Causes – Why did war break out in 1642?

Time Title Content
Introduction: A slide into war?
[1.06] In July 1642 the MP, lawyer and, when it came to war, Parliamentarian Bulstrode Whitelocke spoke in the House of Commons giving vent to his fears of what the looming war would bring, anticipating that the peace and prosperity that England and hitherto enjoyed was being thrown away by a nation that had succumbed to sinfulness, wickedness and debauchery.
[01.33] In an oft quoted passage, Whitelocke confessed himself perplexed by how things had come to war:
“It is strange to note how we have insensibly slid into the beginning of a civil war by one unexpected accident after another, as waves of the sea which have brought us thus far”.
Whitelocke could not discern a clear path of causation which had led the nation to the brink of Civil War, and he fell back on an image of an irresistible slide to war brought about by a succession of unexpected and apparently unconnected accidents as incoherent as waves crashing on the seashore.
[02.11] His near contemporary, Edward Hyde MP, who became a Royalist in the Civil War and was later created Earl of Clarendon, expressed similar views when he somewhat later tried to analyse the origins and causes of the war, writing about a “General combination and universal apostasy[1] in the whole nation”, which led to “total and prodigious alteration and confusion”.  He talked about passages, accidents and actions by which the seed plots of civil war were created.
[02.45] Tempting as it might be to follow Whitelocke and Clarendon in ascribing the origins of the Civil War to a mixture of indolence, unspecified sinfulness, God’s displeasure, random, unconnected accidents and to just ‘one-damn-thing-after-another’ school of thought, academic historians seek and often claim to find deeper, more rational, more coherent causes of the Civil War.
[03.10] Key Causes Most historians investigating the origins and causes of the Civil War note a number of problems and potential causes of division lurking in the late Tudor and early Stuart state.
1. Increasing inequality First, England was a populous and, overall, quite a prosperous kingdom.  Between 1540 and 1640 it enjoyed a century of sustained demographic expansion, with the population size very nearly doubling in 100 years, and clear evidence that trade, commerce, and manufacturing were also expanding.  Many people and families were doing well, including many members of the landed elite, the gentry, the sort of people who dominated local county government and were also elected as MPs when Parliament was called.
[03.53] There was also an urban elite in London and other large provincial towns, again often prospering off the back of trade and commerce, but in a period of rapid population expansion, the laws of supply and demand meant that those at the bottom of the social scale are doing far less well.  The real price of food and drink and other staples, as well as of rents, was rising.  The real value of wages was, in many cases, falling and underemployment and unemployment were growing in the late Tudor and early Stuart state.  If the rich were getting richer, many of the poor were getting poorer and more people were falling into semi-destitution.  There were growing social fears of a tide of paupers and vagrants and attempts to deal with the deserving and undeserving poor.
[04.41] 2. Government Second, England and also Wales, which had been effectively united and brought under England in the reign of Henry VIII, had a fairly well-established system of government, overseen by a hereditary monarch, who possessed extensive prerogative powers. The Crown was Head of the Executive Arm, comprising the Privy Council, Officers of State and Government departments, of the legislative arm, comprising Parliaments, which it could call and dissolve as required, and of the judicial arm, but there were potential problems with the system of government which had slowly evolved and which depended so much on a powerful, hands-on monarch.  Thus, there were grey areas where the extent and limits of royal powers, especially in relation to the rights of the people as expressed in Parliament, were not clear.
[05.33] A monarch was expected to take on and execute additional powers in time of war or national emergency, but the nature and extent of those extra powers were not clearly set out.  Moreover, this system of government relied very much on the individual monarch, on his or her own personality on approach, policy preference and choices, diligence and competences.  If the monarch of the day neglected royal duties, delegated too much power to an individual or favourite, proved to pursue a particular policy which was out of kilter with popular opinion and what was viewed as in the national interests, or sought to enhance royal powers beyond the norm, all sorts of strains and tensions could quickly arise, and they did arise at times during the reigns of every monarch of this period.
[06.24] 3. Finance Third, state finance was also controlled by the Crown, which received income from a variety of sources and then spent that money, not only supporting itself and the royal family, the court and household, but also to cover most of the costs of governing the nation, but in the late Tudor and early Stuart period, the Crown was trying to get by with what was, in effect, a medieval financial system and, in an age of inflation and spiralling costs in some areas of government, particular warfare and the military, this meant that the royal income was often inadequate.  Although England was prosperous, wealth was being inefficiently and inadequately tapped.  The Crown was quite poor, and, in consequence, the activities of Central Government were constrained by financial limitations.
[07.13] In the main, the Crown could also impose and collect new taxes only if it had the approval of Parliament and Members of both Houses, but particular the MPs sitting in the House of Commons could be reluctant to grant such taxes, could take the opportunity to intervene in the policy areas, for which the additional funding was being sought, or might seek to air other areas as a sort of quid quo pro, for granting extra taxes.
[07.42] 4. Religion Fourth, the nature of the country’s religion and of the State Church in England and Wales was not as clear-cut as it might have been.  Following the tortuous early stages of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I, the Protestant religion and State Church had been re-established under the so-called Elizabethan Church Settlement at the beginning of Elizabeth I’s long reign.  The official and only legal religion of England and Wales was a Calvinist form of Protestantism, and everyone had to conform to and worship within the State Church of England, which also covered Wales.  All other forms of faith, as well as absenteeism and atheism were illegal, but some things were left a bit blurry around the edges of the Elizabethan Church Settlement, including how far a human being was pre-destined for salvation, or damnation, from birth or even conception.
[08.40] Moreover, the Elizabethan Church was a compromise, as it retained some elements of the older Catholic Church in terms of its episcopal structure, its use of surplices and clerical vestments, its use of some ceremonial aspects, such as making the sign of the cross, and ornamental features, such as coloured church windows, religious statues and images, crucifixes and so on.  By the beginning of the 17th Century, the vast majority of the people seem to have been won over to this style of the Church of England, but there existed minority groups who were dissatisfied.
[09.19] Roman Catholics On one wing, there were perhaps 40,000 or so people in England and Wales who held true to the old Roman Catholic religion.  Although they aroused great fear among the Protestant majority, most Roman Catholics were, in fact, discreet and politically loyal to the English Crown.   On the other wing, and perhaps a greater threat to the long-term stability of the Church of England, were those Protestants who favoured further reform to create a simpler, stricter, more Protestant church and religion, and who wanted a further burst of reform to remove the Catholic hangovers which persisted within the established church.
[09.58] Puritans These people, referred to variously as the Godly, the ‘hotter sort’ of Protestants, or Puritans, generally did not push for their own separate church and religion, but acted as a pressure group to nudge the Monarch into reforming the State Church, the Church of England.  They favoured things like abolishing clerical vestments and some ceremonial aspects of church services, stripping out images, holy statues and crucifixes from church interiors, a stricter belief in pre-destination from birth, and also keeping Sunday set aside as a day for religious worship and observance and nothing else.  Some also wanted the removal of bishops and archbishops and the abolition of the episcopal system.  However, in the early Stuart period, this puritan strand within the church was countered and opposed by a new group.
[10.52] Arminians This new group favoured the teachings of the Dutch theologian, Jacob Arminius, who back-tracked on the idea of predestination and wanted other changes. Supporters of this strand of Protestantism, often labelled ‘Arminians’, actually favoured and saw a role for the ceremonial and sacramental side of religion.  In many ways, therefore, the Arminians were the mirror image of the Puritans, many of whom believed that Arminianism was uncomfortably close to Catholicism and might be trying to restore Catholicism by stealth.
[11.29] 5. Multiple Kingdoms Fifth, from 1603, when James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I to become ruler of England, Wales and Ireland, England and Wales had thus become just one part of a so-called multiple Kingdom. James VI and I, as he had become, ruled over Britain and Ireland, and multiple kingdoms of this sort often contained lots of tensions and divisions, as the different history and heritages of the component parts, which for much of their earlier history had been separate and independent, tended to pull in different directions.  The overseas, economic, and commercial interests of each component part could be very different from its neighbours and there could be tensions when locked together with those natures in a single polity.
[12.18] Equally, the King was bound to be an absentee ruler in most of his kingdoms for much of the time, but perhaps the biggest tension within the multiple Kingdom of early Britain and Ireland was religion.
[12.31] Religious diversity In England and Wales, the majority religion was a non-episcopalian form of Calvinistic Protestantism, though with the presence of a minority of Roman Catholics. In Scotland, which had gone through a more thorough Reformation in the 16th Century, the majority religion was a non-episcopalian form of Calvinistic Protestantism, more radically changed than the version promulgated by the Church of England, termed Presbyterianism, though Roman Catholicism persisted in parts of Scotland, especially in the Highlands and Islands.
[13.06] The English and Scottish administrators who ran Ireland for the Crown from Dublin were Protestants, but the vast majority of the Irish population were Roman Catholics.  Here was a potential powder keg.  As rulers of the multiple Kingdom of Britain and Ireland, could the early Stuart monarchs allow such religious diversity to persist within their component kingdoms, or should they seek uniformity of faith?
[13.33] James VI and I largely left things as they were, died peacefully in his bed in 1625 and handed onto his son and heir three kingdoms which were at peace. Charles I sought to intervene and change things, created rebellion, war and civil war within and between his kingdoms and died on the block.
[13.55] Charles I Many historians believe that much of the responsibility for causing civil war in England and Wales lies with Charles I, although devout, chaste, and cultured, and faced with plenty of inherited problems certainly not of his making.  Recent historians are often quite damning. Recent portrayals show him as prickly and vengeful, at times dangerously over-confident or panicked into taking the wrong option, prone to adopting policies and tactics out of kilter with his people, which were sometimes seen by contemporaries as abnormal or illegitimate.
[14.33] He was not completely hopeless or incompetent. After all, in 1641-2 he was able to attract sufficient support to begin and wager civil war, but he was not suited to his kingly role as he was not a reconciler.  He was not able to rise above the difficulties he inherited and, in some areas, he made things much worse.  Many of these traits emerged in the first four years of his reign, during which he called three parliaments.  All three ended in acrimony and angry dissolution, the third in 1629 provoking Charles to attempt to rule without calling another.
[15.11] In the late 1620s, Charles had declared or stumbled into mainly naval wars against both Spain and France simultaneously, leading to military humiliation and financial ruin.  He had adopted legal ploys, backed up by heavy-handed judicial pressure, which many saw as dubious or illegal.  He had begun to show his support for Arminianism or high church policies within the Church of England, and he had delegated much power to a single favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, who became a bête noire for many critics of the drift of royal government inside and outside Parliament.
[15.52] Personal Rule The 11 years of Personal Rule, 1629-40, during which Charles ruled without calling a Parliament in England and Wales, relying instead on his enhanced prerogative powers and the executive arm of government, brought a mixed bag.  In some ways it was a period of more orderly government with peace made and maintained overseas, the royal finances rebuilt and attempts made to demonstrate that these methods of government were justified by medieval, legal or feudal precedence, but many of the policy initiatives left a sour taste, particularly in finance, with the revival of old feudal taxes and impositions, notably the repeated collection of Ship Money as a national tax, even though the country was not at war, and in religion where the Arminian or High Church policies favoured by the King were forcefully promoted, including the use of decoration and imagery within churches, the installation of fixed east end altars railed off to make them inaccessible to the laity.  Charles also exalted religious ceremonies, such as bowing, the sign of the cross and kneeling to secure Communion. The force of law was deployed to cower any opposition to his financial and religious policies.
[17.18] On the surface, the Personal Rule appeared to work quite well.  Money was raised, most people seemed to conform to the new style church, the country was at peace, but it all collapsed and was replaced with something remarkably quickly in 1640 in the wake of the King’s military failures against Scotland.
The Road to War
[17.40] The Bishops Wars In the late 1630s, Charles turned his attention to religious diversity within his multiple kingdoms by seeking to bring the Scottish Presbyterian Church much closer to the Church of England.  He did not back down, despite signs of mass organised unrest and resistance north of the border.  In the two wars of summer 1639 and summer 1640, he sought to use the military resources of England, Wales, and Ireland to bring them to bear against the Scots to crush resistance in Scotland, but he failed disastrously.  His defeat in the so-called Scots’ or Bishops’ Wars of 1639 and 1640, left him almost powerless in Scotland, which not only retained its distinctive church, but also promulgated a political revolution leaving the King as little more than a powerless figurehead in Scotland, but it also saw his military, financial and political standing collapse in England and Wales.
[18.44] Some historians, those who are positive about the Personal Rule, believe that it could have gone on almost indefinitely, and was only ended by an external bolt from the blue out of Scotland. Most historians, however, believe that beneath the veneer there was growing discontent within England and Wales, and that the Scottish wars and Charles’ abject failure in them, were merely the catalysts to unleash a home-grown crisis and a change of direction within England and Wales.
[19.16] The Short and Long Parliaments Although Charles had called and swiftly dismissed what had been known as the Short Parliament in spring 1640, his catastrophic failure in war that summer left him severely weakened.  Some historians believe that by autumn 1640 his standing had collapsed, almost to the level of a child king.  In November 1640, he was compelled to call and to keep in being another Parliament, which became known as the Long Parliament.  Aware that it would be very critical of his government, even Charles recognised that he would have to make major concessions if his kingship was to be rebuilt.
[19.56] For the first 10 months or so of this Parliament, down to late summer 1641, the Long Parliament was fairly united in advancing a reform programme, to which the King gave his Royal Assent.  Parliament’s position was strengthened by acts declaring that the Long Parliament could not be dissolved without its own consent and that in future no more than three years could elapse between the dissolution of one Parliament and the summoning of the next.  The personnel of the Personal Rule was demolished with some key players, such as Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and William Laud, Charles’ Archbishop of Canterbury, arrested, imprisoned in the Tower and, in Strafford’s case, executed.  Many of the policies of the Personal Rule were also dismantled, with statues abolishing Ship Money and many of the other feudal dues upon which Charles had relied in the 1630s, curbing the King’s judicial powers to enforce such policies and reinforcing the principle that taxation needed Parliamentary consent.
[21.04] Far less headway was made in reforming religion. MPs and peers could agree on stripping out the Arminian innovations imposed by Charles and William Laud over the previous decade or so, but agreement quickly broke down on whether to go further and, if so, how far, with the more godly members of the Long Parliament seeking to enhance the Elizabethan Church Settlement by introducing sweeping changes, perhaps up to and including the abolition of the episcopal system, but agreement was elusive, divisions were becoming apparent.
[21.41] The Irish Rebellion Down to late summer or early autumn 1641 Charles was quite isolated and impotent, with little choice but to give ground to Parliament, and in no position to launch a civil war, given the paucity of his support, but that changed greatly and quite quickly in 1641-2. In autumn 1641, the majority Irish Catholic population rose up in rebellion, quickly taking control of most of the island of Ireland.  Several thousand protestants who were living in Ireland, most of recent English, Welsh or Scottish descent, were killed.  There was widespread horror in England and Wales and widespread acceptance in Parliament and beyond that an English and Welsh army would swiftly need to be raised and sent to Ireland to restore English and Protestant control there, but many politicians wondered whether Charles I, as the King, the automatic Commander in Chief of such an army, could be trusted with that army and feared that giving him such military potential would endanger the whole reform programme.
[22.50] Growing Divisions Issues were crystalising, and growing divisions were opening up within Parliament and beyond. On the one hand, many MPs and peers wished to push ahead with change and reform.  They believed that work was incomplete and that if pressure on Charles was removed at this stage, especially if he was then given command of a large army, he would be in a position to reverse many of the reforms already achieved.  Moreover, the radical MPs and peers believed that this was a once-in-a-lifetime, God-given opportunity to effect fundamental changes in Church and State and that they should push ahead.
[23.33] On the other hand, Charles and those advising him argued, with some justice, that the King had made major concessions in 1640-41 and that to push ahead further would risk destabilising the entire constitution, would threaten religious turmoil and heresy and would imperil the social order and bring anarchy.  Some within and outside Parliament became increasingly receptive to this message.  Suitably encouraged, Charles took a stand, and he laid out his red lines.
[24.07] Charles made clear that he would not give way on the traditional, God given role of the King to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy.  He would not allow Parliament any say in the appointment of Privy Counsellors and Officers of State, and he would stand by the Episcopal Church of England and would not allow the abolition of Bishops and Archbishops.
[24.31] Rival Capital Although Charles made mistakes, and sometimes acted rashly in late 1641 and 1642, his botched attempt to take control of the Tower in late 1641, his equally botched attempt to arrest five MPs and one peer in January 1642, for example, overall, he and his advisers stuck quite skilfully to the line that the King now represented stability, tradition, the known ways and security and that it was Parliament which was innovating dangerously and subversively.  Taking that line, he began to win wider support, both inside Parliament and in the country and large.  Withdrawing from London and establishing a new base and rival capital at York in spring 1642, during the spring and summer Charles gathered sufficient popular, political and now armed support to enable him to take a stand and to resist any further change or diminution of his powers via a civil war.
[25.44] War The Civil War began slowly, but if we are looking for a specific date at which we can date the start of the Civil War, most historians would pick the 22 August 1642.  On that date, having moved south to Nottingham, Charles raised his Royal Standard, symbolically launching war against his opponents.

[1] the abandonment of a religious or political belief