The Outbreak of the English Civil War

Abstract

The members of the Long Parliament were for the most part well-to-do landowners, nobility and gentry, who shared similar social and educational backgrounds, similar economic interests, and similar ideas on religion and politics. They disliked ‘popery’ and what they regarded as the ‘popish’ tendencies of Archbishop Laud and his party, who had dominated the church during the 1630s. But they were not inclined towards presbyterianism and they feared the more radical puritans and ‘sectaries’. Although they had no love for bishops, most of them wished to keep episcopal government of the church, provided that it could be reformed so as to be under the supervision of the common law and parliament and the squirearchy; and provided that the bishops were men of the same middle-of-the-road views in religion as most of the nobility and gentry. They disliked the policies and methods of government of Charles I in the 1630s; but once unpopular taxes such as Ship-money had been made illegal, unpopular courts like Star Chamber and High Commission abolished, and the summoning of a parliament at least once in every three years assured by the Triennial Act, there remained only one obstacle to agreement between the king and the two Houses of Parliament — distrust.