series of reforms to promote religious uniformity by restricting non-conformist preachers, insisting the liturgy be celebrated as prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer , organising the internal architecture of English churches to emphasise the sacrament of the altar, and reissuing King James's Declaration of Sports , which permitted secular activities on
6625-451: The Remonstrance attacked. The tension was heightened by news of the Irish rebellion, coupled with inaccurate rumours of Charles's complicity. Throughout November, a series of alarmist pamphlets published stories of atrocities in Ireland, including massacres of New English settlers by the native Irish who could not be controlled by the Old English lords. Rumours of "papist" conspiracies circulated in England, and English anti-Catholic opinion
6750-427: The Reverend John Lothropp and the Reverend Zechariah Symmes . Laud's desire to impose uniformity on the Church of England was driven by a belief that this was his office's duty, but his methods seemed persecution to those of differing views. Thus, they had the unintended consequence of garnering support for the most implacable opponents of the Anglican compromise. In 1637, Histriomastix's author, William Prynne ,
6875-406: The Scots in the meantime. They recommended making peace. A cessation of arms was negotiated in the humiliating Treaty of Ripon , signed in October 1640. This stated that the Scots would continue to occupy Northumberland and Durham and be paid £850 per day indefinitely until a final settlement was negotiated and the English Parliament recalled, which would be required to raise sufficient funds to pay
7000-408: The Scottish forces. Consequently, Charles summoned what later became known as the Long Parliament . Once again, his supporters fared badly at the polls. Of the 493 members of the Commons returned in November, over 350 were opposed to the king. The Long Parliament proved just as difficult for Charles as had the Short Parliament. It assembled on 3 November 1640 and quickly began proceedings to impeach
7125-432: The Scottish nobility, at the price of considerable acrimony, by the Act of Revocation (1625), whereby all gifts of royal or church land made to the nobility since 1540 were revoked, with continued ownership being subject to an annual rent. In addition, the boundaries of the royal forests in England were restored to their ancient limits as part of a scheme to maximise income by exploiting the land and fining land users within
7250-513: The Tonnage and Poundage Act. The House of Commons also launched bills attacking bishops and episcopacy, but these failed in the Lords. Charles had made important concessions in England, and temporarily improved his position in Scotland by signing a final settlement of the Bishops' Wars , then securing the Scots' favour on a visit from August to November 1641 during which he conceded to the official establishment of presbyterianism in Scotland. But after an attempted royalist coup in Scotland, known as
7375-481: The age of 18 of what is suspected to have been typhoid (or possibly porphyria ). Charles, who turned 12 two weeks later, became heir apparent . As the eldest surviving son of the sovereign, he automatically gained several titles, including Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay . In November 1616, he was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester . In 1613, Charles's sister Elizabeth married Frederick V, Elector Palatine , and moved to Heidelberg . In 1617,
7500-473: The attainder, not wishing, in the words of one, to "commit murder with the sword of justice". But increased tensions and an attempted coup by royalist army officers in support of Strafford and in which Charles was involved began to sway the issue. The Commons passed the bill on 20 April by a large margin (204 in favour, 59 opposed, and 230 abstained), and the Lords acquiesced (by 26 votes to 19, with 79 absent) in May. On 3 May, Parliament's Protestation attacked
7625-519: The bishops, John Williams , who was convicted of various offences in Star Chamber . Contrary to Laud's expectation, Williams refused to resign as Bishop of Lincoln , and the Lords forced his release, after which Williams supported the impeachment of both Strafford (Wentworth) and Laud. Williams specifically urged the king not to commute Strafford's death sentence, and he was executed in 1641, months before Charles I promoted Williams to Archbishop of York (only to be re-imprisoned by Parliament and then join
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#17327662255347750-485: The case of John Rolle , a Member of Parliament whose goods had been confiscated for failing to pay tonnage and poundage. Many MPs viewed the imposition of the tax as a breach of the Petition of Right. When Charles ordered a parliamentary adjournment on 2 March, members held the Speaker, Sir John Finch , down in his chair so that the session could be prolonged long enough for resolutions against Catholicism, Arminianism, and tonnage and poundage to be read out and acclaimed by
7875-513: The chamber. The provocation was too much for Charles, who dissolved Parliament and had nine parliamentary leaders, including Sir John Eliot, imprisoned over the matter, thereby turning the men into martyrs and giving popular cause to their protest. Personal rule necessitated peace. Without the means in the foreseeable future to raise funds from Parliament for a European war, or Buckingham's help, Charles made peace with France and Spain. The next 11 years, during which Charles ruled England without
8000-432: The college. He graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1594, Master of Arts in 1598 and Doctor of Divinity in 1608. When Laud was going through his exercises as a candidate for the degree of Bachelor in Divinity, in 1604, he contended "that there could be no true churches without diocesan episcopacy". For this the young aspirant was sharply and publicly rebuked by Holland, who presided on the occasion; and who severely reprehended
8125-405: The death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales . An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to Infanta Maria Anna of Spain culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiation. Two years later, shortly after his accession, he married Henrietta Maria of France . After his succession in 1625, Charles quarrelled with
8250-418: The dissolution of the Covenanters' interim government, albeit at the decisive concession that both the Scottish Parliament and General Assembly of the Scottish Church were called. The military failure in the First Bishops' War caused a financial and diplomatic crisis for Charles that deepened when his efforts to raise funds from Spain while simultaneously continuing his support for his Palatine relatives led to
8375-523: The document published and publicly circulated, forcing the King's hand. On 23 December 1641, he gave his reply, refusing to remove the bishops. Charles insisted that none of his ministers were guilty of any crime so as to merit their removal and deferred any decision on Irish land until the conclusion of the war there. The king stated that he could not reconcile Parliament's view of the state of England with his own and that regarding religious affairs, in addition to affirming his opposition to Roman Catholicism, it
8500-543: The duke, a change that became clear around December 1624. Laud ascended rapidly to a position of influence in the period 1626 to 1628, advancing not alone but with a group of like-minded clerics who obtained bishoprics. In 1626 he was translated from St David's to be Bishop of Bath and Wells and in September that year he took the court position of Dean of the Chapel Royal , vacant by the death of Lancelot Andrewes . A few years later, in 1633, he became Archbishop of Canterbury, when George Abbot died. He immediately changed
8625-646: The duke. Charles provoked further unrest by trying to raise money for the war through a "forced loan": a tax levied without parliamentary consent. In November 1627, the test case in the King's Bench , the " Five Knights' Case ", found that the king had a prerogative right to imprison without trial those who refused to pay the forced loan. Summoned again in March 1628, Parliament adopted a Petition of Right on 26 May, calling upon Charles to acknowledge that he could not levy taxes without Parliament's consent, impose martial law on civilians, imprison them without due process, or quarter troops in their homes. Charles assented to
8750-404: The election, settling matters in Laud's favour. Laud became Dean of Gloucester in 1616. At Gloucester Cathedral he began ceremonial innovations with the communion table . By local custom, the table stood in the middle of the choir , as was then usual in a parish church, rather than at the east end as was typical of cathedrals. Laud believed he had the king's blessing to renovate and improve
8875-426: The emperor marked the beginning of the turmoil that would develop into the Thirty Years' War . The conflict, originally confined to Bohemia, spiralled into a wider European war, which the English Parliament and public quickly grew to see as a polarised continental struggle between Catholics and Protestants. In 1620, King Frederick was defeated at the Battle of White Mountain near Prague and his hereditary lands in
9000-416: The end of the reign. The Buckingham household employed John Percy ( alias Fisher), a Jesuit , as chaplain, and the king wished to counter well-founded rumours that Percy was making Catholic converts there. In a three-day series of private debates with Percy in 1622, Laud was introduced to argue the Protestant case on the final day; pamphlets followed. He then displaced John Preston as religious adviser to
9125-405: The few sources of support for Charles's proposed Spanish marriage. With King James's support, Montagu produced another pamphlet, Appello Caesarem , published in 1625 shortly after James's death and Charles's accession. To protect Montagu from the stricture of Puritan members of Parliament, Charles made him a royal chaplain, heightening many Puritans' suspicions that Charles favoured Arminianism as
9250-499: The first time, and the bond between them grew stronger. Together, they embodied an image of virtue and family life, and their court became a model of formality and morality. In January 1629, Charles opened the second session of the English Parliament, which had been prorogued in June 1628, with a moderate speech on the tonnage and poundage issue. Members of the House of Commons began to voice opposition to Charles's policies in light of
9375-410: The form of a bill of attainder . The incident set an important precedent as the process of impeachment would later be used against Charles and his supporters the Duke of Buckingham , Archbishop William Laud , and the Earl of Strafford . James insisted that the House of Commons be concerned exclusively with domestic affairs, while the members protested that they had the privilege of free speech within
9500-481: The future Primate of All England as "one who sought to sow discord among brethren, and between the Church of England and the Reformed Churches abroad". While he was an undergraduate, Laud's tutor was John Buckeridge , who became president of St John's College in 1605. Laud was ordained deacon on 4 January 1601 and priest on 5 April the same year. On 4 May 1603, he was one of the university proctors for
9625-463: The ill-equipped and poorly led English army was easily crushed by Scottish supporters of the National Covenant . Now in need of money to pay indemnities to the Scots, Charles was advised by a hastily summoned Magnum Concilium that he had no choice but to return to Parliament, which reassembled in November. First proposed by John Pym , the effective leader of opposition to the King in Parliament and taken up by George Digby , John Hampden and others,
9750-493: The individual's ability to reject or accept salvation, which opponents viewed as heretical and a potential vehicle for the reintroduction of Catholicism. Puritan reformers considered Charles too sympathetic to Arminianism, and opposed his desire to move the Church of England in a more traditional and sacramental direction. In addition, his Protestant subjects followed the European war closely and grew increasingly dismayed by Charles's diplomacy with Spain and his failure to support
9875-587: The king was directly involved in governance. Strafford's fall from power weakened Charles's influence in Ireland. The dissolution of the Irish army was unsuccessfully demanded three times by the English Commons during Strafford's imprisonment, until lack of money eventually forced Charles to disband the army at the end of Strafford's trial. Disputes over the transfer of land ownership from native Catholic to settler Protestant, particularly in relation to
10000-576: The king's leading counsellors for high treason. Strafford was taken into custody on 10 November; Laud was impeached on 18 December; Finch, now Lord Keeper of the Great Seal , was impeached the next day, and consequently fled to The Hague with Charles's permission on 21 December. To prevent the king from dissolving it at will, Parliament passed the Triennial Act , which required Parliament to be summoned at least every three years, and permitted
10125-483: The king, disregarding special interests, and, particularly, legalistic prevarications. There were opponents at court: Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland , Francis Cottington, 1st Baron Cottington and Queen Henrietta Maria . Cottington observed that Laud could not keep his temper in Council meetings, and by 1637 Laud found he could not follow Wentworth in imagining their push for rigid policies would succeed. Laud
10250-542: The most grave, pious, learned and judicious divines of this island, assisted with some from foreign parts professing the same religion with us, who may consider all things necessary for the peace and good government of the Church. The result was the establishment of the Westminster Assembly of Divines . The Grand Remonstrance was delivered to King Charles I on 1 December 1641, but he long delayed giving any response to it. Parliament therefore proceeded to have
10375-418: The opening of his first Parliament until after the marriage was consummated, to forestall any opposition. Many members of the Commons opposed his marriage to a Catholic, fearing that he would lift restrictions on Catholic recusants and undermine the official establishment of the reformed Church of England . Charles told Parliament that he would not relax religious restrictions, but promised to do exactly that in
10500-462: The parliamentary ranks, but instead of swiftly returning to the field, rode off to plunder the parliamentary baggage train. Lindsey, acting as a colonel, was wounded and bled to death without medical attention. The battle ended inconclusively as the daylight faded. William Laud William Laud ( LAWD ; 7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was a bishop in the Church of England . Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud
10625-456: The petition on 7 June, but by the end of the month he had prorogued Parliament and reasserted his right to collect customs duties without authorisation from Parliament. On 23 August 1628, Buckingham was assassinated. Charles was deeply distressed. According to Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon , he "threw himself upon his bed, lamenting with much passion and with abundance of tears". He remained grieving in his room for two days. In contrast,
10750-657: The political dangers of Puritanism, Laud saw the Calvinist movement's threat to the episcopacy . But the Puritans themselves felt threatened: the Counter-Reformation was succeeding abroad and Protestants were not winning the Thirty Years' War . In this climate, Laud's high church policy could be seen as sinister. A year after Laud's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, the ship Griffin left for America, carrying religious dissidents such as Anne Hutchinson ,
10875-477: The propertied classes for inflicting degrading punishments on gentlemen. For example, in 1637 William Prynne , Henry Burton and John Bastwick were pilloried , whipped and mutilated by cropping and imprisoned indefinitely for publishing anti-episcopal pamphlets. When Charles attempted to impose his religious policies in Scotland he faced numerous difficulties. Although born in Scotland, Charles had become estranged from it; his first visit since early childhood
11000-425: The protests, Charles refused to dismiss his friend, dismissing Parliament instead. Meanwhile, domestic quarrels between Charles and Henrietta Maria were souring the early years of their marriage. Disputes over her jointure , appointments to her household, and the practice of her religion culminated in the king expelling the vast majority of her French attendants in August 1626. Despite Charles's agreement to provide
11125-505: The public humiliation of the Battle of the Downs , where the Dutch destroyed a Spanish bullion fleet off the coast of Kent in sight of the impotent English navy. Charles continued peace negotiations with the Scots in a bid to gain time before launching a new military campaign. Because of his financial weakness, he was forced to call Parliament into session in an attempt to raise funds for such
11250-664: The public rejoiced at Buckingham's death, accentuating the gulf between the court and the nation and between the Crown and the Commons. Buckingham's death effectively ended the war with Spain and eliminated his leadership as an issue, but it did not end the conflicts between Charles and Parliament. It did, however, coincide with an improvement in Charles's relationship with his wife, and by November 1628 their old quarrels were at an end. Perhaps Charles's emotional ties were transferred from Buckingham to Henrietta Maria. She became pregnant for
11375-633: The queen of Bohemia that Laud was 'very just, incorrupt...a rare counsellor for integrity'. Emeritus Professor at Cambridge, Patrick Collinson , an expert in Elizabethan Puritans , in 1980 published this rebuke of Laud in his book on the decades until 1625: "the greatest calamity ever visited upon the English Church". In September 2016, following King's School, Gloucester , Reading School named their newest students' division Laud House after him. The pun "give great praise to
11500-798: The reasserted boundaries for encroachment. The programme's focus was disafforestation and sale of forest lands for conversion to pasture and arable farming, or in the case of the Forest of Dean , development for the iron industry. Disafforestation frequently caused riots and disturbances, including those known as the Western Rising . Against the background of this unrest, Charles faced bankruptcy in mid-1640. The City of London, preoccupied with its own grievances, refused to make any loans to him, as did foreign powers. In this extremity, in July Charles seized silver bullion worth £130,000 held in trust at
11625-474: The reformed religion of Scotland and reject any innovations not authorised by Kirk and Parliament. When the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland met in November 1638, it condemned the new prayer book, abolished episcopal church government , and adopted presbyterian government by elders and deacons. Charles perceived the unrest in Scotland as a rebellion against his authority, precipitating
11750-654: The repeal of the English penal laws , which Charles knew Parliament would not agree to, and that the infanta remain in Spain for a year after any wedding to ensure that England complied with all the treaty's terms. A personal quarrel erupted between Buckingham and the Count of Olivares , the Spanish chief minister, and so Charles conducted the ultimately futile negotiations personally. When he returned to London in October, without
11875-405: The resolve of those who opposed what they saw as a drift toward Rome and Absolutism . Cromwell commented to Falkland that if the Grand Remonstrance had been defeated, 'I would have sold all I had the next morning and never seen England more; and I know there are many other honest men of the same resolution'. In regard to church government, the Grand Remonstrance called for A General Synod of
12000-421: The royal prerogative, especially in matters of taxation. His strong positions were the focus of attack during his trial in 1644. When Wentworth was posted to Ireland in 1632, Laud brought his personal correspondence from him rapidly to the king's attention. It is in this correspondence, in 1633, that the term " Thorough " appears. In practical terms it meant the pursuit of ambitious policy objectives, on behalf of
12125-439: The run-down building, but he offended his bishop, Miles Smith . Neile was Laud's consistent patron. Neile sought, but could not obtain, Laud's appointment as Dean of Westminster , a post that John Williams retained. But at the end of 1621, and despite the king's view of Laud as a troublemaker, Laud received the relatively unimportant see of St Davids . Laud became a confidant of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham , at
12250-517: The sabbath. The Feoffees for Impropriations , an organisation that bought benefices and advowsons so that Puritans could be appointed to them, was dissolved. Laud prosecuted those who opposed his reforms in the Court of High Commission and the Star Chamber , the two most powerful courts in the land. The courts became feared for their censorship of opposing religious views and unpopular among
12375-498: The same manner Bacon had. James told Buckingham he was a fool, and presciently warned Charles that he would live to regret the revival of impeachment as a parliamentary tool. An underfunded makeshift army under Ernst von Mansfeld set off to recover the Palatinate, but it was so poorly provisioned that it never advanced beyond the Dutch coast. By 1624, the increasingly ill James was finding it difficult to control Parliament. By
12500-496: The south-east and East Anglia, as well as the English navy. After a few skirmishes, the opposing forces met in earnest at Edgehill , on 23 October 1642. Charles's nephew Prince Rupert of the Rhine disagreed with the battle strategy of the royalist commander Lord Lindsey , and Charles sided with Rupert. Lindsey resigned, leaving Charles to assume overall command assisted by Lord Forth . Rupert's cavalry successfully charged through
12625-471: The spring of 1644, he was brought to trial which ended without a verdict: as with Strafford, it proved impossible to point to any specific action seen as treasonable. Parliament took up the issue and eventually passed a bill of attainder , under which Laud was beheaded on Tower Hill on 10 January 1645, notwithstanding being granted a royal pardon. As the common hangman of London, Richard Brandon carried out Laud's execution, just as he had, in May 1641, of
12750-592: The time of his death in March 1625, Charles and Buckingham had already assumed de facto control of the kingdom. With the failure of the Spanish match, Charles and Buckingham turned their attention to France. On 1 May 1625 Charles was married by proxy to the 15-year-old French princess Henrietta Maria in front of the doors of Notre Dame de Paris . He had seen her in Paris while en route to Spain. They met in person on 13 June 1625 in Canterbury . Charles delayed
12875-484: The year. When Buckeridge left St John's in 1611, Laud succeeded him as president, but only after a hard patronage struggle reaching high circles at court. The rival candidate, John Rawlinson , was chaplain to Lord Ellesmere , who was both chancellor of the university and Lord Chancellor of England. Laud was chaplain to Richard Neile , who was Clerk of the Closet . Eventually, King James brushed aside irregularities in
13000-402: Was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland , but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1612 upon
13125-590: Was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms ; he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 and executed towards the end of the First English Civil War in January 1645. Laud believed in episcopalianism , or rule by bishops. " Laudianism " was a reform movement that emphasised liturgical ceremony and clerical hierarchy, enforcing uniformity within the Church of England, as outlined by Charles. Its often highly ritualistic aspects prefigure what are now known as high church views. In theology, Laud
13250-404: Was a weak and sickly infant, and while his parents and older siblings left for England in April and early June that year, due to his fragile health, he remained in Scotland with his father's friend Lord Fyvie appointed as his guardian. By 1604, when Charles was three-and-a-half, he was able to walk the length of the great hall at Dunfermline Palace without assistance, and it was decided that he
13375-594: Was abolished and the Commonwealth of England was established as a republic . The monarchy was restored in 1660, with Charles's son Charles II as king. The second son of King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark , Charles was born in Dunfermline Palace , Fife, on 19 November 1600. At a Protestant ceremony in the Chapel Royal of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh on 23 December 1600, he
13500-496: Was accused of Arminianism , favouring doctrines of the historic church prior to the Reformation and defending the continuity of the English Church with the primitive and medieval church, and opposing Calvinism . On all three grounds, he was regarded by Puritan clerics and laymen as a formidable and dangerous opponent. His use of the Star Chamber to persecute opponents such as William Prynne made him deeply unpopular. Laud
13625-472: Was actively hostile towards Spain and Catholicism, and thus, when called by James in 1621, the members hoped for an enforcement of recusancy laws, a naval campaign against Spain, and a Protestant marriage for the Prince of Wales. James's Lord Chancellor , Francis Bacon , was impeached before the House of Lords for corruption. The impeachment was the first since 1459 without the king's official sanction in
13750-405: Was almost 60 years old when he became archbishop and, having waited for a decade to replace George Abbot, was no longer prepared to compromise on any aspect of his policy. Abbot's chaplains had licensed Histriomastix for publication in 1630; the book which attacked English theatre and Christmas celebrations, among others, had caused scandal when it appeared in late 1632. One of Laud's early moves
13875-441: Was also necessary to protect the Church from 'many schismatics and separatists'. The response, drafted in consultation with Hyde, was an attempt at moderation calculated to win back the support of more moderate members of Parliament. In spite of this and concessions including the arrest of William Laud , subsequent events made reconciliation impossible. Charles I of England Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649)
14000-455: Was also slow, and he had a stammer for the rest of his life. In January 1605, Charles was created Duke of York , as is customary in the case of the English sovereign's second son, and made a Knight of the Bath . Thomas Murray , a presbyterian Scot, was appointed as a tutor. Charles learnt the usual subjects of classics, languages, mathematics and religion. In 1611, he was made a Knight of
14125-410: Was baptised by David Lindsay , Bishop of Ross , and created Duke of Albany , the traditional title of the second son of the king of Scotland , with the subsidiary titles of Marquess of Ormond , Earl of Ross and Lord Ardmannoch. James VI was the first cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth I of England , and when she died childless in March 1603, he became King of England as James I. Charles
14250-490: Was beheaded three days later. Also in early May, Charles assented to an unprecedented Act that forbade the dissolution of the English Parliament without its consent. In the following months, ship money, fines in distraint of knighthood and excise without parliamentary consent were declared unlawful, and the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission were abolished. All remaining forms of taxation were legalised and regulated by
14375-406: Was born at Reading, Berkshire , on 7 October 1573, the only son of William Laud, a clothier, and Lucy, born Webbe, widow of John Robinson, another clothier of the town, and sister of Sir William Webbe , Lord Mayor of London . He was educated at Reading School and on 17 October 1589 matriculated to St John's College, Oxford , where he was taught by Thomas Holland . In 1593 he became a fellow of
14500-494: Was convicted of seditious libel along with John Bastwick and Henry Burton , and had their ears cropped and faces branded. Prynne reinterpreted the "SL" ("Seditious Libeller") branded on his forehead as " Stigmata Laudis". This led to popular discontent, particularly in London, and in May 1640 a large armed mob and attacking Lambeth Palace in the hope of capturing the Archbishop. Laud also moved to silence his critic among
14625-519: Was for his Scottish coronation in 1633. To the dismay of the Scots, who had removed many traditional rituals from their liturgical practice, Charles insisted that the coronation be conducted using the Anglican rite. In 1637, he ordered the use of a new prayer book in Scotland that was almost identical to the English Book of Common Prayer , without consulting either the Scottish Parliament or
14750-638: Was forced to withdraw. In mid-1642, both sides began to arm. Charles raised an army using the medieval method of commission of array , and Parliament called for volunteers for its militia. The negotiations proved futile, and Charles raised the royal standard in Nottingham on 22 August 1642. By then, his forces controlled roughly the Midlands, Wales, the West Country and northern England. He set up his court at Oxford . Parliament controlled London,
14875-599: Was no legal bar to collecting the tax for defence during peacetime and throughout the whole of the kingdom. Ship money, paid directly to the Treasury of the Navy, provided between £150,000 to £200,000 annually between 1634 and 1638, after which yields declined. Opposition to ship money steadily grew, but England's 12 common law judges ruled the tax within the king's prerogative, though some of them had reservations. The prosecution of John Hampden for non-payment in 1637–38 provided
15000-403: Was obliged to rely primarily on volunteer forces for defence and on diplomatic efforts to support his sister Elizabeth and his foreign policy objective for the restoration of the Palatinate. England was still the least taxed country in Europe, with no official excise and no regular direct taxation. To raise revenue without reconvening Parliament, Charles resurrected an all-but-forgotten law called
15125-600: Was possibly Henrietta Maria who persuaded Charles to arrest the five members by force, which he resolved to do personally. But news of the warrant reached Parliament ahead of him, and the wanted men slipped away by boat shortly before Charles entered the House of Commons with an armed guard on 4 January. Having displaced Speaker William Lenthall from his chair, the king asked him where the MPs had fled. Lenthall, on his knees, famously replied, "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as
15250-438: Was strengthened, damaging Charles's reputation and authority. The English Parliament distrusted Charles's motivations when he called for funds to put down the Irish rebellion; many members of the Commons suspected that forces he raised might later be used against Parliament itself. Pym's Militia Bill was intended to wrest control of the army from the king, but it did not have the support of the Lords, let alone Charles. Instead,
15375-407: Was strong enough to journey to England to be reunited with his family. In mid-July 1604, he left Dunfermline for England, where he was to spend most of the rest of his life. In England, Charles was placed under the charge of Elizabeth, Lady Carey , the wife of courtier Sir Robert Carey , who put him in boots made of Spanish leather and brass to help strengthen his weak ankles. His speech development
15500-455: Was therefore placed at the heart of the implied plot. On 22 November 1641, following a protracted debate, the Grand Remonstrance was passed by a relatively narrow margin: 159 votes to 148. Its passage divided Parliament and drove some prominent parliamentarians such as Hyde and Falkland , who had previously been critical of the King, into the Royalist camp. At the same time, it strengthened
15625-429: Was to bring in his own men as censors: Samuel Baker (who was chaplain to William Juxon ), William Bray and Matthew Weeks. The operations of the censors, including William Haywood who joined them, became a focus of the Long Parliament as soon as it was convened in November 1640, and Laud ultimately had to answer for Haywood at his own trial. Whereas Wentworth (who became the Earl of Strafford in early 1640) saw
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