Lesson video

Hello everyone, and welcome to lesson three of our inquiry question as to why Civil War broke out in 1642.

Now we already know quite a few reasons as to why that happened.

One of the main ones being Charles I personal rule, and some of you might remember as well, an individual called William Lord who started to make some changes to the church.

Now these changes infuriated many Puritans.

They believed them to be too Catholic seeming, and there was outrage within England.

But, the outrage continued further once Charles decided to take these reforms into Scotland as well.

And that's what we're going to be looking at this lesson, as it sparked the Bishop's war and caused a lot more problems for Charles I.

So, before we get stuck in as always, please make sure that you've got yourself a pen and pencil.

If you don't have them, then please just pause me whilst you go and get them and then we will begin.

Okay, as always, let's begin this lesson by writing down the date in the top right hand corner of your piece of paper and the title, which is Charles I and Scotland.

Please make sure both of these are underlined and pause me as you complete that task.

Okay, so to start, I just want to recap the religious divisions at this time.

Now you'll remember that the England church was mainly Protestant and they referred to themselves as following the Anglican faith.

Remember Protestants, they were all about having plain churches and plain priests because all they thought you had to do in order to show your religious devotion to God was to just focus on the Bible, read the Bible and focus on having a clear connection to God himself.

Now, the Puritans were just an extreme version of that and they start to increase in England at this time.

And really the group that these two really disliked were the Catholics.

Remember they believed something completely different, they wanted their churches to be really well decorated through the use of crosses, candles and they wanted their priest to appear more powerful cause they thought their priests were closer to God.

So therefore they should wear vestments which were those really expensive robes that they would have to wear and Protestants were very, very against this.

They believed that how Catholics practised Christianity was essentially a road to hell.

So, this is one issue that Charles I is already having to deal with both in England and you remember that he also had to deal with this division across the continent within the 13 years war.

However, what we haven't looked at yet is the other two kingdoms that Charles was in charge of.

So first of all, Scotland.

Now they were essentially very similar to the Puritans in that their faith was an extreme branch of Protestants, but they called themselves the Presbyterian faith.

Okay, so again, really wanted to focus on having a clear connection to God and particularly, they really hated the church hierarchy.

So they did not believe that any bishop should be higher than a normal everyday individual.

Okay, and then secondly, Ireland was majority Catholic country.

So let's just remember with Lord's reforms, that many seem to have a lot of Catholic seeming policies, which country do you think is going to be the most enraged if those policies are brought into their country? Yes, you're absolutely right.

It's going to be Scotland of the Presbyterian faith.

This is exactly what happened in 1637 Lord reforms were extended into Scotland and this was met with a lot of outrage that you can see here in this drawing.

So first off Scotland received a new prayer book and it was met with huge rebellion.

The image that you can see here refers to an incident that happened within Edinburgh, as the minister was reading from this new prayer book, there was a rebellion led by a woman named Jenny Geddes and she launched a chair at her minister.

And also you can see in this drawing how others got involved, some of you might be able to spot a cricket bat and there were sticks and stones being thrown at them as they were so outraged with what they were being made to listen to.

In Glasgow, there were reports of another minister being almost torn to pieces as he read from his prayer book and in a place called Brechin within Scotland, there's even reports of a bishop having to hold two pistols to protect himself from the people as he told them of the new news about their religion.

So it did not go down well at all.

What Scotland did in retaliation in 1638, they created what was known as the National Covenant.

And this was to go against laws reforms and stop them from entering into Scotland.

And this all came down to an agreement that was made in 1560, called the Scott's Confession of Faith, which had already been signed off and it allowed Scotland to reject any form of Catholicism and maintain their Presbyterian faith.

So, they were like look, we've been doing this for 78 years, Charles, you simply cannot come here and just change our way of doing things and change our religious faith.

They were completely outraged by this.

Now what outraged Charles I as we know from his past dealings with parliament, if he thinks that anyone is challenging him or going against him, he will see it as a direct threat to his authority and he will not take it lying down.

So, knowing what we already know about Charles I and his personality as King, what might Charles I do to solve the Scottish problem? What I would like you to do is write out that question into your book and then underneath choose just one of these options from the multiple choice as your answer.

Okay, so then write down what your answer is and if you want to extend that further, then you can add a reason why as to why you've chosen that answer.

So, you can justify in your books.

So I just like you to pause the screen here whilst you choose the correct option to this question.

Okay.

Really well done for doing that especially if you then went on to explain your reasoning, that's really, really good at showing a really deep understanding.

So, let's go through them.

Option one.

Compromise.

Wars are too expensive and so Charles and the Covenant will try and negotiate to reach an agreement.

Now, the first part of this is absolutely correct.

We know that wars are really expensive from studying the Thirty Years' War and that actually Charles really struggles to fund them by himself and that he always needs a parliament.

And we know he doesn't have access to parliament at this time as he is currently during his personal rule.

However, the second part where it talks about Charles wanting to negotiate an agreement, that's not going to be correct.

We know what he's like as ruler.

His strong belief in the divine right of Kings means that his word is law.

So it's very unlikely that option one will be the correct option.

Option two.

Debate.

Respect the Covenant's protest and agree that the Scottish Church can remain Presbyterian.

Yeah, that's not going to be the correct option either forming on.

Charles very much believes in Divine right Kings and will not negotiate with anyone.

Option three.

Attack.

The Covenant's rebellion against Charles is a direct threat to his authority.

They should be harshly punished.

Yes, if anyone puts out option three give yourselves a big tick.

We are going to be looking at this attack in greater detail for the rest of this lesson.

Some of you might have already remembered from last lesson, how people within England were harshly punished for going against these reforms. You might remember these three men who had their ears publicly hacked off in front of a huge crowd.

So it's going to be exactly the same for the Scots, they're going to be very harshly punished.

And option four, I don't think any of you would have put this one down.

Ignore.

Soon, the Covenant will grow tired of protesting and accept the reforms. Not very likely.

So really well done for any of you that put down option three.

Fantastic work.

So in 1639, we have the First Bishops' War as Charles takes on the National Covenant in trying to force them to accept his church reforms. However, he's got some problems. Many English noblemen that Charles has taken as part of his army are actually against the invasion of Scotland.

They do not understand why they're fighting Protestants in the North, when what they really should be doing is fighting the Catholics over in Europe that are fighting in the Thirty Years' War.

Surely if England is a Protestant nation, they should protect Protestants and fight the Catholics.

So what this led to within Charles's army is quite a lot of them being quite unenthusiastic about this war.

And what this caused is a lot of low morale within his army.

In contrast to this, the Scots have high morale as they knew they were fighting for religious and political liberty.

Liberty here just meaning freedom.

They have been following the Presbyterian faith for decades.

So, that is definitely not going to be a chance for Charles to just change that and for them to just allow it without fighting.

So, things that leads to in June 1639, 18,000 English men, which is Charles's army meets a far Superior Covenanter force.

Now they're superior in many different ways.

There's more of them, they're more infused and they have got better weaponry.

And Charles upon learning best realises that he is definitely going to lose this war if he goes to battle.

So instead they agree to the Pacification of Berwick, which is where the armies cease to exist.

The armies are disbanded, and it's agreed that Charles will at a later date return to Scotland and negotiate with the National Covenant in order to reach an agreement.

But, we know Charles very well by now and we certainly know that he is not going to negotiate with anyone.

And instead he decides that he needs to return to Scotland and he needs to fight again.

But this time he needs more money.

So, he needs to recall parliament.

And that's exactly what happened.

In 1640 housed the first personal rule ends as the short parliament takes session.

Now, one of the main reasons why this happened is that the Earl of Strafford who is a favourite adviser of Charles' and he's also Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

He persuades Charles to try again.

He says, look, "I've got an Irish army, I can help you out, but also you need to recall parliament." As soon as parliament and does intercession again, which essentially means they're back to work doing what they normally do, they're not going to very easily hand over Charles the money, no.

Instead they flood Charles with petitions.

They go against the ship money that they all agreed was illegal.

They go against the church reforms that goes against the English Protestant faith.

And these petitions, surprisingly to most people, they actually caused some progress.

Charles agrees to remove the ship money in return for a short term loan from parliament in return for some money.

However, parliament did not realise to quit whilst they were ahead, and they continued with the petitions.

They said, "Right, well ship money's one thing, what about the church reforms? You need to get rid of those as well." And this causes Charles to lose his patience and he dissolves parliament again, just after three weeks of them being in session.

And again, he goes without his money.

So in 1640, you had the Second Bishops' War.

Now, remember Charles' has been unable to secure any money for this from parliament and this leads to many English noblemen becoming even less enthused about fighting for him.

A lot of these forces remain poorly armed, underfunded, and underfed.

But Charles thinks that this won't be a problem because he's managed to get 8,000 troops from the Earl of Strafford, but this causes Charles another problem.

As you remember, the Earl of Stratford is the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and you will also remember that Ireland was a mainly Catholic country.

So what this means is that Charles' army is made up of English Protestants and Irish Catholics both of which do not see each other as allies, but they're used to seeing each other as enemies.

So this army is not going to be one that is effective.

Therefore, you have the Battle of Newburn which unsurprisingly is a huge defeat for Charles.

The Covenant says managed to invade the North of England and take over Newcastle and this defeat was absolutely humiliating for Charles.

In order to stop these Scottish from invading any further South, Treaty of Ripon agrees that Charles will pay the Convenances £850 a day so that they will remain where they are and not take any more English lamps.

Now, of course, this is going to cause great problems for Charles as he was already in desperate need of money before the Second Bishops' War even began but now he's even more out of pocket.

So, that was a lot of information there.

I want us to put a pause point now so that we can really consolidate our knowledge and get everything in order.

So what I would like you to do is write down The Bishops' Wars as a heading in your book and then what I'd like you to do is read the five bullet points on the right hand side of the page.

And I want you to copy them out into your book in chronological order.

So what that means is that you write them down in the correct order that the events happens.

So you can see on the left you've got the first, second, third and fourth, to the fifth event.

Make sure that you read them carefully and just pause the screen whilst you put them into the correct order in your book.

Excellent work, really well done for getting that done.

I'm now going to go through these events in order.

So I'm sure all of you managed to get the first event that is, Scotland created the National Covenant to reject Charles' church reforms. Remember they were very angry at how Catholic seemed they were and they wanted to protect the Presbyterian faith.

Secondly, Charles declares war on Scotland, as he fears his authority is under threat.

Very good.

Followed by, Charles loses the the first Bishops' War and is forced to call parliament to get more funding.

So this is where he will then break his 11 years of personal rule.

However, parliament proves to be uncooperative and Charles uses Irish troops to launch the Second Bishops' War.

Of course we all know this now to be an absolute disaster.

So finally, once again, Charles is defeated and is forced to agree to peace and pay fees to Scotland.

Excellent work.

What I'd like you to do now is just quickly pause the screen and give yourself a big tick for all of the events that you got correct.

And if you need to change any through the use of arrows in your notes, then please do so, so that all of your information is correct in your notes.

Really well done.

So, we've now come to the main part of the lesson where you're going to leave these slides so that you can read the worksheet, which has more specific and detailed information about the Bishops' Wars so that you can complete these comprehension questions in full sentences.

So what I would do is encourage you to just read through these questions now so that you have an idea of the key information that you're going to be answering about.

And then I'd like you to pause this video, read the slides on the next page and answer the comprehension questions.

Again, please make sure you're doing this in full sentences.

Once you've done that, then please come back here and we'll go over the answers as well as coming back to that inquiry question of just exactly why Civil War broke out in 1642.

Off you go.

Fantastic work.

Really well done for getting that completed.

As I go through the comprehension questions and their answers, as always, please make sure to give yourself a big tick for all of the amazing correct work that you've been completing.

And if you feel like you can actually improve your answer with the answers that I've given on the screen, feel free to pause this at any moment so that you can jot down any extra information.

We really want to make sure that the work that you're putting down into your notes is of the highest quality.

So if you need to pause me to get that done, then please do not hesitate to do so.

So question number one.

What was the purpose of the National Covenant? An acceptable answer.

To reject Charles I's religious reforms. It's absolutely correct, but I think we can be a bit more specific.

What exactly about those reforms did they not like for instance? So an even better answer, the aim of the National Covenant was to protect Scotland's Presbyterian faith and reject Charles I's Catholic-seeming religious reforms. Good.

Question number two.

Why was Charles I's army unenthusiastic? An acceptable answer.

They did not want to fight Protestants.

And even better one, again is going to go into more detail.

Charles I's first army was unenthusiastic as many soldiers were inexperienced and disagreed with Charles' decision to fight Protestants in Scotland.

They would much rather be fighting Catholics in the Thirty Years' war.

Question number three.

What caused parliament to be cut short in may 1640? An acceptable answer.

Because parliament continued to protest against Charles I.

Definitely correct but what I think can really flush this answer out a bit more is going into the reasons why Charles hated anyone protesting against him.

So a good answer would be as follows.

The Short Parliament only lasted for three weeks because parliament angered Charles I by protesting against him.

And then we go into the explanation.

Charles was a firm believer in the Divine Right of Kings and thought any criticism was a challenges to his authority.

Therefore he dissolved parliament to stop them being able to protest.

Question number four.

How did Charles' extra 8,000 troops in the Second Bishops' War cause him a problem? The acceptable answer, the soldiers were Irish Catholics.

Now again, it's absolutely correct, but we want to explain the problem behind these soldiers being Catholic.

So an even better answer would be, in the Second Bishops' War, Charles can use 8,000 Irish Catholics in his army.

This caused problems for Charles as many Englishmen were Protestants who disliked the Irish Catholics, which would have led to resentment within the army and lowered morale.

This would have made it harder for Charles I's army to be victorious.

Remember, Charles wants an army that are willing to fight to the death so that he can get what he wants.

But instead he had an army who were underfed, underfunded, lacks enough weapons, and what's more, they were now fighting against people who they're actually on side with and fighting against those people with the Catholics who really have been an enemy to them from the beginning.

So it's a very, very strange set of affairs.

Question five.

How did the Treaty of Ripon negatively impact Charles? An acceptable answer.

He was forced to pay £850 a day to stop Scottish forces invading further south.

Now this answer's quite good.

We've got a really specific detail in there, as it tells us the exact amount that Charles had to pay the forces each day, but it kind of ends in a bit of a positive because we've learned that the Scottish forces are now not going to invade further south into England.

It doesn't talk about the negative impacts, which is what this good answer is now going to go on to do.

The Treaty of Ripon stopped the conflict with the Scots but only by Charles agreeing to pay them £850 a day so that they would not invade further south.

The war had used up a huge chunk of Charles' finances, and as parliament had been dissolved, his extra payment would have had a very negative impact on the king's wealth.

You see that right at the end of that answer it then directly linked back to the question and talks about the negative impact on Charles.

Really, really well.

We've got our last task of the lesson and as always we're going to revisit our inquiry question.

Why did the Civil War break out in 1642? Now we have now finished lesson three of a series of six lessons in our unit.

And as we're halfway through, I really want us to just look back over all of the events that we studied so far so that we can reach a judgement on just how close England is to a Civil War by the end of 1639.

So in a second, what you're going to do is copy down this graph onto your page and I'd really encourage you to do this as big as possible, just so that you've got enough room to write everything down.

So I'd encourage using a full A4 page if you can.

And what you can see on this graph is that along the bottom there you've got seven main events that I want to draw your attention to starting from 1626 with Cadiz which you'll remember was one of Buckingham's trips over to Spain as part of the Thirty Years' War and ending with 1639 with the Short Parliament.

And then you can see on the side there as the graph goes up.

At the bottom you've got complete peace within England.

So this is where parliament and Charles are getting on fantastically well and there's no grievances or outrage going on at all.

And then right at the top there, you've got outbreak of war.

So this is the Civil War has already started, families are fighting with one another and blood is being spilled on the streets.

Now, those two scenarios that I've outlined, I'm sure you're already thinking, well, none of these events fall into that category.

So really what you're going to be looking at is the bits in the middle.

Whether that event has caused us a little chance of war or whether it's a much larger chance of war as relationships begin to break down.

So as you make your plots along this graph, we're going to be doing a line graph, I would like to see as well if you can categorise these events.

So as you make your plots, I would strongly suggest that you do so in different colours to show whether that event is religious, economic or political.

And you might find that some of these events will come under both, but you just need to make a judgement within yourself of thinking, which one do I think it falls under the most and then just go with that one.

And then as a challenge for you, I would like you, once you've finished your graph and you've done all your plots in different colours to match the key, choose one of them that you think is a turning point as England moves closer towards the Civil War.

So which event do you think has now made the Civil War an inevitability? It is now going to have to happen and actually the king and parliament will now not be able to make up.

So, what I'd like you to do just before you get started, I'm just going to show you the first event that I've done.

So, I've looked at 1626, I've looked at Cadiz and I first of all categorised it as being a political event.

Now some of you might be thinking, well, if it's to do with the Thirty Years' War, surely it's to do with religion because that's why we got involved.

We wanted to try and fight the Catholics but I decided it was more part of the political causes because remember, this is Buckingham trying to show the parliament that he is the most important adviser, which is why he leads this trip to Spain without their advice.

I think it's a power play which is why I put it down as a political event.

And obviously this isn't going to go right at the bottom.

It's not a time of complete peace but really it's not causing too much war.

This is one of the first things that Buckingham does to really upset parliament.

And at this stage, the relationship between the king and parliament hasn't broken down too much.

So, that's why I've still kept it quite below near the bottom there.

So what I'd like to do is just pause the screen now, copy down this graph.

Feel free to add in my event on Cadiz, but you might disagree with me.

You might want to put a little bit higher, and just complete the rest of the graph the next six events that you can see at the bottom there.

And we meet back and we'll go through.

Excellent work.

Okay.

So I'm going to go through these events.

Now, as I said before, you might have categorise them under different categories.

That's absolutely fine, as long as you can justify it, then that's correct.

And then I just want us to see whether we got parts in the grass, or maybe we've got quite different one.

So we started off with Cadiz, we said it was still very little chance of war, and now we're going to move on to La Rochelle in 1627.

So you should remember from this, is where Buckingham was organising this marriage between Charles and Henrietta Maria.

He was the French princess and also a Catholic, and as part of that agreement, Buckingham said that England would help France crush a Protestant rebellion.

So, I've raised this a little bit higher as you might remember, and he was very angry at having to put down a Protestant rebellion because Protestants were their allies.

They never wanted to try and fight against them.

And that's again why I put this as a religious event as it's really to do with Protestants versus Catholics.

In 1629 was when personal rule begins and parliament have been dissolved and a lot higher.

A little chance of war, remember those MPs tried to stop John Finch from making his announcement that Parliament would be dissolved, they were pushing him down in his chair that killed their outrage, which is why we've got a little increase here.

And it's very much political because it's talking about the relationship between Charles and parliament breaking down at this point.

In 1633, we have Laud's reforms in England.

I've gone a little bit higher here.

Not too high yet.

Again, this is very much a religious reform as these church reforms for many to be believed to be quite Catholic seeming so that the Puritans were outraged.

And remember you heard people being publicly mutilated, they dared to protest against these reforms to the church.

And then in 1635 is where ship money began.

And for me is where I've gone for quite a big dump.

Okay.

It's an economic reason.

Remember ship money was a tax that only the coastal counties used to pay.

And then Charles decided to make the same national tax, everyone benefited from that Navy.

So all of them should pay towards it.

But the reason why I think this is such a big jump is because this was where MPs started to try and take Charles to court.

You had the case taken to court, as Hampton was saying that what Charles had done was illegal and that it was actually parliament that could make any changes to taxes.

And now it wasn't just an issue within call.

It wasn't just parliament versus the king, but now it's really gone out nationally.

Everyone has an opinion on this and everyone seems to be quite angry towards Charles.

So in 1637, laws reforms in Scotland and the start of Bishops' War and I've added a little bit of an increase here.

I think now there's quite a large chance of war, obviously meaning Civil War here.

Obviously we've got the Bishops' war, but I'm talking about Civil War within England.

So I'm not going to go all the way up, up to outbreak of war.

And I'm just going to keep this a little bit higher.

And again, it's religious, the reason why the Bishops' War started as Scotland wanted to protect their Presbyterian faith.

And then lastly, with the short parliament, I made the political cause, and just again, another little jump here.

Not a big one because we definitely don't have any war breaking out within England, but parliament would definitely very angry at only being called for three weeks and then shut down as their petitions and protest against Charles were not listened to.

So, lastly, I completed my challenge and I went and I posed tip money as my earning point as this is when I really thought that tensions breaking down so far between not just Charles and parliament, but also Charles and the people.

And that was the moment for me that I believe England was then on the way to having their Civil War.

Your graph, as I've already said, might look different to mine.

That's absolutely fine.

But, if you feel like you want to add any further detail to the event that I've spoken about so that you can annotate your graph, feel free to do so.

And just pause the screen once you got that done.

But for everyone else, when you're finished, amazing work, we're halfway through our unit and almost, almost very close to learning about exactly why Civil War broke out in England in 1642.

So, you have the option to share your work with Oak National.

If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Again, a very big well done for me to get into the end of this lesson.

I really look forward to seeing you next lesson, when we've got the return of parliament.

They are back and in a very big way.

So I very much look forward to teaching you that again next.

Hope you have a great rest of your day and look forward to learning again with you soon.