What strained the relationship between the first two stuart kings and parliament and with what effect?
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Answer:
Parliament became so firmly embedded in the state because it became clear that parliamentary taxation was the only practical and legal means to finance the rising costs of the English government. Like their predecessors in the middle ages, Members of Parliament vigorously defended the principle that only through parliamentary agreement might taxes be levied. The issue was at the heart of politics in the reigns of James I (1603-25) and Charles I (1625-49). It was Charles’s frustration with the way politicians tried to bargain with him before granting him taxation which made him push well beyond its legal limits his right to raise money without its approval, and ended up in an acrimonious confrontation with the House of Commons in the Parliament of 1628-9.
The most bitterly contested debates during much of the period, however, related to religion. It began with arguments over the nature and direction of the Church of England: whether it should move closer to the reformed Protestant churches of Europe, or whether it should remain a sort of hybrid, with features of both Catholic and reformed traditions. The debate was made worse by suspicions about the Stuart kings' interest in exacerbating the Catholic tendencies in the Church, and in concerns about the threat posed by continental Catholic powers to the Protestant movement.
After the confrontation of 1628-9, Charles abandoned his efforts to negotiate with Parliaments for eleven years of ‘Personal Rule’. But a revolution in Scotland forced him to return to the English Parliament in 1640 to find the money to contest it, and revived, with interest, the confrontations of the 1620s. Within two years, the king and Parliament were at war, and by 1646 the king had been defeated.
A new power struggle ensued between Parliament and the army it had created. In part this was a religious struggle too, for Parliament’s strongest faction was ‘Presbyterian’, with views similar to those of their predecessors, the puritans. The army, though, was dominated by more radical views, in religion and politics. Gaining the upper hand in 1648, it removed the Presbyterians from Parliament. The purged Parliament put the king on trial and executed him in 1649. It instituted a new regime, a republic. But the army’s relationship with a still relatively conservative Parliament was never an easy one, and was ended by Oliver Cromwell’s military coup and assumption of power in April 1653, and his acceptance of the position of ‘Lord Protector’. Cromwell’s confrontations with the Parliaments he summoned, in an attempt to clothe his regime with legitimacy, echoed the Parliaments of his monarchical predecessors. After his death in 1658, the army divided and disintegrated. It opened the way to what was, by then, a hugely popular restoration of the monarchy in 1660 under Charles I’s son, Charles II.
Religion, however, continued to be a dominant political issue. The Church of England, with its bishops and cathedrals, all abolished during the Civil War, was reconstructed after the Restoration. Public worship by the other religious groups which had mushroomed during the Civil War and Interregnum, such as Quakers and Baptists, was outlawed. Many Presbyterians, too, felt that they could not be part of the re-established Church. The most explosive issue, though, was the desire of both Charles II and James II to enable Catholics to worship freely, without the restrictions which had been introduced in the sixteenth century. Blocked from doing so by Parliament, they both tried to find ways of changing the law using the royal prerogative. When Parliament passed the Test Act in 1673, removing Catholics from public office, the resignation of James, then heir to the throne, showed that he had converted to Catholicism himself. The discovery of a supposed ‘popish plot’ heightened panic about Catholic influences. Attempts to pass legislation to exclude him from the throne during 1678-81 inflamed public opinion, divided politicians in ‘whigs’ and ‘tories’ and created an which people believed similar to that of 1641, just before the Civil War broke out.
James II’s attempts to secure the election of a Parliament which would repeal the Test Act led to his deposition in 1689 and replacement by his elder daughter, Mary, and her husband, William, Prince of Orange. After 1689, Parliament was dominated by two preoccupations. One was the perennial one of financing the now very rapidly rising costs of government. William had invaded England in order to ensure it would be a Dutch ally in his impending war against France, and the costly war of 1689-97, and its successor in 1702-14 forced a revolution in British state finance, a rapid growth in state institutions, the army, navy and civil service. Resisting the growth of the state and ensuring the proper oversight of all of this activity became major parliamentary preoccupations.