:: wikimiki.org ::

English Civil War

English Civil War

The term English Civil War (or Wars) refers to the series of armed conflicts and political machinations which took place between Parliamentarians and Royalists from 1642 until 1651. The first (1642–1645) and the second (1648–1649) civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third (1649–1651) was between supporters of Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The third war ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651.

Introduction

The wars inextricably mingled with and formed part of a linked series of conflicts and civil wars between 1639 and 1651 in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, which at that time shared a monarch but formed distinct countries with otherwise separate political structures. Those recent historians who aim to have a unified overview (rather than treating parts of the other conflicts as background to the English Civil War) sometimes call these linked conflicts the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Some have also described them as the "British Civil Wars", but this terminology can mislead: the three kingdoms did not become a single political entity until the Act of Union between Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England and Scotland), in 1800. The wars led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son Charles II, and the replacement of the English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then with a Protectorate (1653–1659) under the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England came to an end, and the victors consolidated the already-established Protestant aristocracy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established a precedent that British monarchs could not govern without the consent of Parliament. Unlike other civil wars in England which focused on who ruled, this war also concerned itself with the manner of governing the British isles. Accordingly, historians also refer to the English Civil War as the English Revolution and (especially in 17th century Royalist circles) as the Great Rebellion.

Background

The King's aspirations

Royalist Contemporaries must have found it unthinkable that a civil war could result from the events taking place. It was less than forty years since the death of the popular Elizabeth I. At the accession of Charles I, England and Scotland had both experienced relative peace, both internally and in their relations with each other, for as long as anyone could remember. Charles hoped to unite the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland into a new single kingdom, fulfilling the dream of his father, James I of England (James VI of Scotland). Many English Parliamentarians were leery of such a move because they feared that if a new kingdom was created then the old English traditions which had bound the English monarchy would no longer exist. As Charles shared his father's position on the power of the crown (James had described kings as "little Gods on Earth", chosen by God to rule in accordance with a doctrine called the "Divine Right of Kings"), this was not an unfounded worry. Although pious and with little personal ambition, Charles demanded outright loyalty in return for "just rule". He considered any questioning of his orders as, at best, insulting. This latter trait, and a series of events, seemingly minor on their own, led to a serious break between Charles and his Parliament, and eventually to war.

Parliament in the English constitutional framework

Before the War, Parliament was not a permanent feature of English government, instead functioning as a temporary advisory committee—summoned by the monarch whenever additional tax revenue was required, and subject to dissolution by the monarch at any time. Because responsibility for collecting taxes lay in the hands of the gentry, the English kings needed the help of that stratum of society in order to ensure that revenue was collected without difficulty. If the gentry were to refuse to collect the king's taxes, he lacked the authority to compel them. Parliaments allowed representatives of the gentry to meet, confer and send policy proposals to the monarch in the form of Bills. These representatives did not, however, have any means of forcing their will upon the king—except by withholding the financial means he required to execute his plans.

Mounting concerns

gentry One of the first events to cause concern about Charles I was his marriage to a French Roman Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria. The marriage occurred within months of Charles's accession to the throne in 1625. Foreign royal marriages were commonplace, but Charles's choice of a Catholic bride made him a potential Papist in the eyes of the small but powerful Puritan minority in Parliament, who constituted around one third of the assembly's members at the time. For many of his subjects, Charles's suspected "Papism" was cause for concern, not only because as head of the established Church in England, there was the possibility that his Bishops, at his request, would stipulate religious practices closer to those of Rome, but also because the English (since the papal excommunication of Henry VIII in 1533), had long associated Roman Catholicism with invasion threats and with political policy imposed from abroad. A potentially more troublesome issue was Charles' insistence on joining the wars raging in Europe, which he saw as something of a crusade. This alone might not have been a problem, except that Charles had placed his own "favourite", George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, in command. Parliament was rather suspicious of Buckingham, with whom they had had to deal under James as well, and eventually they decided to support the war effort only on the condition that Buckingham could be recalled if his performance did not meet expectations. The Parliament of 1625 then granted the king the right to collect customs duties for only a year at a time and not, as was usual, for his entire reign. After a disastrous raid on France, Parliament dismissed Buckingham in 1626, and Charles, furious at what he considered insolence and fearful that they might impeach his favourite, dismissed the Parliament.

Petition of Right

Having dissolved Parliament, and being unable to raise money without it, the king assembled a new one in 1628. Among the members elected was Oliver Cromwell. The new Parliament drew up the Petition of Right in 1628, and Charles accepted it as a concession in order to get his subsidy. Amongst other things the Petition referred to the Magna Carta and said that a citizen should have freedom from:
- arbitrary arrest and imprisonment,
- non-parliamentary taxation,
- the enforced billeting of troops, and
- martial law. However, Charles was determined to rule without summoning another Parliament, and this required him to devise new means of raising extraordinary revenue. Among the most controversial of these policies, was the revival and extension of ship money. This tax had been levied in the medieval era on seaports, but Charles extended it to inland counties as well. As a levy for the Royal Navy, ship money was, according to Charles and his supporters, needed for the defence of the realm and was therefore within the legitimate scope of the royal prerogative. The tax had not been approved by Parliament, however, and a number of prominent men refused to pay it on these grounds. Reprisals against Sir John Eliot, one of the prime movers behind the Petition of Right, and the prosecution of William Prynne and John Hampden (who were fined after losing their case 7–5 for refusing to pay ship money, taking a stand against the legality of the tax) aroused widespread indignation. Charles' use of the Court of Star Chamber in this issue also angered many, as the court had always been seen as the citizenry's last appeal against the monarch's power, and was now apparently being used against them.

The Eleven Years' Tyranny and a rebellion in Scotland

Charles I managed to avoid calling a Parliament for a decade. Depending upon one's political affiliation, this time was known either as the "Eleven Years' Tyranny" or "Charles' Personal Rule". This policy broke down when he was involved in a series of disastrous and expensive wars against his Scottish subjects, the Bishops' Wars of 1639 and 1640. Charles believed in a sacramental version of the Church of England, called High Anglicanism, with a theology based upon Arminianism, a belief shared by his main political advisor, Archbishop William Laud. Laud was appointed by Charles as the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 and started a series of reforms in the Church to make it more ceremonial, starting with the replacement of the wooden communion tables with stone altars. Puritans accused Laud of trying to reintroduce Catholicism, and when they complained, Laud had them arrested. In 1637 John Bastwick, Henry Burton and William Prynne had their ears cut off for writing pamphlets attacking Laud's views—a rare penalty for gentlemen to suffer, and one that aroused anger. As part of Charles' plan to have one uniform High Anglican church across all three kingdoms, he forced the English Common Prayer Book upon Scotland. Scottish Presbyterians reacted explosively when it was introduced in the spring of 1638 with riots started in Edinburgh by Jenny Geddes leading to the National Covenant, that sought to purge bishops from the Church of Scotland altogether. Charles took a year to raise an army, and sent it north in 1639 to end the rebellion. After a disastrous skirmish he decided to seek a truce, the Pacification of Berwick, and was humiliated by being forced to agree not only not to interfere with religion in Scotland, but to pay the Scottish war expenses as well.

Local grievances

In the summer of 1642, these national troubles helped to polarize opinion, ending indecision about which side to support or what action to take. Opposition to Charles also arose owing to many local grievances. For example, the livelihoods of thousands of people were negatively effected by the imposition of drainage schemes in The Fens after the King awarded a number of drainage contracts. The King was regarded by many as worse than insensitive and this was important in bringing a large part of eastern England into Parliament’s camp. This sentiment brought with it people like the Earl of Manchester and Oliver Cromwell, each a notable wartime adversary of the King. Conversely, one of the leading drainage contractors, the Earl of Lindsey, was to die fighting for the King at the Battle of Edge Hill.

Recall of Parliament

Charles needed to suppress the rebellion in his northern realm—he was insufficiently funded, however, and was forced to seek money from a recalled Parliament in 1640. Parliament took this appeal for money as an opportunity to discuss grievances against the Crown; moreover, they were opposed to the military option. Charles took exception to this lèse-majesté and dismissed the Parliament. The name "the Short Parliament" was derived from this summary dismissal. Without Parliament's support, Charles attacked Scotland again and was comprehensively defeated; the Scots, seizing the moment, took Northumberland and Durham. Meanwhile, another of Charles's chief advisers, Thomas Wentworth, had risen to the role of Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1632 and brought in much needed revenue for Charles by persuading the Irish Catholic gentry to pay new taxes in return for promised religious concessions. In 1639, he had been recalled to England and in 1640, was granted the title Earl of Strafford, as Charles attempted to have him work his magic again in Scotland. This time he was not so lucky, and the English forces fled the field in their second encounter with the Scots in 1640. Almost the entirety of Northern England was occupied, and Charles was forced to pay £850 per day to keep the Scots from advancing. If he did not, they would "take" the money by pillaging and burning the cities and towns of Northern England.

The Long Parliament

In desperate straits, Charles was obliged to summon Parliament in November 1640; this was the "Long Parliament". None of the issues raised in the Short Parliament had been addressed, and Parliament took the opportunity to raise them again, refusing to be dismissed. Under the leadership of John Pym and John Hampden, a law was passed which stated that Parliament should be reformed every three years, and removed the king's right to dissolve the Long Parliament without Parliament's consent. Other laws passed by the Long Parliament made it illegal for the king to impose his own taxes, and later, gave members control over the king's ministers. With Ireland apparently peaceful after Strafford's able administration of eight years, Charles thought he saw a way out—Strafford had raised an Irish Catholic army and was prepared to use it against Scotland. Of course the very thought of a Catholic army campaigning against the Scots from Protestant England was considered outrageous by the parliamentary party. In early 1641 Strafford was arrested and sent to the Tower of London, charged with treason. John Pym made the claim that Wentworth's statements of readiness to campaign against "the kingdom" were in fact directed at England itself. The case could not be proven, so the House of Commons, led by John Pym and Henry Vane, resorted to a Bill of Attainder. Unlike treason, attainder required not only the burden of proof, but also the king's signature. Charles, still incensed over the Common's handling of Buckingham, refused. Wentworth himself, hoping to head off the war he saw looming, wrote to the king and asked him to reconsider. Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, was executed on May 12, 1641. Instead of saving the country from war, Wentworth's sacrifice in fact doomed it to one. Within months, the Irish Catholics, fearing a resurgence of Protestant power, struck first, and the entire country soon descended into chaos. Rumours circulated that the Irish were being supported by the king, and Puritan members of the Commons were soon agitating that this was the sort of thing Charles had in store for all of them. On January 4, 1642, Charles attempted to arrest five members of the House of Commons (John Hampden, John Pym, Arthur Haselrig, Denzil Holles, and William Strode) on a charge of treason; this attempt failed, however, as the five members received a tip-off and, prior to the arrival of the king with a party of soldiers, went into hiding. When the troops marched into Parliament, Charles asked William Lenthall, the Speaker, where the five were. Lenthall replied "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House [of Commons] is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here". In other words, the Speaker was a servant of Parliament, rather than of the King. Parliamentary supporters took to arms to protect the five men as they escaped across London.

The First English Civil War

London :Main article First English Civil War. The "Long Parliament", having controverted the king's authority, raised an army led by Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. The purpose of this army was twofold: it was to defeat both an invasion from Scotland and also the attempts by the king and his supporters to restore the monarchy's power. Charles I, in the meantime, had left London and also raised an army using the archaic system of a Commission of Array. He raised the royal standard at Nottingham in August. In September 1642, King Charles I raised his standard in the market square of Wellington, a small, though highly influential, market town in the English Midland county of Shropshire and addressed his troops the next day at nearby Orleton Hall. He declared that he would uphold the Protestant Religion, the Laws of England, and the Liberty of Parliament. The "Wellington Declaration" (otherwise known as the Declaration of Wellington) was held to be so important that the Royal Mint stamped its slogans on the reverse of the 10/- silver coins [http://www.24carat.co.uk/halfpoundcharlesi.html RELIG:PROT:LEG:ANG:LIBER:PAR] and silver half crowns (2/6) [http://www.exeter.gov.uk/timetrail/09_civilwar/object_detail.asp?photoref=9_19 REL.PRO.LEG.ANG.LIB.PAR] that it produced at that time. The inscriptions abbreviate the words "RELIGIO PROTESTANTIUM, LEGES ANGLIAE, LIBERTAS PARLIAMENTI", which is the declaration in Latin. At the outset of the conflict, much of the country was neutral, though the Royal Navy and most English cities favoured Parliament, while the king found considerable support in rural communities. It is thought that between them, both sides had only about 15,000 men. However, the war quickly spread and eventually involved every level of society throughout the British Isles. Many areas attempted to remain neutral but found it impossible to withstand both the King and Parliament. On one side, the king and his supporters fought for traditional government in Church and state. On the other, supporters of Parliament sought radical changes in religion and economic policy and major reforms in the distribution of power at the national level. In addition, Parliament was not a united body; at one point in the nine years of war, there were more members of the Commons and Lords in the King's Oxford Parliament than there were at Westminster. Parliament did, however, have more resources at its disposal, due to its possession of all major cities including the large arsenals at Hull and London. For his part, Charles hoped that quick victories would negate Parliament's advantage in materiel. This precipitated the first major siege, the first siege of Hull in July 1642, which provided a decisive victory for Parliament. first siege of Hull] The first pitched battle at Edgehill proved inconclusive, but both the Royalist and Parliamentarian sides claimed it as a victory. One of the king's outstanding officers, his nephew, Prince Rupert of the Palatinate, proved himself a dashing cavalry commander. A Parliamentarian cavalry troop raised by a country gentleman, evangelical puritan, and Member of Parliament named Oliver Cromwell also played a minor part in the battle. Cromwell would later devise the New Model Army system still evident in military organisation today. The New Model featured a unified command structure and professionalism, which would firmly swing the military advantage towards Parliament. The second field action of the war, the stand-off at Turnham Green, saw Charles forced to withdraw to Oxford. This city would serve as his base for the remainder of the war. In 1643, the Royalist forces won at Adwalton Moor and gained control of most of Yorkshire. In the Midlands, a Parliamentary force under Sir John Gell besieged and captured Lichfield after the death of the original commander, Lord Brooke, and subsequently joined forces with Sir John Brereton to fight the inconclusive battle of Hopton Heath, where the Royalist commander, the earl of Northampton, was killed. Subsequent battles in the west of England at Lansdowne and at Roundway Down also went to the Royalists. Prince Rupert could then take Bristol. In the same year, Oliver Cromwell formed his troop of "Ironsides", a disciplined unit which demonstrated his military leadership ability. With their assistance, he was victorious at the Battle of Gainsborough in July. After an inconclusive battle at Newbury in September, on October 11, 1643, the Parliamentarian army won the Battle of Winceby, giving them control of Lincoln. Political manoeuvring on both sides now led Charles to negotiate a ceasefire in Ireland, freeing up English troops to fight on the Royalist side, while Parliament offered concessions to the Scots in return for aid and assistance. Parliament won at Marston Moor in 1644, gaining York with the help of the Scots. Cromwell's conduct in this battle proved decisive, and marked him out as a potential political as well as a military leader. The defeat at the Battle of Lostwithiel in Cornwall, however, was a serious reverse for Parliament in the south-west of England. In 1645, Parliament reorganized its main forces into the New Model Army, under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax, with Cromwell as his second-in-command and Lieutenant-General of Horse. In what were, in retrospect, two decisive engagements—the Battles of Naseby on June 14 and of Langport on July 10—Charles's armies were effectively destroyed. In the remains of his English realm, Charles attempted to recover stability by consolidating the Midlands. He began to form an axis between Oxford and Newark on Trent, Nottinghamshire. Those towns had become fortresses and were more reliably loyal to him than to others. He took Leicester, which lies between them, but found his resources exhausted. Having little opportunity to replenish them, on May 1646, he sought shelter with a Scottish army at Southwell in Nottinghamshire. This marked the end of the First English Civil War.

Capture of Charles

Charles was ransomed by Parliament and held captive at Holdenby House while Parliament drew up plans. In the meantime, Parliament began to demobilize and disband the army. The army was unhappy about issues such as arrears of pay and living conditions and resisted the disbandment. Eventually the army kidnapped Charles, using their hostage as a bargaining piece in the negotiations. He spent three months at Hampton Court Palace before escaping to the Isle of Wight, where he was recaptured and imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Increasingly concerned, the army marched to London in August 1647 and debated proposals of their own at the Putney Debates.

The Second English Civil War

:Main article Second English Civil War. Charles I took advantage of this deflection of attention away from himself to negotiate a new agreement with the Scots, again promising church reform on December 28, 1647. Although Charles himself was still a prisoner, this agreement led inexorably to the Second Civil War. A series of Royalist uprisings throughout England and a Scottish invasion occurred in the summer of 1648. Most of the uprisings in England were put down by forces loyal to Parliament after little more than skirmishes, but uprisings in Kent, Essex and Cumberland, the rebellion in Wales and the Scottish invasion involved the fighting of pitched battles and prolonged sieges. In the spring of 1648 unpaid parliamentarian troops in Wales changed sides. The Royalist rebels were defeated by Colonel Thomas Horton at the battle of St. Fagans (May 8) and the rebel leaders surrendered to Cromwell on July 11 after the protracted two month siege of Pembroke. A Royalist uprising in Kent was defeated by Sir Thomas Fairfax at the battle of Maidstone on June 24. Fairfax, after his success at Maidstone and the pacification of Kent, turned northward to reduce Essex, where, under their ardent, experienced and popular leader Sir Charles Lucas, the Royalists were in arms in great numbers. Fairfax soon drove the enemy into Colchester, but the first attack on the town was repulsed and he had to settle down to a long siege. In the North of England Major-General John Lambert fought very successful campaign against a number of Royalist uprisings. The largest was that of Sir Marmaduke Langdale in Cumberland. Thanks to the successes of Lambert and the Scottish commander the Duke of Hamilton was forced to take the west route through Carlisle for the Royalist Scottish invasion of England. The Parliamentarians under Cromwell engaged the Scots at the the Battle of Preston (August 17 – August 19). The battle was fought largely at Walton-le-Dale near Preston in Lancashire, and resulted in a victory by the troops of Cromwell over the Royalists and Scots commanded by Hamilton. This Parliamentarian victory marked the end of the Second English Civil War. Nearly all the Royalists who had fought in the First Civil War had given their parole not to bear arms against the Parliament, and many honourable Royalists, like Lord Astley, refused to break their word by taking any part in the second war. So the victors in the Second Civil War were not merciful to those who had brought war into the land again. On the evening of the surrender of Colchester, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle were shot. The leaders of the Welsh rebels Major-General Rowland Laugharne, Colonel John Poyer and Colonel Rice Powel were sentenced to death, but Poyer alone was executed on April 25 1649, being the victim selected by lot. Of five prominent Royalist peers who had fallen into the hands of Parliament, three, the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Holland, and Lord Capel, one of the Colchester prisoners and a man of high character, were beheaded at Westminster on March 9.

Trial of Charles I for treason

The betrayal by Charles caused Parliament to debate whether Charles should be returned to power at all. Those who still supported Charles's place on the throne tried once more to negotiate with him. Furious that Parliament continued to countenance Charles as a ruler, the army marched on parliament and conducted "Pride's Purge" (named after the commanding officer of the operation, Thomas Pride) in December 1648. 45 Members of Parliament (MPs) were arrested; 146 were kept out of parliament. Only 75 were allowed in, and then only at the army's bidding. This Rump Parliament was ordered to set up a high court of justice in order to try Charles I for treason in the name of the people of England. The trial reached its forgone conclusion. 59 Commissioners (judges) found Charles I guilty of high treason, being a "tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy". He was beheaded on a scaffold in front of the Banqueting House of the Palace of Whitehall on January 30, 1649. At the Restoration the regicides who were still alive and not living in exile were either executed or sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Third English Civil War

:Main article Third English Civil War.

Ireland

:See also the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Ireland had known continuous war since the rebellion of 1641, with most of the island controlled by the Irish Confederates. Increasingly threatened by the armies of the English Parliament after Charles I's arrest in 1648, the Confederates signed a treaty of alliance with the English Royalists. The joint Royalist and Confederate forces under Ormonde attempted to eliminate the Parliamentary army holding Dublin, but were routed at the Battle of Rathmines. As the former Member of Parliament Admiral Robert Blake blockaded Prince Rupert of the Rhine's fleet in Kinsale, Oliver Cromwell was able to land at Dublin on August 15, 1649 with the army to quell Royalist alliance in Ireland. Cromwell's suppression of the Royalists in Ireland during 1649 still has a strong resonance for many Irish people. The massacre of nearly 3,500 people in Drogheda after its capture—comprising around 2,700 Royalist soldiers and all the men in the town carrying arms, including civilians, prisoners, and Catholic priests—is one of the historical memories that has driven Irish-English and Catholic-Protestant strife during the last three centuries. However, the massacre is significant mainly as a symbol of the Irish perception of Cromwellian cruelty, as far more people died in the subsequent guerrilla and scorched earth fighting in the country than at infamous massacres such as Drogheda and Wexford. The Parliamentarian conquest of Ireland ground on for another four years until 1653, when the last Irish Confederate and Royalist troops surrendered. It has been estimated that up to 30% of Ireland's population either died or were exiled by the end of the wars. Almost all Irish Catholic owned land was confiscated in the wake of the conquest and distributed to the Parliament's creditors, to the Parliamentary soldiers who served in Ireland, and to British who had settled there before the war.

Scotland

The execution of Charles I altered the dynamics of the Scottish Civil War, which had been raging between Royalists and Covenanters since 1644. By 1649, the Royalists there were in dissaray and their erstwhile leader, Montrose, was in exile. At first, Charles II encouraged the Earl of Montrose to raise a Highland army to fight on the Royalist side. However, when the Scottish Covenanters (who did not agree with the execution of Charles I and who feared for the future of Presbyterianism and Scottish independence under the new Commonwealth) offered him the crown of Scotland, Charles abandoned Montrose to his enemies. However, Montrose, who had raised a mercenary force in Norway, had already landed was unable to abandon the fight. He was unable to raise many Highland clans and his army was defeated at Carbisdale in Ross-shire on April 27, 1650. Montrose was captured shortly afterwards and taken to Edinburgh, where on May 20 he was sentenced to death by the Scottish parliament and was hanged the next day. Charles landed in Scotland at Garmouth in Morayshire on June 23 1650 and signed the 1638 National Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant immediately after coming ashore. Solemn League and Covenant With his original Scottish Royalist followers and his new Covenanter allies, King Charles II was considered to be the greatest threat facing the new English Republic. In response to the threat, Cromwell left some of his lieutenants in Ireland to continue the suppression of the Irish Royalists and crossed the Irish channel to Scotland. He arrived in Scotland on July 22 1650 and proceeded to lay siege to Edinburgh. By the end of August, his army was reduced by disease and a shortage of supplies, and he was forced to order a retreat towards England. A Scottish army, assembled under the command of David Leslie, tried to block the retreat, but the Scotts were defeated at the Battle of Dunbar on September 3. Cromwell's army then took Edinburgh, and by the end of the year, his army had occupied much of southern Scotland. In July 1651, Cromwell's forces crossed the Firth of Forth into Fife and defeated the Scots at the Battle of Inverkeithing. The New Model Army advanced towards Perth, which allowed Charles at the head of the Scottish army to move south into England. Cromwell followed Charles into England leaving George Monck to finish the campaign in Scotland. Monck took Stirling on the August 14 and Dundee on September 1. The next year, 1652, the remnants of Royalist resistance were mopped up and under the terms of the "Tender of Union", the Scots were given 30 seats in a united Parliament in London, with General Monck appointed as the military governor of Scotland.

England

Although Cromwell's New Model Army had defeated a Scottish army at Dunbar, Cromwell was unable to prevent Charles II from marching from Scotland deep into England at the head of another Royalist army. The Royalist army marched to the west of England because it was in that area that English Royalist sympathies were strongest, but although some English Royalists joined the army, they came in far fewer numbers than Charles and his Scottish supporters had hoped. Cromwell finally engaged the new king at Worcester on September 3, 1651, and defeated him. Charles II fled, via safe houses and a famous oak tree to France, ending the civil wars.

Political control

During the course of the Wars, a number of successive committees were established by the Parliamentarians to oversee the war effort. The first of these was the Committee of Safety, created in July 1642, which comprised 15 Members of Parliament. Following the Anglo-Scottish alliance against the Royalists, it was replaced by the Committee of Both Kingdoms between 1644 and 1648, when it was dissolved as the alliance ended. The English members of the former Committee for Both Kingdoms continued to meet and became known as the Derby House Committee. This in turn was replaced by a second Committee of Safety.

Aftermath

It is estimated that around 10 percent of the three kingdoms' population may have died during the civil wars. As was usual in wars of this era, more deaths were caused by disease than by combat. The wars left England, Ireland and Scotland as three of the few countries in Europe without a monarch. In the wake of victory, many of the ideals, and many of the idealists, were set aside. The republican government of the Commonwealth of England ruled England, and later all of Scotland and Ireland, during 1649–1653 and 1659–1660. Between the two periods, and due to infighting amongst various factions in parliament, Oliver Cromwell ruled over The Protectorate as Lord Protector, effectively a military dictator, until his death. Upon his death, Oliver Cromwell's son, Richard, became Lord Protector. Richard's main weakness was that the Army had little confidence in him. After seven months the Army removed Richard and in May 1659 it reinstalled the Rump. However, this too was dissolved shortly afterwards, since it acted as though nothing had changed since 1653 and so it could treat the Army how it liked. After the Rump was dissolved in October, there was a real prospect of a total descent into anarchy as the Army's pretence of unity finally dissolved into factions. It was into this atmosphere that General George Monck, governor of Scotland under the Cromwells, marched south with his army from Scotland. On April 4 1660, in the Declaration of Breda Charles II made known the conditions of his acceptance of the crown of England. Monck organised the Convention Parliament, which met for the first time on April 25. On May 8 it declared that King Charles II had been the lawful monarch since the execution of Charles I in January 1649. Charles returned from exile on May 23. Later in London, on May 29, he was acclaimed king. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661. These events became known as the English Restoration. As they resulted in the restoration of the monarchy with the consent of Parliament, the civil wars effectively set England and Scotland on course to become a parliamentary democracy. This system would ensure that the United Kingdom, created under the acts of union, would avoid participation in the European republican movements that followed the Jacobin revolution in 18th century France and the later success of Napoleon. Specifically, future monarchs became wary of pushing Parliament too hard, and Parliament effectively chose the line of succession in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution and the 1701 Act of Settlement. After the Restoration, Parliament's factions became political parties (later becoming the Tories and Whigs) with competing views and the ability to influence the decisions of the monarch.

Theories relating to the English Civil War

Throughout the greater part of the 20th century, two schools of thought dominated theoretical explanations of the Civil War: the Marxists and the 'Whigs'. Both of them explained the English seventeenth century in terms of long-term trends. Whigs explained the Civil War as the result of a centuries-long struggle between Parliament (especially the House of Commons) and the monarchy. Parliament fought to defend the traditional rights of Englishmen, while the monarchy attempted on every occasion to expand its right to dictate law arbitrarily. The most important Whig historian, S.R. Gardiner, popularized the idea of describing the civil war as a 'Puritan Revolution' which challenged the repressive nature of the Stuart church and paved the way for the religious toleration of the Restoration. Puritanism, in this view, became the natural ally of a people seeking to preserve their traditional rights against the arbitrary power of the monarchy. The Marxist school of thought, which became popular in the 1940s, interpreted the Civil War as a bourgeois revolution. In the words of Christopher Hill, "the Civil War was a class war". On the side of reaction stood the landed aristocracy and its ally, the established church. On the other side stood (again, according to Hill) "the trading and industrial classes in town and countryside, [...] the yeomen and progressive gentry, and [...] wider masses of the population whenever they were able by free discussion to understand what the struggle was really about". The Civil War occurred at the point in English history at which the wealthy middle classes, already a powerful force in society, liquidated the outmoded medieval system of English government. Like the Whigs, the Marxists found a place for the role of religion in their account. Puritanism as a moral system ideally suited the bourgeois class, and so the Marxists identified Puritans as inherently bourgeois. Beginning in the 1970s, a new generation of historians began mounting challenges to the Marxist and Whig theories. This began with the publication in 1973 of the anthology The Origins of the English Civil War (edited by Conrad Russell). These historians disliked the way that Marxists and Whigs explained the Civil War in terms of long-term trends in English society. The new historians called for, and began producing, studies which focussed on the minute particulars of the years immediately preceding the war, thus returning in some ways to the sort of contingency-based historiography of Clarendon's famous contemporary history of the civil war. As a result, they have demonstrated that the pattern of allegiances in the war did not fit the theories of Whig and Marxist historians. Puritans, for example, did not necessarily ally themselves with Parliamentarians, and many of them did not identify as bourgeois; many bourgeois fought on the side of the King; many landed aristocrats supported Parliament. The new generation of historians (commonly called 'Revisionists') have discredited large sections of the Whig and Marxist interpretations of the war. Many of these historians (such as Jane Ohlmeyer) have discarded the title 'English Civil War' and replaced it with the 'Wars of the three Kingdoms' or even the geographically arguable but politically incorrect 'British Civil Wars'. This forms part of a wider trend in British history towards the study of the whole of the British Isles (IONA). This trend is largely a reaction to what is perceived as 'Anglocentric' history, which concentrates on England and ignores or marginalizes other parts of the British Isles. These revisionist historians argue that one cannot fully understand the English civil war in isolation; it needs to stand as just one conflict in a series of interlocking conflicts throughout the British Isles. They see the causes of the war as a consequence arising from one king, Charles I, ruling over multiple kingdoms. For example, the wars unfolded when Charles I tried to impose an Anglican prayer book on Scotland; when the Scots resisted he declared war on them, but had to raise heavy taxes in England to pay for campaigning, which triggered the Civil War in England.

Re-enactments

Two large historical societies exist, The Sealed Knot and The English Civil War Society, which regularly re-enact events and battles of the Civil War in full period costume.

External links

- [http://badley.info/history/Civil-War-England.general.html English Civil War Chronology World History Database]
- [http://members.lycos.co.uk/chrishill61/civil_war_newark.htm Civil War Newark] All about the castles, sieges and defences of the English Civil war (in Newark, near Nottingham)
- [http://www.virtualbrum.co.uk/history/civilwar.htm The Civil War around Birmingham 1642–1648]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-christopher/english-revolution/ The English Revolution 1640] by Christopher Hill, Pub Lawrence and Wishart, 1940.
- [http://www.historybookshop.com/articles/commentary/civil-wars-of-three-kingdoms-ht.asp The Wars of the Three Kingdoms] The British and Irish Civil Wars article by Jane Ohlmeyer, who argues that the English Civil War formed just one of an interlocking set of conflicts that encompassed the British Isles in the mid-seventeenth century
- [http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/lecture7c.html Lecture 7: The English Civil War] An essay on the Politics of the English Civil War Category:English Civil War Category:Wars of the Three Kingdoms Category:Rebellion Category:Revolutions ja:清教徒革命

Parliamentarian

parliamentarian is a specialist in parliamentary procedure. ---- The adjective parliamentarian refers to any person or thing especially associated with a parliament (see parliamentary system). A Parliamentarian (as an upper-cased noun) often labels a Member of Parliament or MP, especially one who is particularly adept in the chamber. ---- In the context of the political and constitutional and military history of England and Great Britain, the term parliamentarian and its derivatives often describe a party to the English Civil War of the mid-17th century -- the supporters of the rights of Parliament, as opposed to the Royalist defenders of monarchical right. In populist military terms, Parliamentary troops (especially New Model Army soldiers) were dubbed Roundheads, as opposed to Royalist Cavaliers. The Parliamentary cause could become fractionated. Thus, within the Parliamentary camp, religious Presbyterian partisans opposed Independents. On the political front, republicans or Commonwealth-men stood against constitutional monarchists, while Levellers and Diggers represented more radical tendencies. Category:English Civil War Category:Parliamentary law

1642

Events

- January 4 - Charles I attempts to arrest five leading members of the Long Parliament, but they escape. Beginning of English Civil War.
- March 1 - Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine) becomes the first incorporated city in America
- March 19 - the citizens of Galway seize an English naval ship, close the town gates and declare for the Irish Confederates.
- May 17 - Sieur de Maisonneuve founds the Ville Marie de Montréal.
- July - Charles I besieges Hull in an attempt to gain control of its arsenal.
- August 7 - Lord Forbes relieves Forthill and besieges Galway.
- September 7 - Lord Forbes raises his unsuccessful siege of Galway.
- September 8 - Thomas Granger executed by hanging at Plymouth, Massachusetts for confessing to numerous acts of bestiality.
- October - Battle of Edgehill.
- November 24 - Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).
- The Dutch drive Spain from Taiwan.
- Abel Tasman achieves the first recorded European sighting of New Zealand.
- Blaise Pascal produces a mechanical adding machine (the "Pascaline").
- Claudio Monteverdi's opera l'Incoronazione di Poppeia is first performed.
- First Battle of Lostwithiel
- Jean-Baptiste Tavernier brings Hope diamond to Europe
- Puritans close all theaters in England
- Peter Stuyvesant becomes the governor of Curaçao

Births

- January 2 - Mehmed IV, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1693)
- February 18 - Marie Champmeslé, French actress (d. 1698)
- April 15 - Suleiman II, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1691)
- June 20 - George Hickes, English minister and scholar (d. 1715)
- August 14 - Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1723)
- December 6 - Johann Christoph Bach, German composer (d. 1703)
- December 25 - Isaac Newton, English mathematician and physicist (d. 1727)
- December 30 - Vicenzo da Filicaja, Italian poet (d. 1707) See also :Category:1642 births.

Deaths

- January 8 - Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and physicist (b. 1564)
- February 7 - William Bedell, English clergyman (b. 1571)
- April 30 - Dmitry Pozharsky, Russian prince (b. 1578)
- July 3 - Marie de' Medici, queen of Henry IV of France (b. 1573)
- August 18 - Guido Reni, Italian painter (b. 1575)
- September 12 - Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis of Cinq-Mars, French conspirator (b. 1620)
- October 24 - Robert Bertie, 1st Earl of Lindsey Fen drainage adventurer and soldier (b. 1583)
- November 1 - Jean Nicolet, French explorer (b. 1598)
- November 7 - Henry Montagu, 1st Earl of Manchester, English politician
- December 4 - Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, French statesman (b. 1585) See also :Category:1642 deaths. Category:1642 ko:1642년 ms:1642 simple:1642

1645

Events

- January 10 - Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud executed for treason on Tower Hill, London.
- January 14 - English Civil War: Fairfax appointed Commander-in-Chief.
- January 29 - English Civil War: Armistice talks opened at Uxbridge.
- February 2 - Covenanters defeated by Montrose at the Battle of Inverlochy
- February 15 - English Civil War: New Model Army is founded officially
- February 29 - English Civil War: Uxbridge armistice talks failed.
- March 4 - English Civil War: Prince Rupert left Oxford for Bristol.
- March 31 - Fearing the spread of the plague, Edinburgh Town Council bans all gatherings except weddings and funerals
- April 3 - Lords pass Self-Denying Ordinance.
- April 10 - Because of the plageu, Edinburgh town council orders that the college graduation ceremony should be brought forward so that students can leave the city (in November 19, teaching continues in Linlithgow)
- April 23 - English Civil War: 150 Irish soldiers bound for service with King Charles, were captured at sea by parliamentarians who celebrated St George's Day by joyfully killing them all at Pembroke.
- May 9 - Covenanters defeated by Montrose at the Battle of Auldearn.
- June 1 - English Civil War: Prince Rupert' army took sacked Leicester
- June 10 - English Civil War: Cromwell confirmed as Lieutenant-General of Cavalry.
- June 14 - English Civil War: Battle of Naseby - 12,000 Royalist forces are beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers
- June 28 - English Civil War - the Royalists lose Carlisle.
- July 2: Fight at Alford, Aberdeenshire.
- July 10 - English Civil War: Cromwell won the Battle of Langport, Somerset.
- July 23 - Alexei Mikhailovich, Tsar of Russia came to the throne.
- September 10 - English Civil War: Prince Rupert surrendered Bristol.
- September 13 - Covenanters defeated Montrose at the Battle of Philiphaugh, Selkirk.
- September 24 - English Civil War: Parliamentarians defeated Royalist cavalry at the Battle of Rowton Heath.
- October 8 - English Civil War: Final crushing of Basing house begun.
- October 8: Jeanne Mance founds the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, the first hospital in North America.
- October 11 - English Civil War The re-fortification of Bourne, Lincolnshire castle against threatened Royalist attack, was begun.
- Siege of Raglan Castle during the English Civil War
- The Long Parliament outlaws the 1559 version of the Book of Common Prayer
- Beginning of the Maunder Minimum, a time period when sunspots became exceedingly rare
- Founding of the Stolberg-Wernigerode branch of the family of counts of Stolberg and Wernigerode in Germany
- Wallpaper begins to replace tapestries as a wall decoration
- Mechanical calculating machine invented by Blaise Pascal.

Ongoing events

- English Civil War (1642-1649)

Births

- August 10 - Eusebio Kino, Italian Catholic missionary (d. 1711)
- August 16 - Jean de La Bruyère, French writer (d. 1696)
- September 21 - Louis Joliet, Canadian explorer (d. 1700)
- Captain William Kidd, Scottish pirate (d. 1701) See also :Category:1645 births.

Deaths

- January 10 - William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1573)
- June 13 - Miyamoto Musashi, Japanese swordsman
- July 13 - Tsar Michael I of Russia (b. 1596)
- July 17 - Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, Scottish politician
- July 22 - Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel, Count-Duke of Olivares, Spanish statesman (b. 1587)
- August 6 - Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex, English merchant (b. 1575)
- August 16 - Tobias Hume, English composer
- August 18 - Eudoxia Streshneva, Tsarina of Mikhail I of Russia (b. 1608)
- August 28 - Hugo Grotius, Dutch philosopher and writer (b. 1583)
- September 8 - Francisco de Quevedo, Spanish writer (b. 1580)
- Li Zicheng, Chinese rebel (b. 1606) See also :Category:1645 deaths. Category:1645 ko:1645년

1648

Events

- Peace treaty signed at Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War.
- Chmielnicki Uprising in Republic of Both Nations (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth).
- The Dutch and the Spanish sign the Treaty of Munster, ending the Eighty Years' War. The Spanish Empire recognizes the Dutch Republic of United Netherlands as a sovereign state, (governed by the House of Orange-Nassau and the Estates General) which was before a province of the Spanish Empire. The Netherlands becomes the first European power with a republican form of government.
- November 11 - France and Netherlands agree to divide the island of Sint Maarten/Saint Martin.
- Change of emperor of the Ottoman Empire from Ibrahim I (1640-1648) to Mehmed IV (1648-1687)
- The Rump Parliament finds Charles I guilty of treason, and sentences him to be executed.
- Admiral Robert Blake defeats Prince Rupert and the remnants of the Royalist navy in the English Civil War.
- In India, building of the Red Fort is completed.
- Discovery of strait (Bering Strait) between Asia and North America by Semyon Dezhnev
- The west bank of Prague (including the Prague Castle) occupied and looted by Swedish armies.
- Sabbatai Zevi declares himself the Messiah at Smyrna.

Ongoing events

- English Civil War (1642-1649)

Births

- January 1 - Elkanah Settle, English writer (d. 1724)
- February 23 - Arabella Churchill, English mistress of James II of England (d. 1730)
- April 4 - Grinling Gibbons, Dutch-born woodcarver (d. 1721)
- April 7 - John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, English statesman and poet (d. 1721)
- April 9 - Henri de Massue, Marquis de Ruvigny, 1st Viscount Galway, French soldier and diplomat (d. 1720)
- April 13 - Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon, French mystic (d. 1717)
- April 26 - King Peter II of Portugal (d. 1712)
- August 9 - Johann Michael Bach, German composer (d. 1694)
- December 15 - Gregory King, English statistician (d. 1712)
- John Blow, British composer (d. 1708) See also :Category:1648 births.

Deaths

- February 2 - George Abbot, English writer
- February 28 - Christian IV, King of Denmark and Norway (b. 1577)
- March 12 - Tirso de Molina, Spanish writer
- March 14 - Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, English general (b. 1584)
- May 20 - King Wladislaus IV of Poland (b. 1595)
- May 26 - Vincent Voiture, French poet (b. 1597)
- August 12 - Ibrahim I, Ottoman Sultan (b. 1615)
- August 20 - Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, English diplomat, poet, and philosopher (b. 1583)
- September 1 - Marin Mersenne, French mathematician (b. 1588)
- November 17 - Thomas Ford, English composer See also :Category:1648 deaths. Category:1648 ko:1648년

Civil war

:For other uses, see civil war (disambiguation). See list of civil wars for individual examples. A civil war is a war in which the competing parties are segments of the same country or empire. Civil war is usually a high intensity stage in an unresolved political struggle for national control of state power. As in any war, the conflict may be over other matters such as religion, ethnicity, or distribution of wealth. Some civil wars are also categorized as revolutions when major societal restructuring is a possible outcome of the conflict. An insurgency, whether successful or not, is likely to be classified as a civil war by some historians if, and only if, organised armies fight conventional battles. Other historians state the criteria for a civil war is that there must be prolonged violence between organized factions or defined regions of a country (conventionally fought or not). Ultimately the distinction between a "civil war" and a "revolution" or other name is arbitrary, and determined by usage. The successful insurgency of the 1640s in England which led to the (temporary) overthrow of the monarchy became known as the English Civil War. The successful insurgency of the 1770s in British colonies in America, with organized armies fighting battles, came to be known as the American Revolution. In the United States, the term 'the civil war' almost always means the American Civil War, with other civil wars noted or inferred from context.

Modern era

What is generally agreed upon is that factors such as nationalism, religion, and ideology, played little role in pre-modern civil wars. While it is quite common for nationalists to read past revolts, such as those of Scotland against England as early stirrings of nationalism, this is a somewhat suspect notion. Religion is more contentious, there are some civil wars that can be seen as fueled by religion in early years, such as the Jewish Revolts against Rome, but these can also be seen as revolts by a servile people against their oppressors or uprisings by local notables in an attempt to gain independence.

Religious conflicts

Civil wars fought over religion have tended to occur more frequently in monotheistic societies than in polytheistic societies; this has been explained as being due to the fact that the latter tend to be more "flexible" in terms of dogma, to allow for some latitude in belief. In Europe through the Middle Ages, the Christianity of the great bulk of the population was influenced by pagan tradition. With the great majority of the population illiterate, access to the Bible was limited and led to a significant amount of syncretism between Christian and pagan elements. With religion so loosely applied, it was rare for people to feel particularly oppressed by it. There were periodic appearances of heresies, such as that of the Albigensians, which led to violence, but historians tend to view these to be the product of peasant revolts rather than themselves motivators of a civil war. As religions tended to become more rigidly defined and understood by their followers, inter-religious tensions generally increased. The rise of Islam witnessed a rash of uprisings against non-Islamic rulers soon after its appearance. Subsequent Islamic history has been marked by repeated civil conflicts, mostly stemming out of the Shi'ite-Sunni divide. In Europe the Protestant Reformation had a similar effect, sparking years of both civil and international wars of religion. Civil wars between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism consumed France in the Wars of Religion, the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War, Germany during the Thirty Years' War, and more recently, The Troubles of Northern Ireland. Religious disputes among Protestant sects also played an important role in the English Civil Wars, while official persecution of Catholics during the French Revolution spurred the Revolt in the Vendée.

Revolutions

A revolution is generally seen as a civil war fought over issues of ideology, over how power should be organized and distributed, not merely over which individuals hold it. The classic example of a revolution, and by some arguments the first is the French Revolution, which is seen to have pitted the middle class and urban poor of France against the aristocracy and monarchy. Some argue that revolutions are a modern continuation of the peasant revolts of the past. Unlike peasant revolts, however, revolutions are almost always lead by members of the educated, but disaffected, middle class who then rally the large mass of the population to their cause. Others see ideology as merely replacing religion as a justification and motivation for violence that is fundamentally caused by socioeconomic factors. To be successful revolutions almost always require armed force to be employed, sometimes escalating to a civil war, such as in the Chinese Civil War. In some cases, such as the French and Russian Revolutions the revolutionaries succeed in gaining power through a quick coup or localized uprising, but a civil war results from counterrevolutionary forces organizing to crush the revolution.

Separatist revolts

One of the most common causes of civil wars, especially in the post-Cold War world has been separatist violence. Nationalism can be seen as similar to both a religion and an ideology as a justification for war rather than a root cause of conflict. All modern states attempt to hold a monopoly on internal military force. For separatist civil wars to break out thus either the national army must fracture along ethnic, religious, or national lines as happened in Yugoslavia; or more commonly a modern separatist conflict takes the form of asymmetrical warfare with separatists lightly armed and disorganized, but with the support of the local population such groups can be hard to defeat. This is the route taken by most liberation groups in colonies, as well as forces in areas such as Eritrea and Sri Lanka. Regional differences may be enhanced by differing economies, as in the American Civil War. National minorities are also often religious minorities and wars of religion may link closely into separatist conflicts.

Coups

Coups d'état are by definition quick blows to the top of a government that do not result in the widespread violence of a civil war. On occasion a failed coup, or one that is only half successful, can precipitate a civil war between factions. These wars often quickly try to pull in larger themes of ideology, nationalism, or religion to try to win supporters among the general population for a conflict that in essence is an intraelite competition for power.

Why war?

Almost every nation has minority groups, religious plurality, and ideological divisions, but few plunge into civil war. Sociologists have long searched for what variables trigger civil wars. In the modern world most civil wars occur in nations that are poor, autocratic, and regionally divided. However, the United States was one of the wealthiest and most democratic countries in the world at the time of its bloody civil war. Some models to explain the occurrence of civil wars stress the importance of change and transition. According to one such line of reasoning, the American Civil War was caused by the growing economic power of the North relative to the South; the Lebanese Civil War by the upsetting of the delicate demographic balance by the increase in the Shi'ite population; the English Civil War by the growing power of the middle class and merchants at the expense of the aristocracy. Competition for resources and wealth within a society is seen as a frequent cause for civil wars, however economic gain is rarely the justification espoused by the participants. Marxist historians stress economic and class factors arguing that civil wars are caused by imperialist rulers battling each other for greater power, and using tools such as nationalism and religion to delude people into joining them. Not only are the causes of civil wars widely studied and debated, but their persistence is also seen as an important issue. Many civil wars have proved especially intractable, dragging on for many decades. One contributing factor is that civil wars often become proxy wars for outside powers that fund their partisans and thus encourage further violence. Research related to the democratic peace theory have studied civil wars and democracy. Research shows that the most democratic and the most authoritarian states have few civil wars, and intermediate regimes the most. The probability for a civil war is also increased by political change, regardless whether toward greater democracy or greater autocracy. Intermediate regimes continue to be the most prone to civil war, regardless of the time since the political change. In the long run, since intermediate regimes are less stable than autocracies, which in turn are less stable than democracies, durable democracy is the most probable end-point of the process of democratization [http://www.worldbank.org/research/conflict/papers/peace.htm]. The fall of Communism and the increase in the number of democratic states were accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, and the number of refugees and displaced persons [http://members.aol.com/CSPmgm/conflict.htm].

Post war

Rebuilding a society in the wake of a civil war is often difficult. In an international war the two parties merely have to agree to a cease-fire and can, for the most part, go their own way. In a civil war not only must violence stop but the factions involved must also learn to coexist with each other. This can often prove difficult, much of the population will have lost friends or loved ones in the war, losses they blame on their opponents. Civil wars also tend to greatly entrench any ethnic, religious, or ideological divisions within a society and restoring unity can be very difficult. The record of United Nations peacekeeping forces in healing such war-torn societies is mixed.

Lists of civil wars

- List of civil wars
- List of fictional wars

Long Parliament

The Long Parliament is the name of the English Parliament called by Charles I, in 1640, following the Bishops' Wars. It receives its name from the fact that it sat almost continuously during the English Civil War until 1653. The sole reason Charles reassembled Parliament was to ask it to pass finance bills, since the Bishops' Wars had bankrupted him.

1640–1648

The Parliament was initially influenced by John Pym and his supporters. In August 1641, it enacted legislation depriving Charles of the powers that he had assumed since his accession. The reforms were designed to negate the possibility of Charles ruling absolutely again. The parliament also freed those imprisoned by the Star Chamber. A Triennial Act was passed, requiring that no more than three years should elapse between sessions of Parliament and the Dissolution Act which required the Long Parliament's consent to its own dissolution. Parliament was also responsible for the impeachment and subsequent execution of the king's advisers, Archbishop William Laud and Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. The Irish Rebellion which started in October 1641 brought the control of the army back into the discussions between King and Parliament. Led by John Pym, Parliament presented the King with the Grand Remonstrance which was passed in the Commons by 11 votes (159 - 148) on 22 November 1641. It listed over 150 perceived "misdeeds" of Charles' reign including the Church (under the influence of foreign papists) and royal advisers (also "have[ing] engaged themselves to further the interests of some foreign powers") the second half of the Remonstrance proposed solutions to the "misdeeds" including church reform and Parliamentary influence over the appointment of royal ministers. December 1641 Parliament asserted that it wanted control over the appointment of the commanders of the Army and Navy in the Militia Bill . The king rejected the Grand Remonstrance and refused to give royal assent to the Militia Bill. The King believed that Puritans (or Dissenters) encouraged by five vociferous members of the House of Commons, John Pym, John Hampden, Denzil Holles, Sir Arthur Haselrig and William Strode along with Lord Mandeville (the future Earl of Manchester) who sat in the House of Lords, had encouraged the Scots to invade England in the recent Bishops' Wars and that they were intent on turning the London mob against him. When rumours reached the court that they were also planning to impeach the Queen for alleged involvement in Catholic plots Charles decided to arrest them for treason. The Speaker of the House during the Long Parliament was William Lenthall. On January 4, 1642, when the king entered the House of Commons to seize the five members, Lenthall behaved with great prudence and dignity. Having taken the speaker's chair and looked round in vain to discover the offending members commenting "I see the birds have flown", Charles turned to Lenthall standing below, and demanded of him whether any of those persons were in the House, whether he saw any of them and where they were. Lenthall fell on his knees and replied: "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here." After his failure to capture five members and the fearing for his life Charles left London for Oxford. Most of the royalist members of Parliament left to join him there where they formed the Oxford Parliament. Without its royalist members, the Long Parliament continued to sit during the Civil War and beyond because under a Dissolution Act passed in 1641 the monarch could not dissolve Parliament without Parliament's consent in the form of a new act of parliament. In March 1642 with the King absent from London and the war clouds gathering, Parliament decreed that its own Parliamentary Ordinances were valid laws without royal assent. The Militia Ordnance was passed on 5 March by Parliament which gave Parliament control of the local militia called Trained Bands. Control of the London Trained Bands was the most strategically critical because they could protect the radical members of Parliament from armed intervention against them by any soldiers which Charles had near the capital. In response to the Militia Ordnance, Charles revived the Commissions of Array as a means of summoning an army instead. :This needs a section from April 1642 through 6 December 1648

Time line

- Triennial Act, passed 15 February, 1641
- William laud imprisoned 26 February, 1641
- Act against Dissolving the Long Parliament without its own Consent 11 May, 1641
- Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford executed May 12, 1641
- Abolition the Star Chamber 5 July, 1641
- Ship Money declared illegal 7 August, 1641
- Grand Remonstrance 22 November, 1641
- Militia Bill December, 1641
- The King’s answer to the petition accompanying the Grand Remonstrance 23 December, 1641
- The King's attempt to seize the five members 4 January, 1642
- The King and Royal Family leave Whitehall for Hampton Court. January, 1642
- The King leaves Hampton Court for the North 2 March 1642
- Parliament decreed that Parliamentary Ordinances were valid without royal assent March, 1642
- Militia Ordnance 5 March, 1642
- The Solemn League and Covenant 25 September, 1643
- Ordinance appointing the First Committee of both Kingdoms 16 February, 1644
- The Self-denying Ordinance 4 April, 1645
- Pride's Purge December 7, 1648

1649–1659 Rump Parliament

:Main article Rump Parliament Divisions emerged between various factions, culminating in Pride's Purge on December 7, 1648, when, under the orders of Oliver Cromwell, Colonel Pride physically barred about half of the members of Parliament from taking their seats. Many of the excluded members were Presbyterians. In the wake of the ejections, the remnant, the Rump Parliament, arranged for the trial and execution of Charles I. It was also responsible for the setting up of the Commonwealth of England in 1649. Oliver Cromwell forcibly disbanded the Rump in 1653 when it seemed they might disband his expensive army of 50,000 men. The Rump was recalled after his son, Richard Cromwell, failed miserably as Lord Protector in 1659.

1660 Restoraton

On February 21 1660 General George Monck reinstated the members 'secluded' by Pride, so that they could prepare legislation for the Convention Parliament and formally dissolve the Long Parliament which happened on March 16, 1660.

Succession

The Long Parliament was preceded by the Short Parliament, was purged by Pride to become the Rump Parliament was restored by Monck and succeded by the Convention Parliament.

Notes

# By the time of the Restoration Lenthall seems to have forgotten his previous resolve when he consented to appear as a witness against the regicide Thomas Scot, for words spoken in the House of Commons while he was the Speaker.

External links

- [http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/glossary/long-parliament.htm British Civil Wars: The Long Parliament]
- [http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/timelines/1641.htm British Civil Wars: 1641 Time Line]
- [http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/timelines/1642_jan_apr.htm British Civil Wars: 1642 Time Line]
- [http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur027.htm Full text of The Triennial Act. 15 February 1641]
- [http://home.freeuk.net/don-aitken/ast/c1.html#198 Full text of the Act against Dissolving the Long Parliament without its own Consent 11 May 1641]
- [http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/organic/1641-asc.htm Full text of the act Abolishing the Star Chamber 5 July 1641]
- [http://home.freeuk.net/don-aitken/ast/c1b.html#201 Full text of the Act Declaring the Illegality of Ship-money 7 August 1641]
- [http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur043.htm Full Text of the Grand Remonstrance, with the Petition accompanying it. 22 November 1641]
- [http://home.freeuk.net/don-aitken/ast/c1b.html#205 Full text of the King’s Answer to the Petition Accompanying the Grand Remonstrance 23 December 1641]
- [http://home.freeuk.net/don-aitken/ast/c1b.html#207 Full text of The Solemn League and Covenant 25 September 1643]
- [http://home.freeuk.net/don-aitken/ast/c1b.html#208 Full text of the Ordinance appointing the First Committee of both Kingdoms 16 February 1644]
- [http://home.freeuk.net/don-aitken/ast/c1b.html#209T Full text of the Self-denying Ordinance 4 April 1645] Category:History of England Category:United Kingdom political history

Charles II of England

Charles II (29 May 1630–6 February 1685) was the King of England, King of Scots, and King of Ireland from 30 January 1649 (retrospectively de jure) or 29 May 1660 (de facto) until his death. His father Charles I had been executed in 1649, following the English Civil War; the monarchy was then abolished and the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland became a republic under Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector (see Commonwealth of England and The Protectorate). In 1660, shortly after Cromwell's death, the monarchy was restored under Charles II. Unlike his father, Charles II was skilled at managing the Parliament of England so much so that Charles is still considered one of England's greatest kings. It was during his reign that the Whig and Tory political parties developed. He famously fathered numerous illegitimate children, of whom he acknowledged fourteen. Known as the "Merry Monarch", Charles was a patron of the arts and less restrictive than many of his predecessors. By converting to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed, Charles II became the first Roman Catholic to reign over England since the death of Mary I of England in 1558 and over Scotland since the deposition of Mary I of Scotland in 1567.

Early life

Charles, the eldest surviving son of Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria of France, was born in St. James's Palace on 29 May 1630. At birth, he automatically became (as the eldest surviving son of the Sovereign) Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay; shortly after his birth, he was created Prince of Wales. Due to the disruption caused by the English Civil War, he was never formally invested with the Honours of the Principality of Wales. During the 1640s, when the Prince of Wales was still young, Charles I fought parliamentary and Puritan forces in the English Civil War. The Prince accompanied his father during the Battle of Edgehill and, at the age of fifteen, participated in the campaigns of 1645, when he was made titular commander of the English forces in the West Country. In 1646, due to fears for his safety, he left England, going first to the Isles of Scilly, then to Jersey, and finally to France, where his mother was already living in exile. In 1648, during the Second Civil War, Charles moved to The Hague, where his sister Mary and brother-in-law the Prince of Orange seemed more likely to provide substantial aid to the Royalist cause than the Queen's French relations. Unfortunately, Charles was neither able to use the royalist fleet that came under his control to any advantage, nor to reach Scotland in time join up with the royalist "Engagers" army of the