The Long Parliament: first formed on November 3, 1640

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Introduction
After dissolving the Short Parliament just six months earlier, King Charles I on November 3, 1640 reluctantly called the Long Parliament to finance the debts of the Covenanter Bishops' Wars. The Long Parliament saw this sudden dependency of Royal power on parliament as an opportunity to restructure politics to its own advantage, and accordingly began reforming certain English judicial and fiscal policies in 1641. The fallout of these reforms plunged England into civil war, and eventually remodeled Great Britain into a constitutional monarchy.


An Additional Prologue: A list of controversial policies and tyrannical offences of King Charles I
The King committed England to a war to "liberate" the Palatinate and suffered a scandalous defeat.

He withdrew the English aid to Protestant Huguenots in France.

He pledged the Danish 20,000 pounds which he had not to give.

He called Parliament and demanded they raise money for him without explaining its uses.

He used royal patronage to dictate who would serve as commissioners, etc.

He patronized William Laud, a high churchman, who, with the help of the king's patronage, was awarded the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and began imposing high church ceremony throughout England and Scotland in a direct affront to Puritan and Presbyterian policies.

King Charles dissolved three Parliaments after Parliamentarians began complaining about his policy of patronage, and ruled for 11 years without calling Parliament into session at all.

As it was all but not possible to tax without Parliamentarian sanction, the King jailed without a trial gentlemen who refused to lend him money, and removed judges who did not agree with him in this.

He kept a lavish court and chapel in the Catholic pomp, which encouraged Catholics, even including the Pope, to buy him off with art.

He taxed Ireland dry, earning a million pounds a year.

He imposed Catholic liturgy and doctrine on the Church of England through the Elizabethan Settlement, and brought Scotland to the point of war by extending the Settlement over Presbyterian Scotland and appointing nine bishops over the Church of Scotland.

He censored and examined every book published that dealt with religion, Church government, or the state, and created the Star Chamber as a phony court for high treason.

English courts were bypassed.

He withdrew naval protection to appease the Catholics, and Turkish pirates swarmed the costs of Cornwall, Ireland, carrying off hundreds into slavery.

Macleod, John. Dynasty: The Stuarts 1560-1807. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1999. 171-182.


The King, Parliament, and the English Civil War
Exhausted and disheartened by the Covenanter victory at Newburn, King Charles was forced to concede ultimate defeat of the Bishops' Wars to the Covenanter Scots, and signed the Treaty of Ripon in October of 1640. The Treaty provided that the Covenanter army would occupy the counties of Durham and Northumberland (extracting £850 a day from the English government) until a new English Parliament was called to ratify a permanent settlement. This new parliament became the Long Parliament, and immediately demonstrated its disdain for Royal power by dismissing two of the King's ministers, the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud. Being so pressed, the King anxiously desired the end of the Scottish Bishops' Wars, and gave the Scots generous terms of his surrender. In the Treaty of London, 1641, he assured the Scots that no one would be censured for signing the Covenant, that Scottish war criminals would be prosecuted in Scotland, all captured goods would be returned to Scotland, the Scottish General Assembly would oversee all Scottish ecclesiastical matters, and Scotland would receive a £300,000 bonus of recompense for the wars (what Parliament called "brotherly assistance"). These concessions only gave Parliament more sway, and put Charles into a position of desperately needing Parliamentarian subsidies.

Parliament ran with its new power. In 1641, Parliament abolished the Star Chamber, the High Commission, and other such privy councils that had previously allowed Charles to bypass common law by ruling without a called parliament during 1629-40. They also eliminated the questionably legal practices of ship-money measures, restraint of knighthood, and forced loans, and abolished prerogative courts and the King's power to raise money arbitrarily. The passage of the Triennial Act of 1641 provided that Parliament would be called up at least once every three years. When the Irish Uprising broke out in October of 1641, Parliament greatly undermined the King's authority by passing the Militia Ordinance, which gave parliament the power to nominate a lord-general and a lord-admiral who would make military decisions through martial law. The King drew his lines here, and refused to sign the bill. Parliament rashly responded by proclaiming that in issues of national defense it could act without the King's signature. A modern hypothetical example of this would be if the US Congress declared that in all issues surrounding terrorism (a defense issue), it didn't need President Obama's signature. Furthermore, Parliament claimed that all lords-lieutenant of the counties (who controlled the county militias) would be appointed by Parliament, and that all appointments of the King would be revoked. Now, Parliament not only was asserting its power at the King's expense, but it was directly putting itself at permanent odds with the King by demanding that his very power to appointment be canceled. This would be the same as if the US Congress demanded that all officers in all branches of the military be appointed by Congress, and the President give up his power as Commander in Chief! Parliament was clearly overstepping its bounds, and the English Civil War soon broke out as a result. Yet, given the King's offences and the fact that the King himself declared war, Parliamentary increase in power so far may by justifiable.

As war began, Parliament appointed the Committee of Safety to dictate the course of the war. Parliament actually split in 1643, with one-third of the House of Commons and most of all the House of Lords leaving Westminster and forming their own pro-Royalist Oxford Parliament ("recruiter" elections were held to make up the difference at Westminster). John Pym, the Whig leader at Westminster, boldly imposed an assessment tax on property to fund the war, and even more audaciously began sequestrating estates owned by pro-Royalist "malignants" in March of 1643. Indeed, even my own family's estate of Cothelstone Manor (I'm a descendant of Adam Stowell) was destroyed by cannon fire under Cromwell's orders in 1651 after Sir John Stowell had successfully repelled a parliamentarian attack of over 600 in 1642; but that's another story. In July 1643, Pym initiated a purchase tax on most common goods. Parliament then collected even more income beginning in 1644 by offering to return some stolen estates to their previous owners for a fee. A system of county committees (what the American Declaration of Independence would call "swarms of Officers") were put in place by Parliament to administrate general county affairs, and additional committees oversaw sequestered estates, controlled the clergy, and enforced the assessments tax ordinances. Parliament had created quite a centrally controlled bureaucracy that infiltrated almost every area of life.

Regarding the war with Charles, Parliament was again split. Throughout the Civil War, the Presbyterians generally formed a "peace party" that sought to restore peaceful relations with the King through negotiation. The Independents generally became the "war party." However, the term "party" must be understood loosely, as members often crossed from one side to the other. After the First Civil War (1640-46), the New Model Army became politically powerful due to the Presbyterian Parliamentarians' hesitation to deal with pay, debts, and grievances of soldiers. When Charles had been arrested after the Second Civil War, the New Model Army purged the Long Parliament of its Presbyterian moderates, and promptly created the High Court of Justice (an eerie resemblance to the old Star Chamber under Charles) to try and eventually behead Charles.

What was left of the Long Parliament became known as the Rump Parliament (with the absence of its Presbyterian delegates). The Rump ruled the Commonwealth until Cromwell, being impatient with slow proceedings, dismissed it in 1653 (see image above). After the Protectorate crumbled, the Rump resumed session in 1659, and in February 1660, the surviving Presbyterian delegates were recalled for the Long Parliament's last session. On March 16, 1660, the Long Parliament voted to dissolve itself, and hold new elections. It was exhausted of the fight for Parliamentarian power, and the new Convention Parliament led the way for the restoration of the Stuarts.

Even though the Long Parliament eventually capitulated, many of its privileges made it through the Stuarts. Parliament had moved too quickly at first, and had learned its lesson through the loss of many lives and the suppression of the personal rights and liberties. Likewise, the beheading of Charles I supremely altered the decorum of the English monarchy, even as it shocked the world by the sheer insolence of its abruptness. English monarchs would learn that if they provoked Parliament by disregarding common law, Parliament might just respond with Civil War and the battle axe on the scaffold. The ensuing balance of power enforced a new kind of political order: constitutional monarchy.


Sources:
Image of Cromwell Dissolving Long Parliament from Wikipedia
Macleod, John. Dynasty: The Stuarts 1560-1807. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/glossary/long-parliament.htm
http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/military/bishops-wars.htm
http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/biog/charles1.htm
http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/glossary/militia-ordinance.htm
http://www.cothelstonemanor.co.uk/tours_and_history.html