The problem with King Charles I would prove to be
that he had no common sense at all. For centuries the English coronation ceremony
had included two elements: blessing with holy oil, giving God’s sanction, and
acclamation by the congregation, bestowing the approval of the people of
England. Under English custom, the king had always ruled with the consent of
the people - and more than one king had
been removed when that consent ended.
But in the 1580s a French philosopher named
Jean Bodin had developed the theory of “Divine Right”, based on the French way
of doing things. This theory stated that kings were chosen by God, since it was
God who had decided who should be the oldest surviving son of the previous
monarch. Bodin believed that it followed that opposing the will of the monarch
was equivalent to sacrilege and was therefore illegal. Effectively this was a
theory that justified the autocratic and arbitrary rule of the French monarchs.
Very useful it was to French monarchs who were struggling with a restive
nobility, and other European monarchs picked it up as a useful tool to use in
their kingdoms.
Charles of England adopted the theory as
well. Unlike the other monarchs, however, he did not just use it as a political
tool. He actually believed it to be literally true. God had made him king,
equipped him with the wisdom needed to rule and decreed that anyone who
disagreed was not just wrong but immoral and sacrilegious to boot. Whatever the
disputes Charles had with his nobles, his bishops or his Parliament were made
ten times worse by Charles’s absolute belief that he was totally right all the
time about everything, and that everyone else was wrong. Disputes there were in
plenty about economics, taxation, religion and a host of other subjects.
Trouble, when it came, was provoked by
Charles. On 4 January 1642 he marched into a meeting of Parliament, backed by a
squad of armed soldiers to arrest five Members of Parliament. The five MPs had
already fled, but Charles’s use of naked force was a step from which there was
no turning back. Both Charles and Parliament began issuing orders to government
officials around the country, some chose to follow orders from the king, others
those from Parliament. On 22 August 1642 Charles raised the Royal Standard in
Nottingham and issued a Commission of Array, that called out the militias of
England to support him against the men he named as traitors - various MPs and
Parliamentary officials. A week later Parliament responded by issuing the
Militia Ordinance, calling out the militia to support them instead.
At first the royalist cause drew its
support from the north and west, with more support in rural areas. Parliament
had the backing of the south and east, and most of the cities. That said, most
of England refused to join the fighting and hoped the trouble would soon be
over. It was not to be.
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