The Historical Significance of the Civil War in England

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The Civil War in England is a range of conflicts between the adherents of Carl I and the adherents of the Parliament. These events took place from 1642 to 1652. The Civil War in England started in August of 1642. The primary cause of the war was the crisis, which had started in November of the previous year. It was difficult to predict the Civil War work before as well as it was impossible to avoid it. This was fundamentally based on the resistance of the government and the entire country. All this took place while ruling Jacob I and Carl I. So, the side of government included those people who got their income because they were close to crown  the ministers, bureaucracy, favorites and others, the entire country was represented by the gentry, and rich citizens. In 1630 the side of the entire country had a great number of claims to the government: the absence of parliament, taxes for the shipbuilding industry, and other taxes set without parliament, church policy and negative attitude to Puritanism, loyal attitude to the Pope policy, especially in the upper classes of society, the international policy-oriented to Spain, rude attempts to interfere into trade and industry and at last the fact that government was corrupted. (Roberts C. , Roberts D., and R. Bisson D., 2001, p152)

It should be emphasized that the war with the sieges, the battles, raids and contradictions, looting, requisition, especially horses, forced recruitment into the army, the significant loss of dead and injured people caused significant damage to agriculture, manufactures, and commerce.

The poor workers suffered from the especially hard impact of war  they were left without work, the farmers lost their crops. These disasters added heavy crop failures, which lasted for three consecutive years from 1647 to 1649. The high cost of bread has reached a level that has made it inaccessible to thousands of poor people.

The policy of parliament was to meet the basic demands of classes, it submitted, the parliament remained absolutely deaf to the needs and aspirations of the Democratic rank and file, whose hardships, sacrifices and dedication of the battlefield victory over the royalists had been conquered. In fact, trade and business segments got freedom from the system of monopolies (partially destroyed by Parliament, but otherwise have lost its force with the beginning of the Civil War. In turn, the big landowners got rid of the material and legal consequences arising from the so-called knight holding. As a result, landlords of the holders of land in feudal law actually turned into their private owners.

The historical significance of this one-sided (in favor of large landowners) abolition of feudal land tenure arrangements can not be overemphasized. Without taking into account a socio-economic and legal consequence of this act is difficult to explain the disappearance of the English peasantry as a class in the century that followed the revolution. (Fraser, 2006, pp344  350)

However, betraying the expectations of broad democratic rank, the parliament did not realize one thing  the revolution has awakened them from their political lethargy. One of the prerequisites of this process was dramatically intensified horizontal (territorial) mobility. The long-term accommodation of the parliamentary forces, recruited mainly in the south and east, the northern and western counties to promote the wide dissemination of ideas carried by the popular preachers, dressed in army uniforms. Besides actually triumphed in the war made it possible for religious sects to openly preach their doctrine.

Works cited

Fraser Rebecca. The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History. W.W. Norton & Co., 2006

Roberts Clayton, Roberts David, and R. Bisson Douglas. A History of England, Volume I: Prehistory to 1714 (Chapters 1-16).Prentice Hall; 4 edition, 2001

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