Why Parliament diskliked Charles I

Essay by djwang88High School, 10th gradeA-, March 2004

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The English Parliament disliked Charles I for four reasons: his rudeness to the members, several unconstitutional acts, terrible affinity for wasting money, and forcing the Laudian reforms upon them.

Charles I was often extremely disrespectful of Parliament, especially when he selfishly became angry. For example, in 1626, Parliament ruled that the king could not collect the tonnage and poundage tax, which he desperately wanted. Upon hearing this, he refused to listen to any of their other complaints and dismissed them early. Then, in 1629, Charles called Parliament again to ask for more money. This time, they tried to force Charles to listen to all their complaints, but in vain. Although they managed to keep the meeting going for some time, Charles became tired of it and kicked them out again. The 1640 "Short Parliament" was named well, because as soon as Parliament proposed a compromise, Charles dismissed them again in anger.

Parliament also hated Charles for his unfair ways of getting money to fund expensive military campaigns. For example, in 1628, he sent his officials to collect a "forced loan" to fight for the Protestant cause in the 30 Years War. People who refused to give Charles money were arrested, an tyrannical, unconstitutional act. However, the main act that got onto people's nerves most was Charles's bringing back of old taxes that hadn't been enforced since medieval times. Charles's ship money tax upset people the most. It was an old wartime tax for coastal cities to pay for naval protection. Charles extended this tax from port cities to all cities, which was a blatantly unconstitutional action. It ended up bringing in ₤200,000 annually, which was a huge amount of money, but he lost even more supporters.

Furthermore, Charles wasted a lot of money on ineffective military campaigns, which...