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Political Issues In The English Civil War

Decent Essays

The English Civil War, a conflict between those who supported the King, and those who supported Parliament was the result of a series of smaller events that eventually blew up into all out war. Religion, and the issues that went along with it did play a factor into starting the war, but political issues like Personal Rule, unfair methods of collecting money, and distrust between Parliament and King Charles I are what made the choice of war the only viable option. The first political issue that helped spark the English Civil War was King Charles I choosing to rule without the assistance of Parliament: Personal Rule. By dissolving Parliament, Charles had cut off his subjects only way of having a say in how their country was run, by voting for …show more content…

Charles hired a man named Thomas Wentworth to do all the dirty work for him. Wentworth’s first order of business was trimming government expenses. He fired government workers, many of whom were friends with the members of Parliament. Trimming government expenses would not be enough to fund Charles’ Personal Rule, so Wentworth’s solution was to also increase revenue without Parliament’s tax money. His plan was called Thorough, and it consisted of three loopholes in the law: increasing tariffs (a tax on imported goods), forced loans, and exploiting Ship Money. Wentworth found out that tariffs were not controlled by Parliament, so he was able to jack up the tariff on imported goods without the need of Parliament. By increasing tariffs, all the goods that the many merchants of England bring in from far away lands gave more money to Charles in the short term, but it had dire consequences in the long term. Because merchants would have to pay more in tariffs for the goods they were selling, they had to increase the prices of their goods to compensate, and as a result, people stopped buying the now more expensive goods. This was especially bad if the merchant was selling perishables like food, as it would go bad and become worthless. Merchants became angry because of the new tariff increase, and they turned against the King. The second part of Thorough …show more content…

Even though Charles had signed the Petition of Right, he was not doing as good job keeping his word about it. He was breaking multiple rules in it like squeezing money out of people, so Parliament stopped trusting him. This became apparent when Charles wanted to raise an army to attack the Catholics that were rebelling in Ireland. When he went to Parliament to ask for money to raise this army, they refused. Rumors were spreading that Charles was actually a Catholic, and his army would attack the Protestants. Even if Charles was genuine, Parliament could not be sure that they could believe him since he was married to a Catholic and had built a Catholic church in his palace, there was too much evidence stacked against him. Instead, Parliament themselves raised their own army. Charles didn’t think that’s all that Parliament wanted their new army to do. Charles saw it as a threat to his power, that Parliament wanted him gone, so Charles did what he thought would be the right course of action: raise his own army by himself, saying that his army is going to fight the Irish as well. Parliament were wary to trust what Charles was saying. They thought that Charles was going to attack the Protestants with his new army, and they saw it as a threat to England as a whole. Seeing each other as threats, declared war on each

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