Causes of the English Civil War

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The civil war broke out in 1642, and was a war that is within a country, it has many reasons for happening. This essay will explain and categorise the main cause’s fop the civil war. I will start by listing the genres of events.

In the 1640’s power and politics were vital for social standard and anyone with power was important and respected so naturally and event such as the civil war would have had politics as one of the main issues for happening. Charles becoming king was obviously a cause because it was his decisions that influenced the war itself and him who raised the flag. Also in 1629 Charles decided to close down parliament because he felt they were exerting too much power than they should, also it almost seems as if Charles is afraid of parliament or jealous because he feels that he is entitled to the “divine right of kings” and seeing parliament using all this power made him feel as if he was less and not as important. This was then followed by the “eleven years of tyranny” which ended in 1640 when he recalled parliament due to shortage of money and mistakes he had made.

An interesting decision Charles made was to marry Henrietta a foreign royal, some people would have said this was purely religiously influenced because she was a catholic and people feared he married her because his desire was to make England catholic. Others have said that it was a power driven choice because he wanted to unite the two countries and gain more power. There are other more religious based events such as when Charles ordered Henry Laud to make a new prayer book which was to be read around the England. This caused an outrage between his people who could now no longer trust him. As if this wasn’t enough he then ordered the book to be read in Scotland this was in 1637 and was possibly one of his worst choices, this was because at the time Scots were angry that Charles hadn’t turned protestant because he was raised as protestant and on top of that they were extremely insulted that Charles would even for a second believe that they would accept this book. This then resulted in rampage and violence so the book was taken away.

The saying “money is the root of all evil” applies strongly in the making of the civil war.

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