Why did Monarchy and Parliament Become Estranged in the 1620s?

The English Monarchy and Parliament became estranged in the 1620s because of disputes about the role of king and parliament, Christian doctrine, financing a war with Spain, and a general lack of trust between the branches of government. This eventually led to King Charles I’s autocratic rule in the 1630s, civil war, and the king’s beheading. 

King James I’s Relationship with Parliament

King James did not leave his son a harmonious or even solvent government. Despite James’s relatively peaceful rule, his high-handed doctrine on the divine right of kings had not always made for a smooth governing relationship. 

Members of Parliament were especially angered at James’s insistence that Charles marry the Spanish princess to uphold the English prestige, which no Protestant princess could supply. This tension turned so heated that James dissolved the body in late 1620.[1]

As for Charles, he didn’t oppose parliament’s existence and even admonished his son not to “entertain any aversion or dislike of parliaments, which in their right constitution will … never injure or diminish your greatness.” [2] 

But Charles lacked vital interpersonal skills and usually came across as more insensitive than his father.[3] His sense of honor and pride played a major role in his decisions and personalized many of the disputes. This only intensified when war broke out with Spain in 1627.[4]

Disputes over Taxation and Foreign Policy

The favoritism that James showed the Duke of Buckingham and the Duke’s military failures brought war strategy and financing to the fore of parliamentary debates early in Charles’s reign

As Lord High Admiral, Buckingham’s war policies resulted in complete disaster. The naval expedition to take Cadiz had failed, ships loaned to the French had been used against English allies, the Protestant Huguenots, and the heavy subsidies to the Protestants had failed to produce favorable results. Furthermore, Charles continued to show favoritism to Buckingham and the offices that the Duke was entrusted with.[5], [6] 

The first step toward estrangement, and one that proved itself the most divisive throughout the 1620s, was war funding. 

Parliament, in 1624, granted funding for national defense in case Spain broke the treaty with England. Spain did break the treaty, but the anticipated war did not immediately come. Charles asked for additional funds, but the Members were reluctant to fund a war that had not been declared against an unknown enemy.[7]

Furthermore, parliament expected a limited sea war against Spain—not a land war against the Holy Roman Empire to recover the Palatinate as Charles expected.[8] 

Charles gave his uncle in Denmark 30,000 pounds to wage war and supported a policy of foreign aid to the European Protestants. Most Members of Parliament, however, wanted the money to stay in England. They considered disrupting Spain’s wealth flow from the New World a better strategy, and as Sir Thomas Fairfax argued, England should “seek the Palatinate in America.”[9], [10]

English Civil War historian Conrad Russell argues that Charles and Buckingham also misjudged the will of the nation. The people did not really want war with Spain, and when the time came to pay for it, they were not in the mood. Russell argues that the House of Commons was more interested in local matters and a redress of monarchical grievances than foreign policy.[11]

Historian Thomas Cogswell, however, disagrees, noting that the lack of debate in the House of Commons showed, instead, a desire to avoid controversy rather than war. He points to the fact that Members gave James 300,000 pounds with the expectation that it would be used to wage war.[12] This fits with Richard Cust’s theory that the disconnect between monarch and parliament owed to the limited scale of war that parliament was willing to wage compared with Charles’s desire to avenge his sister and brother-in-law.[13]

When parliament, in 1625, offered two subsidies to Charles without demanding he address their grievances, he accepted them. But he suddenly realized they were not enough. He then asked for a third subsidy, which they promptly refused.

Sir Francis Seymour remarked that after five subsidies in the previous four years, “nothing hath been done” other than setting upon and consuming their own people.[14]

During the session of 1626, a Mr. Newberry maintained, “When we engaged the king in this war it was not the intention of this house that we should send away our treasure and ships unto … I know not who beyond the sea, but for a war as should be for our good and the weakening of our enemies.”

Sir John Savile argued that “no man will be willing to give his money into a bottomless gulf.”[15]

Many Members of Parliament believed disputes should either be worked out in parliament or Members should live their lives quietly in the country—in which case the king would not be able to wage war without the funds that only a parliament could provide.[16]

Moderates close to Charles argued that a united government was needed to show strength against the Hapsburgs, and that once the king won the hearts and minds of his subjects he would have no problem winning over their purse as well.[17]

Hardliners, meanwhile, like the Earl of Dorset and Bishop William Laud, advised the king to raise revenue without parliament. At this suggestion, the king began looking at how other European monarchs either disposed of or ignored their parliaments.[18] This led to the unpopular forced loan of 1626-28 and ignited the debate in the Parliament of 1628 over whether the king could unilaterally levy taxes.

Disputes over the Divine Right of Kings and Christian Doctrine

Charles and his Privy Council considered taxation part of the divine right of kings.[19] Laud and other clerics argued that royal power was something which originated almost exclusively from God and that the king, therefore, had the right to tax his subjects without their consent.[20]

Doctrine played another role in driving a wedge between king and Parliament in the 1620s.

Charles, unlike his father, favored the doctrine of Arminianism, which in opposition to Calvinism taught that an individual has free will and emphasized works in keeping one’s salvation. Many Calvinists saw this doctrine as dangerously close to Roman Catholicism. 

As on most issues, Charles showed incredible inflexibility on this, and his elevation of Arminians drew the ire of many a Calvinist Member of Parliament who had grown accustomed to a complete doctrinal monopoly on the English Church.[21]

After having narrowly dodged a Spanish queen, parliament watched aghast as Charles married Catholic Henrietta Maria of France. With her arrival, he also promised religious liberty to Catholics and followed through by ceasing all religious persecution.[22]

Charles also began a trend, concerning even to members of his own council throughout the 1620s, of not meeting regularly with parliament during the war with Spain and instead, relying exclusively on his advisers. This followed the pattern of many European monarchs in whose countries parliaments had practically ceased to exist.[23]

After two years of continued attacks on Buckingham and tax resistance, the king came to suspect a more sinister side of parliament that gave him reluctance to convene the body at all.[24] The Privy Council, over the winter of 1627-28, waged this debate between hardliners, led by Buckingham, and moderates on whether parliament was even necessary.

Charles reluctantly agreed with the moderates because he believed only parliament could raise the large sums necessary for conducting a war.[25] He nevertheless left a veiled threat with the new parliament that if it failed to do their duty, he would continue to find other means of raising revenue.

Habeas Corpus

Charles also demanded that parliament give him the ability to imprison arbitrarily based on his word that he would never violate the Magna Carta.[26] Parliament demanded it in writing, nonetheless. To this he agreed and signed their Petition of Right in exchange for five subsidies.[27] 

But the day that the petition was to be distributed to the people, Charles ordered the printer to destroy it and issue in its place his original answer to parliament’s demands that they had found unsatisfactory. According to historian Michael Young, promises by Charles were nothing more than “temporary concessions made to gain an advantage, easily made and easily forgotten.”[27] 

Conclusion

Charles was no inherent authoritarian. He believed kings should meet with parliaments regularly and do their best to work with them. But his belief in that relationship remained rather one-sided. In his speech before the House of Commons in 1626, he declared, “Remember that parliaments are altogether in my power for the calling, sitting and continuance of them. Therefore, as I find the fruits either good or evil, they are to continue or not to be.”[28]

When Charles took the throne, parliament already had reason to distrust the monarch, as his father had boasted of breaking “the Neck of three Parliaments, one right after another.”[29] But although the relationship between monarch and parliament had not been ideal under James, it didn’t disintegrate because James had a more cooperative personality. Furthermore, the funding and execution of the war against Spain that began under James did not fully materialize until Charles’s reign.

Charles’s Arminianism and his marrying a Catholic only exacerbated early battle failures and disputes over war fund allocation. His authoritarianism and perceived lack of trustworthiness contributed to parliament’s reluctance to grant the funds he demanded. When parliament refused to acquiesce, he proved that his doctrine on parliaments was no idle threat, and he readily dissolved the body and ruled alone.[30] The consequences of this breakdown of trust led to a decade of personal rule; and when parliament finally was convened a decade later, civil war.

 

Notes

[1] Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life. (Harlow England: Longman Pearson, 2005), Kindle ed., loc 326.

[2] Charles I, Kindle ed., loc 534.

[3] Charles I, Kindle ed, loc 647.

[4] Kindle ed., loc 1743.

[5] Young, “Charles I and the Erosion of Trust,” 224.

[6] David Coast, “Rumor and Common Fame: The Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham and Public Opinion in Early Stuart England,” Journal of British Studies, 55.2 (April 2016), 1.

[7] Young, “Charles I and the Erosion of Trust,” 219-220.

[8] Young, “Charles I and the Erosion of Trust,” 219-220.

[9] Thomas Cogswell, “The Warre of the Commons for the honour of King Charles’: the parliament-men and the reformation of the lord admiral in 1626,” Institute of Historical Research. 2011.

[10] Cogswell, 633.

[11] Charles I, Kindle ed., loc 1394.

[12] Charles I, Kindle ed., loc 1073.

[13] Charles I, Kindle ed., loc 1091.

[14] Thomas Cogswell, “A Low Road to Extinction? Supply and Redress of Grievances in the Parliaments of the 1620s,” The Historical Journal 33.2 (June 1990), 293.

[15] Coast, “Rumor and Common Fame,” 295.

[16] Cogswell, “A Low Road to Extinction?” 301.

[17] Cust, Charles I and the Parliament of 1628, 28.

[18] Charles I, Kindle ed., loc 1542.

[19] Kindle ed., loc 1507.

[20] Cust, Charles I and the Parliament of 1628, 28.

[21] Kindle ed., loc 2157.

[22] Young, “Charles I and the Erosion of Trust,” 224.

[23] Cust, “Charles I and the Parliament of 1628,” 26.

[24] Cust, Charles I and the Parliament of 1628, 49.

[25] Cust, Charles I and the Parliament of 1628, 27.

[26] Kindle ed., loc 1617.

[27] Young, “Charles I and the Erosion of Trust,” 232.

[28] Charles I, Kindle ed., loc 1311.

[29] Young, “Charles I and the Erosion of Trust,” 219.

[30] Charles I, Kindle ed., loc 1311.dis