How Far Was Charles I Responsible For The Wars Of The Three Kingdoms?

The level of involvement Charles I had in causing the conflicts collectively known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms is disputed by four different historical perspectives. The traditionalist Whig view suggests that the players in the lead-up to the wars, including Charles, were merely powerless puppets of the inevitable clashing of the two forces of conservatism and progressive Protestantism. Similarly, the Marxist perspective forwards the idea of inevitability of bourgeois revolution - and therefore minimalizes the impact of Charles himself. Revisionists, however, such as Conrad Russell refute the idea of long-term divisions and inevitabilities and instead put focus on Charles I`s immediate failures as a king in causing the wars. Post-revisionists take a middling stance between the first and third of these views. The purpose of this essay is to evaluate the extent to which Charles and his actions were personally responsible in building opposition and instigating war by evaluating the growth of opposition in England, the antagonizing of Scotland and Ireland and the problem of `multiple kingdoms`, the increasing sociological rifts at the time and Charles` personal style of rule, and establishing the extent to which these issues (which undoubtedly culminated in open war) can be blamed purely on Charles.

To begin with, it is important to evaluate certain aspects of the growth of Parliamentary opposition during Charles` reign which would eventually explode into armed conflict and rebellion. The Whig view of the period dictates that Parliament, in the lead up to and during the civil war, was the defender of law, liberty and property against the tyranny of absolute monarchy. For example, S.R. Gardiner called the English Civil War a `Puritan revolution` which fought against the oppressive Stuart Church. This idea that greater, long-term forces were at work (with Charles himself being a helpless catalyst for war and his own actions making little difference to what would eventually happen) is, however, somewhat inaccurate. Firstly, the notion of Parliament as a great defender of enlightened ideas should be disregarded in place of the idea that parliament is an `occasion, not an institution`. Whig history has forged an image of a defiantly liberal permanent body that inevitably brought about the end of absolute monarchy. Instead, it was an occasional tool that was misused (or, during the Personal Rule, disregarded entirely) by Charles I and the misuse of which added to short-term discontent with Charles` rule - not long-term discontent with monarchism. Arguably, it was Charles` failings in ignoring Parliament - his indifference to the law regarding the acquisition of taxes , or his policy failures regarding Scotland and Ireland , for example - that led to opposition growing within Parliament in the years prior to the wars and which led to Parliament beginning to work against Charles. Not, as Whigs would have it, Parliament fulfilling its role as the great beacon of enlightenment in the tyranny of absolute monarchy. One could also argue, however, that even the Whig interpretation places some emphasis on Charles himself being responsible for the outbreak of war - but as the `final straw` that pushed an inevitable conflict over the edge, rather than as the prime instigator of a rebellion against his own rule. Even if one were to take the viewpoint that these wars were the culmination of a great buildup of antagonism between ancient human rights and absolute monarchy, it would still be necessary to recognize Charles as the one who pushed that antagonism into war through his own `tyrannical`reign during the Personal Rule. Therefore, when evaluating the rise of opposition to Charles and its eventual descent into war, it seems that the (largely inaccurate) Whig view places Charles as the straw that broke the camel`s back whereas Revisionists would place blame almost entirely on Charles for the war. Either way, however, both place some (if differing) levels of blame on Charles for causing the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and that consensus can be found here surely emphasizes the importance of Charles being personally responsible for the outbreak of war.

Next, one must evaluate the extent to which the blame for the involvement of Scotland and Ireland can be fixed on either Charles himself or the problem of `multiple kingdoms`. There can be no doubt that Scotland and Ireland had a crucial impact on the outbreak of war both on their own fronts and in England (it is, after all, named the Wars of the Three Kingdoms for a reason). For example, armed conflict began in Scotland and it was the Irish rebellion which laid waste to the relatively stable atmosphere of 1641 (where peace seemed likely) by instigating the notion that Charles was part of a Catholic conspiracy and creating a rift between Royalists and Parliamentarians. Whether the roots of the problems that caused the Scottish Civil War and the Irish rebellion can be found in Charles` own failings or within structural inherent weaknesses that arguably meant war was inevitable is highly debatable. The idea that there were inherent constitutional problems of the multiple kingdoms with Britain is forwarded by Conrad Russell. Separating these kingdoms, primarily, was religion - England was made up largely of Protestants, Ireland of Catholics and Scotland of Presbyterians. One could argue that this division, in a time where religion was so important and radicalism was rife, meant that war was inevitable. However, this argument fails in the sense that James I, Charles` father, had ruled Scotland in a laid-back and tolerant fashion which meant that war could be largely avoided. It was Charles` response to the problem of the multiple kingdoms that built resentment which led to war. For example, Charles imposing the book of common prayer into the largely Presbyterian Scotland created popular opposition that led to the Edinburgh riot of 1637 which led directly to armed conflict. Elsewhere, Charles` attempts to fight the Scottish with loyalist Irishmen created the imagery of a king sending Catholics to fight Protestants, which surely lent itself to the idea that Charles was a Catholic sympathizer. Finally, on top of these issues, Charles` style of reign in Scotland and Ireland did not help - for example, he excluded Scotland from trade and politics, rarely visited and generally strongly disliked the Scottish. This, obviously, would have antagonized the other kingdoms even further towards war (in contrast to the `live and let live` style of reign that his father utilized). Therefore, whilst one can argue that there were unavoidable issues with Britain (primarily religious ones), Charles` handling of these issues pushed them from a minor inconvenience into a disaster and, in the case of England, made him seem like a Catholic conspirator (which eventually led to the English Civil War itself). Charles` own actions, therefore, are almost fully responsible for the outbreak of war in Scotland, then Ireland, and then England.

Although not necessarily the sole cause of conflict, the civil war involved a major conflict of cultures which represent the argument that social divisions helped contribute to the outbreak of war. This is an argument that could be attributed to post-revisionists - that whilst war may not have been as inevitable as the Whigs suggest, ideological conflicts nevertheless existed and may have contributed to the political breakdown in the years leading up to the wars. The first of these social divisions has already been discussed - the religious rifts that can be found between different kingdoms. Similarly, on a national level, there was a divide between those who considered themselves as part of paternalistic and conservative communities who expressed a desire for unity through ritual, and those who believed that their religious distinctiveness put them on a higher level than the poor and ungodly, and believed they had a `duty to reform society` (such as the Puritans, for example). This rift cannot be blamed on Charles, nor did Charles do anything to greatly increase those rifts. However, it is important to state that this rift did not lead to the war by itself - it merely intensified the already existing divides that were created by Charles` handling of the Scottish and Irish wars. Marxist historians would also argue for the existence of social divide on a class level. Marxist theory and the five `stages of history` dictate feudalistic society will inevitably be replaced by the emergence of the bourgeois and subsequent revolution, leading a nation into a capitalist society. To apply this to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Marxist historians would argue that 1642 saw this bourgeois revolution occur, due to the social divisions between the emerging bourgeois and feudal monarchy. The same Revisionist critique that can be made of Whig history can also be applied here (that it was short-term problems with Charles` reign and not long-term narratives that led to war) as well as the criticisms that can be levied at Marxism itself (for example - if this is representative of a great bourgeois revolution, why was the monarchy then reinstated during the Restoration?). Even if one were to take the side of the Marxist historians, then it could also be argued that Charles was himself the final straw that led to the bourgeois revolution and was still therefore responsible, in the short-term, for the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Therefore, whilst social divisions did no doubt exist during the years leading up to the wars, their impact is miniscule - religious and community divides merely exacerbated the conflict whilst the Marxist viewpoint is highly disreputable. Thus, social divisions cannot be blamed for the outbreak of war.

Finally, there were consequences to Charles` style of governance (and especially the Personal Rule of Charles, or what the Whig historians would call the `Eleven Years Tyranny`). Revisionism suggests that if the wars were caused by short-term factors, then one of these factors must therefore be Charles himself and his methods of reigning. His flawed reactions to certain problems he came across have already been discussed, such as his mistreatment of the other kingdoms. On top of this, he maintained the use of a financial system best suited for the 15th century in the 17th, which led to corruption, the loss of Crown lands, and a broken financial system (made worse by the wars against France and Spain of the 1620s). As well as this, his failure to fund (and win) those wars further damaged his reputation, and Charles` indifference to the law in attempting to gain those funds greatly aggravated Parliament. Evidence for the emergence of a system increasingly under stress can be found in the Petition of Right, which called for restrictions on non-Parliamentary taxation, martial law, and arbitrary arrests. Finally, the Personal Rule - Charles` eleven years of rule without Parliament - whilst seeing some success, was regarded as (as one can see from the Whig term for it) tyrannical. These short-term problems with how Charles reigned may not have led directly to war, but they very much had an influencing factor and certainly could not have helped Charles` image when rifts began to divide in Parliament over his handling over the Irish rebellion. In this way, Charles` own personal flaws once again contributed (though perhaps not quite as strongly as the aforementioned issues) to the outbreak of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

To conclude, the Whig and Marxist interpretations of the outbreak of the wars establish the need to understand a great narrative at work spanning hundreds of years. These interpretations, however, are largely flawed. Whilst there were some long-term factors in causing the wars (such as social and religious divides on the ground), they were not primary instigators of conflict and probably only served to exacerbate an already existing problem. Charles himself was responsible almost entirely for the Wars of the Three Kingdoms - from his handling of Parliamentary opposition to his reaction to the problem of the multiple kingdoms and his own style of kingship which infringed greatly on human rights (an idea that, it should be noted, came to being shortly after the wars with writers such as John Locke). It is to the post-revisionists that we must turn - the notion that war was not inevitable and must have been instigated largely by Charles I himself, but the instigation of which was made worse by existing social and ideological conflicts, is the one that seems closest to the truth. Therefore, it can be discerned that Charles I was largely very much responsible for the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.