Puritan Revolution
Puritan Revolution
• The Puritan Revolution is also known as the English Revolution it was for general designation for the period in English history from 1640 to 1660.
• It began with the calling of the Long Parliament by King Charles I and proceeded through two civil wars, the trial and execution of the king, the republican experiments of Oliver Cromwell, and, ultimately, the restoration of King Charles II.
• The reasons for the conflict can be traced to social, economic, constitutional, and religious developments over a century or more. Closer at hand were questions of sovereignty in the English state and Puritanism in the church.
• The immediate cause, however, was Charles's attempt (1637) to impose the Anglican liturgy in Scotland.
• The Presbyterian Scots rioted, and then they signed the National Covenant and raised an army to defend their church.
• In 1640 their army occupied the northern counties of England.
• The Long Parliament, summoned by Charles to raise money in support of his war against the Scots, met on November 3, 1640, and demanded reforms as the price for aid.
• It arrested and ultimately executed for treason the king's chief advisers, Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, and William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury.
• It also put limits on the king's prerogatives.
• The members split over the Root and Branch Bill to abolish bishops in the Anglican Church, over raising an army to quell an Irish rebellion, and over the Grand Remonstrance, by which Parliament would control the choice of the king's ministers.
• The political quarrel became an armed conflict in 1642. Most of the Lords and some members of the House of Commons sided with the king (thus making it technically incorrect to call it a war between king and Parliament).
• In August 1642 Charles gathered his army at Nottingham.
• The first battle, fought at Edge hill on October 23, was indecisive.
• In general, the king controlled the northwest, and Parliament controlled the southeast—including London.
• The king's followers were called Cavaliers; those of Parliament were called Roundheads.
• In 1643 Parliament secured the support of the Scottish army by promising that the recently convened Westminster Assembly would make the Anglican church conform to the Presbyterian church of Scotland.
• Meanwhile, Cromwell, an outspoken Member of Parliament and a military genius, was perfecting his regiment of cavalry, which soon earned the name Ironsides.
• Parliament...