Countdown to the English Civil War

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.