1. By 1560, England's upper classes were better educated and more
politically conscious than at any time in the past. Local gentlemen
elected to the House of Commons elevated how well Parliament
worked and created an "institutional memory" by improving
Parliament’s records and establishing precedents.
2.
James I in a speech to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament at Whitehall, 21 March, 1610: “If you will
consider the Attributes to God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a King. God hath power to
create, or destroy, make, or unmake at his pleasure, to give life, or send death, to judge all, and to be judged
nor accountable to none: To raise low things, and to make high things low at his pleasure, and to God are
both soul and body due. And the like power have Kings: they make and unmake their subjects: they have
power of raising, and casting down: of life, and of death: Judges over all their subjects, and in all causes, and
yet accountable to none but God only. They have power to exalt low things, and abase high things, and
make of their subjects like men at the Chess; A pawn to take a Bishop or a Knight, and to cry up, or down
any of their subjects, as they do their money. And to the King is due both the affection of the soul, and the
service of the body of his subjects.” [http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/351/Jamesdrk.htm]
3. James I re-called Parliament in 1621 to discuss the future marriage
of his son, Charles, to a Spanish princess. Parliament was outraged.
If such a marriage occurred, would the heirs be raised Catholic?
The marriage did not happen, but the relationship between king
and Parliament remained damaged at James death in 1625.
4. When England resumed war with Spain in 1624, Parliament distrusted James I and
refused to adequately fund the war. Parliament’s refusal compelled Charles I, who
succeeded his father James I in 1625, to levy discontinued taxes and subject English
property owners to a “forced loan”. Charles I imprisoned property owners who
refused these loans to the crown. To save money and keep a close eye on local
politics, he also quartered troops in private homes.
5. Charles I married Henrietta Maria in 1625. Henrietta was the Catholic
daughter of Henry IV of France, arousing suspicion among notable
Protestants in England that Charles was more sympathetic to Catholics than
Protestants and alarming Protestants that heirs to the throne might be
Catholic. Every English King was the head of the Church of England, a
church very different than the Roman Catholic Church.
6. Charles I to Parliament in1626: “Parliaments are altogether in my
power for their calling, sitting, and dissolution; therefore as I find
the fruits of them good or evil, they are to continue or not to be.”
©Evan Lurie 2013
Charles I execution--Simplified
page 1
7. Kings are above all, “inferior to none, to no man, to no multitudes of men, to
no Angell, to no order of Angels.” Thus “all the significations of a Royall pleasure, are,
and ought to be, to all Loyal subjects, in the nature and force of a Command.” Subjects
must either obey the king’s sovereign will—“which gives a binding force to all his Royall
Edicts”—even if “flatly against the Law of God,” or suffer patiently. Bishop Roger
Maynwaring (chaplain to Charles), Religion and Allegiance, 4 July 1627, modified
[http://oll.libertyfund.org/simple.php?id=810]
8. Parliament drafted the Petition of Rights in 1628 and requested Charles I sign it. The
Petition recited many principles from the Magna Carta, including that there should be no
forced loans or taxation without the consent of Parliament, that imprisonment without
due cause and quartering troops in private homes exceeded the authority of the crown,
and that martial law could not be used in times of peace.
9. Charles I accepted the Petition of Rights presented in 1628,
but after further conflicts he adjourned Parliament shortly
after in 1629. For the next 11 years, Charles I ruled without
convening Parliament once.
10. Anglican Church Archbishop William Laud (appointed by and with the blessing of
Charles I) attempted to force all churches in Scotland to use a prayer book nearly
identical to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in 1637. Accustomed to their own
practice of Christianity and proud of their own liturgy and especially their independence,
the Scots rebelled and declared war on Charles I.
11. “Since the breach of the last Parliament, his majesty hath, by a new book of rates, very
much increased the burden upon merchandise, and now tonnage and poundage, old and
new impositions, are all taken by prerogative, without any grant in Parliament, or
authority of law, as we conceive…Men’s goods are seized, their legal suits are stopped,
and justice denied to those that desire to take the benefit of the law. The great sums of
money received upon these impositions, intended for the guard of the seas, claimed and
defended upon no ground but of public trust, for protection of merchants and defense of
the ports, are dispersed to other uses, and a new tax raised for the same purposes.”--John
Pym speech in Parliament, 17 April 1640
12. To combat the Scots’ revolt, Charles I convened Parliament in
1640 for funding to raise an army. Parliament refused to
authorize any funds until Charles I addressed a long list of
religious and political grievances. The King adjourned Parliament
shortly after. This became known as the “Short Parliament”.
13. The Scots defeated the English army at the battle of Newburn in
August 1640. This defeat compelled Charles to reconvene
Parliament in November 1640. Parliament promptly determined
that it could not be adjourned without its own consent.
©Evan Lurie 2013
Charles I execution--Simplified
page 2
14. Charles I again requested Parliament raise funds for his army to
suppress the Scots rebellion in 1641. Parliament preferred to
become commander-in-chief of the army rather than entrust it to
Charles I. Parliament refused Charles I’s request.
15. In January 1642 Charles I heard rumors that Parliament might impeach Queen Henrietta
Maria. Outraged, he entered Parliament in January 1642 to arrest his Parliamentary
opponents, but they escaped. Charles left London to raise his own army. Parliament
passed the Militia Ordinance of 1642 granting Parliament control over county militias.
16. Charles I ultimately headquartered in Oxford and raised his army. After a series of
indecisive battles, the New Model Army crushed the Royalists at the Battle of Naseby in
June 1645 and captured Royalist artillery and stores. Charles I's private papers fell into the
hands of the Parliamentarians, revealing the full extent of his negotiations to bring over
Irish Catholics to fight against Parliament, and his efforts to secure foreign mercenaries
and money from abroad.
17. Charles I surrendered to the Army in 1646. While Parliamentary leaders spent
fruitless months failing to negotiate a settlement with him, Charles was encouraging
uprisings in England and Wales and an invasion from Scotland.
18. The Army put down a series of royalist insurgencies in 1648 in
the second Civil War, but afterwards its leaders demanded an end
to negotiations with Charles, whom they considered a "man of
blood" responsible for waging war on his own people.
19. On 6 December 1648 Colonel Thomas Pride and his soldiers stood outside the
entrance to St Stephen's Chapel and, as the Commons convened that morning,
arrested 45 Members and excluded a further 186 whom the Army thought were
unlikely to support its goal of punishing the King.
20. After this military coup a further 86 Members left in protest. Pride's Purge left a
'Rump' (as it came to be called) of barely 200 Members. Among these, a
determined clique unilaterally forced through an 'Act' on 6 January 1649,
establishing a court to try Charles I for high treason - ignoring the negative vote a
few days before of the small number of peers still sitting in the Lords.
21. During the trial in Westminster Hall in 1649, Charles I disputed the authority of the
court and refused to enter a plea. Despite widespread opposition to the trial, a
verdict of guilty was pushed through. Only 57 of the 159 commissioners of the
high court originally established by the Rump signed the death warrant for Charles.
©Evan Lurie 2013
Charles I execution--Simplified
page 3