The Stuarts, the Parliament and the Civil War

The Stuarts
You will remember that the question of inheritance played a very big role for the
Tudors. Henry VIII inherited the crown after his father's death only because his elder
brother had already died. For the royal family, it was crucial to have, if possible, not just an
heir but an heir an a spare.

All of Henry's children died childless. You will probably remember that this was a pressing
issue during Elizabeth's reign. But having an heir involved marriage, and marriage for a
monarch involved forming an alliance with another family, possibly with another
country. Not to mention the fact that, if the monarch was a female, it would probably
involve the awkward situation of being the monarch, hence above everyone else - but
being somebody's wife, hence beneath him. (This is an issue even today, in the 21st
century. When Prince Phillip, Queen Elizabeth's husband, died, a lot was said about how
he had to find a place for himself, being not 'somebody' but 'somebody's husband.')

Another issue throughout the reigns of the Tudors was religion. Religion meant being an
ally or an enemy of certain countries. Also, it meant the possibility for some families
or others to take advantage of their influence in court. Remember that people who were
not of the established religion were completely banned. And that influence meant
obtaining positions, doing business, marrying their children to rich heirs and
heiresses. 

By the time of Elizabeth's death, Anglicanism (the English version of Protestantism,

the Church of England) was quite firmly established. But religion would still be an
issue: Catholicism wasn't dead in England, and it was  strong in many countries of
Europe. On the other hand, for many people, the Church of England was still too close
to Catholicism. 

You will probably remember Mary Stuart (Queen Elizabeth's cousin and rival) and
now in this unit we're going to meet her descendants, who succeeded Elizabeth as
kings of England. When you read about them (in one of the textbooks I suggested or in
other sources) notice how the issue of religion will be central in their policies and their
dealings with the Parliament. 

James I

Named her heir by Elizabeth I

 Less successful
 Quarreled with parliament, civil war
 Became a parliamentary monarchy
 Change in society
 Power moved into hands of merchand and landowners
  Crown could not raise money r govern without their concern
 In return for money the House of commons demanded political power
 Victory of the Commons and the classes it represented was unavoidable
 Changes form thinking oin 17th century-age of reason andscience

Parliament against crown

 1601 first trouble with Elizabeth- feared and respected-over seeing monopolies
 James I ruled with small council
 Clever and educated, belief divine rights of kings, only judged by God
 “ wisest fool in Christendom” called by French king
 James lost his common sense
 Elizabeth left a huge debt-James asked parliament to raise taxes
 Parliament agreed and demanded discussing James home and foreign policy
 James said he had the divine right to make decisions, Parliament disagreed and law
supported it
 Elizabeth´s minister as chief of Justice (Edward Coke), made decisions based on law and
limited the king
 He said King was not above law (Act of Parliament), James removed him
 Coke as an MP continued to make trouble, Magna Carta, greater charter of English
Freedom, politically useful to Parliament-1st quarrek between England and Parliament
 Lasted entire reign and that of his son Charles
 Reigned in peace from 1611 and 1621-could not afford an army
 1618, beginning of the thirty year war, Parliament wanted to go to war but James said no
 Died in 1625 quarell with Parliament-money and foreign policy
 CHARLES same story-said Parliament was in his power and DISSOLVED IT
 Need for MONEY-had to recall it and keep quarrelling
 Raising money without Parliament-from Merchants, bankers and landowning gentry,
parliament made him agree to certain rights.
 He needed money and agreed it to be done by act of parliament and not imprison
anyone without lawful reason
 Petition of right: Parliament controlled state and money, “national budget” and
dissolved parliament again
 Ruled successfully without Parliament-got rid of dishonesty, balanced budget, made
administration efficient, 1637 at the height of his power

Religious disagreement
 1637-make serious mistakes
 Religious situation-Puritans wanted James to remove Anglican bishops-he saw danger for
the crown and dismissed them “No bishop, no king”
 He disliked Puritans, married to a French catholic, unpopular in protestant Britain
  MPs Puritans-wealth creating
 Appointed an enemy of Puritans, William Lous, archbishop of Canterbury
 Canterbury brought back catholic practices, introduce the PRAYER BOOK the result ewas
national resistance to introduction of bishops and Catholicism
 Charles faced a rebel Scottish army-improvised army-agreed to respect political and
religious freedom of SCOTTS and pay money to persuade the Sccotts to retun home
 Needed Parliament for money so it returned-NEW LAW- Parliament had to meet every
three years, not kept his AGREEMENTS

CIVIL WAR
 EVENTS IN Scotland made Charles depend on Parliament
 IRELAND resulted in civil war
 James I colonized Ulster, northern England with farmers of Scottish lowlands
 Catholic Irish sent off the land and exploded against English protestant English and
Scottish settlers
 3000 men women and children killed in Ulster
 Charles and Parliamnted quarreled over who would control army to defeat rebles
 Parliament feared king Charles
 Charles moved to Nottignham to defeat Mps that opposed him-CIVIL war
 House of Lords and a few commons supported king
 Royalist-Cavaliers controlled the north and west
 Parliament controlled East Anglia and southeast including London-Roundheads
 Parliament supported by navy, merchants and population in London
 Royalist didn’t have money and lost the war because it did not pay its soldiers who ran
away
 Trade was interrupted, new taxes to pay for war

SUMMARY

James Stuart became king of Scotland in 1567 (as James VI) and king of England
and Ireland (as James I) in 1603. He ruled both kingdoms until his death in 1625.
The son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, James became
king of Scotland as an infant when his mother abdicated. When Elizabeth I died in
1603, James became king of England and moved there with his family. As king,
James encouraged moderation within the Church of England, the essential nature
of which he maintained despite the wishes of his Catholic and Puritan subjects,
and cultivated a reputation for peace that at times frustrated his bellicose courtiers.
He supported the Virginia Company of London‘s establishment in 1607 of the first
permanent English colony in North America, the first settlement of which was
named Jamestown in his honor. His relations with his Parliaments remained
contentious over the issues of union with Scotland, taxation and fiscal
responsibility, corruption, and foreign policy. His extravagant expenditures on his
family’s separate courts, his male favorites, and royal buildings reflected his belief
that kings were meant to spend the money that the government had the obligation
to provide. James was renowned for his intellectual abilities, his flamboyant
generosity, and his passion for hunting. At court he and his queen, Anne,
celebrated their love of theater and pageantry through their patronage of
playwrights and designers such as William Shakespeare and Inigo Jones. He also
commissioned the rich and poetic translation of the Bible that is known as the King
James Bible. James died in 1625 and was succeeded by his son, who ruled as
Charles I.

Early Years
The birth of James Stuart at Edinburgh Castle on June 19, 1566, came at a
tumultuous time in Scotland’s history. His Catholic mother, Mary, Queen
of Scots, ruled a kingdom in the grips of the Protestant Reformation; his
English father, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was estranged from Mary,
who was frustrating his political ambitions at court. Indeed, three months
earlier Darnley had participated in the murder of Mary’s secretary, David
Rizzio, in the pregnant queen’s presence, a crime that she feared was part
of a plot against her as well. Darnley refused to attend James’s baptism, a
lavish ceremony held on December 17, 1566, in the chapel at Stirling
Castle, but he and Mary seem to have reconciled enough to be living
together again a few months later. On February 10, 1567, a gunpowder
explosion destroyed Darnley’s lodgings at Kirk o’ Field; his strangled
corpse lay in the back garden. Suspicion fell upon the queen and her close
advisor, James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell, whom Mary married on May
15, 1567. A fight for control of the kingdom ensued, and on July 24, 1567,
Mary Stuart abdicated in favor of her son. Crowned King James VI in a
Protestant service at Stirling on July 29, 1567, the thirteen-month-old
James became, as he later said, “a cradle king.”
James never saw his mother again. Mary Stuart lost the battle with
her Protestant government to reclaim her crown, and on May 16, 1568,
she fled to England seeking military support from her cousin, Queen
Elizabeth. Instead, Mary remained a prisoner in England for nineteen
years while James grew into his royal adulthood. In 1584, James declined
his mother’s petition to return to Scotland and rule jointly with him, and
he maintained cordial ties with Elizabeth even after she had his mother
tried and executed in 1587.
While a series of regents governed for him from 1567 to 1584, young
James received a rigorous education from his tutor George Buchanan.
Reared a Calvinist, James studied Greek, Latin, and French. James was an
enthusiastic scholar and produced a number of books during his lifetime,
including Daemonologie (1597), about witchcraft; Basilikon
Doron (1598), to advise his son; Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1598),
about the nature of kingship; and Counter-Blaste to Tobacco (1604), a
treatise condemning the plant‘s use. (As tobacco production developed in
Virginia in the 1620s and added to England’s wealth, he ceased voicing his
opposition.) On August 28, 1582, James had an unexpected lesson in the
harsh realities of political survival: William Ruthven, earl of Gowrie,
kidnapped the king and ruled through him until James escaped in June
1583. Within a year, James declared himself of age and began to rule
independently.
On November 23, 1589, James married a Lutheran princess, Anne of
Denmark, in Oslo, Norway. After the happy couple reached Edinburgh,
Scotland, Anne had her coronation in Holyrood Abbey on May 17, 1590.
She would give birth to three boys and four girls, of whom three lived to
adulthood: Henry, born in 1594; Elizabeth, born in 1596; and Charles,
born in 1600.
As the great-great-grandson of Henry VII of England, James kept his
eyes on the prize that had eluded his mother: the English crown. Through
correspondence, he cultivated a familial relationship with Queen
Elizabeth, who paid him an annual pension from 1586 to 1602. James also
relied upon the services of first Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex,
and then Sir Robert Cecil, principal secretary, in his maneuverings during
the 1590s to have the queen name him her heir. She never did publicly,
but on her deathbed the last Tudor ruler seemed to nod in acquiescence to
the naming of her Scottish Stuart successor.

Ruler of England and Great Britain

As James made a stately progress from Edinburgh to London during April
and May of 1603, scores of English elites rode to seek favors from their
popular new king, a married man with children and an experienced
Calvinist ruler known for his generosity. Notwithstanding the plot of Sir
Walter Raleigh and a few others to supplant him with the English
noblewoman Lady Arabella Stuart, to many people James represented a
promising change. In the year following his joint coronation with Anne on
July 25, 1603, in Westminster Abbey, James addressed his first
Parliament, concluded a peace agreement that ended the Anglo-Spanish
War (1585–1604), and convened a religious conference at Hampton
Court, where he affirmed his support of the Church of England’s doctrines
and structure and commissioned a translation of the Bible that would
come to bear his name.
Less successful were his efforts in 1604 to unify his two kingdoms.
James assumed the title of king of Great Britain and commissioned a new
British flag, the Union Jack, but in reality all that England and Scotland
shared politically was their monarch. On November 5, 1605, a group of
disaffected Catholics, including Guy Fawkes, tried to assassinate James by
blowing up Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot. Their failure led to an
outpouring of support for the king and centuries of commemoration.
In 1606, James granted a royal charter to the Virginia Company of
London giving permission for its investors to send ships and settlers to
North America. In April 1607, three ships—the Susan Constant,
the Godspeed, and the Discovery —reached the Chesapeake Bay.
Captains Christopher Newport, Bartholomew Gosnold, and John Ratcliffe
and the original settlers established the first permanent English colony in
North America. In recognition of the king, they named their settlement
Jamestown, and the main river the James. On a voyage to Jamestown in
1609, the Sea Venture sailed into a storm and wrecked on the island of
Bermuda. News of the incident may have inspired Shakespeare’s The
Tempest, performed for the first time at the Jacobean court. (The
word Jacobean comes from the Latin name Jacobus, or James.) King
James sent presents to Powhatan—paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, an
alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians—and saw Powhatan’s
daughter Pocahontas at court when she came to England in 1616. He also
issued the so-called Great Charter of 1618—written in part by Virginia
Company cofounder Sir Edwin Sandys—which created a representative
assembly in Virginia; early in the 1620s, after Sandys’s financial policies
angered investors, the king intervened to prevent Sandys’s reelection as
treasurer. An investigation was launched into his mismanagement of the
colony, and James ultimately revoked the Virginia Company’s charter in
July 1623.
In governing England, James relied most on the hard-working Lord
Treasurer, Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, who tried to keep the profligate
king solvent and free to indulge in his passion, hunting. Led by Salisbury,
the king and Parliament in 1610 almost reached a historic agreement,
known as the Great Contract, that would have reformed and stabilized
royal finances and taxation policies; the collapse of these negotiations,
however, meant that financial conflicts would dominate James’s relations
with his Parliaments for the remainder of his reign.
The king spent large sums on maintaining an elaborate court,
including masques in which the queen participated and plays by the
King’s Men’s company. He also gave extravagant gifts of money and
property to his royal favorites, a practice he began in Scotland with his
older French cousin, Esme Stuart, who in 1581 was made the Duke of
Lennox. Later in life, James’s favorites tended to be attractive younger
men with whom he formed emotional, and probably sexual, bonds. The
Scotsman Robert Carr received vast estates, fees, and titles, including the
earl of Somerset, and he remained close to the king until he was convicted
in 1616, with his wife, Lady Frances Howard, of murdering Sir Thomas
Overbury. Carr’s replacement was George Villiers, who became duke of
Buckingham and benefited politically and financially from his deep and
lasting friendship with the king. An energetic building program that
included a new palace at Whitehall, partly designed by Inigo Jones, and
royal residences for James’s family siphoned off more royal funds. The
one area in which James conserved money was in foreign policy: he kept
England out of expensive wars and prided himself on his willingness to
use diplomacy in resolving foreign disputes.

Later Years
On November 6, 1612, James’s promising and popular heir, Henry Stuart,
Prince of Wales, died at age eighteen of typhoid fever. The following year
James’s daughter, Elizabeth, married Prince Frederick V, Elector
Palatine; to balance this Protestant match, James began marriage
negotiations for his younger son, Charles, now his heir, with Infanta
Maria Ana of the Catholic Hapsburgs of Spain. When the process stalled
in February 1623, the king reluctantly granted his son permission to travel
with the duke of Buckingham to Madrid in the hope of winning the
princess’s hand; they failed, and the king was much relieved by their safe
return to England in October. Queen Anne, who in the 1590s had
converted to Catholicism, died in 1619, and the widowed king never
remarried.
After suffering a stroke, James died at his favorite hunting lodge,
Theobalds, on March 27, 1625. He was fifty-eight. He was buried on May
5, 1625, under Westminster Abbey’s altar, a site from which he had earlier
disinterred Queen Elizabeth, and his son succeeded him as King Charles I.

Charles I was born in Fife on 19 November 1600, the second son of James
VI of Scotland (from 1603 also James I of England) and Anne of Denmark.

He became heir to the throne on the death of his brother, Prince Henry, in
1612. He succeeded, as the second Stuart King of Great Britain, in 1625.

Controversy and disputes dogged Charles throughout his reign. They

eventually led to civil wars, first with the Scots from 1637, in Ireland
from 1641, and then England (1642-46 and 1648). The wars deeply divided
people at the time, and historians still disagree about the real causes of the
conflict, but it is clear that Charles was not a successful ruler.

Charles was reserved (he had a residual stammer), self-righteous and had
a high concept of royal authority, believing in the divine right of kings. He
was a good linguist and a sensitive man of refined tastes.

He spent a lot on the arts, inviting the artists Van Dyck and Rubens to work
in England, and buying a great collection of paintings by Raphael and Titian
(this collection was later dispersed under Cromwell). Charles I also
instituted the post of Master of the King's Music, involving supervision of
the King's large band of musicians; the post survives today.

His expenditure on his court and his picture collection greatly increased the
crown's debts. Indeed, crippling lack of money was a key problem for both
the early Stuart monarchs.

Charles was also deeply religious. He favoured the high Anglican form of
worship, with much ritual, while many of his subjects, particularly in
Scotland, wanted plainer forms.

Charles found himself ever more in disagreement on religious and financial

matters with many leading citizens. Having broken an engagement to the
Spanish infanta, he had married a Roman Catholic, Henrietta Maria of
France, and this only made matters worse.

Although Charles had promised Parliament in 1624 that there would be no

advantages for recusants (people refusing to attend Church of England
services), were he to marry a Roman Catholic bride, the French insisted on
a commitment to remove all disabilities upon Roman Catholic subjects.
Charles's lack of scruple was shown by the fact that this commitment was
secretly added to the marriage treaty, despite his promise to Parliament.

Charles had inherited disagreements with Parliament from his father, but
his own actions, particularly engaging in ill-fated wars with France and
Spain at the same time, eventually brought about a crisis in 1628-29.

Two expeditions to France failed - one of which had been led by The Duke
of Buckingham, a royal favourite of both James I and Charles I, who had
gained political influence and military power.

Such was the general dislike of Buckingham, that he was impeached by

Parliament in 1628, although he was murdered by a fanatic before he could
lead the second expedition to France.

The political controversy over Buckingham demonstrated that, although the

monarch's right to choose his own Ministers was accepted as an essential
part of the royal prerogative, Ministers had to be acceptable to Parliament
or there would be repeated confrontations.

The King's chief opponent in Parliament until 1629 was Sir John Eliot, who
was finally imprisoned in the Tower of London until his death in 1632.

Tensions between the King and Parliament centred around finances, made
worse by the costs of war abroad, and by religious suspicions at home.
Charles's marriage was seen as ominous, at a time when plots against
Elizabeth I and the Gunpowder Plot in James I's reign were still fresh in the
collective memory, and when the Protestant cause was going badly in the
war in Europe.
In the first four years of his rule, Charles was faced with the alternative of
either obtaining parliamentary funding and having his policies questioned
by argumentative Parliaments who linked the issue of supply to remedying
their grievances, or conducting a war without subsidies from Parliament.

Charles dismissed his fourth Parliament in March 1629 and decided to

make do without either its advice or the taxes which it alone could grant
legally.

Although opponents later called this period 'the Eleven Years' Tyranny',
Charles's decision to rule without Parliament was technically within the
King's royal prerogative, and the absence of a Parliament was less of a
grievance to many people than the efforts to raise revenue by non-
parliamentary means.

Charles's leading advisers, including William Laud, Archbishop of

Canterbury, and the Earl of Strafford, were efficient but disliked.

For much of the 1630s, the King gained most of the income he needed from
such measures as impositions, exploitation of forest laws, forced loans,
wardship and, above all, ship money (extended in 1635 from ports to the
whole country). These measures made him very unpopular, alienating many
who were the natural supporters of the Crown.

Scotland, which Charles had left at the age of 3, returning only for

his Scottish coronation in 1633, proved the catalyst for rebellion. Charles's
attempt to impose a High Church liturgy and prayer book in Scotland had
prompted a riot in 1637 in Edinburgh which escalated into general unrest.
Charles had to recall Parliament. However, the Short Parliament of April
1640 queried Charles's request for funds for war against the Scots and was
dissolved within weeks.

The Scots occupied Newcastle and, under the treaty of Ripon, stayed in
occupation of Northumberland and Durham and they were to be paid a
subsidy until their grievances were redressed.

Charles was finally forced to call another Parliament in November 1640.

This one, which came to be known as the Long Parliament, started with the
imprisonment of Laud and Strafford (the latter was executed within six
months, after a Bill of Attainder which did not allow for a defence), and the
abolition of the King's Council (Star Chamber), and moved on to declare
ship money and other fines illegal.

The King agreed that Parliament could not be dissolved without its own
consent, and the Triennial Act of 1641 meant that no more than three years
could elapse between Parliaments.

The Irish uprising of October 1641 raised tensions between the King and
Parliament over the command of the Army. Parliament issued a Grand
Remonstrance repeating their grievances, impeached 12 bishops and
attempted to impeach The Queen.

Charles responded by entering the Commons in a failed attempt to arrest

five Members of Parliament, who had fled before his arrival. Parliament
reacted by passing a Militia Bill, allowing troops to be raised only under
officers approved by Parliament.

Finally, on 22 August 1642 at Nottingham, Charles raised the Royal

Standard calling for loyal subjects to support him. Oxford was to be the
King's capital during the war. The Civil War, what Sir William Waller (a
Parliamentary general and moderate) called 'this war without an enemy',
had begun.

The Battle of Edgehill in October 1642 showed that early on the fighting
was even. Broadly speaking, Charles retained the north, west and south-
west of the country, and Parliament had London, East Anglia and the south-
east, although there were pockets of resistance everywhere, ranging from
solitary garrisons to whole cities.

However, the Navy sided with Parliament (which made it difficult for
continental aid to reach the Royalists), and Charles lacked the resources to
hire substantial mercenary help.

Parliament had entered an armed alliance with the predominant Scottish

Presbyterian group under the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, and
from 1644 onwards Parliament's armies gained the upper hand - particularly
with the improved training and discipline of the New Model Army.

The Self-Denying Ordinance was passed to exclude Members of Parliament

from holding army commands, thereby getting rid of vacillating or
incompetent earlier Parliamentary generals. Under strong generals like Sir
Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, Parliament won victories at Marston
Moor (1644) and Naseby (1645).

The capture of the King's secret correspondence after Naseby showed the
extent to which he had been seeking help from Ireland and from the
Continent, which alienated many moderate supporters.

In May 1646, Charles placed himself in the hands of the Scottish Army (who
handed him to the English Parliament after nine months in return for arrears
of payment - the Scots had failed to win Charles's support for establishing
Presbyterianism in England).

I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible

Crown, where no disturbance can be
The final words of Charles I
Charles did not see his action as surrender, but as an opportunity to regain
lost ground by playing one group off against another; he saw the monarchy
as the source of stability and told parliamentary commanders 'you cannot
be without me: you will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you'.

In Scotland and Ireland, factions were arguing, whilst in England there were
signs of division in Parliament between the Presbyterians and the
Independents, with alienation from the Army (in which radical doctrines
such as that of the Levellers were threatening commanders' authority).

Charles's negotiations continued from his captivity at Carisbrooke Castle on

the Isle of Wight (to which he had 'escaped' from Hampton Court in
November 1647) and led to the Engagement with the Scots, under which
the Scots would provide an army for Charles in exchange for the imposition
of the Covenant on England.

This led to the second Civil War of 1648, which ended with Cromwell's
victory at Preston in August.

The Army, concluding that permanent peace was impossible whilst Charles
lived, decided that the King must be put on trial and executed. In
December, Parliament was purged, leaving a small rump totally dependent
on the Army, and the Rump Parliament established a High Court of Justice
in the first week of January 1649.
On 20 January, Charles was charged with high treason 'against the realm of
England'. Charles refused to plead, saying that he did not recognise the
legality of the High Court: it had been established by a Commons purged of
dissent, and without the House of Lords - nor had the Commons ever acted
as a judicature.

Read some of Charles I's defence at his trial.pdf

The King was sentenced to death on 27 January. Three days later, Charles
was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall,
London.

On the scaffold, he repeated his case: 

I must tell you that the liberty and freedom

[of the people] consists in having of
Government, those laws by which their life
and their goods may be most their own. It is
not for having share in Government, Sir, that
is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a
sovereign are clean different things. If I would
have given way to an arbitrary way, for to
have all laws changed according to the Power
of the Sword, I needed not to have come here,
and therefore I tell you ... that I am the martyr
of the people
The King was buried on 9 February at Windsor, rather than Westminster
Abbey, to avoid public disorder. To avoid the automatic succession of
Charles I's son Charles, an Act was passed on 30 January forbidding the
proclaiming of another monarch. On 7 February 1649, the office of King
was formally abolished.

The Civil Wars were essentially confrontations between the monarchy and
Parliament over the definitions of the powers of the monarchy and
Parliament's authority.

These constitutional disagreements were made worse by religious

animosities and financial disputes. Both sides claimed that they stood for
the rule of law, yet civil war was by definition a matter of force.

Charles I, in his unwavering belief that he stood for constitutional and social
stability, and the right of the people to enjoy the benefits of that stability,
fatally weakened his position by failing to negotiate a compromise with
Parliament and paid the price.

To many, Charles was seen as a martyr for his people and, to this day,
wreaths of remembrance are laid by his supporters on the anniversary of
his death at his statue, which faces down Whitehall to the site of his
execution. After eleven years of Parliamentary rule (known as the
Interregnum), Charles's son, Charles II  was proclaimed King in 1660.