March 10, 1629: Charles I dissolves the Parliament of England, beginning the eleven-year period known as the Personal Rule.

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Charles I of England, Charles Stuart, Earl of Stafford, English Civil War, King Charles I of England, Long Parliament, Parliament, Personal Rule, Rule of Tyranny, Short Parliament, Thomas Wentworth

In January 1629, Charles opened the second session of the English Parliament, which had been prorogued in June 1628, with a moderate speech on the tonnage and poundage issue. Members of the House of Commons began to voice opposition to Charles’s policies in light of the case of John Rolle, a Member of Parliament whose goods had been confiscated for failing to pay tonnage and poundage. Many MPs viewed the imposition of the tax as a breach of the Petition of Right.

When Charles ordered a parliamentary adjournment on March 2, 1629 members held the Speaker, Sir John Finch, down in his chair so that the ending of the session could be delayed long enough for resolutions against Catholicism, Arminianism and tonnage and poundage to be read out and acclaimed by the chamber. The provocation was too much for Charles, who dissolved Parliament on March 10, 1629 and had nine parliamentary leaders, including Sir John Eliot, imprisoned over the matter, thereby turning the men into martyrs, and giving popular cause to their protest.

Personal rule necessitated peace. Without the means in the foreseeable future to raise funds from Parliament for a European war, or the help of Buckingham, Charles made peace with France and Spain. The following eleven years, during which Charles ruled England without a Parliament, are referred to as the personal rule or the “eleven years’ tyranny”. Ruling without Parliament was not exceptional, and was supported by precedent. For example, during the reign of Henry VII Parliament met only on seven occasions between 1485 and 1509, and five of these were between 1485 and 1495. When Henry VII felt more secure, he no longer felt the need to call Parliament.

It was during the reign of Henry VIII and the Reformation Parliament, which sat from 1529 to 1536, which fundamentally changed the nature of Parliament and English government. The Reformation Parliament is where Parliament gained more power as the king began to depend on this legislative body to accomplish his agenda. The King had summoned it in order to settle what was called his ‘great matter’, his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which the Papacy in Rome was blocking.

Parliament had the power of the purse and only Parliament, however, could legally raise taxes, and without it Charles’s capacity to acquire funds for his treasury was limited to his customary rights and prerogatives. It was the abuse of these rights and prerogatives that lead to his downfall.

A large fiscal deficit had arisen in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I-VI. Notwithstanding the Earl of Buckingham’s short-lived campaigns against both Spain and France, there was little financial capacity for Charles to wage wars overseas. Unable to raise revenue without Parliament and unwilling to convene it, Charles resorted to other means. One was to revive conventions, often outdated.

The King also tried to raise revenue through ship money, demanding in 1634–1636 that the inland English counties pay a tax for the Royal Navy to counter the threat of privateers and pirates in the English Channel. Established law supported the policy of coastal counties and inland ports such as London paying ship money in times of need, but it had not been applied to inland counties before.

Many saw this as yet another extra-Parliamentary, illegal tax, which prompted some prominent men to refuse to pay it. Charles issued a writ against John Hampden for his failure to pay, and although five judges including Sir George Croke supported Hampden, seven judges found in favour of the King in 1638. The fines imposed on people who refused to pay ship money and standing out against its illegality aroused widespread indignation.

The end of Charles’s independent governance came when he attempted to apply the same religious policies in Scotland. The Church of Scotland, reluctantly episcopal in structure, had independent traditions. Charles wanted one uniform Church throughout Britain and introduced a new, High Anglican version of the English Book of Common Prayer to Scotland in the middle of 1637. This was violently resisted and riots broke out in Edinburgh.

Charles needed to suppress the rebellion in Scotland, but had insufficient funds to do so. He convened Parliament in 1640 because he needed to seek money from a newly elected English Parliament. Its majority faction, led by John Pym, used this appeal for money as a chance to discuss grievances against the Crown and oppose the idea of an English invasion of Scotland. Charles took exception to this lèse-majesté (offense against the ruler) and dissolved the Parliament after only a few weeks; hence its name, “the Short Parliament”.

Without Parliament’s support, Charles attacked Scotland again, breaking the truce at Berwick, and suffered comprehensive defeat. In 1639, Charles had recalled Thomas Wentworth to England and in 1640 made him Earl of Strafford, attempting to have him achieve similar results in Scotland. This time he proved less successful and the English forces fled the field at their second encounter with the Scots in 1640. Almost the whole of Northern England was occupied and Charles forced to pay £850 per day to keep the Scots from advancing. Had he not done so they would have pillaged and burnt the cities and towns of Northern England.

All this put Charles in a desperate financial state. As King of Scots, he had to find money to pay the Scottish army in England; as King of England, he had to find money to pay and equip an English army to defend England. His means of raising English revenue without an English Parliament fell critically short of achieving this. Against this backdrop, and according to advice from the Magnum Concilium (the House of Lords, but without the Commons, so not a Parliament), Charles finally bowed to pressure and summoned another English Parliament in November 1640.

Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford

The new Parliament proved even more hostile to Charles than its predecessor. It immediately began to discuss grievances against him and his government, with Pym and Hampden (of ship money fame) in the lead. Early in the Parliamentary sessions, known as the Long Parliament, the house overwhelmingly accused Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford of high treason and other crimes and misdemeanors. Charles sacrificed his friend and reluctantly signed the Bill of Attainer submitted by Parliament for Stanford’s execution. This Parliament would be the body that greatly opposed the king eventually leading to Civil War.

January 30, 1649: Execution of Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland.

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Commonwealth, Execution of Charles Stuart of England, House of Lords, King Charles I of England, Long Parliament, Pride's Purge, Privy Council, Rump Parliament, Thomas Pride

Charles’s beheading was scheduled for Tuesday, January 30, 1649. Two of his children remained in England under the control of the Parliamentarians: Elizabeth and Henry. They were permitted to visit him on January 29, and he bade them a tearful farewell. The following morning, he called for two shirts to prevent the cold weather causing any noticeable shivers that the crowd could have mistaken for fear: “the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some observers may imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation.”

He walked under guard from St James’s Palace, where he had been confined, to the Palace of Whitehall, where an execution scaffold had been erected in front of the Banqueting House. Charles was separated from spectators by large ranks of soldiers, and his last speech reached only those with him on the scaffold. He blamed his fate on his failure to prevent the execution of his loyal servant Strafford: “An unjust sentence that I suffered to take effect, is punished now by an unjust sentence on me.”

He declared that he had desired the liberty and freedom of the people as much as any, “but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in having government … It is not their having a share in the government; that is nothing appertaining unto them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things.” He continued, “I shall go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be.”

At about 2:00 p.m., Charles put his head on the block after saying a prayer and signalled the executioner when he was ready by stretching out his hands; he was then beheaded with one clean stroke. According to observer Philip Henry, a moan “as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again” rose from the assembled crowd,some of whom then dipped their handkerchiefs in the king’s blood as a memento.

The executioner was masked and disguised, and there is debate over his identity. The commissioners approached Richard Brandon, the common hangman of London, but he refused, at least at first, despite being offered £200. It is possible he relented and undertook the commission after being threatened with death, but there are others who have been named as potential candidates, including George Joyce, William Hulet and Hugh Peterrs. The clean strike, confirmed by an examination of the king’s body at Windsor in 1813, suggests that the execution was carried out by an experienced headsman.

Cromwell was said to have visited Charles’s coffin, sighing “Cruel necessity!” as he did so. The story was depicted by Delaroche in the nineteenth century.

It was common practice for the severed head of a traitor to be held up and exhibited to the crowd with the words “Behold the head of a traitor!” Although Charles’s head was exhibited, the words were not used, possibly because the executioner did not want his voice recognized. On the day after the execution, the king’s head was sewn back onto his body, which was then embalmed and placed in a lead coffin.

The commission refused to allow Charles’s burial at Westminster Abbey, so his body was conveyed to Windsor on the night of February 7. He was buried in private on February 9, 1649 in the Henry VIII vault in the chapel’s quire, alongside the coffins of Henry VIII and Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. The king’s son, Charles II, later planned for an elaborate royal mausoleum to be erected in Hyde Park, London, but it was never built.

The execution of Charles I had been carried out by the Rump Parliament. The Rump was created by Pride’s Purge when Colonel Thomas Pride forcibly removed from the Long Parliament all those members who supported the King and were not supporters of the Grandees in the New Model Army and the Independents. Many historians consider called it a coup d’état.

Just before and the execution of King Charles I, the Rump Parliament passed a number of Acts of Parliament creating the legal basis for the republic. After the execution of Charles I, the House of Commons abolished the Monarchy, the Privy Council and the House of Lords, and declared the people of England “and of all the Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging” to be henceforth under the governance of a “Commonwealth”, effectively a republic. The House of Commons now had unchecked executive and legislative power. The English Council of State, which replaced the Privy Council, took over many of the executive functions of the monarchy.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

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1789, Bastille Day, Charles I of England, Colonel Thomas Pride, English Civil War, French Revolution, July 14, Long Parliament, Lord Strafford, Louis XVI, Oliver Cromwell, Parliament, Pride's Purge

Saturday is Bastille Day where they celebrate the 1789 storming of the Bastille which was the start of the French Revolution. Since I don’t write long posts on the weekends I thought I would take the celebration of Bastille Day to examine how monarchies adapt and survive. Although Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, did not survive the French Revolution the monarchy in France did limp on for a few decades after it was restored following the Napoleonic period. The question I ask is where did Louis XVI go wrong? Where did Charles I of England & Scotland go wrong in the 1640s culminating in his beheading in 1649? Did each have a part to play in their demise? Ah, so many questions. I often think history is complex and I personally eschew simple cause and effect answers. Generally many factors play into the events of history. So in this small little blog I will examine some of the factors that caused the downfall of these people and also examine, in the big picture, how monarchies that survive to this day, have been able to adapt.

Louis XVI, King of France and Navarre (1774-1792)

Shortly after the storming of the Bastille the French royal family was forcibly removed from the opulent Palace at Versailles to the Tuileries Palace in Paris where they lived as virtual prisoners. For a brief period of time Louis did enjoy a considerable level of popularity. Initially the abolition of the monarchy was not the goal of the revolutionaries. If they had a clear goal it was to end the absolutist nature of the crown and to bring it under the control of a constitution which limited its powers. Much of the fight was between those supporting changes, sometimes radical changes, and those who wished to preserve the monarchy. Louis was indecisive and in his heart he was the King and his heritage and tradition taught that it was the king that wielded the reigns of power. Other factors were his unpopular wife, and Austrian royal by birth, and many rightfully feared that the king and the queen would draw Austria and other absolute monarchies to their side. Invasion of France by foreign powers in support of the monarchy was a constant threat. There was distrust all around on both sides.

In the end because of their shoddy treatment Louis and his family tried to escape their prison like existence in the Tuileries Palace but were caught and returned to Paris. Louis was also secretly planning, with the aid of loyal ministers, his escape once again and the appeal to foreign powers for their aid in restoring the monarchy and ending the revolution. Before they could implement these plans Louis and Marie Antoinette were arrested and the evidence of their dealings with foreign powers to regain power was their undoing and the reasons for being executed for high treason. What if questions are impossible to answer. Had Louis not conspired with foreign powers, had his queen been more popular, would he have lost his head, or was it inevitable?

Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland (1625-1649)

For eleven years Charles ruled as an absolute monarch in a country not used to absolute monarchs. during that time he ruled without calling Parliament. Even his more powerful predecessors, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, still had to wrestle with ministers and Parliament from time to time. Henry had a formidable will and Elizabeth also had a formidable will along with diplomatic skills and feminine charm. As with the case with Louis XVI the seeds for revolution were sown in the past. For Charles the problem concerned with who wielded the power, the Crown or Parliament? The struggle for power between the two entities had a long tradition and in viewing the threads of history it can be seen that the the two would eventually bump heads. Charles did abuse his power during those eleven years of personal rule. He raised taxes illegally and forced loans upon his people.

In 1640 the call of war beckoned in the form of the Bishops War when Charles wanted to force an episcopal style of worship on his Scottish subjects. In order to accomplish his tasks he needed to raise funds and for that he needed Parliament. Charles called two Parliaments within a short time which were distrusting of the king. There was actually distrust on both sides. Despite many concessions given to Parliament by the king there was still a struggle between both the Crown and Parliament. An event that pushed the two parties closer to war was the handling of Lord Strafford. Lord Strafford was the king’s deputy in Ireland and when Parliament could not prove a charge of treason against him the House of Commons resorted to passing a Bill of Attainder which did not require proof of guilt for the conviction of high treason only the king’s signature.

The king knew Strafford to be innocent of the charges and yet the king also knew to ignore the Bill from the House of Commons would trigger war. So the king sent Strafford to slaughter as a sacrificial lamb. Upon Straffords death Ireland fell into chaos fearing reprisals by a protestant army. As tensions continued to rise Charles entered Parliament with 400 troops to arrest 5 members on charges of treason. This failed miserably as the members had been tipped off and flew the coup. The speaker of the House of Commons told the king he was a servant of Parliament and not the king.

Fearing for his safety Charles left London and the English Civil War had begun. It would last, off and on, until 1649 with the defeat of the king and his execution for high treason. Even with an assured victory for Parliament at the end of the war it was still possible for the king to keep not only his head but his crown as well. Toward the end of 1648 the king was willing to negotiate and accept the concessions of Parliament and rule with limited powers. Parliament was willing to accept him and have him return to power. So what happened? Colonel Thomas Pride and his troops scored a military coup d’état and purged Parliament of all those that supported the king. With nothing left but the rump of the Long Parliament and the remaining members who were anti-monarchist, Charles was convicted of high treason and executed.

I could go one with more examples, such as Wilhelm II of Germany, Nicholas II of Russia, Constantine II of Greece etc. It may be impossible to examine these monarchies and answer the question “was there something these monarchs could have done differently to save either themselves or their thrones?” Was their demise inevitable? We’ll never know. One thing I do observe from the tapestry of history is that the monarchies that have survived were the ones that were willing to adapt to changes. Those that wanted to keep the status quo and retain power were the ones that failed and ended up in the trash bin of history. The source of the change seems to have come from the majority of the people in these states and the problem seems to be that the monarchies would not, or could not, either listen to the changes in the wind or see the proverbial hand writing on the wall.