King Charles I ( )

Transcription

1 King Charles I ( ) Charles I is a pivotal figure in the history of Europe and the Americas. During his reign he was King of England, King of Scotland and King of Ireland. At that time, England was a Constitutional Monarchy with a Parliament of nobles charged with upholding the Constitution (Magna Carta) and a Royal Family. Charles I famously engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England because he was an advocate of the Divine Right of Kings, and many in England feared that he was attempting to gain absolute power. Many of his actions; the levying of taxes without Parliament's consent, dissolving Parliament three times, waging civil war, and attempts to force religious reforms caused widespread opposition to his rule. His last years were marked by the English Civil War, in which he was opposed by the forces of Parliament, which challenged his attempts to augment his own power, and by Puritans, who were hostile to his religious policies and Catholic sympathy. Charles was defeated in the first Civil War ( ), after which Parliament expected him to accept demands for a constitutional monarchy. He instead remained defiant by attempting to forge an alliance with Scotland. This provoked a second Civil War ( ) and a second defeat for Charles, who was subsequently captured, tried, convicted, and executed for high treason. The monarchy was then abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England was declared. Charles's son, Charles II, became King after the restoration of the monarchy in Conflicts with Parliament Charles I began his ongoing tension with Parliament over money - made worse by the costs of war abroad. Charles I dissolved Parliament three times between 1625 and In 1629, he dismissed Parliament and resolved to rule alone. This forced him to raise revenue by non-parliamentary means which made him increasingly unpopular. Under the terms of the Magna Carta, taxes could not be imposed without the agreement of Parliament. In 1625, Charles I asked Parliament for 1,000,000 to support an alliance with King Louis XIII of France in his civil war against the Protestants. Parliament disagreed with this alliance and they only gave him 150,000. They also asked Charles to sack his chief minister, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, as they thought he was guilty of giving the king bad advice. Charles refused and instead dissolved Parliament. Charles I now had a problem. He was very short of money; he tried raising money in other ways. For example, he gave orders for Spanish treasure-ships coming from South America to be robbed.

2 This venture was not very successful, and in 1626 he was forced to summon his second Parliament. The Members of Parliament were still unwilling to grant the taxes Charles wanted. Instead they complained about the illegal methods that Charles had been using to raise money. Parliament also demanded a meeting with the king's ministers. Charles refused, declaring that Parliament had no right to question his ministers. Once again he dissolved Parliament and imprisoned his critics. In 1635 the Charles I faced a financial crisis. Unwilling to summon another Parliament, he had to find other ways of raising money. He decided to resort to the ancient custom of demanding Ship Money. In the past, whenever there were fears of a foreign invasion, kings were able to order coastal towns to provide ships or the money to build ships. Charles sent out letters to sheriffs reminding them about the possibility of an invasion and instructing them to collect Ship Money. Encouraged by the large contributions he received, Charles demanded more the following year. Whereas in the past Ship Money had been raised only when the kingdom had been threatened by war, it now became clear that Charles intended to ask for it every year. Several sheriffs wrote to the king complaining that their counties were being asked to pay too much. Their appeals were rejected and the sheriff's now faced the difficult task of collecting money from a population overburdened by taxation. Charles I found other ways of raising money. Another scheme involved selling monopoly rights to businessmen. This meant that only one person had the right to distribute certain goods such as bricks, salt and soap. This policy was unpopular as it tended to increase the price of these goods. In an attempt to improve his popularity with Parliament, Charles I sent some soldiers to help the Protestants in France. However, when he called his third Parliament, they still refused to grant him the taxes that he wanted. The king sent a message for Parliament to be dissolved. The Speaker (chairman) tried to close proceedings but a small group stopped him by holding him down. The doors were locked to keep the Charles I out and Parliament continued with their debate. Charles was so angry when he found out what had happened that he had those involved sent to prison. In the first five years of his reign Charles I summoned and dissolved Parliament three times. Charles I now tried to rule England without Parliament. For the next eleven years no Parliaments were held. Personal Rule The years after Parliament was dissolved in 1629 were known as the Personal Rule as Charles I was the sole ruler. The first years of the Personal Rule were marked by peace in England, to some extent due to tighter central control.

3 Several individuals opposed Charles's taxes and religious policies but the overall trend of the early Personal Rule period is one of peace. When, however, Charles attempted to impose his religious policies in Scotland he faced numerous difficulties. Charles I ordered the use of a new Prayer Book modeled on the English Book of Common Prayer, which, although supported by the Scottish Bishops, was resisted by many Presbyterian Scots, who saw the new Prayer Book as a vehicle for introducing Anglicanism to Scotland. Many Scots signed a national covenant to defend their Presbyterian religion. When the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland abolished Episcopalian government (governance of the Church by Bishops) in 1638, replacing it with Presbyterian government (governance by Elders and Deacons), Charles I sought to put down what he saw as a rebellion against his authority. In 1639 the First Bishops' War broke out. Charles sought to collect taxes from his subjects, who refused to yield any further. Charles's war ended in a humiliating truce in June of the same year. In the Pacification of Berwick, Charles agreed to grant his Scottish subjects civil and ecclesiastical freedoms. Charles's military failure in the First Bishops' War in turn caused a financial and military crisis for Charles, which caused the end of Personal Rule. Due to his financial weakness, Charles was forced to call Parliament into session by 1640 in an attempt to raise funds. While the ruling class grievances with the changes to government and finance during the Personal Rule period were a contributing factor in the Scottish Rebellion, it was mainly due to the key issue of religion that Charles was forced to confront the ruling class in Parliament for the first time in eleven years. The Puritans, who advocated extemporaneous prayer and preaching in the Church of England, predominated in Parliament. Those with the sympathies of Charles I were what came to be known as the High Church Party, which stressed the value of the prayer book and the maintenance of ritual. In essence, it was Charles's confrontational religious modifications that ended what the Whig historians refer to as "The Eleven Years of Tyranny". Religious Conflicts Religious conflicts permeated Charles' reign. He married a Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, over the objections of Parliament and public opinion. He further allied himself with controversial religious figures, including the Roman Catholic Richard Montagu and William Laud, whom Charles I appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in Many of Charles' subjects felt this brought the Church of England too close to Roman Catholicism. Charles wished to move the Church of England away from Calvinism in a more traditional and sacramental direction. This goal was shared by his main political adviser, Archbishop William Laud. Laud started a series of unpopular reforms in an attempt to impose order and authority on the church. Laud attempted to ensure religious uniformity by dismissing non-conformist clergymen and closing

4 Puritan organizations. This was actively hostile to the Reformist tendencies of many of his English and Scottish subjects. His policy was intolerant to Calvinist theology, and insisted that the Church of England's liturgy be celebrated using the form prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. Laud was also an advocate of Armenian theology, a view whose emphasis on the ability to reject salvation was viewed as heretical and virtually "Catholic" by strict Calvinists. To punish those who refused to accept his reforms, Laud used the two most feared and most arbitrary courts in the land, the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber. The former could compel individuals to provide selfincriminating testimony, whilst the latter could inflict any punishment whatsoever (including torture), with the sole exception of death. The lawlessness of the Court of Star Chamber under Charles I far exceeded that under any of his predecessors. Under Charles's reign, defendants were regularly hauled before the Court without indictment, due process of the law, or right to confront witnesses, and their testimonies were routinely extracted through extensive torture. English Civil war In 1641, Parliament passed a law that gave members control over the king's ministers. Charles I was furious and decided it was time to retaliate. On 4 January 1642, Charles sent his soldiers to arrest five members of Parliament. The five men managed to escape before the soldiers arrived. Members of Parliament no longer felt safe from Charles I and decided to form their own army. After failing to arrest the five members, Charles fled from London and aware that Civil War was inevitable, he began to form an army. Religion was an important factor in deciding which side people supported. Charles s persecution of Puritans meant that most members of this religious group supported Parliament, whereas most Anglicans and Catholics tended to favor the Royalists. Large landowners often persuaded their workers to join their army. Landowners living in the north and south-west of England and Wales tended to side with Charles I, whereas people living in London and the counties in the south-east of England mainly supported Parliament. On 22nd August, 1642, the royal standard (an anachronistic medieval gesture) was raised at Nottingham. This started three years of bitter fighting. The war effectively came to an end with the defeat of the Royalist forces at Naseby. The battle was a disaster for Charles I. About 1,000 of his men were killed and another 4,500 of his most experienced troops were taken prisoner. After Naseby, Charles I was never able to raise another army strong enough to defeat the parliamentary army in a major battle.

5 Charles continued to rally support from his court in Oxford. In January 1647, Charles fled to Scotland where he was captured and handed over to the parliamentary army. Charles was imprisoned in Hampton Court, but in November 1647 he escaped to Carisbrooke. Charles continued to try to bargain with the various parties, eventually coming to terms with the Scottish Presbyterians that he would allow the establishment of Presbyterianism in England as well as Scotland for a trial period. The Royalists rose in July 1648 igniting the Second Civil War, and Charles the Scots invaded England. Most of the uprisings in England were put down by forces loyal to Parliament after little more than skirmishes. The Scottish invasion, however, involved the fighting of pitched battles and prolonged sieges. But with the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Preston, the Royalists lost any chance of winning the war. In August 1648 Cromwell's parliamentary army defeated the Scots and once again Charles was taken prisoner. Trial and execution In January 1649, in response to Charles's defiance of Parliament even after defeat, and his encouraging the second Civil War while in captivity, Parliament decided to charge Charles I with "waging war on Parliament." It was claimed that he was responsible for "all the murders, burnings, damages and mischief to the nation" in the Civil War. Parliament passed an Act creating a court for Charles's trial. The High Court of Justice established by the Act consisted of 135 Commissioners (all firm Parliamentarians). This was the first time in English history that a king had been put on trial. The trial of Charles I on charges of high treason and "other high crimes" began on 20 January 1649, but Charles refused to enter a plea, claiming that no court had jurisdiction over a monarch. He believed that his own authority to rule had been given to him by God when he was crowned and anointed. The court, by contrast, proposed that no man is above the law. Over a period of a week, when Charles was asked to plead three times, he refused. It was then normal practice to take a refusal to plead as an admission of guilt, which meant that the prosecution could not call witnesses to its case. However, the trial did hear witnesses. Eventually, on 27 January, Charles was given his last opportunity to defend himself against the charges. When he refused he was sentenced to death. His death warrant was signed by the fifty-nine jurors who were in attendance. On the 30 January, Charles was taken to a scaffold built outside Whitehall Palace. Charles wore two shirts as he was worried that if he shivered in the cold people would think he was afraid of dying. Troopers on horseback kept the crowds some distance from the scaffold, and it is unlikely that many people heard the prayer that he made just before his head was cut off with an axe. A week

6 later he was buried at Windsor. Epilog The monarchy was restored in 1660 and Charles II, son of Charles I, was crowned King. The Colony of Carolina in North America was named for Charles I. Carolina later separated into North Carolina and South Carolina, which eventually declared independence from England during the formation of the United States. To the north in the Virginia Colony, Cape Charles, the Charles River, Charles River Shire and Charles City Shire were named for him. Charles City Shire survives almost 400 years later as Charles City County, Virginia. The Virginia Colony is now the Commonwealth of Virginia (one of the four U.S. states that are called commonwealths), and retains its official nickname of "The Old Dominion" bestowed by Charles II because it had remained loyal to Charles I during the English Civil War.