History Bite The English Revolution More than a century before the French sent King Louis XVI to the guillotine in 1793, the English beheaded their king, Charles I, in 1649. Most history books still call it a civil war. But it was really an English revolution. Charles I was king of England from 1625 to 1649. And up until the bitter end, he insisted that he had a divine and absolute right to rule over every man, woman, and child in Britain. He believed he was an agent of God. The problem for Charles, however, was that by the time he became king in 1625, the British Parliament was filled with Calvinists who begged to differ on the divine status of their king. Indeed, the Calvinists in Britain had long believed their Anglican kings and queens were just too close to being Catholic; and Charles gave good cause for their concern. He was, in fact, a Protestant king with heavily Catholic leanings. His queen was a Catholic from France. He used Irish Catholic troops against Scottish Calvinists when they rebelled against his attempts to seize greater control over the Church of Scotland. His efforts to support Protestants against Catholics during the Thirty Years War seemed half-hearted. And when Catholics in Ireland turned against their Protestant overlords in 1641, it looked as though the king was sympathetic to the Catholic side. Added to this, the king repeatedly dissolved Parliament whenever it voiced opposition to his plans; and he used the secretive Court of Star Chamber to prosecute his enemies. By 1641, members of Parliament had had enough of their divinely ordained king. They presented Charles with a list of grievances which has come to be known as the Grand Remonstrance. Charles refused to settle the grievances in the way Parliament requested and he softly reasserted his absolute power over the state as king of England. Two weeks later, on January 5, 1642, Charles made an error which would cost him his life. He ordered the arrest of five members of Parliament for treason, alleging they had colluded with Scottish forces against the Crown. And it was true. They had in fact colluded with Scottish forces against the Crown. But Charles entered the House of Commons by force to make the arrests. He was the first and last British monarch to ever do so. It was an act akin to the President of the United States entering the United States Congress by force to arrest five of its members. It represented a complete breakdown of government, and it stripped Charles of his legitimacy as king. To add insult to injury, Charles wasn’t even able to make the arrests. The five alleged traitors had been forewarned of their arrests and were absent. Parliament responded by immediately seizing control of London. The king fled the city, marshaled his troops against Parliament, and the English Civil War had begun. There were no freedom fighters in the English Civil War. Nobody was fighting for individual liberty. Each side was fighting to impose its rule and its religious beliefs. In the end, Charles lost the war to the forces of Parliament, which were led by a brilliant military strategist and tactician named Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was himself a member of Parliament, a Congregationalist, and a religious fanatic. He was also a monster who would go on to murder thousands of his own countrymen and commit genocide in Ireland. He truly hated Catholics, believing the Catholic Church was the Antichrist, and he was no fan of the Church of England either. Cromwell rose to power by reforming and controlling the army; and by 1645, he had defeated the bulk of the king’s forces. He created a professional, full-time fighting force instead of relying on the usual practice of assembling a patchwork of noble dilettantes and conscripts as the need arose. He was terribly effective too. In 1646, Charles surrendered to the Scots. A few years later, on January 20, 1649, the king was tried for treason. King Charles I was subsequently found guilty, sentenced to death, and beheaded ten days later on January 30, 1649. It was the beginning of the end for the divine right of kings in Europe.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 00:30:34 +0000
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