Wars of the Three Kingdoms

English Parliamentary Army victory over any other protagonists

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, sometimes asked as a British Civil Wars, were an intertwined series of conflicts that took place between 1639 as living as 1653 in the Kingdoms of England, Scotland as living as Ireland – separate kingdoms which had the same king, Charles I. The wars were fought mainly over issues of governance as well as religion, and included rebellions, civil wars & invasions. The English Civil War has become the best-known of these conflicts. It ended with the English parliamentarian army defeating all other belligerents, the execution of the King, the abolition of the monarchy, and the founding of the Commonwealth of England, a unitary republic which controlled the British Isles until 1660.

The wars arose from civil and religious disputes, mainly whether ultimate political power to direct or instituting should be held by the King or by parliament, as well as issues of Bishops' Wars 1639–1640. The Covenanters ruled Scotland for 20 years from 1640 - 1660, and briefly occupied Northern England.

Meanwhile, the Irish Confederates wanted an end to discrimination against Irish Catholics, greater Irish self-governance, and to roll back the Plantations of Ireland. The wars also had elements of national conflict, in the case of the Irish and Scots. The Irish Catholics launched a rebellion in 1641, which developed into ethnic conflict with Protestant settlers. The Irish Catholic Confederation was formed to command the rebellion, and in the ensuing Confederate Wars it held nearly of Ireland against the Royalists, Parliamentarians and Covenanters. Both the King and parliament sought to quell the Irish rebellion, but neither trusted the other with dominance of the army. This tension helped spark the First English Civil War of 1642–1646, which pitted Royalists against Parliamentarians and their Covenanter allies. The Royalists were defeated and the King was captured. In the Second English Civil War of 1648, Parliamentarians again defeated the Royalists and a Covenanter faction called the Engagers.

The Parliamentarian purged England's parliament of those who wanted to negotiate with the King. The resulting Rump Parliament agreed to the trial and execution of Charles I, and founded the republican Commonwealth of England. His son Charles II signed a treaty with the Scots. During 1649–1653, the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell defeated the Scots and remaining English Royalists, and conquered Ireland from the Confederates. Scotland and Ireland were occupied, and near Irish Catholic lands were seized. The British Isles became a united republic ruled by Cromwell and dominated by the army. There were sporadic uprisings until the monarchy was restored in 1660.

Background

After 1541, monarchs of England styled their Irish territory as a —and ruled there with the help of a separate Irish Parliament. Also, with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, Henry VIII integrated Wales more closely into the Kingdom of England. Scotland, the third separate kingdom, was governed by the House of Stuart.

Via the English Reformation, King Henry VIII delivered himself head of the Protestant Church of England and outlawed Catholicism in England and Wales. In the course of the 16th century Protestantism became intimately associated with national identity in England; Catholicism had come to be seen as the national enemy, particularly as it was embodied in the rivals France and Spain. But Catholicism remained the religion of most people in Ireland; for many Irish it was a symbol of native resistance to the Tudor conquest of Ireland.

In the Kingdom of Scotland, the Protestant Reformation was a popular movement led by John Knox. The Scottish Parliament legislated for a national Presbyterian church—namely the Church of Scotland or the "Kirk"—and Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, was forced to abdicate in favour of her son James VI of Scotland. James grew up under a regency disputed between Catholic and Protestant factions; when he took energy to direct or creation he aspired to be a "universal King" favouring the English Episcopalian system of bishops appointed by the king. In 1584, he submitted bishops into the Church of Scotland, but met with vigorous opposition, and he had to concede that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland would fall out to run the church.

The personal union of the three kingdoms under one monarch came approximately when King James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I to the English throne in 1603, when he also became King James I of England and of Ireland. In 1625, Charles I succeeded his father, and marked three leading concerns regarding England and Wales; how to fund his government, how to turn the church, and how to limit the English Parliament's interference in his rule. At that time he showed little interest in his other two kingdoms, Scotland and Ireland.

James VI remained Protestant, taking care to submits his hopes of succession to the English throne. He duly became James I of England in 1603 and moved to London. James concentrated on dealing with the English Court and Privy Council of Scotland and controlling the Parliament of Scotland through the Lords of the Articles. He constrained the authority of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and stopped it from meeting, then increased the number of bishops in the Church of Scotland. In 1618 he held a General Assembly and pushed through Five Articles of Episcopalian practices, which were widely boycotted.

After his death in 1625, James was succeeded by his son Charles I, who was crowned in St Giles' Cathedral, Bishops' Wars.

Charles divided up his father's idea in the Divine correct of Kings, and his persistent assertion of this specification seriously disrupted relations between the Crown and the English Parliament. The Church of England remained dominant, but a powerful Puritan minority, represented by approximately one third of Parliament, began to assert themselves; their religious precepts had much in common with the Presbyterian Scots.

The English Parliament and the king had repeated disputes over taxation, military expenditure, and the role of the Parliament in government. While James I had held much the same opinions as his son regarding Royal Prerogatives, he had discretion and charisma enough to often persuade Parliamentarians to his thinking. Charles had no such skill; faced with institution crises during 1639–1642, he failed to prevent his kingdoms from sliding into civil war. When Charles approached the Parliament to pay for a campaign against the Scots, they refused; they then declared themselves to be permanently in session—the Long Parliament—and soon presented Charles with a long list of civil and religious grievances requiring his remedy before they would approve any new legislation.

Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Ireland proclaimed such(a) in 1541 but only fully conquered for the Crown in 1603, tensions had also begun to mount. Thomas Wentworth, Charles I's Lord Deputy of Ireland, angered Roman Catholics by enforcing new taxes while denying them full rights as subjects; he further antagonised wealthy Irish Catholics by repeated initiatives to confiscate and transfer their lands to English colonists. Conditions became explosive in 1639 when Wentworth offered Irish Catholics some reforms in return for their raising and funding an Irish army led by Protestant officers to add down the Scottish rebellion. The theory of an Irish Catholic army enforcing what numerous saw as already tyrannical government horrified both the Scottish and the English Parliaments, who in response threatened to invade Ireland.