English Civil War (1642-1651): King Charles I versus Parliament

The English Civil War was a series of wars fought between 1642 and 1651 between supporters of King Charles I, the Royalists or “Cavaliers”, and supporters of Parliament, the “Roundheads”. It ended with the king’s trial and execution, the abolition of the monarchy and the rule of Oliver Cromwell. Closely linked to wars in Scotland and Ireland, it was the most destructive conflict on British soil in modern times and shaped ideas about Parliament, religious freedom and the limits of royal power.

Causes: money, religion and power

Charles I became king of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1625. He believed that kings ruled by divine right and that Parliament existed to advise and vote taxes, not to direct policy. After bitter clashes, including the Petition of Right of 1628, he dissolved Parliament in 1629 and ruled alone for eleven years, a period called the Personal Rule.

To raise money he used old or disputed sources of revenue. The most controversial was ship money, a tax traditionally levied on coastal counties in wartime, which he extended to the whole country in peacetime from 1635. John Hampden’s refusal to pay led to a famous court case in 1637–1638, which the king narrowly won.

Religion was even more divisive. Archbishop William Laud promoted ceremony, altar rails and the authority of bishops, which many Puritans saw as a drift towards Catholicism. Charles’s Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria of France, deepened their suspicions.

The crisis began in Scotland. When Charles imposed a new prayer book there in 1637, the Scots resisted, signed the National Covenant in 1638 and defeated him in the Bishops’ Wars of 1639–1640. Needing money, he called the Short Parliament in April 1640 and then the Long Parliament in November 1640.

The Long Parliament dismantled the Personal Rule. It executed the king’s chief minister, the Earl of Strafford, in May 1641 and abolished the prerogative courts. Then the Irish Rebellion of 1641 raised the question of who should command an army to crush it. On 4 January 1642 Charles entered the House of Commons with soldiers to arrest five members, who had already fled. He soon left London, and both sides prepared for war.

Course of the wars

The First Civil War (1642–1646)

Charles raised his royal standard at Nottingham on 22 August 1642. Broadly, the king drew support from the north, west and Wales, while Parliament held London, the south-east, the navy and most major ports. Many people tried to stay neutral, and families and communities were often divided.

The first major battle, the Battle of Edgehill on 23 October 1642, was indecisive. The king advanced on London but turned back at Turnham Green in November and made Oxford his wartime capital. In 1643 the Royalists did well, winning at Adwalton Moor and Roundway Down and capturing Bristol, but they failed to take Gloucester.

In September 1643 Parliament allied with the Scots in the Solemn League and Covenant. A Scottish army crossed into England in January 1644, and on 2 July 1644 the combined forces destroyed the Royalist army of the north at the Battle of Marston Moor, near York.

Divisions among Parliament’s generals led to reform. The Self-Denying Ordinance removed members of Parliament from military command, and in 1645 Parliament created the New Model Army under Sir Thomas Fairfax, with Oliver Cromwell commanding the cavalry. On 14 June 1645 it crushed the king’s main army at the Battle of Naseby. Further defeats followed, and in May 1646 Charles surrendered to the Scots. Oxford fell in June 1646.

The Second Civil War (1648)

Victory did not bring peace. Parliament, the army and the Scots disagreed over religion and the terms to offer the king. Charles negotiated with all of them while seeking to divide them. The army, unpaid and politically radicalised, seized the king in June 1647 and debated the future constitution at Putney that autumn.

In December 1647 Charles made a secret “Engagement” with a group of Scots, who promised to restore him in return for establishing Presbyterianism in England for three years. Royalist risings broke out in Wales, Kent and Essex in 1648, and a Scottish army under the Duke of Hamilton invaded. Cromwell defeated the Scots at Preston on 17–19 August 1648, and Fairfax ended the long siege of Colchester on 28 August.

Trial, execution and the Third Civil War

Many in the army now regarded Charles as a “man of blood” who must be held to account. On 6 December 1648 soldiers under Colonel Thomas Pride barred more than a hundred moderate members from Parliament. The remaining “Rump” set up a special court, which tried the king for treason, and the execution of Charles I took place in Whitehall on 30 January 1649. The monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, and England was declared a Commonwealth.

The Scots, angered by the execution of their king, proclaimed his son Charles II. After conquering much of Ireland in 1649–1650, Cromwell defeated the Scots at Dunbar on 3 September 1650. Charles II invaded England in 1651, but on 3 September 1651, exactly a year after Dunbar, Cromwell destroyed his army at Worcester. The young king hid, famously in an oak tree at Boscobel, and escaped to France.

Life and war at home

Most fighting consisted not of great battles but of sieges, raids and skirmishes around fortified houses, castles and towns. Both sides garrisoned hundreds of strongholds and lived off the surrounding countryside through taxes, forced loans and free quarter, the billeting of soldiers in private homes.

Ordinary people bore heavy burdens. Parliament introduced new taxes, including the excise on goods and a weekly, later monthly, assessment on property, which were heavier than anything levied under the Personal Rule. In 1645 groups of farmers and villagers called Clubmen rose in several counties to protect their communities from soldiers of both sides.

The war also brought an explosion of print. With censorship collapsed, thousands of pamphlets and the first regular newsbooks spread news, propaganda and new religious and political ideas.

Key people

• Charles I (1600–1649): king who fought to preserve royal authority and the Church of England as he understood it.
• Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658): MP and cavalry commander who became the leading Parliamentarian general and later Lord Protector.
• Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612–1671): commander-in-chief of the New Model Army from 1645 to 1650.
• Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619–1682): the king’s German-born nephew and his most famous cavalry commander.
• Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex (1591–1646): Parliament’s first lord general, commander at Edgehill.
• John Pym (1584–1643): leader of the opposition in the Commons until his death in December 1643.

By the numbers

All these figures are estimates; records are incomplete, and historians use different methods.

Consequences

The war left the three kingdoms under a single republican government. From 1653 to 1658 Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector, backed by the army. Ireland suffered a harsh conquest and massive land confiscation, and Scotland was occupied and briefly united with England.

The republic did not long survive Cromwell’s death in 1658. Amid political chaos, General George Monck brought his army south, and the monarchy was restored under Charles II in May 1660. Yet the old system did not fully return. The prerogative courts were gone, Parliament now met regularly, and the question of how far a king could act without it was settled decisively in the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689.

Myths and facts

Myth: all Roundheads were Puritans and all Cavaliers were aristocrats. Both sides drew support from every class. Many nobles fought for Parliament, many ordinary people for the king, and religious views on each side were mixed.

Myth: Parliament fought to abolish the monarchy. In 1642 almost no one wanted a republic. Parliament claimed to be rescuing the king from evil advisers, and the decision to try and execute him came only after the second war in 1648.

Myth: it was a purely English war. The conflict began in Scotland and Ireland and involved all three kingdoms, which is why many historians prefer the term Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

Timeline

• 1629, March: Charles I dissolves Parliament and begins eleven years of Personal Rule.
• 1640, November: The Long Parliament meets.
• 1642, 22 August: Charles raises his standard at Nottingham; the war begins.
• 1642, 23 October: Battle of Edgehill, the first major battle.
• 1644, 2 July: Parliamentarian and Scottish victory at Marston Moor.
• 1645, 14 June: The New Model Army defeats the king at Naseby.
• 1646, 5 May: Charles surrenders to the Scottish army at Southwell.
• 1648, 17–19 August: Cromwell defeats the Scots and Royalists at Preston.
• 1649, 30 January: Charles I is beheaded in Whitehall.
• 1651, 3 September: Charles II is defeated at Worcester; the wars end.

Why it matters

The English Civil War was the only time an English king was tried and executed by his own subjects. It established that a monarch could not govern without Parliament, gave rise to new political ideas, from the Levellers’ demands for wider voting rights to Thomas Hobbes’s theory of sovereignty, and left a legacy of religious and national bitterness, especially in Ireland, that endured for centuries.