The End of Personal Rule and the Early Long Parliament

Governing without Parliament, 1629–1640

Charles I dissolved Parliament in 1629 and governed without calling another for eleven years. This period is known as Personal Rule. His enemies called it the ‘Eleven Year Tyranny’, expressing their belief that he was ruling oppressively and avoiding parliamentary scrutiny.

Governing without Parliament was possible while Charles could meet his expenses from existing income and measures taken under the royal prerogative. Peace with France in 1629 and Spain in 1630 reduced the cost of war. Trade recovered, increasing customs revenue. However, Charles’s methods of raising money, enforcing religious conformity and punishing critics accumulated grievances. When war returned, these grievances made it difficult to obtain Parliament’s cooperation.

Financial grievances: money without parliamentary consent

Charles continued collecting tonnage and poundage, customs duties on trade, without Parliament’s authorisation. He also revived old rights and obligations to increase his income. In 1630, he fined landowners who had failed to present themselves for knighthood at his coronation, reviving an obligation affecting freeholders with land worth more than £40 a year. He restored old royal forest boundaries and fined people whose property now counted as encroaching on royal land. Grants of monopolies provided another source of revenue.

Such measures helped Charles avoid calling Parliament, but people affected by them resented the financial demands. Although many rested on royal prerogative, their revival made royal government appear arbitrary: an old obligation could suddenly become an expensive liability.

Ship money became the most controversial example. Traditionally, coastal communities provided money for naval defence in emergencies. In 1634, Charles levied it on coastal counties to build warships against threats including piracy. In 1635, he extended it to inland counties. Critics objected that this amounted to a new tax imposed without Parliament’s consent.

John Hampden challenged ship money in court in 1637. Seven of the twelve judges supported the king, but five supported Hampden. Charles won the case, yet the narrow division encouraged opponents to regard Hampden as having achieved a moral victory. The dispute was therefore about more than money: it raised the question of how far the king could tax his subjects without Parliament.

Religious grievances: Laud’s drive for uniform worship

William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. Charles supported his efforts to impose uniform worship in the Church of England. Laud valued ceremony, order and the ‘beauty of holiness’; he believed that he was restoring proper church discipline. Uniform religious practice also reinforced Charles’s authority as head of the Church.

Puritans favoured simpler worship and regarded practices such as bowing towards the east, using crucifixes and turning communion tables into altars as dangerously close to Catholicism. Laud’s officials inspected churches, and ministers who refused to conform could be dismissed or suppressed. This made religious change feel compulsory rather than a matter of conscience.

Laud was not trying to make England Roman Catholic. Nevertheless, many Puritans believed that his policies were taking the Church in that direction. Charles’s Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria, and suspicions about Catholic sympathies among royal advisers deepened their fears. Religious disagreements consequently became political disagreements about the use of royal power.

Suppressing criticism made opposition stronger

Charles and Laud used the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission to punish opponents. Critics argued that royal government was not merely introducing unpopular policies but preventing subjects from challenging them.

In 1637, William Prynne, Henry Burton and John Bastwick were punished for publishing attacks on bishops and Laudian religious practices. They were sentenced to the pillory, branding, the cropping of their ears and imprisonment for life. These public punishments were intended to deter criticism, but they also provoked demonstrations and turned the three men into Puritan martyrs: people celebrated for suffering for their beliefs.

The Long Parliament’s criticisms of Personal Rule therefore connected three issues. Charles had raised revenue without parliamentary approval, imposed religious changes that many Protestants distrusted, and used harsh punishments against those who objected.

Scotland made Personal Rule unsustainable

The immediate reason Charles recalled Parliament was the crisis in Scotland. His attempt to impose a new prayer book there provoked riots in Edinburgh in July 1637. Scottish opposition developed into a national movement, united by the National Covenant of 1638, against royal interference in Scottish religious affairs.

Charles attempted to enforce his authority through the Bishops’ Wars of 1639–1640. The First Bishops’ War in 1639 failed to secure Scottish obedience. Determined to continue the struggle, Charles needed money for another campaign. Strafford advised him to summon an English Parliament to obtain war funds.

The Short Parliament met in April 1640, ending Personal Rule. MPs were willing to consider financial support, but insisted that grievances in church and government be addressed first. Charles wanted money for war rather than a prolonged examination of his policies. Encouraged by Strafford’s argument that an army could be raised by other means, he dissolved Parliament in May.

This did not solve his financial or military problems. The English army was poorly trained and disciplined and was defeated in the Second Bishops’ War. Scottish troops occupied Northumberland and Durham, and Charles faced the expense of maintaining the occupying army. He could no longer manage the crisis without parliamentary funding. The Long Parliament met in November 1640.

The underlying grievances explain why MPs resisted Charles’s demands; the Scottish wars explain why he had to face those MPs in the first place.

Attacking the king’s advisers

John Pym and other parliamentary leaders concentrated their early attacks on Charles’s ‘evil councillors’, particularly Laud and Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. Blaming advisers allowed MPs to challenge royal policies without immediately attacking the king himself. Removing these men would also weaken Charles’s ability to continue governing in the same way.

Laud was impeached in December 1640. The accusations included exercising tyrannical powers in church and state, introducing supposedly Catholic religious practices and causing the disastrous Scottish wars. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London in March 1641. His removal struck directly at the enforcement of Charles’s religious policy. He remained imprisoned; his execution came later, in 1645.

Why Strafford was especially feared

Strafford was a powerful royal administrator who had governed Ireland and worked with Laud to develop ‘Thorough’: efficient, centralised government devoted to the king’s interests. In Ireland, he increased revenue and built an army, but his ruthless methods, taxation, land confiscations and enforcement of Laudian reforms created enemies.

MPs feared that such methods could be used to strengthen arbitrary royal government in England. Their case against Strafford centred on the accusation that he had advised Charles to use the Irish army against opponents in England as well as against the Scots. This made him appear a potential military threat to Parliament.

Strafford’s trial began in March 1641, with Pym leading the prosecution. When the prosecution could not prove the alleged treason, his opponents turned to a bill of attainder to condemn him by parliamentary legislation. Charles eventually gave his consent, and Strafford was executed on 12 May 1641.

By removing Laud and Strafford, Parliament disabled two leading supporters of Personal Rule. Charles lost trusted instruments of religious and political authority, while Parliament demonstrated that it could hold royal advisers responsible for the government’s actions.