Charles I: the king and his kingdoms

Here is some background detail that may be a bit dry but is essential in understanding the background to the Civil War.

Charles I, by Gerrit van Honthorst
(1628). Public domain

A composite monarchy

In March 1625 James I, the first Stuart monarch, died and his son succeeded as Charles I. Through his father James I and VI Charles was the inheritor of a 'composite monarchy', England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The component parts constantly interacted with each other, yet the kingdoms (apart from England and Wales) were not united. There were three parliaments, one in Westminster and two single-chamber parliaments in Edinburgh and Dublin. The Scottish parliament was nominally independent, but the Dublin parliament was subject to Westminster. 

A Charles I sixpence showing him as King of England, Scotland,
and Ireland (and showing as well that the kings of England
were still laying claim to the French throne)

Law and the state

England had a single common law, an amalgam of ancient custom. Roman law and case-law. The thirteenth century saw the emergence of a two-chamber Parliament comprising the Houses of Lords and Commons. Parliament’s central purposes were

1. to advise the monarch of what was happening in the localities
2. to collaborate with the Crown in the passing of acts of Parliament (statutes)
3. to vote taxes (the ‘extra-ordinary revenue’ of the Crown)

The period of the Reformation in the 1530s had established the King-in-Parliament as the supreme legislative authority in England. This meant that by the accession of James I in 1603 monarchs were more powerful when they acted in collaboration with Parliament and the law and when they governed with the consent of the political elite than if they tried to rule alone. One peer declared

The truth is the Kings of England are never in their glory, in their splendour, in their Majestic Sovereignty, but in Parliaments. … The King out of Parliament has a limited, a circumscribed Jurisdiction. But waited on by his Parliament, no Monarch of the East is so absolute. Quoted Leanda de Lisle, The White King (2018), p. 41.

Though the Crown possessed some discretionary powers, the ‘royal prerogative’, it was widely thought that such powers were granted and defined by the common law. The Crown could issue proclamations, dealing with administrative, economic, and social matters, but they were regarded as inferior to common law and statute.


But though it was agreed that sovereignty rested with the King-in-Parliament, there was no constitutional requirement for Parliament to be sitting all the time. Elizabeth and the early Stuarts summoned Parliament either when they needed money, or in times of exceptional emergency.

The Crown had no police force to impose its will. The total number of paid government officials was fewer than 2,000. The government was entirely dependent on the voluntary co-operation of local nobles and gentry for the collection of taxes, the training of the militia, the enforcement of laws, the trial of most criminals. The local elites held offices such as justice of the peace, deputy lieutenant, lord lieutenant on royal commissions. Far from being all-powerful, Stuart government rested on co-operation.

Taxation

Historically, royal revenues had been divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’.

1. Ordinary: from Crown lands, customs duties, feudal revenues, the profits of justice and (after 1534) from the Church. By 1603 these sources were generating a total income of around £350,000 per annum. However, in the early seventeenth century government was becoming more expensive and the Crown increasingly needed to supplement its revenue.
2. Extra-ordinary: this was direct taxation, which could only be levied with the consent of Parliament. By the last decades of Elizabeth’s reign, these direct taxes were becoming a regular part of the royal income. Although they accounted for only ten per cent of royal revenue, the Crown was unable to wage war without them.

Religion

Under the Tudors England had repudiated papal jurisdiction and then embarked on a Protestant Reformation. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, the Church of England had developed its own sense of identity, resting on the fiction that every Englishman, by virtue of being an Englishman, was a member of the Church of England.

But not all were easy with this vision. The most vociferous critics came from within the Church, from those loosely called ‘Puritans’. The more extreme loathed the remnants of Catholicism found within the Church and looked abroad to the example of ‘the best reformed Churches’, especially Calvinist Geneva and the Scottish Kirk. The Puritans had developed their own culture - that of the ‘godly’. They were inspired by a doctrine of providence, the vision of a directly interventionist God and of a nation under divine guidance.


The ‘Puritans’ did not separate from the Church but others did. The most notable were the ‘Brownists’, who were largely rooted out by persecution during Elizabeth’s years. Their model of church government was of individual congregations. These people were later to be called ‘Independents’.

Outside Ireland, where they were a persecuted majority, Catholics were marginalized and regarded as potential traitors. Arguably, the most powerful religious sentiment in England was anti-Catholicism.

Scotland and Ireland

In 1560 the Scottish Reformation had established the reformed Kirk, Calvinist in doctrine and autonomous from the state. Instead of episcopacy the Kirk developed a classically Calvinist structure of presbyteries run by ministers and lay elders. This development was not to the liking of James VI, who regarded bishops as the natural supporters of the Crown. 

In the sixteenth century waves of English settlers displaced the native Irish. In the early seventeenth century Ulster was ‘planted’ with English and Scottish settlers. These settlers were Protestant, though they were less than five per cent of the population. This meant that Catholicism became the distinctive mark of Irish identity, while the English regarded the Irish as savages.

Conclusion

Charles I inherited a peaceful country, but there were underlying issues that could cause tension.

1. The complications arising from the nature of a composite monarchy. 
2. The increasing financial problems of the Crown.
3. Religious divisions and the difficulty of uniting all the peoples of the British Isles into a single church.