2E - Challenges to the arbitrary government of Charles I: reactions against financial policies
Between 1625 and 1628, Charles’s need to finance war repeatedly collided with demands for lawful government and Protestant security. Learn how financial policies, Church disputes, foreign failures and Buckingham’s position turned disagreements into a wider crisis of trust.
Supply and disputed customs
Charles needed Parliament’s financial support for war, but MPs wanted to investigate grievances before making large grants.
He succeeded James in March 1625, inheriting plans for action against Spain and the unresolved Palatinate crisis. MPs supported defence of Protestant interests, but that did not commit them to whatever expenditure the government requested. The costs and strategy of war mattered. Dissolving a Parliament could stop criticism, but also remove a source of supply.
In 1625 the Commons proposed granting tonnage and poundage, customs duties on imports and exports, for one year rather than the customary lifetime grant. The measure did not become a completed parliamentary grant before dissolution. Charles nevertheless continued collecting the duties, regarding them as established royal income needed for government. MPs viewed collection without their authorisation as a threat to their control of taxation. The constitutional dispute was over entitlement and consent, not simply whether trade should be taxed. UK Parliament on tonnage and poundage.
Arbitrary government
Government alleged to act according to the ruler’s will rather than recognised legal limits. In the 1620s the charge concerned contested taxes, imprisonment and religious authority, not an agreed verdict accepted by every contemporary.
Merchants resisting customs could have their goods seized. This made abstract arguments about prerogative concrete: property could be taken while the legal basis of the charge remained disputed. The Crown argued from precedent and necessity; opponents argued that those claims must not displace consent. Such disagreement could widen because MPs were themselves landowners or represented trading communities and recognised similar dangers to their own property.
The Forced Loan and imprisonment
The Forced Loan made the king’s financial demands a dispute about personal liberty as well as taxation.
Charles dissolved Parliament in 1626 while MPs were pursuing Buckingham. He then demanded a Forced Loan from subjects assessed largely on the basis of parliamentary subsidies. A genuine loan would involve voluntary consent and a prospect of repayment; this demand was enforced. Those refusing could face imprisonment or other pressure. It raised money but also suggested that dissolution allowed the king to obtain taxation by another name.
Five imprisoned refusers challenged their detention in the Five Knights’ Case, also called Darnell’s Case, in 1627. Their lawyers sought release through habeas corpus, the procedure requiring a prisoner to be brought before a court so that the legal basis of detention could be examined. The Crown gave the king’s special command as the reason rather than specifying an ordinary offence. The court did not release them on bail. That outcome did not settle every argument about taxation, but it intensified fear that royal command could prevent effective legal protection. University of Nottingham’s catalogue of contemporary arguments and University of the West Indies discussion of the case.
Military preparations added local grievances. Billeting required householders to accommodate troops; forced billets imposed costs and exposed civilians to disorder. Martial law used military procedures rather than ordinary legal protections. Critics could therefore connect the cost of failed campaigns, coerced payments and interference with property and liberty. The Petition of Right would respond to precisely these linked concerns in 1628.
Religion and royal protection
Religious opposition intensified when Charles protected churchmen whom MPs considered dangerous to Protestant belief and lawful government.
Many English Protestants accepted Calvinist teaching about predestination. Clergy associated with Arminianism placed more emphasis on the possibility of resisting grace and on human response to God. In English political arguments, the label also came to cover anti-Calvinist churchmen who favoured ceremony and episcopal authority. Theology, worship and obedience were related concerns, but they were not identical doctrines.
Richard Montagu’s Appello Caesarem appeared in 1625 and appealed to royal protection in a dispute over his religious teaching. The Commons attacked him; Charles protected him as a royal chaplain and later promoted him to the bishopric of Chichester in 1628. To the king, defending an appointed clergyman could protect Church authority. To opponents, promotion seemed to reward doctrines they had condemned and deny Parliament any effective remedy. History of Parliament’s account of Archbishop Abbot and the Montagu controversy.
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