Why Did the Civil War Break out in 1649?

                                               Why did the Civil War break out in 1649?

In this essay I will talk about Civil war and the reasons and factors of why the civil war broke out in 1649. I shall be talking about how religion, lack of money and power were all causes of the English civil war.

Firstly I will look at religion. Most English people were Protestants or Puritan so when Charles I married Henrietta –princess of France- the people where furious because she was a catholic. The people thought because the queen was catholic they king would also change his religion and change the churches of England so that they would look more like catholic churches. Most churches in England were becoming too similar to the Catholic Church as they started to place candles and crucifixes around the church. The normal church did not have any decorations or crucifixes.  The people are afraid that his wife could change his mind and make England a catholic country like it once used to be. Charles I is not able to please everyone he won't be able to win because some people are catholic and some are Protestants, he cannot be both.

Secondly I will talk about money, I believe the lack of money that Charles I had led to the outbreak of the civil war because Charles kept demanding tax from the people, he taxed the people heavily and refused to take parliaments advice. He used this tax for the army and wars but he also collected it at times where it was not needed.  People thought that he was getting to powerful because he was collecting tax without parliaments permission but when questioned Charles said that he is king by divine right and that he has the power to shut down parliament.  Charles needed to have discussed the tax matter with parliament but he did not. Charles used ship money when he no longer had parliaments support.

Parliament put the blame on the king's advisors not only the king himself but both Strafford and Archbishop Laud. The Parliament wanted them killed, but Charles tried to heal the rift by signing Strafford a death warrant and passing a bill saying that ship money was now illegal and that no other bill could be taken unless the parliament agreed.

I shall now talk about how Charles had too much power.  I think that civil war was Charles fault because he is the one who caused most of the problems. He made arrangements for foreign countries such as Holland to invade England; he also got help from the Scots and the Irish.   Foreign monarchs in Europe helped Charles by invading England.

Some believe that it was Parliament who pushed Charles into declaring war by making unreasonable demands in the first place and by trying to share power more fairly with him even though he always refused. Charles believed that he was king by divine right and that is was wrong to give his right to the parliament.Acording to the law it was illegal to put a king on trial and judge him ( nonetheless they did it anyway).

Finally I shall talk about how parliament wanted support against Charles. Parliament wanted to gain as much support as possible so they produced propaganda pamphlets which showed how bad the actions of the Royalists were.  They told stories about the terrible things that the Royalists did . Most of these propagandas influenced the people who have not yet chosen which side to take (the king or Parliament). Now that what was shown in the pamphlets the Parliamentarians were sure that they would get a lot of supports because the pamphlets showed lots of bad things which the royalists had done. They also got lots of evidence from the letters written by Brilliana Harley to her son. In these letters she wrote that the royalists were treating people bad by kicking and wounding them.