Wars of the Three Kingdoms

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The spark - tumult in St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, supposedly instigated by Jenny Geddes .

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms ( English Wars of the Three Kingdoms ) formed a series of intertwined conflicts in England , Ireland and Scotland from 1639 to 1651, after these three countries had come under the rule of the same monarch. The English Civil War is the most famous of these conflicts and involved the execution of the Monarch of the Three Kingdoms, Charles I , by the English Parliament in 1649.

This series of wars includes the Episcopal Wars of 1639 and 1640, the Scottish Civil War of 1644 to 1645, the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the reconquest of Ireland by Cromwell in 1649, and the first and second English Civil Wars, 1642-46 and 1648- respectively. 49; also the occasionally so-called Third English Civil War 1650–51.

Although the name is not new and was already used by James Heath in his book A Brief Chronicle of all the Chief Actions so fatally Falling out in the three Kingdoms , published in 1662, the term is representative of the development in the historical sciences terms to unite so as not to present them as the mere backdrop of some conflict, in this case the English Civil War. Some, like Carlton, Gaunt, and Royal, call them British Civil Wars , but this term is misleading because, although the three kingdoms were under personal union , the three kingdoms were not united until the Act of Union 1800 .

The term "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" is often extended to the uprisings and conflicts that dragged on through the 1650s to the Stuart Restoration under the reign of Charles II in 1660 (from then on the three kingdoms were again under one relative peaceful personal union under the Stuart king ) and sometimes up to the Venner uprising in the following year.

background

The personal union of the three kingdoms under one monarch emerged as a relatively new development as a term of the 17th century. Since 1541, English monarchs also had their Irish territories as a kingdom , which they ruled together with their own Irish parliament , while Wales was more closely integrated into the Kingdom of England under Henry VIII . Scotland, the third kingdom of its own, was ruled by the House of Stuart, and the three kingdoms were united under the same monarch when King James VI. Elizabeth I succeeded the English throne in 1603. The ruling of these three very different kingdoms turned out to be difficult for Jacob and his successor Charles I , especially when they tried to impose religious unity on the three kingdoms and Charles wanted to govern them in an absolutist way without involving parliament .

Different religious conditions shaped the respective countries. With the English Reformation , King Henry VIII made himself head of the Church of England and outlawed Catholicism in England and Wales. In the course of the sixteenth century, Anglicanism became closely linked to national identity in England: the English people generally viewed Catholicism, particularly in the incarnation of Spain and France, as a national enemy. However, Catholicism was the religion of the majority of Irish and stood for some of them a symbol of national resistance against the Tudor occupation of Ireland in the 16th century. In the Kingdom of Scotland in grew Reformed vonstatten continuous embossing Reformation from one of John Knox led people's movement.

Religious confrontation in Scotland

Jacob VI remained Protestant , taking care to keep his hopes for the English throne. In 1603 he legally became James I of England and moved to London. His diplomatic and political skills were now fully focused on dealing with the English court and parliament . At the same time he ruled Scotland by writing to the Privy Council of Scotland and the Parliament of Scotland through the Lords of the Articles. He stopped the Scottish General Assembly by holding a meeting, then increased the number of Scottish bishops. In 1618 he held a general assembly and pushed through the Five Articles of Episcopal Practices, which were largely boycotted. In 1625 he was succeeded by Charles I , his less able and reserved son, who was crowned with full Anglican rite in St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh in 1633 . Karl tried to enforce the Anglican rite. The opposition, however, gained momentum when Karl tried to forcibly introduce the Book of Common Prayer . Charles' confrontation with the Scots reached a climax in 1639 when Charles failed in an attempt to defeat Scotland by military means.

England

Charles shared the conviction that the kings owed their rule solely to the grace of God and therefore owed an account only to him. In doing so, he brought the Stuart kingship into opposition to the English system of government, which at that time had had limited parliamentary participation in state affairs for about 300 years. This led to a serious rift between the Crown and the English Parliament. While the Church of England remained dominant, a powerful Puritan minority was represented by a third of the MPs who had much in common with the Presbyterian Scots.

The English parliament's conflicts with the king over taxation, military spending and the role of parliament in government were repeated.

Ireland

In the meantime, tensions began to escalate in the Kingdom of Ireland , which was proclaimed as such in 1541 but was not fully conquered by the Crown until 1603. Charles I's Lord Deputy there , Thomas Wentworth , had angered the native Irish Catholics by repeated initiatives to confiscate their land and give it to the English colonists.

Outbreak of war

Abbreviated translation of the image description: The English and Scottish armies embrace each other lovingly.

Modern historians stress the inevitability of civil war by pointing out that all sides resorted to violence in a situation of mutual suspicion and paranoia. Charles' initial failure to bring the Episcopal War to a swift end also showed other disaffected groups that violence could serve their ends.

aftermath

While the Wars of the Three Kingdoms set the stage for the many changes that would later shape the modern British Isles, they did little in the short term. The Commonwealth of England achieved a relatively unstable state between a monarchy and a republic.

Timeline

"Charles I, King of England, from Three Angles" by Anthony van Dyck
  • 1637: Charles I tries to impose the Anglican rite on the Presbyterian Church of Scotland , riots begin under Jenny Geddes .
  • 1638: Signing of the National Covenant in Scotland.
  • 1639: Conflict between the Covenanters and Royalists in Scotland, beginning with the Covenanters taking Aberdeen in February.
  • 1639: The Episcopal War: Charles brings his troops to Scotland, but decides to negotiate instead of fighting. Signing of the Treaty of Berwick on June 18, 1639.
  • 1640: Charles convenes the English parliament again to win new money for his war. Parliament agrees to support Karl financially. However, Karl refuses to accept the conditions of parliament. He dissolves it after only three weeks existence, so it into British history as "Short Parliament" ( " Short Parliament " ) has been received.
  • 1640: The Second Episcopal War or "Second War of the Alliance" breaks out in August of that year. In response to Karl's attempt to raise an army against them, an army of Covenanters crossed the Tweed and overran English troops in the Battle of Newburn (August 28, 1640), then marched on Newcastle.
  • 1640: The Treaty of Ripon (October 26, 1640) leaves Newcastle in the hands of the Scots, who also receive a large tribute from Charles.
  • October 23, 1641: The Irish Rebellion breaks out in Ulster , accompanied by a massacre of Protestants committed by the Catholics. The rebels win a battle against the Crown in Julianstown Bridge just outside Drogheda in December.
  • December 1, 1641: Parliament enacts the Grand Remonstrance for Charles, which some historians see as a direct challenge to Charles's authority.
  • 1642: The Covenanters send a Protestant Scottish army to Ulster to defend the Protestant plantation (settlements) .
  • 1642: Karl enters the House of Commons to arrest five "traitors".
  • 1642–1646: The First English Civil War
  • 1642: An alliance of Irish Catholics, Gaelic Irish and Old Englanders forms the Catholic Confederation , based in Kilkenny, and meets for the first time in March 1642.
  • October 23, 1642: The Battle of Edgehill is the first stalemate battle in the English Civil War .
Contemporary depiction of the beheading of Charles I of England in front of the Banqueting House, Whitehall, London.
  • 1643: The truce between English royalists and Irish Confederates is declared.
  • 1643: September 25th: An alliance between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters - the Solemn League and Covenant - is declared. Scottish troops invade England to support the English parliamentarians.
  • 1644: July 2nd: Battle of Marston Moor - a huge defeat for the royalists
  • 1644: The Scottish Civil War , started by the royalist Montrose , with the help of Irish Confederate troops under Alasdair MacColla , including the Scottish-Irish forces under Manus O'Cahan .
  • 1645: The English Parliament forms the New Model Army .
  • June 14, 1645: The New Model Army defeats the Royalist Army at the Battle of Naseby , ending the First English Civil War.
  • August 15, 1645: Montrose gains royalist control of Scotland at the Battle of Kilsyth .
  • 1646: May: Charles I surrenders to the Scottish Covenanters, who hand over the English Parliament to him.
  • 1646: June 5th: At the Battle of Benburb , an Irish Confederate army under Owen Roe O'Neill defeats the Scottish Covenanters Army in Ulster.
  • 1647: At the Battle of Dungan's Hill (August) and the Battle of Knocknanauss (November), English MPs crush the Irish Confederate armies of Leinster and Munster.
  • 1648–1649: The Second English Civil War
  • 1648–1649: Peace of Ormonde - formally an alliance between Irish Confederates and English royalists is proclaimed.
  • 1648: The Battle of Preston (August): Scottish covenanters invade England to restore Charles's rule and are defeated by English MPs.
  • 1649: January 30th: Charles I is executed by the English Parliament.
  • 1649: August 2nd: At the Battle of Rathmines , the parliamentarians rout an Irish royalist army and out of Dublin ; August 15th, the New Model Army lands in Ireland and begins to retake Ireland .
  • 1649: September 11th: Cromwell takes Drogheda , followed by Wexford on October 11th.
  • 1650: Montrose tries to provoke a royalist revolt in Scotland; defeat, arrest and kill the Covenanters.
  • 1650: Charles II renounces alliance with the Irish Confederates.
  • 1650: The Third English Civil War breaks out between the Scots and the English Parliament. Cromwell invades Scotland and crushes the Scottish army at the Battle of Dunbar (September 3, 1650).
  • 1650/1651: Henry Ireton besieges Limerick twice
  • 1651: June: Admiral Robert Blake takes the Isles of Scilly .
  • 1651: September 3rd: The defeat of Charles II and the Scots at Worcester ends the Civil War. Charles II goes into exile in France.
  • 1652: The last Irish fort in Galway surrenders - the guerrilla war continues.
  • 1653: Surrender of the Irish organized troops at Cavan .
  • 1654: End of the Glencairn Rising in Scotland
  • 1655: March: Penruddock uprising in south-west England.
  • 1658: September 3rd: Oliver Cromwell dies. He is followed by his son Richard as Lord Protector .
  • 1659: August: Booth's uprising on the Welsh border.
  • 1660: May 25th: Charles II lands at Dover. The Restoration of England, Scotland, Ireland and the English colonies begins.
  • 1661: January 1st to 4th: Venner's uprising in London.

literature

British Islands

  • Martyn Bennett: The Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland, 1638-1651 . Blackwell, Oxford 1997, ISBN 0-631-19154-2 .
  • Martyn Bennett: The Civil Wars Experienced: Britain and Ireland, 1638–1661 . Routledge, Oxford 2000, ISBN 0-415-15901-6 .
  • Charles Carlton: Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars, 1638-1651 . Routledge, London 1992, ISBN 0-415-03282-2 .
  • John Kenyon, Jane Ohlmeyer (Eds.): The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1638-1660 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998, ISBN 0-19-866222-X .
  • Trevor Royle: The Civil War: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1638-1660 . Little, Brown, London 2004, ISBN 0-316-86125-1 .
  • Conrad Russell, 5th Earl Russell: The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637-1642 . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-822754-X .
  • David Stevenson: Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates: Scottish-Irish Relations in the Mid-Seventeenth Century . Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast 1981, ISBN 0-901905-24-0 .
  • John R. Young (Ed.): Celtic Dimensions of the British Civil Wars . John Donald, Edinburgh 1997, ISBN 0-85976-452-4 .

England

  • Gerald Aylmer: Rebellion or Revolution ?: England, 1640–1660 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1986, ISBN 0-19-219179-9 .
  • Christopher Hill (Historian): The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution . Temple Smith, London 1972, ISBN 0-85117-025-0 .
  • John Morrill (Historian): The Impact of the English Civil War . Collins & Brown, London 1991, ISBN 1-85585-042-7 .
  • Austin Herbert Woolrych: Battles of the English Civil War . Phoenix Press, London 2000, ISBN 1-84212-175-8 (first edition: 1961).

Ireland

  • Pádraig Lenihan: Confederate Catholics at War, 1641-1649 . Cork University Press, Cork 2000, ISBN 1-85918-244-5 .
  • Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin: Catholic Reformation in Ireland: The Mission of Rinuccini, 1645–1649 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, ISBN 0-19-820891-X .
  • Micheál Ó Siochrú: Confederate Ireland, 1642–1649: A Constitutional and Political Analysis . Four Courts Press, Dublin 1999, ISBN 1-85182-400-6 .
  • Micheál Ó Siochrú (Ed.): Kingdoms in Crisis: Ireland in the 1640s . Four Courts Press, Dublin 2001, ISBN 1-85182-535-5 .
  • M. Perceval-Maxwell: The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 . Gill & Macmillan, Dublin 1994, ISBN 0-7171-2173-9 .
  • James Scott Wheeler: Cromwell in Ireland . Gill & Macmillan, Dublin 1999, ISBN 0-7171-2884-9 .

Scotland

  • David Stevenson: The Scottish Revolution, 1637-1644: The Triumph of the Covenanters . David & Charles, Newton Abbot 1973, ISBN 0-7153-6302-6 .
  • David Stevenson: Alasdair MacColla and the Highland Problem in the Seventeenth Century . John Donald, Edinburgh 1980, ISBN 0-85976-055-3 .

Other

Remarks

  1. Ian Gentles, citing John Morrill's reminder, states, “there is no stable, agreed title for the events…. They have been variously labeled the Great Rebellion, the Puritan Revolution, the English Civil War, the English Revolution, and most recently, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. "See Ian Gentles, The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms, 1638 –1652 , Modern Wars in Perspective, Ed. HM Scott and BW Collins (Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2007), 3.
  2. ^ Joad Raymond: The invention of the newspaper: English newsbooks, 1641–1649. Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-928234-X , p. 281. (books.google.co.uk)
  3. ^ Charles Carlton: Going to the wars: the experience of the British civil wars, 1638-1651. 1994 edition, 1992 original, ISBN 0-415-10391-6 .
  4. ^ Peter Gaunt: The British Wars 1637-1651. Routledge, United Kingdom, 1997, ISBN 0-415-12966-4 .
  5. Trevor Royle: The British Civil War: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1638-1660. Palgrave Macmillan, USA, 2004, ISBN 0-312-29293-7 .
  6. November 1641 according to the plaque on Julianstown Bridge. ( julianstown.com ( March 26, 2009 memento from the Internet Archive ), accessed January 2, 2013.)