When the English colonists of North America rebelled against a distant Parliament, they were simply carrying on a tradition of resistance against power which has easily visible roots in the Magna Carta. However, not many Americans know that there was a much more recent event in English history which certainly formed some of the impetus behind the American Revolution.
Background to the English Civil War
Contrary to popular belief, medieval kings did not maintain a god-like rule over their subjects. Leaders had always had to contend with popular sentiment and, in particular, with the desperation of subjects oppressed beyond hope. Time and again, the peasants seen as humble and dull through modern eyes had risen up for one reason or another and threatened autocratic rule. Christian political theories dating back to the time when the Roman Empire still controlled or influenced Western Europe declared that rulers owed their place in society to the common people and were responsible to God for proper rule.
The Reformation created a conflict with this underlying idea. With Martin Luther's struggle against Christian leaders in Rome, a new theory developed to justify religious divisions.
Cujus regio eius religio. The phrase means that the religion of the king was to be the religion of the state over which he ruled. Suddenly, the king's role became that of a representative of God. He ruled, you might say, in persona Christi much as the priest stood in for Christ during the liturgy of the Church.
In England, the result was unlikely and unexpected. Queen Elizabeth I ruled over the struggling nation for more than 40 years during the late 16th century. She provided stability and steady international success but she also headed the English Church, newly liberated from Rome's oversight, during a time when many Protestant sects were splintering in different directions. She was a symbol of unity and, in some ways perhaps, a stand in for the Blessed Virgin Mary for people recently adhering to the new doctrines of Anglicanism. Most of the country was still Catholic when she died in 1603 but the Anglican Church was undoubtedly the state church.
After the death of Elizabeth, Protestants in England went on to even greater heights. Under her successor, James I, the King James Bible was translated and published. This translation is still prized today among many Protestant denominations.
However, the splintering impulse natural to Protestantism could not be suppressed. Many English Protestants wished to follow in the footsteps of continental and Scottish Protestants who had done more than simply alter a few doctrines while continuing to celebrate and adorn Christianity in the Catholic fashion.
The Puritans, remembered across the Atlantic as the founders of the American colonies, were members of a movement like many others on the continent. This movement sought to restore an imagined Biblical simplicity to society. Priests and bishops were scorned as accretions to the natural Church of Christ, though they were mentioned in biblical texts and described thoroughly in the texts of the earliest Christians, such as St. Justin Martyr and Clement of Rome.
Puritans, therefore, could not tolerate the way that Anglican bishops and priests were supported by the State and funded by taxation. Their conflict with the successor of King James, Charles I, was primarily religious.
Another factor counted strongly against the hegemony or divine right of the kings of England. Ever since the Magna Carta, the power of parliament had grown little by little. In its nascent form, it had served simply as an advisory body to the king which could potentially counter him only in matters which offended a large majority of nobles.
Over time, though, the power of parliament had grown. To raise taxes, the king now needed permission from Parliament. This body wielded power simply because it represented nobles, other landowners and wealthy men who could not give the king orders but could withhold funding.
The members of parliament were also entirely from the Anglican Church. Their membership in this new ecclesiastical formation was not simply a matter of theological choice. Many, if not most, of the members of Parliament owed their present wealth to acquisitions made when King Henry VIII had shut down monasteries and convents and run off the monks and nuns inhabiting them just a century before. The continuation of the state Church was important to them.
The nobles and the Puritans made unlikely allies but they found themselves with a shared concern about Charles I. The focus of this concern revolved around his French Catholic wife, Henrietta Marie. Charles had married her right at the beginning of his reign. For Puritans this was an abomination but even for the members of Parliament it was disconcerting, even if they were accustomed to royal marriages bridging cultural gaps for the sake of alliances.
Many other issues complicated the relationship between the King, his people and their representatives. Frustrated with the Parliament's stubbornness, Charles essentially suspended that political body by failing to call for its gathering during a period now known as the Eleven Years' Tyranny.
By 1640, though, the king was desperately in need of increased funding. He called for a Parliament to assemble. Instead of discussing his financial concerns, though, the newly convened body immediately began to direct grievances towards him. The members began to pass laws, including one which forbid the King to dissolve their assembly without their permission.
Stage One (1642-1646)
Charles I decided that Parliament had overstepped its bound by late 1641. In January of 1642, he led troops to capture certain leading members of that representative body. When they entered the meeting hall, they could not find these leaders since they had been tipped off and had already fled. Nor would anyone confess knowledge of there whereabouts.
As summer approached, tensions rose. The king tried to correspond with Parliament but could not make any advancement of his cause. Towns corresponded using improved roads and the printing press and they slowly began to take sides. The conflict at this point remained at the level of local brawls. However, many towns remained neutral. The mass of the Royal Navy sided with the Parliament.
When it became clear that war could not be avoided, Charles I rallied 2,000 cavalry at Nottingham and began to collect more troops to follow his standard. Parliament also began to create an army under the Duke of Essex. The royalists were commonly known as cavaliers and the forces supporting Parliamentary rule were known as roundheads.
Initially, the King's forces fared well in the North and in Wales and Cornwall. Ironically, these were the last bastions of Catholicism in the country, though the King proudly proclaimed that he was fighting to uphold the Protestant religion. Parliament found most support in large cities and the south of England.
It was not until 1644 that the forces of Parliament were able to secure victory in the North. Royalists remained stubbornly strong, though, in Wales and Cornwall. It was not until the summer of 1645 that the Royal Army was finally defeated in the battles of Naseby and Langport.
In May of 1646, circumstances forced the King to seek shelter with a Scottish Army. They soon turned him over to Parliament and the first stage of the Civil War came to an end. The kingdom of England now referred to itself as the Commonwealth, ruled over by an assembly of nobles and other representatives of powerful interests in England.
Stage Two (1648-1649)
Though he was a prisoner, Charles I managed to communicate with the Scots and negotiated a deal. In return for their invasion of England and assistance returning him to the throne, he would establish Presbyterianism in England for three years.
As 1648 began, there were a number of separate uprisings in favor of the royal cause. One by one, they were put down by Parliamentarian forces, some of them led by Oliver Cromwell, an elected member of Parliament and a Puritan who would later rise to executive power in the new regime.
Part of the deal made after the end of the first stage of the Civil War was an agreement that all captured royalists would not return to arms for their cause. Those who did so in this second stage of the war were harshly treated and often executed.
Trial and Execution of Charles I
Naturally, the roundheads were furious with the king for finding a way to reopen the war. Many of the Parliamentarians had actually been interested in keeping the monarchy in a reduced role in the future. Now, they saw the actions of Charles I as pure treason. Put on trial, he was found guilty and executed in January 1649.
All participants in both the trial and the execution were aware of the gravity of their deeds. Not a single country in Europe would ever provide them with refuge after executing a king. Any return of monarchy would also bring with it their own downfall. Their struggle now was one of life or death.
Stage Three (1649-1651)
Ireland had entered a state of general rebellion in 1641 and had not since returned to the control of England. It was largely controlled by a confederation of Irish leaders. Civil war had also torn apart Scotland since 1644.
Under Cromwell, Parliamentarian forces ruthlessly suppressed all rebellion in Ireland. More than 450 years later, the Irish still remember this invasion with acrimony. A massacre of more than 3,000 prisoners after one particular siege demonstrated for Catholics that the new regime meant to eradicate their presence in the New Order that would rule England.
The son of Charles I landed in Scotland in 1650 to raise an army against the Parliamentarians to the south. Oliver Cromwell was recalled from Ireland to fight Charles II in Scotland. Cromwell's force was called the New Model Army since it was formed to be a standing army that could serve anywhere and was not tied down to a region like many militias and garrisons of the time.
Over the course of a year, Cromwell eliminated the royalist threat and chased Charles II into southern England. The heir to the throne eventually escaped to France in 1652.
Eventually, Cromwell and Parliament came to a parting of ways as the country tried to settle down into a peace of some sorts after the flight of the would-be king. In 1653, Cromwell used his military might to force Parliament to dissolve and took over the reins of government himself. The new regime was known as the Protectorate.
