Origins of the English Civil War

The English Civil War of 1642-1651 can be considered as a feud between

the King and the English Parliament. Long before the onset of the

civil war, Parliament and king Charles I had distrusted each other.

As a result, Parliament often refused to finance the king’s wars.

Unable to gain enough support from Parliament, Charles I challenged

local control of nobles and landowners, who composed of the majority

of Parliament, by “levying new tariffs and duties, attempting to

collect discontinued taxes, and subjecting English property owners

to…forced loan and then imprisoning those who refused to pay…as well

as quartering troops in private homes” (Craig et al. 560). Parliament

attempted to control the king’s power when it presented to Charles the

Petition of Right in 1628. This petition required that there would be

no loans or taxation without the consent of Parliament, that Charles

would not be able to imprison any free man without due cause, and that

no troops would be quartered in private homes. Although Charles

initially agreed to the petition, he dissolved Parliament in 1629 and

did not recall it again until 1640. Parliament’s resentment of the

king’s tyrannical actions combined with its resistance to control the

king refused to grant Charles financial support for the war with

Ireland in 1640. Charles retaliated and made inevitable a civil war

when he dissolved Parliament once more and arrested five of its

members (Taylor vii). The resulting tension between Charles and

Parliament eventually erupted in a Civil War in 1642 and lasted until

1651.

Many scholars have been associating the phenomenon of the English

Civil War to a variety of causes and motives. Among Parliament’s

support...

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.... Furthermore, Charles I

had attempted to make himself the first despot by reducing Parliament

to a nullity (Macaulay 64). It should be noted that during the time

of Charles I, the king had no standing army, and that the king could

not legally raise money without the consent of Parliament (Taylor 3,

4). However, because Charles had always been in favor of the notion

of absolute monarchy (Taylor viii), he had dared to make

extraparliamentary actions without the consent of Parliament. These

included the trespass onto the constitutional rights of the English

people, levying taxes without the consent of Parliament, imprisoning

civilians and court nobles alike without due cause, and quartering

troops in private homes during times of war (Macaulay 63-64). All

these actions challenged local control of nobles and landowners (Craig

et al. 560).