Personal Rule
Encyclopedia
The Personal Rule was the period from 1629 to 1640, when King Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

 of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 and Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 ruled without recourse to Parliament
Parliament of England
The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England. In 1066, William of Normandy introduced a feudal system, by which he sought the advice of a council of tenants-in-chief and ecclesiastics before making laws...

. Although the King was entitled to do this under the Royal Prerogative
Royal Prerogative
The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, privilege, and immunity, recognized in common law and, sometimes, in civil law jurisdictions possessing a monarchy as belonging to the sovereign alone. It is the means by which some of the executive powers of government, possessed by and...

 his actions caused discontent among those who provided the ruling classes, although the effects were more popular with the common people.

Charles had already dissolved three Parliaments by the third year of his reign in 1628. After the murder of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham KG was the favourite, claimed by some to be the lover, of King James I of England. Despite a very patchy political and military record, he remained at the height of royal favour for the first two years of the reign of Charles I, until he was assassinated...

, who was deemed to have a negative influence on Charles' foreign policy, Parliament began to criticize the king more harshly than before. Charles then realized that, as long as he could avoid war, he could rule without Parliament.

Whig
British Whig Party
The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...

 historians sometimes called this period the Eleven Years' Tyranny. The term is indicative of the partisan nature of activities at the time, which would eventually result in the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...

. However, more recently revisionists refer to the 11 years a period of "Creative Reform", due to the measures taken by Charles to restructure English politics at the time.

Background

In the Medieval period, government in England was very much centred on the King
King
- Centers of population :* King, Ontario, CanadaIn USA:* King, Indiana* King, North Carolina* King, Lincoln County, Wisconsin* King, Waupaca County, Wisconsin* King County, Washington- Moving-image works :Television:...

. He ruled personally, usually assisted by his Council, the Curia Regis
Curia Regis
Curia regis is a Latin term meaning "royal council" or "king's court."- England :The Curia Regis, in the Kingdom of England, was a council of tenants-in-chief and ecclesiastics that advised the king of England on legislative matters...

. The council members were chosen by the King, and its membership varied greatly, but members often included powerful nobility
Nobility
Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...

 and churchmen, senior civil servants, and sometimes certain members of the King's friends and family.

Early parliaments began to emerge under Edward I
Edward I of England
Edward I , also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. The first son of Henry III, Edward was involved early in the political intrigues of his father's reign, which included an outright rebellion by the English barons...

, who wished to implement taxation changes and wide-ranging law reforms, and sought to gain the consent of the nation. Nevertheless, calling a parliament was an expensive and time-consuming process, requiring many personal invitations (for the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....

) and elections in the shire
Shire
A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in the United Kingdom and in Australia. In parts of Australia, a shire is an administrative unit, but it is not synonymous with "county" there, which is a land registration unit. Individually, or as a suffix in Scotland and in the far...

s and chartered cities
City
A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...

 and borough
Borough
A borough is an administrative division in various countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing township although, in practice, official use of the term varies widely....

s. So parliaments would only be summoned on particularly important occasions. And, once a parliament had finished its business, the King would dissolve it, and perhaps not summon another for an extended period. In the meantime, the Curia Regis - that is, the King with his chosen advisers - would make laws ("ordinances"), spend money, and carry on the business of government.

From the 14th to the 16th centuries, the acknowledged powers of Parliament grew. In particular, it was established that Parliament was the only body that could authorise nationwide taxation and excise. There were practical underpinnings to these powers, for it was the same people who the monarch had to rely on to collect and remit taxes on a large scale (i.e. the landed gentry) that elected representatives to Parliament at this time. If a sovereign were to attempt to impose new taxes without consulting the gentry then the gentry could have simply refused to collect the taxes, and the monarch would have had little feasible recourse.

Once summoned, a parliament could take the opportunity to submit policy proposals to the monarch ("bill
Bill (proposed law)
A bill is a proposed law under consideration by a legislature. A bill does not become law until it is passed by the legislature and, in most cases, approved by the executive. Once a bill has been enacted into law, it is called an act or a statute....

s"), which would be expected to take precedence over ordinances if signed into law by the monarch, although (s)he was under no obligation to grant the Royal Assent
Royal Assent
The granting of royal assent refers to the method by which any constitutional monarch formally approves and promulgates an act of his or her nation's parliament, thus making it a law...

 to any such proposal. However, monarchs did increasingly use parliaments more widely in lawmaking as a way of gaining popular support for their policies. One example was during the English Reformation
English Reformation
The English Reformation was the series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church....

, when the Reformation Parliament acting at Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...

's instigation passed a succession of laws regulating the church in England.

The first of the Stuart
House of Stuart
The House of Stuart is a European royal house. Founded by Robert II of Scotland, the Stewarts first became monarchs of the Kingdom of Scotland during the late 14th century, and subsequently held the position of the Kings of Great Britain and Ireland...

 monarchs to rule England, James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...

, was a peaceable monarch. However, James' personal extravagance caused him to be perennially short of money and he was obliged to summon parliaments often. Successive parliaments thereupon sought to turn the King's financial woes to their advantage, requiring various policy concessions before voting taxes. In 1625, James was succeeded by his son Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

, who immediately plunged England into an expensive and ultimately unsuccessful war with Spain, in an attempt to force the Catholic Spanish King Philip IV
Philip IV of Spain
Philip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640...

 to intercede with the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II
Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor
Ferdinand II , a member of the House of Habsburg, was Holy Roman Emperor , King of Bohemia , and King of Hungary . His rule coincided with the Thirty Years' War.- Life :...

 on behalf of Charles's brother-in-law, Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Frederick V was Elector Palatine , and, as Frederick I , King of Bohemia ....

, the husband of Charles's sister Elizabeth, to regain the Palatinate and his hereditary lands, which the Emperor had taken from him.

Parliament's protests about the war's mismanagement by the Duke of Buckingham
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham KG was the favourite, claimed by some to be the lover, of King James I of England. Despite a very patchy political and military record, he remained at the height of royal favour for the first two years of the reign of Charles I, until he was assassinated...

, and others of Charles' policies, primarily regarding taxation and other methods of acquiring funds, and Charles' refusal to compromise, eventually led to Charles dissolving Parliament in March 1629. He also made peace with Spain and France, largely due to fact that the financial burden of waging these wars could not be sustained without funds that only Parliament could provide. For the next eleven years, Charles governed with only an advisory council of royal appointees.

Finances

The greatest problem Charles initially encountered at this stage was a continued lack of funds. The main sources of income for the King were customs duties, feudal dues and income from the King's personal estates. Nationwide taxation was widely understood to be for emergencies and special purposes, such as war, and it was by this time generally accepted that only Parliament could authorise a general tax. But even in peacetime, the traditional sources of the King's revenue were stretched to the limit to fund the business of government. So Charles and his advisers developed various schemes to raise additional revenue without recourse to Parliament. Easily the most famous of these measures was the so-called "Ship Money
Ship money
Ship money refers to a tax that Charles I of England tried to levy without the consent of Parliament. This tax, which was only applied to coastal towns during a time of war, was intended to offset the cost of defending that part of the coast, and could be paid in actual ships or the equivalent value...

", a legal but extremely unconventional tax on the inland counties to fund the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

. Other expedients included fines levied on gentlemen who had failed to attend Charles' coronation to be knighted, the sale of government offices and monopolies
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

, and fines for non-attendance at church.

On the other side of the ledger, the government tried to reduce expenditure, especially by avoiding war (thus pursuing an isolationist foreign policy) and also avoiding large-scale innovations on the domestic front. Of equal importance, Charles learned to spend less extravagantly compared to his father.

Despite the King's unconventional methods of raising money, the absence of Parliamentary taxation limited the tax burden during the Personal Rule. This combined with the country's avoidance of the Thirty Years' War that was ravaging Europe made the 1630's a time of relative prosperity in England compared to the Continent, which in turn helped to make the Personal Rule popular with the common people, who had no political influence with parliaments in any case. Charles became especially popular with commoners in rural areas, this not uncoincidentally being the constituency where the King would find his most reliable support in the coming Civil War.

End of the Personal Rule

The Personal Rule began to unravel in 1637, when Charles, along with his adviser Archbishop Laud
William Laud
William Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 to 1645. One of the High Church Caroline divines, he opposed radical forms of Puritanism...

, attempted to reform the Presbyterian Church in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 to bring it into line with the Anglican Church. This met with immense Scottish opposition, and when negotiations broke down, a Scottish army invaded England. Charles could not afford to pay English troops to fight the Scots, and was obliged in 1640 to call the Short Parliament
Short Parliament
The Short Parliament was a Parliament of England that sat from 13 April to 5 May 1640 during the reign of King Charles I of England, so called because it lasted only three weeks....

. This ended the Personal Rule, though Charles dissolved the Short Parliament after only a few days; by the end of the year, with the Scots still in England and no other routes left to him, he summoned the revolutionary Long Parliament
Long Parliament
The Long Parliament was made on 3 November 1640, following the Bishops' Wars. It received its name from the fact that through an Act of Parliament, it could only be dissolved with the agreement of the members, and those members did not agree to its dissolution until after the English Civil War and...

. In the months that followed, the Parliamentary leaders, turning their attention to domestic matters, demanded ever more sweeping concessions from Charles over government policy. In 1642, Charles left London in order to raise an army and regain control by force, and the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...

 began.

See also

  • John Cooke, the prosecutor
    Prosecutor
    The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...

     in the 1649 trial of Charles I of England
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