3.2 The English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution

James I (reigned 1603–1625), already king of Scotland, believed in divine right and quarreled with Parliament over money. His son Charles I (1625–1649) went further. He collected taxes without Parliament's consent and jailed people who refused to pay. In 1628 Parliament made him accept the Petition of Right, which banned taxes without Parliament's consent and imprisonment without cause. Charles then ruled without Parliament from 1629 to 1640, raising money through old fees like ship money.

Religion made things worse. Charles's archbishop, William Laud, pushed ceremonies that Puritans saw as Catholic, and Charles married a Catholic French princess. When Charles forced a new prayer book on Presbyterian Scotland, the Scots rebelled. Needing money for war, Charles had to call Parliament in 1640.

This Long Parliament attacked royal powers, and in 1642 civil war broke out between Royalists (Cavaliers) and Parliament's supporters (Roundheads), many of them Puritans. Parliament's New Model Army, a disciplined force commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax with Oliver Cromwell as its leading cavalry general, won. Charles I was tried and executed on January 30, 1649, an act that shocked Europe.

England became a republic called the Commonwealth. Parliament abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords. Radical groups appeared: the Levellers wanted voting rights for most men, and the Diggers wanted land held in common. Cromwell crushed these groups and brutally conquered Ireland. In 1653 he dissolved Parliament and ruled as Lord Protector, backed by the army and enforcing strict Puritan rules, until his death in 1658.

Many people were tired of military rule, so Parliament invited Charles II back in 1660, the Restoration. Parliament passed the Test Act (1673), barring non-Anglicans from public office, and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679), protecting against unjust imprisonment.

Charles II's brother, James II (1685–1688), was openly Catholic. He appointed Catholics to office and kept a standing army. When his son was born in 1688, raising the prospect of a Catholic dynasty, Parliament's leaders invited his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange, ruler of the Dutch Republic, to take the throne. William landed with an army, James fled to France, and almost no blood was shed in England, which is why it's called the Glorious Revolution.

The result was a constitutional monarchy in which Parliament held sovereignty, meaning final authority to make law. Power still rested with landowners, though, since only a small share of men could vote. In the 1700s a prime minister and cabinet, starting with Robert Walpole (1721–1742), ran the government through Parliament.

• English Bill of Rights (1689): the monarch could not suspend laws, raise taxes or keep a peacetime army without Parliament's consent; Parliament was to meet often and debate freely; no Catholic could inherit the throne.
• Toleration Act (1689): Protestant dissenters could worship in their own churches, though Catholics and non-Anglicans were still barred from office.
• John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (published 1689) argued that government rests on the consent of the governed and that people may resist a ruler who violates their natural rights to life, liberty and property.