When Charles succeeded James in 1625, he wasted no time in finding his bride: Henrietta Maria of France. France was Catholic, and so was Maria. One of the reasons for the marriage was that it would bring England closer to France (they were both engaged in a war with Spain at the time). However, one of the stipulations of the marital agreement was that Maria was allowed to continue practising Catholicism in England. Catholic priests therefore became a presence in the Court at Whitehall. This, along with the King’s Catholic sympathies, were a cause for concern for Parliament. This was particularly the case as many of the Members of Parliament were Puritans. As was happening in other Protestant countries, Puritans were becoming a dying bread, and the English Puritans wanted to stop this happening to them.
Royal finance was the source of many of the disputes that lead to the dissolving of Parliament in 1629. When Charles came to the throne in March 1625 he found the monarch bankrupt. He needed to sale a lot of Crown land just to get out of debt. But for Charles, he had no reason to belief that the Crown would continue to be poor. Since Edward IV, monarchs of England had been granted Tonnage and Poundage for life by Parliament, as a gesture of goodwill. The made up a sizeable part – perhaps as much as fifty per cent – of the King’s income. However, the parliament of 1625 only granted Charles one year of Tonnage and Poundage, much to the King’s dismay. Although at first this may seem a direct insult to the King (as Charles indeed took it), Parliament may have had good reason for it. Because of the financial importance of Tonnage and Poundage, it was a pivotal issue. By the need for the King to prove he deserved it from year to year, Parliament was able to exercise restraint over the King. And they had could reason to be concerned about the King’s possible, as they would see it, abuse of power. Before he came to the throne, Parliament knew of Charles’ believe in the divinity of kingship and Royal Prerogative. Another reason for Parliament’s apprehension was the continuing influence of Buckingham over the English monarchy. Parliament had hoped that his influence would subside when James died, but they were soon disappointed as Buckingham had cleverly grown close to Charles in realisation that he would soon become king. Also, more importantly, they were concerned with developments on the Continent. In most notably France, but also in other ancient European Sovereignties, the increasing power of parliament had lead the monarch in power to put a stop to the more democratic approach by completing dissolving parliaments, and reverting to Royal absolutism. It was a very relevant concern in England. As one MP remarked in 1626, “We are the last Parliament in Europe that retains its ancient privileges”. James I had believed in the Divine Right of Kings, but not actually put it into action. However, Charles, as well as believing in it, was prepared to put it into action as well. And so Tonnage and Poundage was an ideal way to “tether” the King.
However, despite Parliament only granting Tonnage and Poundage for a year, the King continued to collect it after the year, without their permission. The King had justified it by saying that, as it had been granted for life to monarchs for many centuries without exception, it became his right. Subtly, this was part of the feudalism/parliamentary rights dispute because the King was looking back to the past to reinforce his argument, whereas Parliament was looking at the present situation to justify its actions.
A major obstacle in good relations of the King and Parliament was the Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham was a manipulative, self-centred figure who had had influence over James as well as Charles. He had a monopoly over titles and was a corrupt figure who led England into many foreign policy disasters. He was notorious for purging the court of his enemies (Buckingham’s dominance of court titles forced such people as Thomas Wentworth to look to the Commons not court to pursue their interests). A lot of the examples of the King abusing his power were thanks to Buckingham’s influence over Charles, e.g. over Tonnage and Poundage. Because Parliament couldn’t directly blame the King, it often blamed Buckingham. The 1626 Parliament attacked Buckingham for his disastrous military expeditions, notably the attack on the Spanish port of Cadiz. Arundel and Bristol, two peers who had attacked Buckingham previously, decided to attack him again. Bristol had damaging information relating to bribes given to the Spanish by Buckingham to woo a Spanish princess away to marry Charles in 1623. To keep them quiet, Charles imprisoned them for treason. However, he was forced to let them go because of a large Lords revolt. Parliament then tried to impeach Buckingham, but Charles was prepared to move and take the onslaught himself in defence of his friend. He dissolved the Parliament. These examples show how Charles was prepared to defend his friend when it would have been wiser to sacrifice him. Of course, the dissolution of Parliament because of Buckingham did much to freeze relations and were still not forgotten when the next Parliament was called in 1628. During that time, handbills were drawn up that summarised the hatred of Buckingham: “Who rules the Kingdom? The King. Who rules the King? The Duke. Who rules the Duke? The Devil”.
Buckingham was assassinated in 1628, and Parliament hoped that relations with the King would greatly improve afterwards. However, they did not. This was because, previously, Buckingham had been a “cushion” that absorbed the attacks that Parliament made on the King. But with Buckingham out the way, the attacks became increasingly centred on the King because Parliament had run out of people to blame other then the King.
Throughout Charles’ reign of the 1620s, England was at war. First with Spain, and then with France and Spain. This was due to a disastrous foreign policy, largely orchestrated by Buckingham (perhaps the most important reason why he was so hated up to his death). Neither war was for a reason of any relevance to the English people or the security of the state (even though they could be blamed on relevant reasons). War in the seventeenth century was, thanks to the invention of gunpowder, becoming very expensive. The cash-strapped King needed money to pay for these wars which he didn’t have. Unfortunately, Parliament was very reluctant to give this to him. As did most of England, they saw little reason to be at war. According to them, any fighting should take place at sea, which was cheaper and it was where England was strongest. Charles’ first Parliament of 1625 only gave him two subsidies. Parliament had seen how the Mansfeld expedition had failed and it was also was wary of the pro-Catholic nature of the French alliance.
By the time of the next parliament in 1626, England was at war with France as well. Charles wanted a lot of money to wage this war, so he recalled Parliament. Parliament offered four subsidies, but it was not prepared to be treated by the King as a “rubber stamp” to give him subsidies when he wanted them. It therefore gave the condition that it must be allowed to impeach Buckingham if it was going to give Charles the money. As has already been discussed, Charles dissolved Parliament rather than sacrifice his friend. Parliament, of course, protested, but Charles dissolved it anyway. This is symbolic of Charles’ lack of willingness to compromise at all with Parliament.
Dissolving Parliament did not solve the problem of the money he needed. He therefore devised another way of getting the money. Charles realised the backlash he would receive if he attempted to force the money out of peoples’ pockets. He therefore devised the Free Gift, which relied on people being overcome with patriotism and donating the money for the security of the country. People were very suspicious of it because it did not have parliamentary approval and also, as part of it, a list would be kept of all those who did not pay. People did refuse to pay, and so it did not manage to raise enough money. This incident is another example of Charles’ lack of understanding of his subjects. He had expected the country to trust him implicitly, to believe that what he was doing was right. So it came as a surprise to him when it failed. Part of the problem was that the officials responsible for collecting the money believed they were answerable to the community they governed, and not primarily the King. They therefore refused to partake in “black-listing” those who did not pay.
Because of the failure of the Free Gift, Charles responded with a more direct approach: the Forced Loan, also in 1626. Although it maintained the fiction that the money to be raised from this was voluntary, it was not. Men who refused to pay were imprisoned. The King justified the Forced Loan like the Free Gift by saying that people would have been obliged to pay had Parliament voted the subsidies and they would have voted the subsides had not a few troublemakers forced him to close it. He also said that in cases of national emergency, like then, the King could act above the law. Of course the King would normally act within the law, but in times like these, he must carry out his first duty and act to preserve the Kingdom. The trouble that MPs pointed out was that this meant that only the King could decide when a “national emergency” had arisen and this would allow a lot of corruption and abuse of power on the King’s part.
The Forced Loan raised serious questions about Parliament’s role in voting taxation, the individual’s right to be consulted in Parliament before paying tax, and about the limits of Royal power. As the Forced Loan was very successful – the equivalent of five subsidies had been raised when Parliament would have only given four – the Members of Parliament became worried that the success would make the King think that acting without Parliament was easier and free of uncertainity.
Some Members of Parliament and other gentlemen were so concerned about this that they decided to make a stand, even if Parliament had been dissolved. The events that followed became known as the “Five Knights Case”. Some seventy gentlemen were remanded in prison for refusing to pay the Loan. They tested the legality of it by issuing a habeas corpus. However, the Privy Council would not give the specific reason as to their imprisonment. Therefore, the case would not test the legality of the Forced Loan as the knights had originally intended, but instead challenge the King’s right to remand prisoners without a reason. Those challenging the King’s Royal Prerogative decided to play the King at his own game: look to the past for evidence to back up their argument. Magna Carta. They used Magna Carta to attack the King because it stated that the King could not imprison people without just cause. Magna Carta was, of course, the most important legal document in existence at the time because it defined the rights of the Country’s citizens. Those defending the Crown used the argument that as God is a fountain of justice, and the King is his representative on Earth, that in some cases the King must act for the greater good without saying why. So it came down to a dispute over the Divine Right of Kings again.
The Forced Loan had given Charles the money he needed to fight the war in 1626, but in 1628 it had run out and he needed more; half a million more. He therefore recalled Parliament, perhaps a mistake due to the backlash still in evidence after the Forced Loan and the Five Knights Case. In 1628, opposition to the King and Buckingham was perhaps at the highest point. Certainly, suspicion of Charles’ Arminian sympathies were very high due to the promotion of William Laud. Buckingham was now the most hated man in the country and he would be soon assassinated before Charles dissolved the Parliament in 1629. In response to the growing uncertaintity of the law and the King, best summed up when Sir John Eliot remarked, “Where is Law? Where is property? It has fallen into the chaos of a higher power”, Sir Edward Coke, the great champion of Common Law and the constitution, drew up the Petition of Right. This was designed to set things straight, to verify the ancient liberties. This was a powerful document because, if the King didn’t sign it, he would be accused of a complete disregard to the laws that govern the Country. However, if he did, it gave Parliament a current document written for the day in which they lived (unlike Magna Carta) to refer to, effectively constricting the King a lot further than he had been before. It also forced the king to rely on Parliament because it outlawed forced loans and imprisonment without just cause. The King signed it, but it was to cause him trouble in the future. As the King realised that it bound him to acting much more within the law than he had done previously, it was one of the reasons why he got rid of those who would pick up on any incidents where he went against it by dissolving Parliament in the next year.
After the death of Buckingham, there were some improvements in Crown-Parliament relations. Some previously anti-Buckingham MPs felt they could now rejoin the King again, for example Thomas Wentworth. Also, Anglo-French relations improved as Charles moved closer to Henrietta Maria. However, there were increasingly disputes on such issues as Religion (Charles had promoted William Laud to Bishop of Chichester) and Tonnage and Poundage, which the King was still collecting. He argued that it was war and it was necessary. As well as again defying Parliamentary rights, Parliament also made the point that it didn’t think the war was necessary in the first place and neither France or Spain were taking it seriously.
The King had had about enough of Parliament’s stringent control of subsidies, and Parliament were equally angry about the King’s lack of compromise, of acting without Parliament. The final blow came when Parliament introduced the “Three Resolutions” of 1629. As it was being made, Charles had already ordered an adjournment of Parliament, but the Commons continued with it, seeing it as the crunch point; the point where either the King will embark on a tyrannous personal rule (as he did), or where Parliament can finally leash him. The Resolutions were solely aimed at the two issues that were of most concern to Parliament in 1629: the crushing of Arminianism and the stopping of the King collecting Tonnage and Poundage. The orchestrator of this, Sir John Eliot was imprisoned after the King heard of it, and Parliament was dissolved on 10 March 1629. And thus, Charles embarked on the Eleven Year Tyranny, or the Personal Rule.
The Personal Rule was representative of Charles’ belief in the Divine Right of Kings and Royal Prerogative. He believed Parliament were a hindrance, holding him back. The reasons why he reached this conclusion are many and complicated. The Divine Right of Kings and, strongly linked, Charles’ belief in feudalism, were perhaps umbrella terms that accounted for all of the actions that made Parliament believe that it could not work with him at all. Parliament could have been a lot more generous with granting the King subsides, but perhaps it had good reason to. Again, the Divine Right of Kings was a strong reason why so little money was granted: Parliament needed to leash the King. The King failed to concede that the feudal system was becoming obsolete in a time when England was trying to lay the foundations of a more democratic system and technology was advancing quickly (it would be less than 150 years until the start of the Industrial Revolution). The influence of Buckingham can not be forgotten. He was responsible for a weakening of England’s military power and reputation with it, as well as the cause of financial disagreements with the King and Parliament.
