AP European History

Barron’s

The English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution

The Stuart Kings and Parliament (1603-1688)

James I (r. 1603-1625), king of Scotland and son of Mary, Queen of Scots, took the throne upon Elizabeth’s death, since .she had no direct heirs. A believer in the divine right of kings, James failed to understand the importance of Parliament in governing England. A conference at Hampton Court in 1604 failed to reconcile the Puritans, who opposed the Anglican hierarchy as the Church of England. The Gunpowder Plot, 1605, was uncovered before disgruntled Catholics (led by Guy Fawkes) objecting to James’s enforcement of laws that required participation in Anglican services, could blow up the king and Parliament. The years 1610 to 1611 saw Parliament enmeshed in the issue of its role in financing government.

• • The “Addled” Parliament met in 1614, so-called by James because it spent its entire session arguing that taxes could be levied only with its consent and that rule was by king and Parliament in conjunction.
  1. Dissolving Parliament, James tried to rule without it until England’s involvement in the Thirty Years’ War necessitated his reconvening it.
  2. In 1621, after a rancorous session in which Parliament criticized James’s foreign policy, Parliament passed the Great Protestation, claiming free speech and authority in conducting governmental affairs. James dissolved the body and arrested its leaders.
• • Charles I (r. 1625-1649) was, like his father, devoted to the divine right theory and, unlike his father, woefully inept at dealing with Parliament.
  1. Embroiled in wars on the Continent, he called for Parliament to vote funds to carry them through.
  2. Parliament refused to do so until Charles signed the Petition of Right.
  3. It guaranteed:
     1. Parliament alone can levy taxes.
     2. Martial law cannot be declared in peacetime.
     3. Soldiers may not be quartered in private homes.
     4. Imprisonment required a specific charge.
  4. The Bishops’ War of 1639-1640, after Archbishop Laud persecuted Puritans and tried to force Anglican worship upon the Presbyterian Scots, led Charles to reconvene Parliament in order to pay war debts from his loss.
  5. The Long Parliament (1640-1660) demanded the following in return for paying for Charles’s defeat:
     1. Impeach his top advisers.
     2. Allow Parliament to meet every three years without his summons.
     3. Promise not to dissolve Parliament without its consent.
  6. When Charles attempted, in early 1642, to arrest opposition members, Parliament seized control of the army.
     1. Charles gathered his forces.
     2. The English Civil War (1642-1649) began.

The Course of the Conflict

The Civil War in England was caused by a conflict between the king and the Parliament about where sovereignty lies and what are its limits. In the end, the hostilities would leave Parliament as the sovereign power of England, with the monarch to be reduced to more of a ceremonial role from the 1650s onward. The rising middle class, many of whom were members of Parliament, wanted to gain political power, so this civil war is of ten viewed by economic historians as a conflict between the monarchy and nobility on one side, and the bourgeoisie on the other. The middle class, the merchants, the major cities, and a small segment of the nobility supported Parliament and were called Roundheads. The Anglican clergy, the majority of the nobility, and the peasants backed the king and were referred to as Royalists or Cavaliers.
1643 – The Roundheads allied with Presbyterian Scotland, promising to impose Presbyterianism on England in exchange for military assistance. Charles called on Irish Catholics for help.
1644 – Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), a Puritan leader of Parliament, led his New Model Army of Puritans against the Cavaliers at Marston Moor and defeated them decisively.
1645 – Charles surrendered to the Scots.
1647 – The Scots turned Charles over to Parliament, which was led by Cromwell’s Independents, who favored religious toleration. The Scots turned about and allied with Charles, who promised that he would impose Presbyterianism on the English.
1648 – Cromwell defeated the Scots at the Battle of Preston and helped purge the Presbyterians from Parliament, thereby creating the Rump Parliament, which voted to behead Charles for treason.
1649 – With the execution of Charles, England became a republic, the Commonwealth, and Cromwell and his army wielded power. In suppressing Irish supporters of the Crown, the Puritans committed terrible atrocities and imposed injustices that would exacerbate the Irish Question for centuries.
1653-1660 – Cromwell was designated Lord Protector by a puppet Parliament and ruled with its support until his death in 1658. His son Richard, a far less capable ruler, was deposed in 1660, and Charles II (r. 1661-1685) was proclaimed king.

The Stuart Restoration (1660-1688)

The Cavalier Parliament (1660-1679) marked the development of the first political parties, the Tory and Whig parties.

• • The Tories, made up of nobles, gentry, and the Anglicans, were conservatives who supported the monarchy over Parliament and who wanted Anglicanism to be the state religion.
• • The Whigs, mainly middle class and Puritan, favored Parliament and religious toleration.
  1. Since the Tories prevailed in the Cavalier Parliament, Anglicanism was restored by a series of laws that forbade dissenters to worship publicly, required government officials and military personnel to practice Anglicanism, and discriminated against other faiths.
  2. The Whig Parliament, elected in 1679, was suspicious of Charles II’s absolutist and pro-Catholic tendencies and enacted the Habeas Corpus Act, which limited royal power by:
     1. Enabling judges to demand that prisoners be in court.
     2. Requiring just cause for continued imprisonment.
     3. Providing for speedy trials.
     4. Forbidding double jeopardy (being charged for a crime that one had already been

The Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution was actually the culmination of an evolutionary process over centuries which, through historical accident, outright conflict, and painstaking design, increased the power of Parliament over the monarchy. James II (r. 1685-1688) was unpopular from the moment he took the throne. A devout Roman Catholic, he appointed Catholic ministers to important posts and gave the appearance of trying to impose Catholicism upon the English.

• • In 1688, important nobles invited William of Orange, a Hollander, and Mary, the wife of James’s oldest child, to rule England conditional upon their granting a bill of rights.
• • When William and Mary (r. 1688-1704) arrived in England, James fled to exile in France.
• • The new monarchs accepted from Parliament, as a condition of their reign, the Declaration of Rights (enacted into law as the Bill of Rights in 1689).
• • The Habeas Corpus Act, the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights have all become part of the English Constitution.
• • In the centuries that followed, monarchs in England came to reign, while Parliament came to rule.

Although, at the time of the Glorious Revolution, Parliament served the interests of the wellborn or the wealthy, it came to represent “the people” as government came to be viewed as existing and functioning according to John Locke’s Enlightenment concept of consent of the governed. The English, and those who inherited their political traditions, would guarantee individual rights and would create modern democracy.