Charles And Parliament example essay topic
James had to ask Parliament to raise a tax to pay the debt. Parliament agreed, but in return insisted on the right to discuss James's home and foreign policy. James, however, insisted that he alone had the "divine right" to make these decision. Like Elizabeth, James preferred to rule with a small council. He believed that the king was chosen by God and therefore only God could judge him. James's ideas were not different from those of earlier monarchs, as other monarchs in Europe were.
Parliament agreed, and it was supported by the law. In 1605, took place what was lately known as the "Powder plot", which revealed an explosive controversy between the Catholic citizens of England and King James. This conspiracy was the third of four attempts at harming the King, who was a supporter of the Calvinist faith. The motive behind this plot was revenge for the penal laws, which were measurements against priests and recusants.
In 1604, a peace treaty between England and Spain ended the hopes of foreign intervention on behalf of other Catholics. So, Robert Catesby masterminded the plot to kill King James and establish a more Catholic friendly government. Robert Catesby placed barrels of gunpowder and iron bars in the cellars of the Parliament Buildings on the night of November 4, 1605. They planned to ignite the gunpowder the following day when James, his eldest son, Prince Henry, and Queen Ann attended the opening of Parliament. In the blast it was assumed that both the King and his two sons would be killed, which would allow Princess Elizabeth to inherit the throne. One of the conspirators, Guy Fawkes, was deputed to stay with the gunpowder and ignite it at the opportune moment.
However, as the time came to enact the plan, Lord Mounteagle sent a letter to Cecil, one of King James advisors, anonymously warning him of the scheme. This resulted in the termination of the plans and the scattering of many of the conspirators. But Guy Fawkes was not warned. So on November 5 he showed up at the cellar, torch in hand, only to be arrested by the King's agents. James was successful in ruling without Parliament between 1611 and 1621, but it was only possible because Britain remained at peace. James could not afford the cost of an army.
In 1618, at the beginning of the Thirty Years war in Europe, Parliament wished to go to war against the Catholics. So, the King called a third Parliament, and soon perceived that the opposition was stronger and fiercer than ever. He now determined on a change of tactics. Instead of opposing an inflexible resistance to the demands of the Commons, he agreed to a compromise which, if he had faithfully adhered to it, would have averted a long series of calamities. The Parliament granted an ample supply. The King ratified, in the most solemn manner, that celebrated law, which is known by the name of the Petition of Right, and which is the second Great Charter of the liberties of England.
By ratifying that law he bound himself never again to raise money without the consent of the Houses, never again to imprison any person, except in due course of law, and never again to subject his people to the jurisdiction of courts martial. This is the origin of which is today known as "Habeas Corpus". Until his death in 1625 James was always quarrelling with Parliament over money and over its desire to play a part in his foreign policy. Charles I found himself quarrelling even more bitterly with the Commons than his father had done, mainly over money. When he tried raisin money without Parliament, by borrowing from merchants, bankers and landowning gentry, Parliament decided to make Charles agree to certain "parliamentary rights". These rights established an important rule of government by Parliament, because the King had agreed that Parliament controlled both state money, the "national budget", and the Law.
Charles realised that the Petition made nonsense of a King's "divine right". He decided to prevent it being used by dissolving Parliament the following year. Charles surprised everyone by being able to rule successfully without Parliament. He was able to balance his budgets and make administration efficient. By 1637 he was at the height of his power.
His authority seemed to be more completely accepted that the authority of an English King had been for centuries. However, in that same year Charles began to make serious mistakes that resulted from the religious situation in Britain. Charles shaved his father's dislike of Puritans. He had married a French Catholic, and the marriage was unpopular in Protestant England. Many MPs were either Puritans or sympathise d with them, and many of the wealth-creating classes were Puritan. But Charles took no notice of popular feeling, and he appointed and enemy of the Puritans, William Laud, as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Archbishop Laud brought back into Anglican Church many Catholic practices and tried to make the Scottish Kirk accept the same organisation as the Church in England. When Laud tried to introduce the new prayer back in Scotland in 1637 the result was national resistance to the introduction of bishops and what Scots thought of as Catholicism. - It is important to remember that Scotland and Ireland become parts of the same Empire with England In 1603, when Elizabeth died. - In spring 1638, Charles faced a rebel Scottish army. Without the help of Parliament he was only able to put together an inexperienced army. It marched north and found that the Scots had crossed the border.
Charles knew his army was unlikely to win against the Scots. So he agreed to respect all Scottish political and religious freedom, and also to pay a large sum of money to persuade the Scots to return home. It was impossible for Charles to find this money except through Parliament. This gave it the chance to end eleven years of absolute rule by Charles, and to force him to rule under parliamentary control. In return to its help, Parliament made Charles accept a new law which stated that Parliament had to go at least once every three years. However, as the months went by, it became increasingly clear that Charles was not willing to keep his agreements with Parliament.
Ruling by "divine right", Charles felt no need to accept its decisions. The Civil War- Cavaliers and Roundheads Events in Scotland made Charles depend on Parliament, but events in Ireland resulted in civil war. James I had continued Elizabeth's policy and had colonized Ulster, the northern part of Ireland. The Catholic Irish were sent off the land, and even those who had worked for Protestant settlers were now replaced by Protestant workers from Scotland and England. In 1641, Ireland exploded in rebellion against the Protestant English and Scottish settlers.
In London, Charles and Parliament quarrelled over who should control an army to defeat the rebels. Besides, Charles' friendship towards the Catholic Church increased Protestant fears. Already some Irish rebels claimed to be rebelling against the English Protestant Parliament, but not against the King. In 1642, Charles tried to arrest five MPs in Parliament. London locked its gates against the King, and Charles moved to Nottingham, where he gathered an army to defeat those MPs who opposed him. The civil war had started.
Most of the House of Lords and a few from the Commons supported Charles. The Royalists, known as "Cavaliers", controlled most of the north and west. But Parliament controlled the east and the Southeast, including London. Their short hair gave the Parliamentarian soldiers their popular name of "Roundheads". Parliament was supported by the navy, by most of the merchants and by the population of London. It therefore controlled the most important national and international sources of wealth.
The Royalists, on the other hand, had no way of raising money. By 1645, the Royalist army was unpaid and as a result soldiers either ran away, or stole from local villages and farms. In the end they lost their courage for the fight against the Parliamentarians and at Naseby in 1645, the Royalist army was defeated. Finally, as a consequence of the war, Parliament introduced new taxes, people rejected both armies and soldiers. Soldiers were uncontrolled. Execution of Charles I- Republican Britain- Oliver Cromwell- The Commonwealth- The Protectorate Several MPs had commanded the Parliamentarian army.
Of these, the strangest was an East Anglican gentleman farmer named Oliver Cromwell. He had created a new "model" army, the first regular force from which the British army of today developed. Instead of country people or gentry, Cromwell invited into his army-educated men who wanted to fight for their beliefs. Cromwell and his advisers had captured the King in 1645. Charles himself continued to encourage rebellion against Parliament even after he had surrendered and had been imprisoned.
Some puritan officers of the Parliamentarian Army demanded the King's death for treason. Two- thirds of the MPs did not want to put the king on trial. But the remaining fifty- three judged him and found him guilty of making war against his own kingdom and the Parliament. On 31st January 1649, King Charles was executed. The next eleven years saw the rule of the Commonwealth (1649-60). Parliament was supposed to be in control, but the real power lay with Cromwell and the army.
The Scots were shocked by Charles' execution. They invited his son, whom they recognised as King Charles II, to join them and fight against the English Parliamentary army. But they were defeated, and young Charles himself was lucky to escape to France. Scotland was brought under English republican rule. Disagreement between the army and Parliament resulted in Parliament's dissolution in 1653. Cromwell establishing the Protectorate (1653-58).
This was essentially a monarchy by another name, with Cromwell at its head. His rule was a time of rigid social and religious laws on radical Protestant lines. Cromwell had got rid of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican Church. However, a group called "Levellers" wanted a new equality among all men.
They wanted Parliament to meet every two years, and for most men over the age of 21 to have the right to elect MPs to it. They also wanted complete religious freedom. Levellers in the army rebelled, but their rebellion was defeated. Summing up, the result of Parliament's dissolution, was that from 1653 Britain was governed by Cromwell alone.
He became "Lord Protector". Cromwell's government divided the country into 11 districts, each under a major general, who were responsible not only for tax collection and justice, but for guarding public morality as well. His affords to govern the country through the army were extremely unpopular. Church attendance was compulsory. Horse racing and cockfights were banned, plays were prohibited, gambling dens and brothels were closed, as were many alehouses.
Drunkenness and blasphemy were harshly dealt with. People were also forbidden to celebrate Christmas and Easter. When Cromwell died in 1658, the Protectorate collapsed. In the end Oliver Cromwell had been just as dictatorial and autocratic as Charles and James had been.
He called Parliament when he needed money and dismissed it when it argued. The Restoration- Charles II- Whigs and Tories Richard Cromwell, Oliver's son, was not a good leader and the army commanders soon started to quarrel among themselves. One of these decided to act. In 1660 he marched to London, arranged for free elections and invited Charles II to return to his kingdom. The republic was over.
When Charles II returned to England, the laws and Acts of Cromwell's government were automatically cancelled. Charles managed his return with skill; he made peace with his father's enemies. Only those who had been responsible for his father's execution were punished. Parliament remained weak and Charles II shaved his father's belief in divine right. Charles II hoped to make peace between the different religious groups. He wanted to allow Puritans and Catholics who disliked the Anglican Church to meet freely.
But Parliament was strongly Anglican, and would not allow this. Parliament also knew that Charles himself was attracted to the Catholic Church and was always afraid that Charles II would become a Catholic. For this reason, Parliament passed the Test Act in 1673, which prevented any Catholic from holding public office. The first political parties appeared. One of these parties was a group of MPs who became known as "Whigs", a rude name for "cattle drivers". They were opposed by another group, nicknamed "Tories", an Irish name for "thieves".
The Tories upheld the authority of the Crown and the Church, and were natural inheritors of the "Royalist" position. The Whigs were not against the Crown, but they believed that its authority depended upon the consent of Parliament. These two parties became the basis of Britain's two-party parliamentary system of government. The struggle over Catholicism and the Crown became a crisis when news was heard of a Catholic plot to murder Charles and put his brother James on the throne.
In fact, the plan did not exist. It was a trick to frighten people and to make sure that James and the Catholics did not come to power. But Charles would not allow any interference with his brother's divine right to be King. So James II became King after his brother's death in 1685.
James II- War with Holland- The Great Plague- The Great Fire War with Holland resulted from competition in trade. The government engaged in war with Holland. The sycophants of the court, made fortunes rapidly, while the sailors mutinied from very hunger, the dockyards were unguarded and the ships were leaky and without rigging. It was at length determined to abandon all schemes of offensive war; and it soon appeared that even a defensive war was a task too hard for that administration.
The Holland fleet sailed up the Thames, and burned the ships of war which lay at Chatham. It was said that, on the very day of that great humiliation, the King feasted with the ladies of his seraglio, and amused himself with hunting a moth about the supper room. Then, everywhere men magnified Oliver Cromwell's valour, genius, and patriotism. Everywhere it was remembered how, when he ruled, all foreign powers had trembled at the name of England, how Holland, now so haughty, had crouched at his feet, and how, when it was known that Cromwell had died, Amsterdam was lighted up as for a great deliverance, and children ran along the canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead.
Even Royalists exclaimed that the state could be saved only by calling the old soldiers of the Commonwealth to arms. Soon the capital began to feel the miseries of a blockade. Fuel was scarcely to be procured. Tilbury Fort, the place where Elizabeth had, with manly spirit, hurled foul scorn at Parma and Spain, was insulted by the invaders. The roar of foreign guns was heard, for the first time, by the citizens of London.
In the Council it was seriously proposed that, if the enemy advanced, the Tower should be abandoned. Great multitudes of people assembled in the streets crying out that England was bought and sold. The houses and carriages of the ministers were attacked by the populace; and it seemed likely that the government would have to deal at once with an invasion and with an insurrection. The extreme danger, it is true, soon passed by.
A treaty was concluded once England achieved the trade position it wanted, and the nation was once more at peace. The discontent engendered by maladministration was heightened by calamities which the best administration could not have averted. While the ignominious war with Holland was raging, London suffered two great disasters: A pestilence, surpassing in horror any that during three centuries had visited the island. And scarcely had the pestilence ceased when a fire, such as had not been known in Europe since the conflagration of Rome under Nero, laid in ruins the whole city, from the Tower to the Temple, and from the river to the purlieus of Smithfield. The early spring of 1665 brought a sudden rise in the death rate in the poorer sections of London. The authorities ignored it.
As spring turned into one of the hottest summers in memory, the number of deaths escalated and panic set in. The nobility left the city for their estates in the country. They were followed by the merchants, and the lawyers. The Inns of Court were deserted.
Most of the clergy suddenly decided they could best minister to their flocks from far, far away. The College of Surgeons fled to the country, which did not stop several of its members from writing learned papers about the disease they had been at such pains to avoid. The court moved to Hampton Court Palace. By June the roads were clogged with people desperate to escape London.
The Lord Mayor responded by closing the gates to anyone who did not have a certificate of health. These certificates became a currency more valuable than gold, and a thriving market in forged certificates grew up. By mid July over 1,000 deaths per week were reported in the city. It was rumored that dogs and cats spread the disease, so the Lord Mayor ordered all the dogs and cats destroyed.
Author Daniel Defoe in his Journal of the Plague Years estimated that 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats were killed. The real effect of this was that there were fewer natural enemies of the rats who carried the plague fleas, so the germs spread more rapidly. Anyone in constant contact with plague victims, such as doctors, nurses, inspectors, were compelled to carry coloured staffs outdoors so that they could be easily seen and avoided. When one person in a house caught the plague the house was sealed until 40 days after the victim either recovered or died (usually the latter). Guards were posted at the door to see that no one got out. The guard had to be bribed to allow any food to passed to the inmates.
It was not unknown for families to break through the walls of the house to escape, and in several cases they carefully lowered a noose over the guard's head from an attic window and hung him so they could get away. Throughout the summer the death rate escalated, reaching a high of over 6,000 per week in August. From there the disease slowly receded until winter, though it was not until February of 1666 that King Charles thought it safe to return to the city. It is hard to say how many died, It is thought that over 100,000 people perished in and around London, though the figure may have been much higher. On the night of September 2, 1666, a small fire broke out in the premises of a baker's shop in Pudding Lane, London, perhaps started by the carelessness of a maid. In the close-packed streets of London, where buildings jostled each other for space, the blaze soon became an inferno.
Fanned by an east wind, the fire spread with terrifying speed, feeding on the tar and pitch commonly used to seal houses. After four days while helpless citizens stood by and watched the destruction of their homes, the wind mercifully died and the fire was stopped. Then the accounting took place. When a dazed populace took stock of the damage, they must have wondered if Armageddon had come. Fully 80% of the city was destroyed, including over 13,000 houses, 89 churches and 52 Company (Guild) Halls. The spiritual hub of the city, Old St. Paul's Cathedral, was nothing but rubble.
It was a disaster of unprecedented proportions. Within days of the fire's end, Christopher Wren submitted plans to Charles II for the complete rebuilding of the city. Christopher Wren was the greatest British architect of the time. Wren's grand scheme called for cutting wide avenues through the former warren of alleys and byways that had made up old London, opening up the city to light and air as it were. Charles liked the scheme, but he realized that the expense and the necessity of rebuilding as fast as possible made it unworkable.
Instead, he appointed Wren to rebuild the city's churches, including St. Paul's, a position the young architect filled brilliantly over the next fifty years. Wren also was responsible for building the Monument (1671-79), a memorial commemorating the fire. The Monument (on Monument Street, naturally!) is a slender column 202 feet high, which is the exact distance from its base to the site of the baker's shop where the fire began. The original plans for the Monument called for a statue of Charles II on top, but Charles objected to the honour, fearing that the people of London would then associate him with the disaster. Wren replaced the statue with a simple bowl with flames emerging. The Monument is open year round and can be climbed to gain a wonderful view of the city.
At the base is a mural depicting the story of the fire. One final note on the Great Fire: In 1986 the Baker's Company issued a somewhat belated apology for the fire (320 years late). Better late than never. Literary events during the Stuarts' reign John Milton (1608-1674), the only great epic poet in English.
He was born in the city of London, above the White Bear tavern, where Bread Street intersects Cheapside. John Milton entered St. Paul's School at the age of eleven, already well grounded in the humanistic disciplines. In addition to his studies in Greek, Latin, grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, history, geography, astronomy, and so on, young John Milton also acquired the rudiments of French, Italian and Hebrew, read freely in the English poets, and practised versifying the psalms. Milton was profoundly opposed to the Arminian free-will doctrines, strict disciplinary procedures, and ritualistic liturgy which had developed under Archbishop William Laud.
After a spiritual struggle from which he did not emerge without some marks of bitterness, he decided to forgo and ecclesiastical career. At the age of twenty-four, having received his degrees, he left Cambridge and retired to his father's estate at Horton, in Bucks. During his six years at Horton he wrote at least four poems which, had he never again set pen to paper, would assure him a place in the chronicle of English poetry. After that, he went on writing pastoral elegies and idylls. In 1638 he did a two-year tour of the Continent. He was received with great respect and made the acquaintance of such men as Galileo, G.B. Mans o (the patron of Tasso), and Lucas Holstein, librarian at the Vatican.
In 1939, and because of rumours of an approaching civil war, Milton hurried back to England. In 1641 he published his first prose pamphlet, Of Reformation in England. In 1641 also appeared Of Prelatical Episcopacy and Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence. In 1642 he published An Apology for Smectymnuus. These anti-prelatical tracts were indistinguishable from those of the Presbyterian party generally.
But about 1644 Milton's religious position henceforth, while too complex in its theological details for easy summary, was independent, not to say individualist, in its view of ecclesiastical discipline. In 1642 Milton got married. The misery of his marriage was a rude shock to Milton. He wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and he argued for a reinterpretation of the four forbiddingly explicit passages in Scripture which deal with the grounds for divorce. The judgement of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644), Tetrachord on (1645) and Colasterion (1645) all attempted to buttress the argument forth in the first divorce tract.
They won Milton only an unpleasant notoriety. When King Charles I was publicly executed, Milton took side of the radical party. He was appointed secretary for foreign tongues to the council of state. He wrote a book (Eikon Basi like) purporting that it had been written by Charles I while in prison.
It was a dangerous propaganda against the Puritans, and Milton was asked to reply it. His reply was Eikonoklastes., a well- received book by the radicals of his own party. In 1652 he went permanently and completely blind. The Restoration of Charles II was for Milton a disaster.
He was imprisoned for a while. Blind, elderly, impoverished, and alone, he sat down after the Restoration to compose the great epic poem called Paradise Lost. This book was about man's first disobedience, Satan and God. The publication of this book in 1667 was a success. In 1674 a second edition appeared and he divided the original ten books into twelve.
He died on November 8 of the same year and was buried in the church of St. Giles Cripple gate. John Dryden (1631-1700) was born into a country family at Ald winkle All Saints, on Aug. 9, 1631. He was an English poet, dramatist, and critic. His first notable poem was an elegy on the death of Cromwell (1659). In 1668 he published Of Dramatic Poesie, his first substantial critical discussion and one of the most important documents in English classical criticism. By 1672 he had made a reputation in the new "heroic" drama, of which the two parts of The Conquest of Granada (1670-1671) are the grandest example, and in sophisticated comedy- Sir Martin Marr- all (1668), The Wild Gallant (1669) and the admirable Marriage A-la-mode (1672) In 1670's he experimented with a form of tragedy, he wrote his finest play, All for Love: or, The World Well Lost (1677), based on Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
The works Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and The med all (1682) established what became one of the main genres in English Augustan literature, a new way of writing English satire. Dryden died on May 1, 1700, in London and was buried in Westminster Abbey. John Donne (1572-1631), was born in London. He was sent to Oxford to study, but he took no degree at either university because of his refusal to graduate, which was due to his wish to avoid taking the oaths of fealty to the Church of England which were imposed on undergraduates over sixteen and on all graduates.
He secretly married Anne More, his master's niece. When Donne's father-in-law knew that, he sent Donne to prison and secured his dismissal from the Lord Keeper's service, where Donne worked. Then, with no employment and with most of his patrimony exhausted, he had to secure a position worthy of his talents. In 1610 Donne published Pseudo- Martyr, dedicated to King James. In 1612 Donne wrote the Anniversaries, on the death of Sir Robert and Lady Drury's only daughter Elizabeth.
In 1615 the king made him one of his chaplains and commanded the University of Cambridge to confer on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In 1621 the King named Donne Dean of St. Paul's and he became one of the best-known preachers of the age. In 1624 he published Devotions, in where he recorded each stage of the serious illness he was suffering from. His poetry has had considerable influence in the present century. Donne founded what has been termed the "line of wit" in English poetry, also known as the "metaphysical" school. His influence was dominant in English poetry until after the restoration, when Dryden established new standards of state.
John Donne died on Mar. 31, at the age of fifty-nine. Ben Johnson (1573-1637), English dramatist and poet who ranks with Shakespeare and Marlowe as one of the three Elizabethan playwrights. He was born on June 11, 1573, in London. At Westminster School he was taught by William Camden, classical scholar and poet. Ben expressed gratitude to his master in verse and prose.
He dedicated the Folio version of Every man in his Humour to him. He acted from 1595 to 1598. After that, he first appeared in court records as a writer of plays. In late 1597 the first of his plays was played, The Case Is Altered. It was followed by Every man in his Humour. The principal actors in the play included Richard Burbage and William Shakespeare.
Johnson took part in the so-called War of the Theatres. It was fashionable to seek for personal allusions and hidden autobiography in Elizabethan plays, particularly those connected with the War of the Theatres. He wrote in 1601 Poetaster, The Return from Parnassus, Vol pone (1606), The Silent Woman (1609) and The Alchemist (1610). He also wrote in collaboration with Chapman, G., Marston and Inigo Jones. By 1612 he published the collection of the Epigrams, called by the poet "the ripest of my studies". After the death of King James in 1625 a long period of adversity began for the old poet: he had a lot of debts; he was stricken with palsy, then paralysis; King Charles neglected him; his later plays et failure on the stage and lampoons from his rivals.
But old age, poverty and sickness did not destroy his dedication to literature. In 1633 he prepared a collection of poems called Eupheme. He also left an incomplete pastoral comedy, The Sad Shepherd. He died Aug. 6, 1637. He was imitated by Her rik and the Cavaliers; Dryden and Pope admired and followed him as the embodiment of classicism; writers of Restoration and eighteen-century comedy were also strongly influenced by him. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, was a born storyteller, capable of writing narratives of great imaginative power and dramatic suspense.
His characters were vivid and racy types in spite of such allegorical names. He was a shrewd observer of both material and spiritual things. Pilgrim's Progress (1678) narrated the difficult journey of Christian through the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, and other places, on his way to the Celestial City. Pilgrim's Progress, the Second Part (1684) was the story of Christiana and her children following the same route as Christian to the Celestial City.
Her experiences were less terrifying than those of her husband, but she met with some memorable new characters. All these fictions have passages displaying Bunyan's great narrative qualities, and all were popular reading among the dissenting lower classes. The immediate public reception of Pilgrim's Progress was unprecedented in English publishing. Since the book has been translated into more than a hundred languages and it has gradually come to be accepted as one of the classics of world literature. FINAL CONCLUSIONS The Stuarts monarchs quarrelled with Parliament and this resulted in civil wars.
As we have seen, the important changes did not take place simply because the Stuarts were bad rulers. They resulted from basic change in society. During the 17th century, economic power moved ever faster into the hands of the merchant and land owing farmer classes. The crown could no longer raise money or govern without their cooperation. These groups, represented by the House of Commons, demanded in return of money political power. The victory of the Commons and the classes it represented was unavoidable.
There were also a historic period between 1649 and 1660 in which England was a Republic without King or Queen.
Bibliography
Shores, L. (1964) Collier's Encyclopedia.
Volumes 4-8-16-13. The Collier Publishing Company. England Glover, A.J. (1960) A First Approach to English Literature.
J.M. Dent & Sons LTD. England Kenneth, O.M. (1984) The Oxford Illustrated history of Britain Oxford University Press.