The causes and consequences of the British wars.
“King Charles is totally to blame for this war.”
How far do you agree with this statement?
In my essay today we will be looking at the specific statement “King Charles is totally to blame for this war.” The English Civil war officially began in 1642, during Charles`s reign. It was really the Royalists vs. the Parliamentarians. The Royalists were a large group of people who supported King Charles in every way. Parliamentarians were of course, the MP`s of Parliament. The two groups did not like each other, as there were many different arguments and disagreements on what the king should and shouldn’t do, and how he should run the country. We will be discussing the causes of the civil war going through these several different topics, money, religion, Scotland, Parliament and Charles. But what we also need to know, is the relationship between Charles and Parliament throughout Charles`s reign. Not just that, but others who may have caused the war. This argument can be answered both ways by either being wrong or right.
Money played a massive role as to why Charles was to blame for the civil war. Money makes the world go round, doesn’t it? The more you have the more things you are able to accomplish. Charles was a King, but he started off with a little amount of it. Throughout the course of Charles`s reign, his money was decreasing rapidly. Louis XIII was a Catholic French King who at the time was in the middle of a civil war against Protestants. We will expand on this point further in the Religion section. Parliament wanted to help the French against Louis Xiii, but Charles refused to do so and decided he wanted to help Louis Xiii. MP`s were furious at this decision and when Charles asked Parliament for a large amount of tax money to help fund for wars, they gave him a fraction of it.
Charles was told by Parliament that he had fire his Chief Minister, the Duke of Buckingham. Charles was not able to do so and believed that Parliament was questioning his judgement. To travel around this problem, he dissolved Parliament. However, Charles was left with a problem; he had little money and had no legal way of raising taxes. He was just digging himself in a deeper whole than he already was. It was illegal to raise taxes, because he was not able to obtain Parliaments permission to do so. Charles was now desperate and would do anything to gain money. He ordered for ships to be robbed, but he did not gain much. He was forced to recall parliament in 1626 and looked weak. But they refused to give any more money. Parliament had found that Charles was illegaly receiving money and complained to him. Yet again he dissolved Parliament.
Yet again Charles needed to find another way to receive money. So he introduced “Ship money”, this usually happened when countries thought they were under threat of being invaded and got cities near seas to either give ships, or give money to build them. He told sheriffs that they would be under threat, but nothing happened. Charles saw he was gaining a large amount of money, so he increased the ship money tax. People thought this was wrong as no one had threatened him, but he was still raising prices. Ship money and Ship roberry were both signs of greediness on Charles behalf. It showed what lengths he would go to, to get what he wanted. But the most unpopular thing Charles thing he did that envolved money, was selling monopilies. Monopilies were when a “ all or nearly all of the for a given type of or ”* He gave these to businessmen who were willing enough to pay a large amount of money. So things like sugar could only be sold by one person, normally for a large amount of money. Monopolies were disfavoured by a huge portion of the public, as people could not afford to buy it. He tried one last time to get the taxes he wanted from parliament. So he tried to impress Parliament by helping the Huguenots against Louis XIII. But this failed as well and Charles decided to dissolve Parliament yet again! Charles closed Parliament for 11 years and these year were named the “Eleven years of Tyranny” Him closing Parliament this many times showed that he did not want Parliament`s advice, he wanted Parliament`s money. This had its gradual effect as Charles was losing his money and things like food and clothes were priced higher. This meant people would not be able to eat or buy clothes and work rates would go down. This may have led to the civil war, because people might have thought that if Charles had stuck with Parliament advice they would not be low on money. Parliament was actually looking quite good right now and they could turn around to Charles and say, well if you listened to us you wouldn’t be here. This is also where Charles advisors come into play, but we will talk about that later. Charles did have some reasons though. He might have not wanted to fight against Louis XIII, because he wanted to build a relationship with France, for future help purposes like wars.
