The end of the Personal Rule

The Scots revolt

The historian, the earl of Clarendon wrote: 

‘a small, scarce discernible cloud arose in the north, which was shortly after attended with a storm’.

The collapse of the personal rule was brought about by events in Scotland, highlighting Charles’s problems as the monarch of multiple kingdoms. Just as he attempted to impose uniformity on England, so he tried to bring Scottish religious practice in line with England’s. 

James VI had presided over an uneasy compromise in Scotland. Since the Reformation the country had had a Presbyterian rather than an Anglican church structure. In 1610 James had restored bishops, but he allowed the Presbyterian structure to continue at lower levels. His policy was to make Scottish religion more conformable to Anglican norms, but he sensibly did not push the Scots too far.

Charles was more out of touch with Scottish affairs than his father had been. He did not visit Scotland until 1633, and the Scots were deeply hurt by the fact that he had waited for eight years before he was crowned in Scotland. They were also offended that he chose Holyrood rather than the more traditional Scone or Stirling, and that the ceremony was conducted before a raised altar behind which was a tapestry into which was woven a crucifix. 

In 1636 Charles issued a new 'Book of Canons', regulating worship according to the Anglican pattern, based on the English canons of 1604. These were imposed by royal prerogative without consultation. The Scots Privy Council was treated as a rubber stamp and was ordered to command the use of the new prayer book when it was ready in 1637.

Archbishop Laud's
Book of Common Prayer
Public domain

The king's council in Scotland fixed Sunday 28 July for the introduction of the new Prayer Book throughout the country and announced that they themselves would mark the occasion by going in procession to St Giles' for the morning service. But as soon as the dean, Dr Hannah, began the service, the crowd at the back of the church rioted. The demonstration had been premeditated as the principal ministers, gentry, citizens and lords had had three months to consider their strategy. The religious fervour of the population was genuine. Even the ministers willing to use the Book could do so only if their congregations allowed them. Those who tried to defy their congregations faced violence. 

The riot against the Prayer Book,
 28 July 1637
Public domain

The National Covenant

In February 1638 the Scots bonded themselves together in a solemn oath refusing to comply with royal policy. The vast majority of nobles, lairds, ministers and others signed the National Covenant pledging to ‘maintain the true worship of God’ and the ‘true religion, liberties and laws of the kingdom’. 

The National Covenant of 1638
Huntley House Museum, Edinburgh
photograph, Kim Traynor

We promise and swear that we shall to the utmost of our power, with our means and lives, stand to ... the defence and preservation of the foresaid true religion ... against all sorts of persons whatsoever; so that whatsoever shall be done to the least of us for that cause shall be taken as done to us all in general, and to every one of us in particular.

This was a peaceful and distinctively Scottish form of complaint to Charles as King of Scots; unfortunately Charles reacted as King of England and interpreted this as a direct challenge to his rule. He decided to use military force to bring the Scots into line. 

But, being Charles, he also prepared to negotiate. In the summer of 1638 he dispatched the Marquis of Hamilton, one of the few Scots he trusted, to negotiate with the Covenanters, and authorized him to grant such important concessions as the calling of a Scots Parliament and the withdrawal of the Prayer Book. He also permitted a General Assembly to meet at Glasgow in November and was furious when this body abolished episcopacy in Scotland. In his private letters to Hamilton, Charles made it clear that any concessions to the Covenanters were only to win time; he would die ‘rather than yield to their impertinent and damnable demands’. He and Laud were convinced that severity alone would serve their purpose.

But Charles did not have support in England for his Scottish policies. Newspapers were prohibited, but the bolder Puritan booksellers circulated manuscript sheets containing information about the Scottish dispute. The dissident Scots lords had their agents and friends in England.

Military preparations

Charles did not have a standing army and he relied on the local militia. He raised money mainly from loans and ordered arms from the Low Countries. These were seen to be inadequate when they arrived. Finance was a huge problem. The Inns of Court and the City of London refused him a loan and a national refusal to pay Ship Money led to a taxpayers' strike. The delay gave the Scots ample opportunity to raise an army.

Alexander Leslie, the Covenanting leader
Public domain

The Covenanting leader was Alexander Leslie, a veteran of the Thirty Years' War, who had served in the Swedish army. The Scots army was staffed with professional soldiers, backed by a supportive population.

The First Bishops' War

In March Charles I left London to join his army at York, but when he arrived on 30 March the war was already lost. The Covenanters had consolidated their position by capturing Edinburgh Castle and Dumbarton, and Aberdeen. 

Every company in the Covenanting army had its standard stamped in gold letters, ‘For Christ’s Crown and Covenant’ and most had a piper or a fiddler to keep up their spirits. Their remarkable unity and good humour were owing both to Leslie’s skilful generalship and to the inspiration of the ministers who accompanied them.

Under the terms of the Pacification of Berwick (19 June), Charles agreed to call another Scots Parliament (which he would open in person) and a General Assembly at Edinburgh - which subsequently ratified the abolition of episcopacy in Scotland.

From Charles’s point of view, perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the first Bishops’ War was the mistrust and discontent it revealed among his own soldiers and their officers. It is now known that dissident peers, Lord Brooke, viscount Seye and Sele, and his son, Nathaniel, were in secret communications with the Covenanters in the summer of 1639. These links also extended to Ulster Protestants. All this proved that Charles’s critics in his three kingdoms had similar grievances and were prepared to make common cause. 


Feeling the need for strong counsel, Charles asked Wentworth to return to England. He arrived in September and promptly advocated a hard-line policy: the Scots should be treated as rebels, Scotland should be conquered and made a dependency of the English crown, and the only way to achieve this was by war; for this, Charles would need money and would therefore have to summon Parliament. 

Wentworth (earl of Strafford from January 1640) believed that because he had successfully managed the Irish Parliament, a new English Parliament would present no problems.

The Short Parliament

On 13 April 1640, the Personal Rule ended when Parliament assembled. Contrary to Strafford’s optimistic predictions, the Commons had been elected on an anti-court programme, with Ship-money a major issue. Its leaders were Charles’s old opponents,  John Pym (this was his sixth Parliament), William Strode, John Hampden, and Denzil Holles. This Parliament refused to grant the subsidies Charles demanded in spite of his major concession - the repeal of Ship-money - until their religious and political grievances received a hearing. 

The Commons were supported by a minority of twenty-five peers, led by the earl of Bedford, described by Clarendon as 'the great contriver and designer in the House of Lords'. On the advice of Strafford, who promised him an Irish army of 8,000, Charles dissolved Parliament on 5 May - this was his fourth Parliament and the last he would be able to dissolve. It was the shortest in English history.

Meanwhile the Scots' agenda was now more militant - they now insisted that a lasting settlement could only be achieved by the abolition of episcopacy in England as well as Scotland.

In July the earl of Bedford and six other peers sent a letter to the Scots leaders in which, while refusing to invite a Scottish army into England, he promised to stand by the Scots in all legal and honourable ways.

The Second Bishops' War

In August the Scots, galvanized by their new radical agenda, seized the initiative when Leslie led an army of about 18,000 across the Tweed. On 28 August they routed a hastily assembled English army at Newburn. Then, while the English reinforced the fortifications of Berwick, they by-passed the town and went on to take Newcastle. The king fell back to York.

With suspicious synchronicity, Charles’s opponents among the English peerage signed a petition lamenting innovations especially the increase in popery and urging the king to summon another Parliament to redress grievances. This was probably drawn up by the former Commons’ opponents, John Pym and Oliver St John, who were clearly working with the Covenanting leaders. 


Charles responded to the petition by summoning a Great Council of Peers to York. When they met on 24 September, he immediately announced the summoning of a Parliament for 3 November. In the meantime his commissioners negotiated with the Scots and on 21 October concluded the Truce of Ripon: the Scots would remain in Newcastle and receive £850 a day from Charles until satisfactory terms were agreed by an English Parliament. It was a great humiliation but the king was playing for time, as the Covenanting ranks had begun to split.

Conclusion

1. Charles's attempt to foist an Anglican prayer book on the Scots was probably the greatest mistake of his reign. It inspired a spontaneous national revolt that was supported by his opponents in England.
2. The Scots revolt ended the personal rule and forced him to summon the Short Parliament.
3. His failure to reach a settlement with this parliament led to its dissolution, but by the end of 1640 he was forced to summon another parliament - one of the most revolutionary in English history.