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English Civil War
The 'English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists ("Cavaliers") over, principally, the manner of England's government. The first (1642–46) and second (1648–49) wars pitted the supporters ofKing Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while thethird (1649–51) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The war ended with the Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.
The overall outcome of the war was threefold: the trial and execution of Charles I; the exile of his son, Charles II; and the replacement of English monarchy with, at first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–53) and then the Protectorate (1653–59) under Oliver Cromwell's personal rule. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England ended with the victors consolidating the established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament's consent, although the idea of parliament as the ruling power of England was legally established as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688
The term "English Civil War" appears most often in the singular form, although historians often divide the conflict into two or three separate wars. Nor were these wars restricted to England. Wales was then a part of the Kingdom of England and was affected accordingly; from the outset, moreover, the conflicts involved wars with and civil wars within both Scotland andIreland (see Wars of the Three Kingdoms for an overview).
Unlike other civil wars in England, which focused on who should rule, this war was more concerned with the manner in which the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland were governed. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica called the series of conflicts the "Great Rebellion", while some historians – especially Marxists such as Christopher Hill (1912–2003) – have long favoured the term "English Revolution"
The two sides had their geographical strongholds, such that minority elements were silenced or fled. The strongholds of the royalty included the countryside, the shires, and the less economically developed areas of northern and western England. On the other hand, all the cathedral cities (except Chester and the royalist stronghold of Oxford) sided with Parliament. All the industrial centers, the ports, and the economically advanced regions of southern and eastern England typically were parliamentary strongholds. Lacey Baldwin Smith says, "the words populist, rich, and rebellious seemed to go hand in hand
Many of the officers and veteran soldiers of the English Civil war studied and implemented war strategies that had been learned and perfected in other wars across Europe, namely by the Spanish and the Dutch during the Dutch war for independence which began in 1568.[7]
The main battle tactic came to be known as pike and shot infantry, in which the two sides would line up, facing each other, with infantry brigades of musketeers in the centre, carrying matchlock muskets;[8] these muskets were inaccurate,[8] but could be lethal at a range of up to 300 yards.[8] The brigades would arrange themselves in lines of musketeers, three deep, where the first row would kneel, the second would crouch, and the third would stand, allowing all three to fire a volley simultaneously.[8] At times there would be two groups of three lines allowing one group to reload while the other group arranged themselves and fired.[9] Mixed in among the musketeers were pikemen carrying pikes that were between 12 feet (4 m) and 18 feet (5 m) long, whose primary purpose was to protect the musketeers from cavalry charges.[8] Positioned on each side of the infantry were the cavalry, with a right-wing led by the lieutenant-general, and a left-wing by the commissary general;[8] the main goal of the cavalry was to rout the opponent’s cavalry and then turn and overpower their infantry.[8][10]
The Royalist cavaliers' skill and speed on horseback led to many early victories. Prince Rupert, the leader of the king’s cavalry, learned a tactic while fighting in the Dutch army where the cavalry would charge at full speed into the opponent’s infantry firing their pistols just before impact.[8][11]
However, with Oliver Cromwell and the introduction of the more disciplined New Model Army, a group of disciplined pikemen would stand their ground in the face of charging cavalry and could have a devastating effect.[8] While the Parliamentarian cavalry were slower than the cavaliers, they were also better disciplined.[8] The Royalists had a tendency to chase down individual targets after the initial charge leaving their forces scattered and tired. Cromwell’s cavalry, on the other hand, trained to operate as a single unit, which led to many decisive victories.
The English Civil War broke out fewer than forty years after the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. Elizabeth's death had resulted in the accession of her first cousin twice-removed, King James VI of Scotland, to the English throne as James I of England, creating the first personal union of the Scottish and English kingdoms.[a] As King of Scots, James had become accustomed to Scotland's weak parliamentary tradition since assuming control of the Scottish government in 1583, so that upon assuming power south of the border, the new King of England was genuinely affronted by the constraints the English Parliament attempted to place on him in exchange for money. In spite of this, James' personal extravagance meant he was perennially short of money and had to resort to extra-Parliamentary sources of income.
James' personal extravagance was tempered by his peaceful disposition, so that by the succession of his son Charles I to the English and Scottish thrones in 1625 the two kingdoms had both experienced relative peace, both internally and in their relations with each other, for as long as anyone could remember. Charles hoped to unite the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland into a new single kingdom, fulfilling the dream of his father.[13] Many English Parliamentarians had suspicions regarding such a move because they feared that setting up a new kingdom might destroy the old English traditions which had bound the English monarchy. As Charles shared his father's position on the power of the crown (James had described kings as "little gods on Earth", chosen by God to rule in accordance with the doctrine of the "Divine Right of Kings"), the suspicions of the Parliamentarians had some justification
Parliament in the English constitutional framework[edit]
At the time, the Parliament of England did not have a large permanent role in the English system of government. Instead, Parliament functioned as a temporary advisory committee and was summoned only if and when the monarch saw fit to summon it. Once summoned, a parliament's continued existence was at the king's pleasure, since it was subject to dissolution by him at any time.
Yet in spite of this limited role, Parliament had, over the preceding centuries, acquired de facto powers of enough significance that monarchs could not simply ignore them indefinitely. Without question, for a monarch, Parliament's most indispensable power was its ability to raise tax revenues far in excess of all other sources of revenue at the Crown's disposal. By the seventeenth century, Parliament's tax-raising powers had come to be derived from the fact that the gentry was the only stratum of society with the ability and authority to actually collect and remit the most meaningful forms of taxation then available at the local level. This meant that if the king wanted to ensure a smooth collection of revenue, he needed the co-operation of the gentry. For all of the Crown's legal authority, by any modern standard, its resources were limited to the extent that, if and when the gentry refused to collect the king's taxes on a national scale, the Crown lacked any practical means with which to compel them.
Therefore, in order to secure their co-operation, monarchs permitted the gentry (and only the gentry) to elect representatives to sit in the House of Commons. When assembled along with the House of Lords, these elected representatives formed a Parliament. Parliaments therefore, allowed representatives of the gentry to meet, primarily (at least in the opinion of the monarch) so that they could give their sanction to whatever taxes the monarch expected their electorate to collect. In the process, the representatives could also confer and send policy proposals to the king in the form of bills. However, Parliament lacked any legal means of forcing its will upon the monarch; its only leverage with the king was the threat of its withholding the financial means required to execute his plans
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