On 10th of March 1629, King Charles I of England took a step that would transform the political landscape of the kingdom. Frustrated by years of confrontation with Parliament, and a particularly outrageous scene in Parliament, the King dissolved it and resolved to govern without calling another – Parliament only met in this period when it was called upon by the monarch. What followed was an eleven-year period known as the “Personal Rule,” or by critics as the “’Eleven Years’ Tyranny.” At the time, it was well within the King’s right for him to do this, however, it was one of the most consequential decisions of Charles’s reign and helped to set England on the path toward civil war.
To understand why Charles chose to rule without Parliament, one must look at the troubled relationship between the King and Parliament during the 1620s. Charles inherited the throne in 1625 from his father, James I, along with a set of unresolved tensions about money, religion, and the limits of royal authority. Parliament traditionally granted Tonnage and Poundage to the monarch for their entire reign, but Charles had only been granted them for one year – any attempt at re-negotiation would be followed by demands for political concessions. In addition, Parliament did not grant the subsidies that Charles required. Parliament chose to do this to put Charles in a poor financial state, and use it as a springboard for political concessions, such as Parliament being able to call itself.
Charles’s early reign was marked by expensive and unsuccessful military ventures, particularly against Spain and France which required funds that the Crown did not possess. When Parliament was summoned to provide money, members instead criticised royal policy, attacked the king’s favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, and demanded reforms.
The conflict reached a major turning point in 1628 with the presentation of the Petition of Right. This document asserted that the king could not levy taxes without parliamentary consent, imprison subjects without cause, or impose martial law in peacetime. Charles accepted the Petition of Right, but relations with Parliament did not improve. The following year, tensions escalated over issues of religion and taxation. Many MPs feared the king’s religious policies of Arminianism, championed by William Laud. These policies, like Altar rails, and bowing at the name of Jesus, were seen as Catholic by many in England, like the Puritan MP John Pym. To be clear, Arminianism is not Catholic, but many viewed it as such. At the same time, Charles was collecting Tonnage and Poundage despite not being granted it by Parliament – the year he had been granted had since gone by. Charles needed the money.
The final crisis came in the dramatic session of 10th of March 1629. When the king attempted to adjourn Parliament for the day, several MPs physically held the Speaker in his chair while resolutions condemning the King’s policies were read aloud. To Charles, this episode represented open defiance of royal authority. He dissolved Parliament and arrested several of the MPs who held the Speaker down.
It was at this moment that Charles embarked on governing without Parliament. For the next eleven years, no Parliament or national assembly would be summoned. Instead, the king relied on a smaller circle of advisers and sought to rule through existing legal and administrative structures.
From the king’s perspective, this decision was not necessarily revolutionary. Many monarchs had previously ruled for long periods without Parliament, including his own father James I who ruled without Parliament for seven years between 1614 and 1621. If the Crown could maintain financial stability and political order, the absence of Parliament was no problem.
In fact, he kept the peace for the majority of the Personal Rule and even balanced the books of Royal finances by roughly the mid-1630s, thanks to a strong financial administration, led by Richard Weston, Francis Cottington, and William Juxton.
However, Charles had to rely on alternative methods of raising revenue which were often unpopular. His government revived old taxes and expanded others. These included fines for violations of forest laws, the sale of monopolies – as had James I done – and the controversial extension of “ship money,” a levy historically imposed on coastal towns for naval defence, but Charles expanded it to the whole country.
Ship money became one of the most well-known and contentious policies of the Personal Rule. Under Charles, the tax was extended to inland counties and collected during peacetime: it was argued to be a matter of national defence. The resistance of the MP John Hampden in 1637, who refused to pay the tax and challenged it in court, showed the unpopular nature of the tax. Despite losing his case, he only lost seven to five by a vote of Royal Judges. Ship Money collapsed shortly after, with people refusing to pay.
Alongside financial reforms, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury led Arminian religious reforms, including strong persecution of very radical Protestants, through censorship. The most vicious attack came on three men, William Prynne, John Bastwick, and Henry Burton, who had their ears cut off and were branded with “SL” or “Seditious Libeller.” William Prynne famously reinterpreted the “SL” as “Stigmata Laudis” or “the marks of Laud.”
For several years, these policies appeared to work well. Finances were balanced, Radicals were silenced, and there was peace. However, under the surface, there was deep resentment: Ship money collapsed between 1637 and 1640, and secret groups of Puritans including MPs like John Pym, William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, and Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick used “Shareholder meetings” of the Providence Island Company to discuss opposition to the King.
The collapse of the Personal Rule came not out of England, but from Scotland. When Charles attempted to impose a new prayer book on the Scottish Church in 1637, riots broke out in Edinburgh. The resistance soon developed into a broader political movement that rejected royal interference in Scottish religious affairs, including an establishment of the Solemn League and Covenant. The resulting conflict – known as the Bishops’ Wars – forced Charles into calling Parliament.
In 1640, Scottish forces had not only pushed back English forces, but had also captured Newcastle, which was vital for coal as winter approached. Charles lacked the money to fight and was forced to call Parliament twice, one lasting only three weeks, nicknamed the “Short Parliament” and one lasting 20 years until 1660, aptly called the “Long Parliament.”
The anniversary of Charles’s decision on 10th of March 1629 therefore marks more than a moment of royal frustration or power-grabbing. It represents nature of England at the time, foreign to us, where it was well within Royal Prerogative to rule without Parliament. In many ways, the Personal Rule led to our system today, whereby some view the Monarch as completely unnecessary.
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https://www.philippagregory.com/news/charles-i-begins-his-11-years-of-personal-rule
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-I-king-of-Great-Britain-and-Ireland
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