NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
... The Parliament refused to hand them over. Charles planned to go personally to arrest the five Knights. But they received information of this in advance and fled. In 1637 Charles attempt to impose the Anglican liturgy in Scotland led to rioting by Presbyterian Scots.
Charles was unable to quell the revolt, and in 1640 he convoked the so-called Short Parliament to raise an army and necessary funds. This body, which sat for one month (April-May), refused his demands, drew up a statement of public grievances, and insisted on peace with Scotland. Obtaining money by irregular means, Charles advanced against the Scots, who crossed the border, routed his army at Newborn, and soon afterward occupied Newcastle and Durham. His money exhausted, the king was compelled to call his fifth Parliament, the Long Parliament, in 1640. Led by John Pym, it proceeded against the two chief royal advisers, the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and Sir Thomas Wentworth, 1 st earl of Strafford. Parliament secured the imprisonment and subsequent executions of both men.
In 1641 Charles agreed to bills abolishing the prerogative courts, prohibiting arbitrary taxation, and ensuring that this Parliament would not be dissolved without its own permission. The king also agreed to more religious liberties for the Scots. Soon after, Charles was implicated in a plot to murder the leaders of the Covenanters, a Scottish group devoted to maintaining Presbyterianism. When Charles visited Scotland in August 1641, he promised Archibald Campbell, 8 th earl of Argyll, a Covenanter leader, that he would submit to the demands of the Scottish Parliament. While still in Scotland, the king received word of a rebellion in Ireland in which thousands of English colonists were massacred. When he returned to London in November, he tried to have Parliament raise an army, under his control, to put down the Irish revolt.
Parliament, fearing that the army would be used against itself, refused, and issued the Grand Remonstrance, a list of reform demands, including the right of Parliament to approve the kings ministers. Charles appeared in the House of Commons with an armed force and tried to arrest Pym and four members. The country was aroused, and the king fled with his family from London. Both sides then raised armies.
The supporters of Parliament were called Roundheads, and those of the king, Cavaliers. The first civil war of the English Revolution, now inevitable, began at Edge hill on October 23, 1642. The Cavaliers were initially successful, but after a series of reverses Charles gave himself up to the Scottish army on May 5, 1646. Having refused to accept Presbyterianism, he was delivered in June 1647 to the English Parliament. Later he escaped to the Isle of Wight but was imprisoned there. By this time a serious division had occurred between Parliament and its army.
The army's leader, Oliver Cromwell and his supporters, the Independents, compelled Parliament to pass an act of treason against further negotiation with the king. Eventually, the moderate Parliamentarians were forcibly ejected by the Independents, and the remaining legislators, who formed the so-called Rump Parliament, appointed a court to try the king. On January 20, 1649, the trial began in Westminster Hall. Charles denied the legality of the court and refused to plead. On January 27 he was sentenced to death as a tyrant, murderer, and enemy of the nation. Scotland protested, the royal family entreated, and France and the Netherlands interceded, in vain.
Charles was beheaded at Whitehall, London. Subsequently Oliver Cromwell became chairman of the council of state, a parliamentary agency that governed England as a republic until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Although Cromwell had summoned the Nominated Parliament into existence, he took no active role in its proceedings and was himself surprised in December 1653 when a parliamentary delegation arrived to place power in his hands. Cromwell again refused to establish a military government and supported a plan developed by General John Lambert for a written constitution, the Instrument of Government. Lambert had hoped a king would head the new government, but Cromwell refused to accept the crown and was instead named Lord Protector. He ruled as head of the military with a Council of State and a Parliament that met every three years and included members from England, Scotland, and Ireland.
The protectors powers were broadly defined, especially in military and foreign affairs. Following the course of the history, one can clearly see that there were political, economical, but most importantly, religious reasons to the English Civil War. A religious group that appeared as a result of reformation, Puritans were badly suppressed. This suppression meant for many that everything that happened for the hundred years had no sense. The tension created by constant changes in the policy towards the Reformation (Edward vs.
Bloody Mary; Elizabeth I vs. Charles I) was growing. Only a single lighting of a match was necessary to cause an explosion. However, the event that were going were enough to cause not just one war, but three.
So what were the effects of the English Civil War on the Reformation? The Reformation as such has already been completed by the reign of Charles. However, Reformations heritage was meant to stay there for a much longer time. Puritanism, one of the most famous religious movements, which appeared as a result of Reformation in England, became widely spread after the end of the war. Oliver Cromwell attempted to establish many of the reforms that Puritans had been demanding throughout the revolutionary decades. These included religious toleration and stricter morals (see Puritanism).
He was willing to tolerate all but the most extreme religious sects, enforced the stricter moral code established during the Commonwealth, and even closed theatres. Puritan theology is a version of Calvinism. It asserts the basic sinfulness of humankind; but it also declares that by an eternal decree God has determined that some will be saved through the righteousness of Christ despite their sins. No one can be certain in this life what his or her eternal destiny will be.
Nevertheless, the experience of conversion, in which the Holy Spirit touches the soul, so that the inward bias of the heart is turned from sinfulness to holiness, is at least some indication that one is of the elect. The experience of conversion was therefore central to Puritan spirituality. Much of Puritan preaching was concerned with it. This concern was evident in questions such as how conversion comes about whether in a blinding flash as with Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, or following well-defined stages of preparation; how one can distinguish actual conversion from the counterfeit; and why not everyone will be converted.
Puritan spiritual life stressed self-discipline and introspection, through which one sought to determine whether particular spiritual strivings were genuine marks of sainthood. Although full assurance might never be attained, the conviction of having been chosen by God fortified the Puritans to contend with what they regarded as wantonness in society and faithfulness in the church, and to endure the hardships involved in trying to create a Christian commonwealth in America. Puritanism was not static and unchanging. At first it simply stood for further reform of worship, but soon it began to attack episcopacy church government by bishops, as in the Church of England un scriptural.
At times the difference between the Puritans and the Anglicans (members of the Church of England) seems to have been as much a matter of differing cultural values as one of differing theological opinions. For example, their Sabbatarianism (insistence on strict observance of the Sabbath) came into conflict with a defence of sports and games on Sunday by King James I. One can take the development of Puritanism even further. Puritans were among of the first settlers of the New World.
In 1620 one of the separatist congregations sailed for New England on the Mayflower. In New England the colonists established independent congregations, each congregation having the right to choose its own leaders and discipline its members. While church and state supported each other, neither one was allowed to interfere in the affairs of the other. In America, Puritan moralist and its sense of an elect people in covenant with God deeply affected the national character. The Puritan belief that communities were formed by covenants produced Americas first democratic institution, the town meeting. At the town meeting every church member had the right to speak, and decisions were made by majority rule.
The Puritan emphasis on simplicity of worship, its asceticism (austerity and self-denial), and its Sabbatarianism remained influential into the 20 th century. The Puritan devotion to popular education, high standards of morality, and many, if not all, democratic principles had an important effect on American life. Reformation had a very important effect on the course of the English history. It might be even said that it was one of the causes of the English Civil war. The Reformation un doubtfully caused religious tension that was present in the country in the mid 17 th century. Many people had acquired the religious freedom they had never experienced before and they were ready to fight for it even with their own king.
The king, on the contrary, did not support the ideas of the most. Unlike not many kings before him, aimed at establishing an absolute monarchy, where Parliament and Church would be secondary institutions after the monarch. Civil War, in turn, also put its print on the Reformism. Religion, as Martin Luther dreamt, was starting to become closer to people, they could establish their own churches and did not have to follow the cannons defined by the Roman Church. Puritans, a very good example of this transformation, have even established their churches in the New World, which millions of Americans are thanking now.
Bibliography: Will Durant. The Reformation. New York. 1957 Haydn Here. The Counter-Renaissance. New York. 1976 Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. Microsoft. 2002 Smith A.
L. The Age of the Reformation. New York. 1964 Janelle Pierre. The Catholic Reformation. Milwaukee. 1983 Beard Chas. The Reformation of the 16 th Century in Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge.
London, 1993
Free research essays on topics related to: english civil war, church of england, council of state, oliver cromwell, town meeting
Research essay sample on English Civil War Church Of England
