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Personal Rule and the seeds of rebellion (1629–40)

The bishops’ wars and the return of parliament (1640–42).

• The first English Civil War (1642–46)
• Conflicts in Scotland and Ireland
• Second and third English Civil Wars (1648–51)
• Cost and legacy

• What is Charles I known for?
• What was Charles I’s early life like?
• How did Charles I become king of Great Britain and Ireland?
• What was the relationship between Charles I and Parliament like?
• Why was Charles I executed?

English Civil Wars

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• Table Of Contents

When did the English Civil Wars occur?

The English Civil Wars occurred from 1642 through 1651. The fighting during this period is traditionally broken into three wars: the first happened from 1642 to 1646, the second in 1648, and the third from 1650 to 1651.

What was the first major battle fought in the English Civil Wars?

The first major battle of the English Civil Wars fought on English soil was the Battle of Edgehill , which occurred in October 1642. Forces loyal to the English Parliament, commanded by Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex , delayed Charles I’s march on London.

How many people died during the English Civil Wars?

An estimated 200,000 people lost their lives directly or indirectly as a result of the English Civil Wars, making it arguably the bloodiest conflict in the history of the British Isles.

When did the English Civil Wars come to an end?

The English Civil Wars ended on September 3, 1651, with Oliver Cromwell ’s victory at Worcester and the subsequent flight of Charles II to France.

English Civil Wars , (1642–51), fighting that took place in the British Isles between supporters of the monarchy of Charles I (and his son and successor , Charles II ) and opposing groups in each of Charles’s kingdoms, including Parliamentarians in England , Covenanters in Scotland , and Confederates in Ireland . The English Civil Wars are traditionally considered to have begun in England in August 1642, when Charles I raised an army against the wishes of Parliament , ostensibly to deal with a rebellion in Ireland. But the period of conflict actually began earlier in Scotland, with the Bishops’ Wars of 1639–40, and in Ireland, with the Ulster rebellion of 1641. Throughout the 1640s, war between king and Parliament ravaged England, but it also struck all of the kingdoms held by the house of Stuart —and, in addition to war between the various British and Irish dominions, there was civil war within each of the Stuart states. For this reason the English Civil Wars might more properly be called the British Civil Wars or the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The wars finally ended in 1651 with the flight of Charles II to France and, with him, the hopes of the British monarchy.

Compared with the chaos unleashed by the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) on the European continent, the British Isles under Charles I enjoyed relative peace and economic prosperity during the 1630s. However, by the later 1630s, Charles’s regime had become unpopular across a broad front throughout his kingdoms. During the period of his so-called Personal Rule (1629–40), known by his enemies as the “Eleven-Year Tyranny” because he had dissolved Parliament and ruled by decree, Charles had resorted to dubious fiscal expedients, most notably “ ship money ,” an annual levy for the reform of the navy that in 1635 was extended from English ports to inland towns. This inclusion of inland towns was construed as a new tax without parliamentary authorization. When combined with ecclesiastical reforms undertaken by Charles’s close adviser William Laud , the archbishop of Canterbury , and with the conspicuous role assumed in these reforms by Henrietta Maria , Charles’s Catholic queen, and her courtiers, many in England became alarmed. Nevertheless, despite grumblings, there is little doubt that had Charles managed to rule his other dominions as he controlled England, his peaceful reign might have been extended indefinitely. Scotland and Ireland proved his undoing.

In 1633 Thomas Wentworth became lord deputy of Ireland and set out to govern that country without regard for any interest but that of the crown. His thorough policies aimed to make Ireland financially self-sufficient; to enforce religious conformity with the Church of England as defined by Laud, Wentworth’s close friend and ally; to “civilize” the Irish; and to extend royal control throughout Ireland by establishing British plantations and challenging Irish titles to land. Wentworth’s actions alienated both the Protestant and the Catholic ruling elites in Ireland. In much the same way, Charles’s willingness to tamper with Scottish land titles unnerved landowners there. However, it was Charles’s attempt in 1637 to introduce a modified version of the English Book of Common Prayer that provoked a wave of riots in Scotland, beginning at the Church of St. Giles in Edinburgh . A National Covenant calling for immediate withdrawal of the prayer book was speedily drawn up on February 28, 1638. Despite its moderate tone and conservative format, the National Covenant was a radical manifesto against the Personal Rule of Charles I that justified a revolt against the interfering sovereign .

The turn of events in Scotland horrified Charles, who determined to bring the rebellious Scots to heel. However, the Covenanters , as the Scottish rebels became known, quickly overwhelmed the poorly trained English army, forcing the king to sign a peace treaty at Berwick (June 18, 1639). Though the Covenanters had won the first Bishops’ War , Charles refused to concede victory and called an English parliament, seeing it as the only way to raise money quickly. Parliament assembled in April 1640, but it lasted only three weeks (and hence became known as the Short Parliament ). The House of Commons was willing to vote the huge sums that the king needed to finance his war against the Scots, but not until their grievances—some dating back more than a decade—had been redressed. Furious, Charles precipitately dissolved the Short Parliament. As a result, it was an untrained, ill-armed, and poorly paid force that trailed north to fight the Scots in the second Bishops’ War. On August 20, 1640, the Covenanters invaded England for the second time, and in a spectacular military campaign they took Newcastle following the Battle of Newburn (August 28). Demoralized and humiliated, the king had no alternative but to negotiate and, at the insistence of the Scots, to recall parliament.

A new parliament (the Long Parliament ), which no one dreamed would sit for the next 20 years, assembled at Westminster on November 3, 1640, and immediately called for the impeachment of Wentworth, who by now was the earl of Strafford. The lengthy trial at Westminster, ending with Strafford’s execution on May 12, 1641, was orchestrated by Protestants and Catholics from Ireland, by Scottish Covenanters, and by the king’s English opponents, especially the leader of Commons, John Pym —effectively highlighting the importance of the connections between all the Stuart kingdoms at this critical junction.

To some extent, the removal of Strafford’s draconian hand facilitated the outbreak in October 1641 of the Ulster uprising in Ireland. This rebellion derived, on the one hand, from long-term social, religious, and economic causes (namely tenurial insecurity, economic instability, indebtedness, and a desire to have the Roman Catholic Church restored to its pre- Reformation position) and, on the other hand, from short-term political factors that triggered the outbreak of violence. Inevitably, bloodshed and unnecessary cruelty accompanied the insurrection, which quickly engulfed the island and took the form of a popular rising, pitting Catholic natives against Protestant newcomers. The extent of the “massacre” of Protestants was exaggerated, especially in England where the wildest rumours were readily believed. Perhaps 4,000 settlers lost their lives—a tragedy to be sure, but a far cry from the figure of 154,000 the Irish government suggested had been butchered. Much more common was the plundering and pillaging of Protestant property and the theft of livestock. These human and material losses were replicated on the Catholic side as the Protestants retaliated.

The Irish insurrection immediately precipitated a political crisis in England, as Charles and his Westminster Parliament argued over which of them should control the army to be raised to quell the Irish insurgents. Had Charles accepted the list of grievances presented to him by Parliament in the Grand Remonstrance of December 1641 and somehow reconciled their differences, the revolt in Ireland almost certainly would have been quashed with relative ease. Instead, Charles mobilized for war on his own, raising his standard at Nottingham in August 1642. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms had begun in earnest. This also marked the onset of the first English Civil War fought between forces loyal to Charles I and those who served Parliament. After a period of phony war late in 1642, the basic shape of the English Civil War was of Royalist advance in 1643 and then steady Parliamentarian attrition and expansion.

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English Civil Wars

By: History.com Editors

Updated: September 10, 2021 | Original: December 2, 2009

Between 1642 and 1651, armies loyal to King Charles I and Parliament faced off in three civil wars over longstanding disputes about religious freedom and how the “three kingdoms” of England, Scotland and Ireland should be governed. Notable outcomes of the wars included the execution of King Charles I in 1649, 11 years of republican rule in England and the establishment of Britain’s first standing national army.

Background: The Rise of the Stuarts and King Charles I

England’s last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I , died in 1603, and was succeeded by her cousin, James Stuart . Already King James VI of Scotland, he became King James I of England and Ireland as well, uniting the three kingdoms under a single ruler for the first time. Though at first the Catholic minority in England welcomed James’ ascension to the throne, they later turned against his regime, even attempting to blow up the king and Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot .

James’ son, Charles I, succeeded him on the throne in 1625. His marriage to a Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria of France fueled suspicions (especially among more radical Protestants, known as Puritans ) that the king would introduce Catholic traditions back into the Church of England. Charles also believed strongly in his divine right to rule, and in 1629 he dismissed Parliament altogether; he would not recall it for the next 11 years.

War in Scotland

Beginning in the late 1630s, Charles made efforts to establish a more English-like religious practice in Scotland, generating fierce resistance among that country’s Presbyterian majority. A Scottish army defeated Charles’ forces and invaded England, forcing Charles to recall Parliament in 1640 to generate the money to pay his own troops and settle the conflict. Instead, Parliament acted quickly to restrict the king’s powers, even ordering the trial and execution of one of his chief ministers, Lord Strafford.

Amid the political upheaval in London, the Catholic majority in Ireland rebelled, massacring hundreds of Protestants there in October 1641. Tales of the violence inflamed tensions in England, as Charles and Parliament disagreed on how to respond. In January 1642, the king tried and failed to arrest five members of Parliament who opposed him. Fearing for his own safety, Charles fled London for northern England, where he called on his supporters to prepare for war. 

Did you know? In May 1660, nearly 20 years after the start of the English Civil Wars, Charles II finally returned to England as king, ushering in a period known as the Restoration.

First English Civil War (1642-46)

When civil war broke out in earnest in August 1642, Royalist forces (known as Cavaliers) controlled northern and western England, while Parliamentarians (or Roundheads) dominated in the southern and eastern regions of the country. The king’s forces appeared to be gaining the upper hand by early 1643, especially after concluding an alliance with Irish Catholics to end the Irish Rebellion. But a key alliance between the Parliamentarians and Scotland that year led to a large Scottish army joining the fray on Parliament’s side in January 1644.

On July 2, 1644, Royalist and Parliamentarian forces met at Marston Moor, west of York, in the largest battle of the First English Civil War. A Parliamentarian force of 28,000 routed the smaller Royalist army of 18,000 , ending the king’s control of northern England. In 1645, Parliament created a permanent, professional, trained army of 22,000 men. This New Model Army, commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell , scored a decisive victory in June 1645 in the Battle of Naseby, effectively dooming the Royalist cause.

Second English Civil War (1648-49) and execution of King Charles I

Even in defeat, Charles refused to give in, but sought to capitalize on the religious and political divisions among his enemies. While on the Isle of Wight in 1647-48, the king managed to conclude a peace treaty with the Scots and marshal Royalist sentiment and discontent with Parliament into a series of armed uprisings across England in the spring and summer of 1648.

After Fairfax, Cromwell and the New Model Army easily crushed the Royalist uprisings, hard-line opponents of the king took charge of a smaller Parliament. Concluding that peace could not be reached while Charles was still alive, they set up a high court and put the king on trial for treason. Charles was found guilty and executed by beheading on January 30, 1649 at Whitehall.

Third English Civil War (1649-51)

With Charles dead, a republican regime was established in England, backed by the military might of the New Model Army. Beginning late in 1649, Cromwell led his army in a successful reconquest of Ireland, including the notorious massacre of thousands of Irish and Royalist troops and civilians at Drogheda. Meanwhile, Scotland came to an agreement with the executed king’s eldest son, also named Charles, who was crowned King Charles II of Scotland in early 1651.

Even before he was officially crowned, Charles II had formed an army of English and Scottish Royalists, prompting Cromwell to invade Scotland in 1650. After losing the Battle of Dunbar to Cromwell’s forces in September 1650, Charles led an invasion of England the following year, only to suffer another defeat against a huge Parliamentarian army at Worcester. The young king narrowly escaped capture, but the decisive victory ended the Third English Civil War, along with the larger War of the Three Kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland).

Impact of the Civil Wars

An estimated 200,000 English soldiers and civilians were killed during the three civil wars, by fighting and the disease spread by armies; the loss was proportionate, population-wise, to that of World War I.

In 1653, Oliver Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, and tried (largely unsuccessfully) to consolidate broad support behind the new republican regime amid the continued growth of radical religious sects and widespread uneasiness about the new standing army.

After Cromwell’s death in 1658, he was succeeded as protector by his son Richard, who abdicated just eight months later. With the continued disintegration of the republic, the larger Parliament was reassembled, and began negotiations with Charles II to resume the throne. The triumphant king arrived in London in May 1660, beginning the English Restoration .

British Civil Wars. National Army Museum .

Mark Stoyle. Overview: Civil War and Revolution, 1603-1714. BBC .

The English Civil Wars: Origins, events and legacy. English Heritage .

Simon Jenkins. A Short History of England: The Glorious Story of a Rowdy Nation . (PublicAffairs, 2011) 

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Causes of the English Civil Wars

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The English Civil Wars (1642-1651) were caused by a monumental clash of ideas between King Charles I of England (r. 1625-1649) and his parliament. Arguments over the powers of the monarchy, finances, questions of religious practices and toleration, and the clash of leaders with personalities, who passionately believed in their own cause but had little empathy towards any other view, all contributed to the decade-long conflict which saw over 600 battles and sieges, thousands of deaths, the execution of Charles, abolition of the monarchy, and the proclamation of England as a republic.

The Three Civil Wars

The conflict between the Royalists ('Cavaliers') and Parliamentarians ('Roundheads') which rocked Britain is usually divided into three distinct parts:

• The First English Civil War (1642-1646)
• The Second English Civil War (Feb-Aug 1648)
• The Third English Civil War or Anglo-Scottish War (1650-1651)

The causes of all three conflicts, sometimes collectively known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (England, Scotland , and Ireland ), were much the same except that following Charles I's execution in 1649, the figurehead for the Royalists during the Third Civil War became his son Charles II of Scotland.

Historians do not agree on the precise causes of the Civil Wars, and so the following is a summary of the various viewpoints with no particular weight given to one cause over another.

A Multitude of Causes

The principal causes of the English Civil Wars may be summarised as:

• Charles I's unshakeable belief in the divine right of kings to rule
• Parliament's desire to curb the powers of the king
• Charles I's need for money to fund his court and wars
• Religious differences between the monarch, Parliament, Scottish Covenanters, and Irish Catholics
• The personalities of key leaders on both sides, which did not allow for compromise
• A rise in the number and economic power of the new gentry who now sought political change
• A belief that the king was a wicked warmonger and had to be removed

The Divine Right of Kings

Charles was very much like his father James I of England (r. 1603-1625) in that he had an unshakeable belief in his divine right to rule, given to him, he thought, by God , and so no man, be it politician or soldier, should ever question his reign. The English king once stated: "Parliaments are altogether in my power…As I find the fruits of them good or evil, they are to continue or not to be" (McDowall, 88). This belief was never shaken throughout the wars, as seen in 1649 when he refused to recognise the authority of those who had put him on trial for treason:

I would know by what power I am called hither…I would know by what authority, I mean lawful…Remember, I am your king, your lawful king…a king cannot be tried by any superior jurisdiction on earth. (Ralph Lewis, 160)

Charles' personality had much to do with the crisis. A little shy and lacking confidence after a childhood away from the limelight when his elder brother was groomed for the crown, Charles was thrust into the glare of politics when Henry, Prince of Wales died of fever aged 18. Never quite trusting those around him, inflexible, repeatedly unwilling to make concessions, and not particularly receptive to criticism, Charles was perhaps led into making certain decisions that he himself did not whole-heartedly believe in or which were, at best, naive in their ignorance of opposing and more modern views. The king is also accused of being unaware of the different social, economic, and religious identities within his own kingdoms, particularly regarding Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, but also in parts of England where there were differences between regions and between rural and urban communities. In fairness, similar criticisms could be made of his opponents with such bullish MPs as John Pym (1583-1643) and Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) who were utterly convinced God was on their side and not with the king.

There is also the argument that Charles inherited a difficult situation, his father being the first Stuart monarch after the Tudors. The kingdom was a united one in name only. There had been turbulent religious reforms going back to Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547), and the fallout of these was still being felt. Tensions between monarch and Parliament were not new either, and the antiquated system of state finances did not help smooth the relationship. Granted that the situation was not an easy one, some historians would accuse Charles of making it much worse, turning only potential problems into very real ones (Gaunt, 18).

The position of the king as an absolute monarch in Charles' own mind should have been seriously challenged by such events as the 1628 Petition of Right when Parliament demanded the king stop trying to raise money outside of that institution. Other demands included an end to both imprisonment without trial and the use of martial law against civilians. Desperately in need of money for his war with France, the king was obliged to agree to the demands but it in no way altered his opinion of his status as a monarch who had no need to consult anyone on how to govern his kingdom.

Disputes Over Finances

The monarchy traditionally required Parliament to meet and pass favour on royal requests for money, which typically entailed MPs deciding budgets and raising taxes. Charles grew tired of Parliament's obstinacy and insistence that money be accounted for and spending curbed. The king repeatedly called and dismissed parliaments but eventually grew tired of this situation and decided to rule alone. Parliament was not called between 1629 and 1640, a period often called the 'Personal Rule' of the king. This strategy worked well enough until the king desperately needed funds in 1639 to pay for his campaigns against a Scottish army, which had occupied the north of England, and a serious rebellion in Ireland, both fuelled by religious differences and the king's high-handed policies.

The king's efforts to raise money during his 'Personal Rule' had met with only limited success. He borrowed from bankers, extracted new customs duties, imposed forced loans on the wealthy, sold monopolies, and widened the extraction and use of Ship Money (originally imposed on coastal communities only to help fund the navy). He also imposed fines based on archaic forest laws and increased fines imposed by courts. Many of these measures were deeply unpopular with the merchant classes and local gentry, who were more numerous than ever before. Such men were keen to see a political role to match their importance to the economy , and they were unwilling to fund the whims of a monarch who caused what they saw as unnecessary wars and who supported a declining and outdated feudal aristocracy. It did not help that Charles spent grandly on new palaces and art collections. Parliament, knowing the king had nowhere else to go for more cash, could now force Charles into political reforms and concessions.

Charles called what became known as the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640 to help raise an army, but this failed after three frustrating weeks of discussion. As a result, the king could only muster a weak militia force against the Scots in the so-called Bishops' Wars (1639-1640). These wars ended in Charles making concessions to Scotland in the Treaty of Ripon in October 1640. Scotland was permitted its religious freedom, and the leaders on the battlefield were promised a handsome sum in cash to stand down. The king then had the practical problem of where exactly to get this money from without Parliament.

Without much choice in the matter, another Parliament was called in November 1640, and so began a period known as the 'Crisis of the Monarchy'. MPs seized their opportunity with the Long Parliament, as it became known, to guarantee their future survival. Money would be raised to pay off the Scots, but only on the condition that laws were passed which meant a parliament must be called at least once every three years, that it could not be dissolved by the monarch's wishes alone, royal ministers now had to be approved by Parliament, and Ship Money was made illegal. The king agreed but then blithely ignored his promises.

One of the decisions of Parliament which had particularly struck Charles and soured relations more than ever was the trial for treason and execution of his closest advisor Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Stafford (1593-1641) in May 1641. Stafford had been accused of preparing to bring an Irish army into England to aid the king, for which there was not much evidence. More significant, perhaps, was Parliament's fear of what exactly the gifted and utterly ruthless Stafford planned in the future regarding themselves. As far as Charles was concerned, Parliament had drawn first blood.

In October 1641 the king needed money for yet another army when a rebellion broke out against English rule (some would say tyranny) in Ireland, fuelled by grievances over massive English land confiscations and the exclusive employment of English and Scottish immigrants on many large estates. Ulster was a particularly bloody battleground while Charles and the English Parliament wrangled over the formation of an army necessary to quell the rebellion. Parliament was particularly anxious that the king use such a force in Ireland and not against themselves. These fears were perhaps not unfounded, and the king's attempted arrest of five MPs in January 1642 hardly instilled confidence. The group, who included John Pym, had written the Grand Remonstrance listing the king's abuses of power and which was passed by Parliament in November 1641. The Remonstrance was then made public. In retaliation for the arrests, the Parliamentarians locked the gates of London, preventing Charles from entering his own capital. However, the king was encouraged by the distinct lack of unity in Parliament as the Remonstrance had only been accepted by 159 votes to 148. Some MPs believed that the king's powers were being unjustly infringed upon (for example, that he could not choose his own counsellors or military leaders), while the more radical members were keen to curb those powers even further. A military solution to the deadlock might now be Charles' best tactic. The king relocated from Hampton Court to York and then to Nottingham in August 1642, where a royal army was formed.

Religious Differences

As we have seen, the multiple threads of discord that caused the English Civil Wars were intertwined in a complex political, religious, and military knot. Charles frequently created new enemies because of his religious policies. In 1627, Charles began to promote the Arminians, a branch of the Anglican Church that emphasised ritual, sacraments, and the clergy, and not the style of preaching seen in other branches closer to Calvinism. Some saw this move as a dangerous shift back towards Catholicism, a sign of a secret Papist conspiracy to reverse the English Reformation , an idea which was widely circulated in the 17th century by word of mouth and the printing press, adding fictional fuel to a bonfire of conspiracy theories that went all the way back to the one real conspiracy: the Gunpowder Plot to blow up King and Parliament in 1605.

Charles was not, in fact, a Catholic but a High Anglican, that is he had certain sympathies with such aspects of the Christian Church as ceremony, the elevation of the clergy and bishops, and what he perceived as the beauty and order provided by certain decorations within the church building itself. For many, though, it was difficult to distinguish this from 'Popish' practices and Roman Catholic doctrine. There were, too, more concrete concerns over the Arminians' seeming support of an absolute monarchy.

In 1633, the king appointed William Laud (1573-1645), an Arminian, as the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England. Laud was detested by the Puritans , who remained a rich and powerful section of English society and who had a strong presence in Parliament. Many MPs and army officers were Independents or Congregationalists, that is they wanted less power in the hands of bishops and more inclusion in the Church. Many wanted greater freedom for 'independent' congregations that assembled according to the individual believers' consciences and their own interpretation of the Bible . Laud outraged the Puritans when he reintroduced what were widely seen as Catholic practices into the more austere Anglican Church. These included decorating churches, railing off the altar or communion table to restrict access only for the clergy, and encouraging music . Laud banned preaching on any day other than a Sunday and replaced this with the Catechism. He also banned the weekday lectures that Puritans so valued. From Laud's and the king's perspective, these religious changes were slight and intended to emphasise ritual and order, but for the Puritans, this was a direct attack on the achievements of the Reformation . With no real means to protest or obstruct these measures, and with punishments and fines for non-compliance, many Puritans decided to emigrate and find greater religious freedom in North America or the Netherlands.

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Charles also upset the Scottish Kirk and its Presbyterian church leaders by trying to install bishops there. The introduction of a new prayer book in 1637 was made without even consulting the Kirk. The Presbyterians (moderate Puritans who believed in a church hierarchy) much preferred to stick to their system where each congregation was led by a minister who in turn reported to the Synod, an elected supervisory council of elders. Further, the Scots believed Charles had no right to impose anything on the Scottish Church, a point many were willing to fight for.

Far from being a problem of ecclesiastical debate, these issues boiled over onto the battlefield in the Bishops' Wars mentioned above. The Scottish Presbyterian Church was determined to defend its independence and so became an active ally of the Parliamentarians in the English Civil Wars before switching sides in support of the Royalists when Parliament was deemed the greater threat. Those Scots who sought an alliance with England were known as the Covenanters from the agreement known as the National Covenant of February 1638. Those who signed the agreement swore to defend the Presbyterian Church, even by military means if necessary.

In England, meanwhile, as we have seen, the situation between King and Parliament had worsened considerably. By 1642, both sides were gathering arms, fortifying the cities they controlled, and preparing for war. The first major battle was at Edgehill in October. The result was indecisive, as it would be in many of the battles that followed. While often seen as a war that did not involve a great number of civilians, it is estimated that at least one in four adult male Britons fought at some point, one in ten people in urban areas lost their homes, and the vast majority of people had to bear heavy taxes, even if they themselves avoided the actual fighting. As the Civil War progressed so new motives arrived for supporters on both sides. Charles' policy in Ireland further alienated the king from many of his English subjects. The king had struck a deal with Irish rebels so that Irish Catholic troops might bolster his army. This never came about in reality as most of the troops from Ireland were Charles' English soldiers now released from policing duties there, and even these were few in number. The episode did raise the serious question as to Charles' loyalty to the Anglican Church.

More and more people came to see the king as a despot and wilful warmonger who no longer had his people's interests foremost in his mind. The capture of the king's personal writing cabinet at the Battle of Naseby in 1645 revealed that the king had no intention of ever compromising with Parliament. Already for many, there could be no peaceful resolution to the conflict. This was particularly so after the Second Civil War and the invasion of a Scottish army into England. The king, even in self-imposed exile on the Isle of Wight, came to be viewed as a 'man of blood', a biblical term for a ruler who waged war against his own people. In his treaty with the Scots known as the Engagement of December 1647, he had even promised to favour the Presbyterian Church in England, disband the English army and rely only on a Scottish one, and suppress radical religious groups. This was the final straw.

With more money and a more professional army, the Parliamentarians were the victors again at the Battle of Preston in 1648 . Charles I was tried and found guilty of treason to his own people and government. The king was executed on 30 January 1649. The monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, and the Anglican Church was reformed. Scotland remained loyal to the crown, and Charles' eldest son Charles was, by right of birth, its king. However, a Scottish army was again defeated by an English one in the so-called Third English Civil War, and the would-be Charles II was obliged to flee to France.

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) ruled the 'Commonwealth' republic as Lord Protector. When Cromwell died, his chosen successor, his son Richard Cromwell, was not supported for long, and so, to avert another civil war, there was the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. Charles returned from France to become Charles II of England (r. 1660-1685), but he now had to rule alongside a much more powerful Parliament.

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Bibliography

• Anderson, Angela & Scarboro, Dale. Stuart Britain. Hodder Education, 2015.
• Bennett, Martyn. The English Civil War 1640-1649 . Routledge, 2014.
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• Wanklyn, Malcolm. Decisive Battles of the English Civil War. Pen and Sword Military, 2007.

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Cartwright, M. (2022, February 04). Causes of the English Civil Wars . World History Encyclopedia . Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1939/causes-of-the-english-civil-wars/

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Cartwright, Mark. " Causes of the English Civil Wars ." World History Encyclopedia . Last modified February 04, 2022. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1939/causes-of-the-english-civil-wars/.

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The Origins & Causes of the English Civil War

We English like to think of ourselves as gentlemen and ladies; a nation that knows how to queue, eat properly and converse politely. And yet in 1642 we went to war with ourselves…

Victoria Masson

We English like to think of ourselves as gentlemen and ladies; a nation that knows how to queue, eat properly and converse politely. And yet in 1642 we went to war with ourselves. Pitting brother against brother and father against son, the English civil war is a blot on our history. Indeed, there was barely an English ‘gentleman’ who was not touched by the war.

Yet how did it start? Was it simply a power struggle between king and Parliament? Were the festering wounds left by the Tudor religious roller coaster to blame? Or was it all about the money?

Divine right – the God given right of an anointed monarch to rule unhindered – was established firmly in the reign of James I (1603-25). He asserted his political legitimacy by decreeing that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority; not the will of his people, the aristocracy or any other estate of the realm, including Parliament. Under this definition any attempt to depose, dethrone or restrict the powers of the monarch goes against the will of God. The concept of a God given right to rule was not born in this period however; writings as far back as AD 600 infer that the English in their varied Anglo-Saxon states accepted those in power had God’s blessing.

This blessing should create an infallible leader – and there is the rub. Surely if you have been given power to rule by God, you should demonstrate an ability to wield this responsibility with a degree of success? By 1642 Charles I found himself nearly bankrupt, surrounded by blatant corruption and nepotism and desperate to hold onto the thin veil that masked his religious uncertainty. He was by no means an infallible leader, a fact that was glaringly obvious to both Parliament and the people of England.

Parliament had no tangible power at this point in English history. They were a collection of aristocrats who met at the King’s pleasure to offer advice and to help him collect taxes. This alone gave them some influence, as the king needed their seal of approval to legitimately set taxes in motion. In times of financial difficulty that meant the King had to listen to Parliament. Stretched thinly through the lavish lifestyles and expensive wars of the Tudor and Stuart period, the Crown was struggling. Coupled with his desire to extend his high Anglican (read here thinly disguised Catholic) policies and practices to Scotland, Charles I needed the financial support of Parliament. When this support was withheld, Charles saw it as an infringement on his Divine Right and as such, he dismissed Parliament in March 1629. The following eleven years, during which Charles ruled England without a Parliament, are referred to as the ‘personal rule’. Ruling without Parliament was not unprecedented but without access to Parliament’s financial pulling power, Charles’s ability to acquire funds was limited.

Charles’s personal rule reads like a ‘how to annoy your countrymen for dummies’. His introduction of a permanent Ship Tax was the most offensive policy to many. Ship Tax was an established tax that was paid by counties with a sea border in times of war. It was to be used to strengthen the Navy and so these counties would be protected by the money they paid in tax; in theory, it was a fair tax against which they could not argue.

Charles’s decision to extend a year-round Ship Tax to all counties in England provided around £150,000 to £200,000 annually between 1634 and 1638. The resultant backlash and popular opposition however proved that there was growing support for a check on the power of the King.

This support did not just come from the general tax paying population but also from the Puritanical forces within Protestant England. After Mary I , all subsequent English monarchs have been overtly Protestant. This stabilization of the religious roller coaster calmed the fears of many in Tudor times who believed if a civil war was to be fought in England it would be fought along religious lines.

While outwardly a Protestant, Charles I was married to a staunch Catholic, Henrietta Maria of France. She heard Roman Catholic mass every day in her own private chapel and frequently took her children, the heirs to the English throne, to mass. Furthermore, Charles’ support for his friend Archbishop William Laud’s reforms to the English Church were seen by many as a move backwards to the popery of Catholicism. The re-introduction of stained glass windows and finery within churches was the last straw for many Puritans and Calvinists.

To prosecute those who opposed his reforms, Laud used the two most powerful courts in the land, the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber. The courts became feared for their censorship of opposing religious views and were unpopular among the propertied classes for inflicting degrading punishments on gentlemen. For example, in 1637 William Prynne, Henry Burton and John Bastwick were pilloried, whipped, mutilated by cropping and imprisoned indefinitely for publishing anti-episcopal pamphlets.

Charles’s continued support for these types of policies continued to pile on support for those that were looking to put a limit on his power.

By October 1640, Charles’ unpopular religious policies and attempts to extend his power north had resulted in a war with the Scots. This was a disaster for Charles who had neither the money nor the men to fight a war. He rode north to lead the battle himself, suffering a crushing defeat that left Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham occupied by Scottish forces.

Public demands for a Parliament were growing and Charles realised that whatever his next step was to be, it would require a financial backbone. After the conclusion of the humiliating Treaty of Ripon that let the Scots remain in Newcastle and Durham whilst being paid £850 a day for the privilege, Charles summoned Parliament. Being called upon to help King and country instilled a sense of purpose and power into this new Parliament. They now presented an alternative power in the country to the King. The two sides in the English Civil war had been established.

The slide to war becomes more pronounced from this stage onwards. That is not to say it was inevitable, or that the subsequent removal and execution of Charles I was even a notion in the heads of those who opposed him. However, the balance of power had begun to shift. Parliament wasted no time arresting and putting on trial the Kings closest advisers, including Archbishop Laud and Lord Strafford.

In May 1641 Charles conceded an unprecedented act, which forbade the dissolution of the English Parliament without Parliament’s consent. Thus emboldened, Parliament now abolished Ship Tax and the courts of The Star Chamber and The High Commission.

Over the next year Parliament began to introduce increased emboldened demands, and by June 1642 these were too much for Charles to bear. His bullish response in barging into the House of Commons and attempting to arrest five MPs lost him the last remnants of support among undecided MPs. The sides were crystallized and the battle lines were drawn. Charles I raised his standard on 22nd August 1642 in Nottingham: the Civil War had begun.

So the origins of the English Civil War are complex and intertwined. England had managed to escape the Reformation relatively unscathed, avoiding much of the heavy fighting that raged in Europe as Catholic and Protestant forces battled in The Thirty Year War. However, the scars of the Reformation were still present beneath the surface and Charles did little to avert public fears about his intentions for the religious future of England.

Money had also been an issue from the outset, especially as the royal coffers had been emptied during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. These issues were exacerbated by Charles’s mismanagement of the public coffers and through introducing new and ‘unfair’ taxes he simply added to the already growing anti-Crown sentiment up and down the country.

These two points demonstrate the fact that Charles believed in his Divine Right, a right to rule unchallenged. Through the study of money, religion and power at this time it is clear that one factor is woven through them all and must be noted as a major cause of the English Civil War; that is the attitude and ineptitude of Charles I himself, perhaps the antithesis of an infallible monarch.

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The Causes of the English Civil War

Charles I                         Oliver Cromwell

The English Civil War has many causes but the personality of Charles I must be counted as one of the major reasons. Few people could have predicted that the civil war, that started in 1642, would have ended with the public execution of  Charles. His most famous opponent in this war was Oliver Cromwell  – one of the men who signed the death warrant of Charles.

No king had ever been executed in England and the execution of Charles was not greeted with joy. How did the English Civil War break out?

As with many wars, there are long and short term causes.

Long term causes :

The status of the monarchy had started to decline under the reign of James I. He was known as the “wisest fool in Christendom”. James was a firm believer in the “divine right of kings”. This was a belief that God had made someone a king and as God could not be wrong, neither could anyone appointed by him to rule a nation. James expected Parliament to do as he wanted; he did not expect it to argue with any of his decisions.

However, Parliament had one major advantage over James – they had money and he was continually short of it. Parliament and James clashed over custom duties . This was one source of James income but Parliament told him that he could not collect it without their permission. In 1611, James suspended Parliament and it did not meet for another 10 years. James used his friends to run the country and they were rewarded with titles. This caused great offence to those Members of Parliament who believed that they had the right to run the country.

In 1621, James re-called Parliament to discuss the future marriage of his son, Charles, to a Spanish princess. Parliament was outraged. If such a marriage occurred, would the children from it be brought up as Catholics? Spain was still not considered a friendly nation to England and many still remembered 1588 and the Spanish Armada. The marriage never took place but the damaged relationship between king and Parliament was never mended by the time James died in 1625. 

Short term causes :

Charles had a very different personality compared to James. Charles was arrogant, conceited and a strong believer in the divine rights of kings. He had witnessed the damaged relationship between his father and Parliament, and considered that Parliament was entirely at fault. He found it difficult to believe that a king could be wrong. His conceit and arrogance were eventually to lead to his execution.

From 1625 to 1629, Charles argued with parliament over most issues, but money and religion were the most common causes of arguments. 

In 1629, Charles copied his father. He refused to let Parliament meet. Members of Parliament arrived at Westminster to find that the doors had been locked with large chains and padlocks. They were locked out for eleven years – a period they called the Eleven Years Tyranny.

Charles ruled by using the Court of Star Chamber. To raise money for the king, the Court heavily fined those brought before it. Rich men were persuaded to buy titles. If they refused to do so, they were fined the same sum of money it would have cost for a title anyway! 

In 1635 Charles ordered that everyone in the country should pay Ship Money. This was historically a tax paid by coastal towns and villages to pay for the upkeep of the navy. The logic was that coastal areas most benefited from the navy’s protection. Charles decided that everyone in the kingdom benefited from the navy’s protection and that everyone should pay. 

In one sense, Charles was correct, but such was the relationship between him and the powerful men of the kingdom, that this issue caused a huge argument between both sides. One of the more powerful men in the nation was John Hampden. He had been a Member of Parliament. He refused to pay the new tax as Parliament had not agreed to it. At this time Parliament was also not sitting as Charles had locked the MP’s out. Hampden was put on trial and found guilty. However, he had become a hero for standing up to the king. There is no record of any Ship Money being extensively collected in the areas Charles had wanted it extended to.

Charles also clashed with the Scots. He ordered that they should use a new prayer book for their church services. This angered the Scots so much that they invaded England in 1639. As Charles was short of money to fight the Scots, he had to recall Parliament in 1640 as only they had the necessary money needed to fight a war and the required authority to collect extra money.

In return for the money and as a display of their power, Parliament called for the execution of  “Black Tom Tyrant” – the Earl of Strafford, one of the top advisors of Charles. After a trial, Strafford was executed in 1641. Parliament also demanded that Charles get rid of the Court of Star Chamber.

By 1642, relations between Parliament and Charles had become very bad. Charles had to do as Parliament wished as they had the ability to raise the money that Charles needed. However, as a firm believer in the “divine right of kings”, such a relationship was unacceptable to Charles.

In 1642, he went to Parliament with 300 soldiers to arrest his five biggest critics. Someone close to the king had already tipped off Parliament that these men were about to be arrested and they had already fled to the safety of the city of London where they could easily hide from the king. However, Charles had shown his true side. Members of Parliament represented the people. Here was Charles attempting to arrest five Members of Parliament simply because they dared to criticise him. If Charles was prepared to arrest five Members of Parliament, how many others were not safe? Even Charles realised that things had broken down between him and Parliament. Only six days after trying to arrest the five Members of Parliament, Charles left London to head for Oxford to raise an army to fight Parliament for control of England. A civil war could not be avoided. 

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What Caused the English Civil War?

Laura Mackenzie

13 jun 2018.

The English Civil War was in fact a series of wars that pitted supporters of the monarchy, known as “Royalists” or “Cavaliers”, against supporters of the English parliament, known as “Parliamentarians” or “Roundheads”.

Ultimately, the war was a struggle over how much power parliament should have over the monarchy and would challenge forever the idea that an English monarch had the right to rule without the consent of their people.

When was the English Civil War?

The war spanned nearly a decade, beginning on 22 August 1642 and ending on 3 September 1651. Historians often divide the war into three conflicts, with the First English Civil War lasting between 1642 and 1646 ; the Second between 1648 and 1649; and the Third between 1649 and 1651.

The first two wars saw fighting between supporters of Charles I and supporters of the so-called “Long Parliament” and culminated in the trial and execution of the king and the abolition of the monarchy.

Charles Junior was luckier than his father and the third war ended with his exile, rather than his execution. Just nine years later, however, the monarchy was restored and Charles returned to become Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Why did the English Civil War start?

Before the outbreak of the war, England was governed by an uneasy alliance between the monarchy and parliament.

Although the English parliament did not have a large permanent role in the system of governance at this time, it had been around in some form since the middle of the 13th century and so its place was fairly well established.

What is more, during this time it had acquired de facto powers which meant it could not easily be ignored by monarchs. The most important of these was parliament’s ability to raise tax revenues far beyond any other sources of revenue available to the monarch.

Tensions between Charles and MPs came to a head in 1629 when the king shut down parliament altogether and ruled alone.

But what about those taxes?

Charles was able to rule alone for 11 years, using legal loopholes to squeeze money out of his subjects and avoiding wars. But in 1640 he eventually ran out of luck. Facing a rebellion in Scotland (of which he was also king), Charles found himself in desperate need of cash to stamp it out and so decided to summon parliament.

Parliament took this as its opportunity to discuss its grievances with the king, however, and it only lasted three weeks before Charles shut it down again. This short lifespan was what led to it becoming known as the “Short Parliament”.

But Charles’ need for money hadn’t gone away and six months later he bowed to pressure and once again summoned parliament. This time around parliament proved even more hostile. With Charles now in a deeply precarious position, MPs saw their chance to demand radical reforms.

Parliament passed a multitude of laws diminishing Charles’ power, including one law that gave MPs power over the king’s ministers and another that forbade the king from dissolving parliament without its consent.

Over the ensuing months, the crisis deepened and war seemed inevitable. In early January 1642, Charles, fearing for his safety, left London for the north of the country. Six months later, on 22 August, the king raised the royal standard in Nottingham.

This was a call to arms for Charles’ supporters and marked his declaration of war against parliament.

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The English Civil Wars: History and Stories

The English Civil Wars were a catastrophic series of conflicts that took place in the middle of the 17th century. Fought between those loyal to the king, Charles I, and those loyal to Parliament, the wars divided the country at all levels of society. At the heart of the conflict were fundamental questions about power and religion.

The legacy of the Civil Wars can be seen not only in our political landscape, but in the historic environment. Many of the ruined castles we see today sustained their damage during the war. Learn more about the Civil Wars, the people who lived through them, and how the conflict unfolded at English Heritage sites.

• The English Civil Wars comprised three wars, which were fought between Charles I and Parliament between 1642 and 1651.
• The wars were part of a wider conflict involving Wales, Scotland and Ireland, known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
• The human cost of the wars was devastating. Up to 200,000 people lost their lives, or 4.5% of the population. This was as great a loss, proportionally, as during the First World War.
• The causes of the wars were complex and many-layered. At the centre of the conflict were disagreements about religion, and discontent over the king’s use of power and his economic policies.
• In 1649, the victorious Parliamentarians sentenced Charles I to death. His execution resulted in the only period of republican rule in British history, during which military leader Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. This period is known as the Interregnum, and lasted for 11 years until 1660 when Charles’s son, Charles II, was restored to the throne.
• The Civil Wars saw the beginning of the modern British Army tradition with the creation of the New Model Army – the country’s first national army, comprised of trained, professional soldiers.
• Many castles were besieged during the wars, resulting in severe damage. Others were deliberately destroyed, or ‘slighted’, after the fighting. The ruinous state of many of England’s castles that we see today can be traced back to these events.

The Civil Wars Explained

Journey through one the most complex and turbulent periods in English history with our comprehensive guide to the events of the Civil Wars.

We look at what caused the wars, how they unfolded, and what their legacy was – from their origins in the early years of Charles I’s reign to Parliament’s short-lived victory and the subsequent Restoration of the monarchy.

Key Figures and Stories

Read about the man at the centre of the most turbulent period of England’s history, and learn about the statue dedicated to him in Trafalgar Square, London. 

A Royal Prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle

Read about Charles I’s time as a prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, including his many attempts to escape.

Jane Whorwood: Royalist Spy

Jane Whorwood was one of the key agents behind attempts to free Charles I from captivity on the Isle of Wight, notably from Carisbrooke Castle, in 1648.

Charles II and the Royal Oak

Find out how the future king escaped from Parliamentarian forces after the Battle of Worcester in 1651, giving English history one of its greatest adventure stories.

The Battle of the Downs

This major sea battle between the Dutch and the Spanish in 1639 exposed the weakness of the English navy. Read more about the battle and how it destabilised Charles I’s reign in the years running up to the first Civil War.

The Civil Wars and the British Army

Discover how the reorganisation of the Parliamentarian army during the Civil Wars marked the beginning of the modern British Army tradition.

Living Through War

To live in the middle of the 17th century was to endure some of British history’s most distressing and divisive events. Discover just some of the people associated with our properties who lived through them, and how they carried on with their lives and professions.

Margaret Cavendish

Novelist, poet and philosopher Margaret Cavendish travelled to Paris with Queen Henrietta Maria to escape the violence of the Civil Wars, and remained in exile there throughout the Interregnum. Against the backdrop of this political upheaval, she wrote prolifically on sex, gender, and natural and political philosophy.

Lady Anne Clifford

In 1649 Lady Anne Clifford, a staunch Royalist, left London to reclaim her family estates in northern England. Finding her lands badly neglected and the five Clifford castles much damaged by the events of the Civil Wars, she devoted the final three decades of her life to restoring them.

John Dryden

Poet John Dryden briefly served in Cromwell’s government and on his death commemorated him in ‘Heroic Stanzas’. After the Restoration, however, his loyalties shifted and he wrote several long poems praising Charles II. The king later officially employed Dryden as Poet Laureate. Read more about the poet and where to find his London blue plaque.

Samuel Pepys

Diarist Samuel Pepys witnessed Charles I’s execution as a 15-year-old boy. He held Republican sympathies that day, but, like Dryden, he swiftly adopted Royalist loyalties once Charles II was restored to the throne. It was to Pepys that Charles II recounted his dramatic escape from Boscobel House. Read more about the famous chronicler, and discover his London blue plaque.

Castles Under Siege

Discover the places in English Heritage’s care that were besieged during the wars.

Discover how Donnington Castle in Berkshire held out for King Charles I during a 20-month siege in 1644–6, and played a key role in the Second Battle of Newbury.

In 1646 Goodrich Castle was the scene of one of the most hard-fought sieges of the first Civil War, which Parliament finally won with the aid of a huge mortar, known as Roaring Meg. 

Old Wardour

In 1643 Lady Blanche Arundell defended Old Wardour against Parliamentarian attack for six days before being forced to surrender. Read more about the siege and the castle’s fate after the wars.

Scarborough

Scarborough Castle was besieged twice during the Civil Wars, and during one of them, the bombardment was so intense that half the tower collapsed. Read about the sieges, and more of the castle’s history, here.

In 1646 Pendennis was one of the last Royalist strongholds to hold out against the Parliamentarian army. About 1,000 soldiers and their dependants endured a five-month siege, only surrendering when their food supplies ran out.

Beeston Castle passed between Royalist and Parliamentarian hands several times during the Civil Wars. The Royalists finally surrendered in 1645, and the castle was slighted.

War came to Walmer in 1648, while Charles I was imprisoned. In Kent, a rebellion broke out in support of the king. Sailors from the English navy in the Downs captured Sandown, Deal and Walmer castles, but all were eventually recaptured by Parliament.

Walmer’s neighbour, Deal Castle, also saw battle in 1648, and held out against a ferocious siege for nearly three months before finally succumbing to Parliament. Read more about Deal’s history.

Explore More

Boscobel House

Explore the history of Boscobel House, where Charles II hid while fleeing Parliamentarian soldiers in 1651. 

White Ladies Priory

Read about Boscobel’s sister site, where Charles II first arrived after his flight from the battle of Worcester. It was here that he adopted his disguise as a peasant, and plotted his escape.

Cromwell’s Castle

Standing on a rocky promontory in the Scilly Isles, this round tower was built after Parliament’s conquest of the Scillies in 1651 and is one of the few surviving Cromwellian fortifications in Britain. Read more about its history.

Life under siege at Goodrich Castle

The 17th-century objects found at Goodrich Castle help us to imagine what life at the castle was like during the Civil War siege. View some of them in detail here.

olivercromwell.org

Oliver cromwell english civil war charles i, causes of the english civil war, what caused the civil war what part did cromwell play in causing the war.

Contemporaries were themselves unsure what had caused the war. The parliamentarian Bulstrode Whitelocke was able to discern no clear cause, explaining the outbreak of hostilities as the result of ‘one unexpected accident after another’ which had caused the nation ‘insensibly’ to slide into war. When contemporaries attempted more sophisticated analysis of the causes of the civil war, they came up with very different conclusions. While the royalist politician Edward Hyde, later the Earl of Clarendon, felt that war had resulted from political errors and blunders made by both sides in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the civil war, the political philosopher James Harrington felt that it was caused by long term social and economic changes which had been underway since the sixteenth century or before.

Historians have always adopted and continue to adopt very different approaches to the causes and origins of the civil war. Some, like Harrington, have continued to look to long-term problems, issues or developments, dating back to the early Tudor or even the late medieval period, while others, like Hyde, have argued that state and society were sound until the early seventeenth century or beyond and that the causes of the war were very short-term, emerging only in the 1620s or the 1630s. Many of the so-called revisionists, who dominated the field for parts of the 1970s and 1980s, took this second line, attempting to discredit older explanations which rested on long-term causes and instead tending to stress shorter-term issues, problems which came to prominence only after 1625. More recently, anti- or post-revisionists have criticised this approach, arguing that the revisionists went too far in focusing on short-term issues and in underplaying or ignoring evidence of medium- and long-term problems.

Some historians, following in Harrington’s footsteps, have continued to see the war as caused by long-term social and economic developments and problems. This approach (and responses to it) dominated the field in the middle decades of the twentieth century, when many Marxist and non-Marxist historians alike saw the civil war as a class war, caused by tensions between rising middle classes and a declining aristocracy (and crown). Although later work threw considerable doubt on this approach by apparently demonstrating that England and Wales did not divide on clear class lines in 1642, some historians still broadly hold to significant elements of this interpretation, and many others see increasing social and economic tensions in the century 1540-1640, caused by a doubling of the English and Welsh population over that period, as contributing to a greater or lesser extent to the collapse into civil war.

For much of the Victorian and Edwardian period, the so-called Whig interpretation dominated the field. This tended to stress two elements, both of them long-term problems festering away at the heart of the English state. One was mainly secular, namely a growing power-struggle between on the one hand parliament in general and the House of Commons in particular, anxious to gain a greater role in government and to win power to enable it to protect and promote the rights and liberties of the people, and on the other hand the crown, which sought to retain powers and prerogatives itself. The second was mainly religious, namely a growing power struggle between on the one hand a vociferous band or party of Godly puritans, who wanted the process of Protestant Reformation to go much further and who were dissatisfied with the existing state church, and on the other hand the crown and upper echelons of the Church of England, who supported the status quo or who were reluctant to push ahead with further Reformation anywhere near as far or as fast as the puritans wanted. Both problems, these historians argued, were apparent by the reign of Elizabeth I, if not before, and they worsened during the first half of the seventeenth century through continuous or intermittent sniping and through occasional political, religious and constitutional crises and confrontations. At length, these long-term and worsening problems led to an unbridgeable divide and to civil war. This approach, largely ignored or dismissed as irrelevant or secondary by Marxist socio-economic interpretations, was confronted head-on in the 1970s and 1980s by the revisionists, with their stress on shorter-term issues and their arguments that there were few if any longer-term problems within the English state, that down to the 1620s or 1630s the political, constitutional and religious elements of the state were working well, with an emphasis on harmony, consensus and co-operation.

From the nineteenth century onwards, most historians have taken a top-down approach to analysing the causes of the war, looking at the role and motivation of the leading political and social players in the conflict and in many cases focusing on the world of Whitehall and Westminster, on developments in central government and administration. However, over the last few decades some historians have taken a bottom-up approach, exploring how and why the nation as a whole or particular geographical parts of it divided in the early 1640s, assessing the factors which influenced provincial opinion, seeking to discover what motivated the mass of the population in the towns and countryside either to take up arms and fight for one side or the other or to attempt to remain neutral and uninvolved. For some historians this is no more than a secondary issue – it may explain how the nation divided once war began, but the war itself was caused by fractures within elites, either the political elite at the centre of state, church and government or the social elites who led the rising middle classes to war against the aristocracy. But for other historians, this is a crucial, even the crucial, issue – no matter how and why the political or social elites may have fallen out amongst themselves, full-scale civil war could have occurred only because of much broader and deeper fractures present within society and the country as a whole. Accordingly, from the 1960s onwards a great deal of research and writing has analysed developments, opinions and divisions in towns, counties, regions or the provinces as a whole during the pre-war decades and on through the civil war itself; while some of this work has tended to focus on urban and rural elites, much of it has sought to cover a broader social span or has specifically addressed questions of non-elite, popular opinion and allegiance.

Much recent work has sought to demonstrate that during the pre-war decades those living in the provinces were well aware of developments in church and state, and that, far from being inward looking and concerned solely or largely with local affairs, the people of England and Wales were affected by, and took an informed interest in, the regime’s foreign and domestic policies. This informed interest could be found at many levels of society and was not the exclusive preserve of the small urban or rural elites. Many local historians have gone on to suggest that secular or religious concerns, many of them stemming from or reacting to government policies, were causing tensions and divisions within English and Welsh society during the pre-war decades, real or potential fracture lines which not only explain how and why society quickly divided into different camps once war had broken out but also (some historians contend) form a major plank in causing the civil war itself, in explaining why England and Wales collapsed into war in the early 1640s. For some historians, these fracture lines involved a complex mixture of social, economic and cultural factors, seen in geographical divisions between on the one hand arable and mixed farming areas of often small parishes, with hierarchical and paternalistic communities which stood by traditional religious, cultural and communal life, and on the other hand wood-pasture areas of often large parishes, more fluid and open, individual and distinctive communities which embraced moral and religious change and reformation and new ideas in general. For other historians, the fracture lines in provincial communities were more straightforward, caused principally by religious divergences and conflict between religious traditionalists and increasingly vocal groups of Godly reformers, who came to dominate some communities and whose dissatisfaction with the existing Church of England led them to agitate for further reformation. Indeed, some historians have suggested that religion was the dominant issue which divided the country and thus precipitated civil war at the centre as well as in the provinces. They argue that whatever differences there were over state finance, foreign policy or whatever, only religion was so central to the elite and the non-elite alike, so fundamental to everyone’s lives, that compromise proved impossible and instead not only were key members of the elite driven to seek a physical and military solution in defence of their faith but also their stands struck a chord and received much wider support in many English and Welsh communities, so generating full-scale civil war.

Understandably enough, in seeking the causes of the English civil war most historians have focussed on England and Wales, but the wider context has never been entirely ignored. The outbreak of civil war in England clearly followed on from, and was to some extent shaped by, the failed wars against Scotland in 1639 and 1640 and the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in 1641, and many historians have examined the contribution which those Scottish and Irish events made to the outbreak of civil war in England and Wales. Similarly, many historians have noted the wider continental difficulties which the early Stuart monarchs faced – such as pressure to enter European conflicts in support of Protestantism and the very costly failure of Charles I’s foreign policy when he did go to war against Spain and France in the latter half of the 1620s – and they have assigned them a (generally quite minor) role in the sequence of events which led to civil war.

From time to time, some historians have gone further down this path. A few have seen the civil war in England and Wales, as well as the wars between England and Scotland and the rebellion in Ireland, as just three manifestations of a much broader general crisis of the middle decades of the seventeenth century, a concentration of revolts, rebellions, civil wars and wars between states which engulfed much of Europe (and parts of the wider world) over this period. They suggest that this concentration of wars and armed instability shared a common cause, perhaps widespread socio-economic tension and class strife caused by climatic downturn, perhaps political tension caused by the centralising aspirations of heads of state, perhaps pressure on government caused by the fiscal and administrative burdens of the expanding military arm of the state. Some historians have accepted and followed this line or argument, though many were and are sceptical that one or more specific causes can lie behind and explain the outbreak of so many different types of conflict in so many differently organised states in so many diverse and widely spread theatres and geographical regions.

From a slightly different perspective, during the late 1980s and 1990s many historians took a renewed interest in the British nature of the English civil war, seeing it as one element of the British wars or the wars of the three kingdoms of the period from 1637 to 1651 or beyond. They stress the repeated and intimate inter-connections between the conflicts which broke out in Scotland, Ireland and England and Wales over the years 1637-42 and suggest that they probably had common causes, a British problem or problems. Scotland, Ireland and England and Wales formed a multiple kingdom, each with its own very different and distinctive history and traditions, judicial and administrative mechanisms, religion and society, but from 1603 onwards all were ruled by a single monarch. When that monarch proved to be careless of the rights and the distinctive ways of his component kingdoms and when he brutally attempted to impose religious change and greater religious uniformity throughout his religiously divided inheritance, the result was crisis, collapse and war. However, some historians have not been wholly convinced by this British line, arguing that although the contributions of Scotland and Ireland undoubtedly help explain the form and timing of the descent into civil war, the outcome in England and Wales was a distinctive English and Welsh war, albeit one with many Scottish and Irish connections, not a single British conflict. Many contend that there must be English causes to the civil war, that internal English and Welsh problems must have been present, and that only deep divisions within England and Wales can explain why civil war broke out there in summer 1642 and raged on for much of the decade.

In attempting to weigh up what caused the English civil war, it is important to recognise that the different lines of interpretation and explanation may not be mutually exclusive. It is quite possible that a number of problems and issues came together in triggering the outbreak of war, each of them carrying roughly equal weighting and playing an important part in the breakdown. Similarly, different participants may have been motivated to take up arms and begin a civil war for slightly or very different reasons – the causes of the breakdown at the centre in 1642, which led the political elite of Whitehall and Westminster to resort to arms, may not have been the same as the factors which led provincial communities to divide into warring groups or which motivated large numbers of ordinary people to take up arms.

What role did Cromwell play in all of this? How far did he personally contribute to causing the civil war? As Cromwell had played no significant role in central or even local government before 1640 – he had sat in just one parliament, that of 1628-9, in which he was a very minor and insignificant figure, and he had never served as a county JP or held high office – he is largely irrelevant to interpretations of the civil war which emphasise long-term causes. If the civil war is seen as resulting from long-term political, constitutional and religious problems dating back to the sixteenth century or from long-term socio-economic tensions and class strife whose origins may even have pre-dated 1500, Cromwell’s personal role in and contribution to the descent into civil war can be no more than negligible. Cromwell might have a slightly larger role to play in lines of interpretation – such as those advanced by the revisionists in the 1970s and 1980s – which lay greater stress on short-term causes and on political blunders made by both sides in the years preceding 1642, but even if this line is followed, Cromwell’s personal contribution was almost certainly very small.

Down to his election to the Short and Long Parliaments in 1640, Cromwell was politically inexperienced and insignificant. He had lost out in a power-struggle in his native Huntingdon at the start of the 1630s and been firmly slapped down, and in the later 1630s he may have spoken out for those seeking compensation from local fen drainers around Ely (though the evidence is far from clear), but overall he does not come across as a political animal and he had never held power or influence in central or local government. Yet during the opening two years of the Long Parliament, 1640-42, Cromwell does stand out as being surprisingly active and prominent within the House. He was certainly not one of the leaders of parliamentary business and events – he was not one of the leading critics of royal government whom Charles tried to arrest in January 1642 – and at times his inexperience and a certain naivety let him down, leading to a number of embarrassing blunders and misdirected failures. But considering his inexperience down to 1640 and his apparent obscurity when he took his seat in the Long Parliament, his record is impressive and somewhat surprising. He was a prominent critic of some aspects of royal government and of the church, frequently he was named to committees and acted as Teller in divisions or as messenger to the House of Lords, and he presented important petitions from individuals or communities. He reportedly helped to draft a Bill aimed at the complete abolition of episcopacy, he moved the second reading of a Bill for annual parliaments (which, modified, eventually became the Triennial Act), and he was prominent in moves for parliament to appoint guardians for the Prince of Wales and for the Earl of Essex to be appointed commander of the militia by Ordinance rather than by Act of Parliament, thereby removing the need to seek and obtain royal assent. In 1641 he urged the prosecution of those allegedly involved in the Army Plots and in 1641-2 he was outspoken in advocating a vigorous, armed response not only to the Irish rebellion but also to other Catholic conspiracies at home and abroad.

Historians interpret Cromwell’s prominent and conspicuous role during the opening two years of the Long Parliament in different ways. For some, this is the first sign of Cromwell’s self-made rise from obscurity to fame, arguing that in the wake of his religious conversion at some stage during the 1630s, he had a burning desire to seek reform in church and state alike and, believing that he was doing God’s will, he gained the confidence and energy to drive himself and others forward in pursuit of those goals. For others, Cromwell’s obscurity in 1640 has been over-played and is at least in part illusory, for by then he was allied by marriage, kinship or friendship to a number of far more experienced, important and prominent critics of royal government who sat in the Long Parliament, including John Pym, John Hampden and Oliver St John in the Commons and Bedford, Warwick and Saye and Sele in the Lords. From the early days of the Long Parliament, these alliances gave Cromwell a greater standing and reputation than his own social position or previous political experience would merit. Leading on from this, some historians have suggested that Cromwell was deliberately being used by some or all of these more prominent and experienced politicians, that they were employing Cromwell as their agent to fly kites for them, to give an airing to policies and initiatives which might be pursued if they won sufficient support.

In summer 1642, as political fighting gave way to armed preparation for war, Cromwell was certainly one of those members of parliament and of the political elite who firmly supported the parliamentary cause and who were willing to stand up and be counted. In early and mid August 1642, before war had formally been declared by the king, Cromwell returned to his home area and with a troop of newly-raised horse helped to secure Cambridge town and castle and its magazine for parliament. In Cambridge he also prevented part of a consignment of college plate being sent off for the use of the king. Cromwell was by no means the only MP to have taken this sort of physical, armed stance, by no means the only member of the landed elite to have nailed his colours to the mast in this way, but at this stage only a small minority of the more courageous, committed parliamentarians were prepared to act in this manner. Cromwell’s actions in Cambridge in August 1642 serve as a visible measure of his personal courage and commitment to the cause, but they did not of themselves contribute significantly to causing and starting the English civil war. Whatever line we take on that hotly disputed and unresolved historical controversy, Cromwell’s personal role, stance and actions played at most only the most minor part in the problems and tensions, in the developments and sequence of events, which caused the English civil war.

To what extent can the outbreak of civil war in 1642 be blamed on Charles I?

04 July, 2013 • History

The causes of the English Revolution have long been a subject of historiographical debate. One of the central questions has been that of the existence of a “high road to civil war”; that is, whether the causes of revolution can be traced back to the reigns of James, Elizabeth, or even earlier, or whether the causes were more immediate, surfacing during Charles’ reign. This essay will therefore address the question of the extent to which it was caused by the actions of Charles — which is to say, whether the causes originated after 1625 and, furthermore, whether Charles could reasonably be said to be responsible, or whether the events were out of his control.

The early Stuarts had in common with one another a number of conflicts with Parliament, among them constitutional issues, religion and finance. Not all of these were new problems but a number of factors increased the tendency towards conflict.

The question of constitutional issues can be addressed first, as it exacerbated the others. According to a traditional, “Whig” point of view, the roots of the revolution are traced back to the increasing absolutism introduced to the English monarchy by James and developed further by Charles. In this view, James ‘sowed the seeds of revolution and disaster’ 1 and Charles continued on this path; the early Stuarts were, therefore, both at fault, with Charles inheriting an already-restless kingdom. However, more recently, it has been pointed out that this interpretation was ‘utterly at odds with James’s widely praised performance as king of Scotland’; 2 by the time he inherited the English throne he had successfully managed the various hostile factions of Scotland for sixteen years.

To establish the truth of this claim (that there was a distinct change in the mode of government between Elizabeth and James) we can look at several facts. Firstly, there is the number of Parliamentary sessions held: James’ reign saw nine sessions in 22 years. Elizabeth’s reign, on the other hand, had 13 sessions in forty-four years, 3 sitting for a total of only two and a half years compared to three and a half under James. It has further been argued that when James wrote Basilikon Doron in 1599, arguing for the absolute power of the monarch, he was inspired by, and perhaps envious of, his cousin’s ability to rule her kingdom with so little interference. 4 Thus, the roots of absolutism in England predated both Charles and James; in fact, according to Smith, despite James’ problems ‘his style of kingship generally fostered stability’, 5 but he quotes Reeve’s description of Charles as ‘fundamentally unsuited for kingship’. 6

James’ outspoken views on the role of the monarch in relation to Parliament undoubtedly made contemporaries uncomfortable; he showed particular lack of tact in lecturing Parliament (on several occasions) on the limitations of its rights, sparking fears that ‘we are not like to leave to our successors that freedome we receved from our forefathers’. 7 Nevertheless, he was also an experienced ruler; Smith refers to his ‘shrewd political realism’, citing his abandonment of his plans for a union of the two kingdoms as an example of this. 8 He regularly showed discretion in this manner, seeming well-aware of how his words and actions were perceived; countless examples are given by Smith and others of his diplomatic withdrawals. This can be contrasted strongly with Charles.

Charles inherited his father’s belief in a divine right to rule (indeed, Basilikon Doron , in which those beliefs were set out, had been written specifically by James to teach his sons). However, he did not inherit James’ tact and diplomacy; unlike his father, he was unwilling to bend or negotiate unless forced — a failing which increased the perception of weakness, ’encouraging his subjects to believe that …he would retreat further’. 9 However, even this was not inevitable; his earliest dealings with Parliament, during the last years of his father’s reign, were successful, and it was a short time into his own reign before the problems began to manifest.

It has long been argued that by the early seventeenth century the finances of the crown were wholly inadequate; not simply in their magnitude, but structurally flawed as well. Morton describes them as ‘medieval in character’ and requiring on Elizabeth’s part ’the most extreme parsimony’ 10 to make ends meet. Inflation had driven prices up significantly during the sixteenth century, but Crown revenues, based primarily on rents and fines, had not risen in proportion. 11 Early in James’ reign a major restructuring of Crown finances was proposed, whereby the Crown would give up certain of its revenue sources in return for a guaranteed grant. However, this plan fell through and questions have been raised as to whether it would have been a success — Woolrych argues that it would have required greater frugality than James generally displayed. The inability of King and Parliament to agree on financial reform (according to Morton, due to the lack of economic understanding at the time) led to repeated conflicts over subsidies to the Crown, and to James’ increasing use of other sources of income — for example, the sale of titles and Crown lands.

The financial difficulties for Charles began in his first Parliament, which refused to grant Tonnage and Poundage to the King for life as was traditional, instead granting it for just a year with the intention of revisiting the royal financial arrangements. A clash of personalities ensued, with Charles inclined to see disagreement as a sign of a conspiracy against him. 12 His grievances were not unfounded, as England was currently engaged in a war against France, with the vocal support of Parliament, yet with the King expected to pay for it; Parliament attempted to use this as leverage to have the unpopular Duke of Buckingham removed from office. The dispute remained unresolved until an attempted impeachment of Buckingham led to Charles dissolving Parliament, and so Charles augmented his income with a ‘forced loan’ instead.

This set the scene for the remainder of the decade, with Charles’ attempts to raise money creating further conflicts which made Parliament unwilling to co-operate. Charles’ next Parliament introduced a Petition of Right, which agreed to finance the Crown so long as a number of grievances were addressed, but Charles accepted only grudgingly, doing his best to undermine it. Once again this aligns with Russell’s description of ‘a political style which tended to advertise the fact that concessions were made unwillingly’, 13 and did nothing to improve Parliament’s trust in him; they carried on and passed three resolutions against his continued flouting of the Petition of Right, whereupon he cited ‘seditious carriage’ sparked by ‘some few vipers’ 14 and dissolved Parliament.

This was the beginning of Charles’ personal rule. While opinion is divided as to whether it was a tyranny (see, for example, Kevin Sharpe 15 for an argument that it was not), it was certainly marked by continuing financial problems, among other things. Fundamentally the problem was that, since Charles could not impose taxation without Parliament, he needed to find ever more novel ways of generating revenue without new taxes. He had a particular talent for obeying the letter of the law while ignoring its spirit; for example, Ship Money was generally accepted to be within his power to raise, but his imposition of it on inland counties was an unwelcome innovation, 16 as was his designation of a significant part of Essex as royal forest, upon which landowners were then fined for encroaching. 17

However, these only increased the grievances against him; when Charles finally called a new Parliament in 1640, it was because of a lack of money to fund the war effort against Scotland. For its part, Parliament, once called, was more concerned with discussing the King’s attempts at taxation, among other things, than in giving him more money.

The second recurring conflict throughout the early Stuart period was religion; again, this was an issue which did not begin with the Stuarts, but rather dated back to Henry VIII. A settlement had been reached under Elizabeth, but the issue was raised again by the Millenary Petition early in James’ reign, from Puritans who saw the opportunity, under a new monarch, to push for further reform. However, the religious situation remained relatively stable, with James opposing major changes in either direction. His adherence to a middle way is evidenced by the opposition from both sides — although there was ongoing suspicion about his Catholic sympathies, particularly around the time of the Spanish Match, he was also (famously) the target of a Catholic assassination plot and firmly Protestant in his own convictions. 18

Charles again differed from his father, both in his religious convictions and his policies. His inclination towards the ceremony of Arminianism, seen as dangerously close to Catholicism by suspicious Protestants, along with his marriage to a French Catholic princess, increased tensions with Puritans. However, it is easy to judge him harshly on his inflexibility in this regard: Charles’ religious convictions were sincere, and not easily abandoned; while his pursuit of them may be seen as tactless, and he may have benefited from his father’s ability to know when to back down, it should be remembered that he was not setting out to be unreasonable.

His appointment of the Arminian Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, against the advice of his father, further incited discontent. As well as the “popish” tendencies he displayed, he was a strong proponent of uniformity in the Anglican church, which inevitably brought him (and by extension Charles) into conflict with the various Dissenting movements of the period. In particular, his plans to introduce the Anglican prayerbook in Scotland can be argued to be one of the more direct causes of the conflict.

The prayerbook had been introduced with little consultation, and along with Scotland’s pride in its independence from England and its discontent as the junior partner of the personal union, it was said that the Reformation in England was “verrie far inferior” to that of Scotland; 19 the strength of this opinion can be demonstrated by the rioting it provoked at St Giles’, and the later, more organised resistance in the form of the National Covenant. Charles’ attempts to bring this resistance under control were hampered by his usual inflexibility. His tendency was to refuse absolutely to negotiate, only to be left with no choice but to back down, a tendency remarked upon even by his supporters: “those particulars which I have so often sworn and said your Matie would never condiscend to, will now be granted, therefore they will give no credit to what I shall say ther after, but will still hope and believe, that all their desires will be given way to”.

The failure to negotiated escalated to the point where the Covenanters raised an army against Charles; the need to raise money to defend against this forced Charles to summon a Parliament at last. However, as noted above, this Parliament had other priorities; and beyond the financial disputes, the Short Parliament itself had a strong Puritan element and opposed Charles’ religious innovations. Charles, given the choice of negotiating with the Scots or with Parliament, chose to do neither, dissolving Parliament within three weeks and continuing to raise an army against Scotland. This spectacularly poor decision led to the occupation of New- castle by a Scottish army and the summoning of another Parliament within six months.

The Long Parliament was even less inclined to negotiate than the Short Parliament had been, immediately setting about a series of reforms, such as the Triennial act, and proceeding to impeach Laud and Strafford, Charles’ most unpopular advisors. After disagreement over the handling of the Irish Uprising, Parliament (led by Pym) issued the Grand Remonstrance, detailing the many grievances since the start of the reign and positioning itself as the true de- fender of English liberty; Charles once more perceived dissent as a conspiracy against him and eventually retaliated by attempting to round up the ringleaders, marching to Parliament with armed soldiers. The resulting outcry led to his flight from London to Oxford and can be seen as the start of the civil war in England. Parliament declared itself to have no need of royal assent and the King eventually summoned an alternative Parliament at Oxford.

Across a range of themes it can be seen that Charles was rarely, if ever, the fundamental cause of the conflict. The social, political, and economic problems of his reign were structural, dating back a century or more, with religious differences developing from the reigns of Henry VIII and especially Mary, and economic problems starting possibly even earlier than that. 20 The transition to James’ reign and personal union with Scotland marked a watershed and James became a convenient scapegoat, but more recently attention has been paid to 1625, or even later, as the point of no return. It is hard to lay all the blame on Charles, given the presence of these century-old structural issues, but also difficult to ignore his personal weaknesses that led him to fail so drastically (and terminally) at addressing them. Perhaps if Henry, Prince of Wales, had not died in 1612 and had succeeded his father in place of his younger brother, the middle part of the century would have looked drastically different. There are, however, no simple solutions to the question of blame in the English Revolution.

Samuel R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War (Longmans, Green & Co., 1883), [v]{.smallcaps}, p. 316.  ↩︎

David Lawrence Smith, ‘Politics in Early Stuart Britain, 1603–1640’, in A Companion to Stuart Britain , ed. by Barry Coward (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 233–52.  ↩︎

R. E. Foster, ‘Conflicts and Loyalties: The Parliaments of Elizabeth I’, History Review , 56, 2006 < https://www.historytoday.com/archive/conflicts-and-loyalties-parliaments-elizabeth-i >.  ↩︎

I read this during the research for this essay, but have since been unable to find the reference again.  ↩︎

Smith.  ↩︎

L. J. Reeve, Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 173.  ↩︎

Megan Mondi, ‘The Speeches and Self-Fashioning of King James VI and I to the English Parliament, 1604-1624’, Constructing the Past , 8.1 (2007), 139–82 < https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=constructing >.  ↩︎

Conrad Russell, ‘The British Problem and the English Civil War’, History , 72, 1987, 395 < https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229X.1987.tb01469.x >.  ↩︎

Arthur Leslie Morton, A People’s History of England , 3rd edn (Lawrence & Wishart, 1989), p. 179.  ↩︎

Austin Herbert Woolrych, Britain in Revolution: 1625–1660 (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 16–17.  ↩︎

Russell.  ↩︎

The Personal Rule of Charles I (Yale University Press, 1992).  ↩︎

R.H Fritze and W. B. Robison, Historical Dictionary of Stuart England: 1603–1689 (Greenwood, 1996), p. 201.  ↩︎

Woolrych.  ↩︎

Woolrych; Morton.  ↩︎

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The causes of the English civil war.

Melroy Satkunarajah

The causes of the English civil war

In this essay I am going to explain why the civil war broke out in 1642. The English civil war broke out on 22 nd  August 1642. It caused many deaths and divided some families. There were many reasons for this, including religious arguments, financial arguments, the actions of Charles himself, all the causes were linked together, (Parliamentarian and Royalist) some of the events of 1642 and the demands made by parliaments for more power and also I am going to explain the long – term causes and the short – term causes also know as the triggers.

There are many different reasons for the causes of the English civil war but first I will start with the religious disputes over archbishops Laud’s reforms of the church. Reforms were introduced that made churches more decorated (like catholic churches) Charles I collected customs duties without parliaments permission, he married a French catholic who was unpopular with his people. The Bishops' Wars were fought between the Scots and English forces led by . These conflicts paved the way for the uprising of Parliament that began the English civil wars.

Charles I was attempting to enforce Anglican reforms onto the Scottish church. However the Scots were opposed to this, and even wanted to destroy the control that bishops had over the church. To this end, Charles' reforms were rejected by the Scottish Assembly at Glasgow in 1638.

Charles was furious that the Scots had rejected his proposals, and hastily formed an English force with which to march on Scotland in 1639. He did not have the funds for such a military expedition, nor confidence in his troops, so he was forced to leave Scotland without fighting a battle.

The unrest continued in Scotland, and when Charles discovered that they had been plotting with the French he again decided to mount a military expedition. This time, Charles called Parliament in order to get funds (1640).

This is a preview of the whole essay

The second cause was the financial quarrels between the king and parliament. When parliament formed, they immediately wanted to discuss grievances against the government, and were generally opposed to any military operation. This angered Charles and he dismissed parliament again, hence the name "Short Parliament" that it is commonly given.

Charles went ahead with his military operation without Parliament's support, and was beaten by the Scots. The Scots, taking advantage of this, went on to seize Northumberland and Durham.

Charles found himself in a desperate position, and was forced to call parliament again in November, 1640. This parliament is known as the "Long Parliament".

The third cause was the demands made by parliament for greater share government. The tension between Charles and Parliament was still great, since none of the issues raised by the Short Parliament had been resolved. This tension was brought to a head on January 4th, 1642 when Charles attempted to arrest five members of parliament. This attempt failed, since they were spirited away before the king's troops arrived.

Charles left London and both he and parliament began to stockpile military resources and recruit troops.

Charles officially began the war by raising his standard at Nottingham in August, 1642. At this stage of the wars, parliament had no wish to kill the king. It was hoped that Charles could be reinstated as ruler, but with a more constructive attitude to parliament. Parliaments were supported by the richer South and East, including London. Parliament also held most of the ports, since the merchants that ran them saw more profit in a parliament-lead country.

Parliament definitely had access to more resources than the king, and could collect taxes. Charles had to depend on donations from his supporters to fund his armies.

The fourth cause was that Charles I ruled without parliament. Charles I dissolved parliament because of all the disputes and ruled without it for 11 years. King did not like the wealth, power or ideas of parliament. He began making the decisions about taxes without parliament.

The fifth cause was that the ship money argument. Without parliament, Charles had to think up new pays of raising money, e.g. ship money which was paid in times of war by people living the coast, now had to pay by all people even though there was no war.

The sixth cause was that the parliament was recalled and demanded reforms. King Charles I wanted money, so he reopened the parliament to get money but they demanded the reforms e.g. never to be shut down again.

These are called the long – term cases.

Some M.P.S demanded more reforms from the king in a new list called ‘the grand remonstrance’ other M.P.S stick up for the king because he has already greed to some reforms.

A rebellion starts in Ireland where Catholics murdered 200,000 Protestants.

The England wondered if Charles supported the Catholics.

Charles I try to arrest five M.P.S while parliament is in session, but they had escaped before hand. This lost the king a lot of respect and showed he wanted to control parliament after all. Parliament and the king argued over who control the Army.   Only six days after trying to arrest the five Members of Parliament, Charles left London to head for Oxford to raise an army to fight Parliament for control of England. A  could not be avoided.

By 1642, relations between Parliament and  had become very bad. Charles had to do as Parliament wished as they had the ability to raise the money that Charles needed. However, as a firm believer in the "divine right of kings", such a relationship was unacceptable to Charles.

 These are called the short – term causes.

From the beginning of his reign, King Charles quarrelled with parliament about power.

King Charles dismissed parliament in 1629 and ruled without it for 11 years.

In 1635, King Charles made everyone pay the ship money tax.

The Scots rebelled against the new prayer book which the king and archbishop laud introduced in Scotland.

In 1638, the Scots invaded England.

King Charles asked parliament for money to raise an army.

Parliament made King Charles agree to reforms in 1641.

King Charles and archbishop laud made changes of the Church of England which were unpopular.

The puritans were angry about the king’s Catholic sympathies.

These are shot – term causes and long – term causes, they are linked together between causes and how they lead to civil war.        

I think there were almost as many reasons for people to fight the civil war as there were people fighting. Briefly, however, the main reason for the war was the king Charles I and his various parliaments did not agree about anything – religion, how the country should be run, how England should behave towards other countries and so on. This was made worse by the fact that Charles I, believing that kings got their power from god and so could rule as they chose, made no attempt to keep his parliament happy. He spent eleven years ruling without parliament at all. When the long parliament, called in 1640, tried to make him change his ways and he refused, war broke out. (Some important things may not have set off the war, without the small triggers).        

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English Civil War

Introduction.

Divine Right of Kings

Charles I came to the British throne in 1625. Like his father, James I, he believed in the “divine right of kings.” This meant that kings were chosen by God, so their authority could not be challenged by anyone on Earth. When Parliament refused to grant many of Charles’s demands for money, the king was furious.

Personal Rule

From 1629 to 1640 Charles I ruled without calling Parliament at all. During this period he made his subjects pay heavy taxes, which made them support Parliament even more. Some of the nobles also began to worry that Charles had found a way to run the country the way kings did in France and Spain at that time—with total power and without being bound by any laws. Charles even had his own court called the Star Chamber, which was run by men who did everything the king said. This court arrested and punished people without giving them a proper trial. In 1640 Charles called Parliament back into session, but the conflict between the two continued.

The Puritans

In England at this time was a group of strict Protestants known as Puritans . Although they were a minority, they had a great deal of influence and were becoming quite powerful. Most Puritans were well-educated and successful in business. They believed that God was on their side, and they openly criticized the king’s policies. Many members of Parliament were Puritans.

The Country Divides

In 1633 Charles appointed William Laud as archbishop of Canterbury, an important leader of the Church of England . Both the king and Archbishop Laud wanted the clergy and bishops to be more powerful. In the 1630s most churches in England were plain and undecorated, and church services were simple. Laud introduced more music and ceremony. Priests were allowed to wear colored robes and churches were decorated. The traditions of the Church grew more like they had been when England was a Catholic country.

These changes, along with the fact that the king’s wife was Catholic, made the Puritans suspicious that Charles was becoming too fond of the Catholic faith. The country began to divide into Royalists, who supported Charles, and Parliamentarians, who supported the Puritan members of Parliament. Generally, the nobles and landowners supported the king. The people living in towns and cities were on the side of Parliament.

Outbreak of War

In 1641 Parliament insisted that the king make religious reforms and replace his ministers. Charles refused. In 1642 he forced his way into the House of Commons, attempting to arrest five members of Parliament. However, the men had already fled. Charles realized that his actions would provoke a war. He left London and both sides began to gather their armies. The Parliamentary forces were nicknamed Roundheads by their enemies because they cut their hair very short. The king’s forces were called Cavaliers.

Early Battles

The first major battle of the English Civil War took place at Edgehill in 1642. Although both sides claimed to have won, there was no significant victor.

At the time, much of the country remained neutral, but it was not long before the war involved everyone in Britain. In 1643 a series of small battles took place, including the Battle of Hopton Heath and the Battle of Newbury. Around this time, Oliver Cromwell began to emerge as the natural leader of the Parliamentarians. He was a great military commander. Though the early part of the war went well for the king, Cromwell rallied his troops and began fighting back decisively.

Surrender of the King

In 1644 the Scots joined the Roundheads and heavily defeated the Cavaliers at the Battle of Marston Moor. This gave them control of the north of England. The following year, Cromwell’s New Model Army—a group of professional soldiers—defeated the Cavaliers at the Battle of Naseby.

The king’s forces were led by nobles who were not always experienced in warfare. Cromwell’s forces were stronger and better organized. By 1646 Charles realized that he was in danger. Rather than surrendering to Parliament, however, he went to the Scots, hoping to make a deal with them.

End of the Civil War

Charles misjudged the Scots. In January 1647 they handed the king over to Parliament. He escaped briefly and more fighting broke out, but the king’s supporters were roundly defeated at the Battle of Preston in 1648.

Charles was tried and found guilty of waging war on his own people. He was executed in 1649, leaving England a commonwealth with Parliament ruling the land. Supporters of the monarch fought on for some time, trying to get Charles’s son to be named as Charles II, but there was little they could do.

Cromwell’s Commonwealth

In 1653 Cromwell was appointed Lord Protector, ruling England in place of a king. Cromwell attempted to bring in military rule and imposed strict Puritan ideals on the British people. Many people were not happy with his rule. Two years after he died in 1658 the monarchy was restored.

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Short Term Causes of the English Civil War

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Oliver Cromwell and Parliament still wanted more power and no return to the Catholic religion. To make things worse for Charles the Catholics in Ireland killed 100,000 Protestants.

Charles did not like being told what to do so he used his soldiers to try and put five of Cromwell’s friends in prison. This upset the people of England. The next big argument was over the army. Both the King and Parliament wanted to control the army. Parliament made the King angry by taking over the army and not telling the King.

This was the final straw for Charles and on the 22nd of August 1642 Charles and Parliament went to war. The civil war had begun.

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Causes of The Civil War

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Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 572 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

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Economic factors, political factors, social factors, the role of leadership.

• McPherson, J. M. (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press.
• Goldfield, D. R. (2005). America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation. Bloomsbury Press.

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