Lesson video

Hi, everyone and welcome to lesson six of six of the enquiry question.

Why does Civil War break out in 1642? Really well done, you have made it to the end and now all we have to do after studying all of the content and looking at all of those particular events that broke down the relationship between king and parliament, it is now time for us to decide what did actually cause that civil war to break out in 1642? We've looked at economic problems, political conflicts and religious divisions.

So what we now need to understand and to make a judgement on is which of those three causes was most directly responsible for war breaking out? Now, this is a question that historians have pondered and debated for many years, and we're going to be engaging with some of their arguments in order to make our own judgement.

Which is going to be really really interesting to see what you can add to this debates.

Okay, so as always, remember, you need your pen and a bit of paper to come this lesson.

If you don't have them already, please pause me whilst you go and grab them.

And then without further ado, we will begin.

Okay, so to begin, can you please write down the date in the top right hand corner of your piece of paper and the title, which is now the enquiry question, we are finally going to be answering it.

Why did the Civil War break out in 1642? Make sure both of these are underlined pause me once you get that completed and then we will begin.

So to start off, I just wanted to recap the main events that we studied over this unit.

Okay, and they break down roughly into these three periods of time.

Between 1625 and 1630 is the English involvement within 30 years war over in Europe, between 1629 to 1640 is where Charles the first has his personal rule, where he rules England for 11 years without the help of parliament.

And then in 1640 to 1642, is when long parliament comes back into session, ending Charles first's personal rule and they make many demands upon Charles and come back in a very aggressive way.

So, to go through, you remember in the year 1626 this is where Buckingham lead a trip over to Spain to try and get some glory back for the British but they are defeated by Spanish forces.

1627 is where Buckingham had agreed to help France crush a protestant rebellion with La Rochelle.

Both of these events greatly angering parliament against Charles the first because both of these events proved to be very much failures for Charles.

So during his personal rule in 1633, you have Laud's Reforms. Remember this led to further breakdown relationship as the reforms seemed quite catholic seeming to many people.

And as England was a largely protestant country with an increasing amount of puritans this led to a lot of anger.

In 1635, Charles very much desperate for money without parliament being in session makes his changes to ship money.

So this is where he made this tax now something that everyone within the country had to pay.

Whereas before it was just those that lived on the coast that had to pay.

So people became very angry about that, in 1639 to 40 is where you have the Bishops' War.

So these are between England and Scotland as Charles tries to force Laud's Reforms over into Scotland and to upset that presbyterian faith which of course we know causes a lot of backlash.

And then when long Parliament come into session, they come in John Pym very cleverly targets Charles's evil counsellors, which leads to in 1641, the Earl of Strafford being executed, and also the Great Remonstrance as after the Irish rebellion, when Charles starts to win back support from the public as he agrees to crush the Irish rebellion.

John Pym thinks right, we need to highlight what are his mistakes again so that everyone remains his enemy and comes up with a document the great remonstrance which highlights those 241 complaints.

And in 1642, is where Charles in retaliation to the great remonstrance attempts to arrest five Members of Parliament.

Now, this is the event that many historians believe to trigger the Civil War as this really puts King and Parliament against each other, they are now enemies, and that relationship is very much past the point of no return.

So, causation.

That is what our question is asking us.

And this is a key historical skill.

It's, we've just seen, there's many different events that are at play in causing a civil war to happen.

But what we need to reach a judgement on at the end of this lesson is understanding which of those events were more important? Which of those events were directly responsible for causing that war? Now, before we attempt to answer that question, I want us to practise our skills of causation.

Now, some of you might have heard the phrase, the straw that broke the camel's back.

And we are going to meet this very special camel here he is called Alphonse.

And what I'm going to do is read you a story, which explains what why a straw broke the camel's back.

And some of you might already be thinking.

Well, obviously it's the straw.

The straw is the main reason why the camel's back was broken.

However, in this story, I'm going to be telling you, you're going to find a lot more causes.

So I just like you to have a think what I'm reading you this story.

Which of these causes do you think are most directly responsible for poor Alphonse the camel breaking his back? Okay.

Once upon a time, there was a camel called Alphonse.

For various reasons relating to an unfortunate accident during his birth, the camel had severe back problems. This was not the end of his misfortune.

However, because he had an evil exploitative owner who Frank, the camel killer.

He regularly overloaded his camels prior to taking them on gruelling and totally unnecessary round trips, up and down mountains, on his way to deliver goods to his customers.

These customers shockingly, were completely indifferent to these frequent and gross violations of the rights of camels, and found Frank and his antics at least vaguely endearing.

Well, one Friday, Frank had just finished loading up Alphonse and his poor exploited fellow creatures, yet another gruelling and totally unnecessary round trip up and down the mountains.

He had piled and piled and piled up the goods onto Alphonse's back and was taking a break and reflecting smugly on his handiwork chewing a straw.

On a whim, he decided to add the bedraggled straw he had been chewing to Alphonse's lugg.

Alphonse groaned obligingly, he eyed his owner with disgust.

He keeled over and died of radical and irreversible, back collapse.

Okay, so what we've seen there is five different causes from that story as to how Alphonse the camel had his back broken.

And we can split these into two categories.

Okay, so as I said at the beginning, a lot of you would have been thinking what obviously it's the straw that broke the camel's back.

That is the phrase, but actually you can see in that blue box that is just one short term cause, that triggers Alphonse's camels back to break.

But actually, this story highlights lots of other causes that are happening for a longer time than that that's going to lead to that back breaking.

So, you can remember at the very beginning of the story, the underlying cause that's afflicted Alphonse throughout his life is that he had back problems since birth.

That could definitely have been one of the causes, why his back broken.

Also the fact that he was owned by an evil owner Frank, who made Alphonse's life far worse, tired him out with one of those really heavy loads, and put him on really long gruelling trips up and down the mountains.

And it's another cause as well, that no one who saw this happening, none of the customers, they did nothing to help.

So you can see that we've got four long term causes that have been going on for many a long time.

And actually, just that one short term cause of Frank adding the straws to Alphonse's back.

Probably wouldn't have broken that back if it hadn't been for all of the long term causes.

Okay, so what we need to think of as historians when we're understanding about why events happened is that we don't just look at the triggering event.

We don't just look at the straw that broke the camel's back, but actually, we need to look back further to look at everything else that might have caused it as well.

It might have just been that for Alphonse, if none of those long term causes that ever happened to maybe he'd never had the back problems. That actually if Frankie just decided to put a straw on his back, that poor day for Alphonse, then he would have been absolutely fine.

But the long term causes themselves are just as important if not more important than the short term cause.

Okay, so what I'd like us to do is apply this understanding of causation to these key events looking at the cause of the Civil War.

So what I'd like you to do is just take a chance to pause here and categorise these events into short term and long term causes.

So what I, encourage you to do is write down two headings on your page, short term on one side, long term on the other, and then just copy down the events that you think go under those two headings, okay? And then a challenge for you.

I want you to try and make it judgement now.

Which type of cause, do you think long term or short term? Do you think is directly responsible for causing the Civil War? Is it those underlying causes that have been going on for a very long time? Or is it the events that triggered it right towards the wars outbreak? Okay, so just pause the screen once you complete that, and then we'll go through the answers.

Excellent stuff, okay.

So I'm going to show you what I've put down.

As always, please give yourself a tick if you've got it correct.

And if you need to amend anything, then feel free to put our answers and we write them where they need to go.

So in terms of long term causes.

First off, it's the failures in the 30 years war.

That is one of the very first events that we studied and trying to understand how the relationship between King and Parliament broke down.

So this is written I mean, this is happening in 1625.

So this is almost 20 years before the Civil War breaks out this so this is very much a long term cause.

Followed by Charles' personal rule and ship money.

Obviously this starts within 1629 ship money coming in and 1635.

So around this is thought a long time before civil war breaks out.

And then also around the same time of that is Laud's Church reforms and the Bishops' war, okay.

Now short term causes is the causes that happened during the long Parliament between year 1640 to 1642 because these all took place just two years before the Civil War broke out.

So here you would have put Strafford's execution and the Great Remonstrance, as well as Charles attempted arrest of five members.

Now, for those of you that managed to complete the challenge question, excellent work.

I'm just going to go through some audience of mine and see whether you agree with me or not.

So, for some of you, you might argued that the short term causes were most directly responsible.

And that actually because of Parliament being so aggressive between the year 1640 to 1642, and also Charles's really poor judgement in trying to arrest those five members, they acted as a trigger in causing that Civil War.

And actually, if it hadn't been for those events, then maybe the relationship between King and Parliament might have improved as time has gone on.

But actually, it was these events that cause that relationship to break apart and can no longer be fixed.

Whereas other of you might have argued that long term causes were directly responsible.

And you might have argued that if it hadn't have been for all of this increase in tensions that have gone on for around 20 years.

Then actually, with those short term causes, with the actions of 1640 to 1642, they probably would never have happened, and that actually, with that long parliament, then maybe Parliament would have been less aggressive.

And Charles would have been able to work closely together with them.

But actually, the long term causes were really responsible in ramping up tensions between king and parliament, and then causing them to act so terribly during the short term.

So you might argue the long term is more directly responsible because you didn't have that, then you wouldn't have the short term causes.

Okay, good stuff.

So got another pause point here.

So we've looked at causation festival and how you can categorise it into long term and short term causes.

Now we're going to look at a different way of categorising causes and we've already had some practises of this in previous lessons.

So, what I would like you to do here is you can write down this title as another subheading in your book.

Why did Civil War broke out in 1642? And then I'd like you to write down two to three events under each of these categories.

So first off, you've got religion reasons you're going to be thinking about the divisions between Protestantism, catholicism, puritisim and presbyterianism, okay? Then you've got political reasons.

So this is going to be the relationship between Charles and parliament, you can be thinking about the divine right of kings and Parliament's protests.

And then economic reasons, you want to be thinking about, why Charles was so desperate for money and the actions that he did in order to gain money.

Which therefore, as a consequence, led to many people at the public turning against him.

So I just want you to pause here, make sure you get two to three events under each category.

Do more if you can be absolutely amazing, and then we'll go through.

Excellent work, okay, let's see.

I've done about two or so each of them you might have more than me, that's absolutely correct.

But if you're missing any of these answers, please feel free to add them to your own notes.

So for religious reasons, I've put down Laud's reforms really important it causing a Puritan outrage against Charles.

And also with the Bishops' wars, as those Laud's reforms try to branch out into Scotland and Scotland rebelled.

The political sorry for economic reasons.

We've got, shipped money in 1635.

Remember more people are now having to pay money to the king in order to fund the Navy of which they're very angry about and also Charles needing money to fund war.

This acts as a pressure between King and parliament is one of the main reasons why he always seems to call them is because he wants money to fund war.

Whether that's the 30 years war, the Bishops' war or trying to crush the Irish rebellion.

And then for political reasons, and we've spoken about personal rule of Charles, you remember this great Billy Angus parliament is they're out of a job for 11 years.

So Stafford's execution as parliament target Charles's closest advisors as they believe them to be evil counsellors, and absolutely the Great Remonstrance which then tipped Charles over the edge and causes him to try and arrest five MPs.

Good.

Okay, so you remember those three categories, and historians for a very long time have been debating which of those categories were most directly responsible for causing the Civil War.

And debates began with Whig historians, who argued that long term religious and political causes are directly responsible for causing the Civil War.

So they believed it was down to puritans rising up and rebelling against Charles as well as parliament demanding greater amounts of power as a result of the personal rule.

After Whig historians have debated this, you've got a different group of historians who disagreed.

And these historians were known as Marxist historians.

And they still think that long term causes are directly responsible, but they wanted to focus in on the economic causes.

So really, they'll be talking about shift money, and how not just Parliament but the public and now starting to go against Charles.

Which never happened before and that is why the Civil War broke out in 1642.

And then we've got a third group of historians that absolutely go against Whig historians and Marxist historians.

And they start to look at these arguments and they start to revise them and they think.

You know, what, they've actually put too much emphasis on the long term causes.

And actually, revisionist historians believe that those long term causes might have gone through a very long time and not actually ended up in a war.

They might have sorted themselves out in other ways.

So revisionist historians argue that short term political, economic and religious causes are all directly responsible.

So they believe it is a big mix of their short term factors that actually triggered Civil War to break out.

Okay, and this is really to me, I think what's so interesting about history is obviously the events in the past are set in stone.

They are not going to change.

But what does change as more historians read about these events is people's opinions on them, their judgments of them, and this is what keeps history really, really exciting is this ongoing debates about why events might happen.

So, pause point for you now.

Here we have a view as to why the English Civil War broke out.

I would like you to take a pause point here to read through and then decide what type of interpretation this would be.

Is it a whig historian interpretation, marxist historian or revisionist historian, okay.

I'll just read it out for you and you can follow it along as I read.

The English under the Stuarts cause a civil war so they could gain freedom from monarchical tyranny.

Charles' the first personal rule, push the country to breaking point by removing any opposition and forcing church reforms upon England and Scotland.

The Civil War was part of a process to re-address the balance as parliament gain some power was the monarchy lost some.

So I just want you to pause the screen here.

Once you write down what type of interpretation you think this is? And in order to deepen your thinking, please give a reason why.

If you want to include torque quotes for this as part of the answer, that would be another way to elevate the answer as well, off you go.

Okay, excellent work.

So, some key phrases that you might have used within your answer would be these.

Facts that it talks about monarchical tyranny.

So really they're referring to Charles here as being someone with absolute power.

Okay, so we're talking about what type of king he was.

And then further down, it talks about Laud's reforms and how those Laud's reforms were forcing the church to make changes.

And then lastly, it talks about how the Civil War was caused, because what it wanted to do is re-address the balance between parliament and the monarchy, as parliament gained power, and the monarch lost there's.

So it's really looking at the relationship between King and parliament.

So for those of you that put down that this would be a whig historian view.

Amazing work, absolutely right, because it's referring to the political and religious long term causes that led up to the Civil War breaking out.

Okay, right.

What you are now going to do is you're going to leave these slides and you're going to read a worksheet that's going to give you greater information about the historical debates surrounding the cause of the English Civil War.

Okay, what I suggest you do, as always is retrieve these questions first, so that you have a strong idea of what key information you need to look out for in the worksheets.

And then I'd like you to pause this video.

Read the slides on the next page and answer the comprehension questions.

As always, make sure that this is of your best ability full sentences.

I look forward to resuming back here once you're finished, off you go.

Excellent work really, really well done for getting that completed.

I'm going to go through the answers now.

And as always, feel free to pause me at any point if you feel like you can improve your answer by adding extra details and or by giving yourself a big tick for the questions that you've got correct.

Okay, so question one.

According to Whig historians, the English Civil War was part of what process? Acceptable answer, England gaining more political and religious freedoms. But a good answer is going to be a full sentence and it's going to be specific as to what we're talking about.

So, Whig historians argue that the Civil War was an important part of England's process to gain greater political and religious freedoms. Good.

So this is this idea of the Civil War being quite inevitable because actually it was needed it for England's journey towards having more political religious freedoms. Question number two, What events would wait argued directly cause the Civil War? An acceptable answer, Parliament refusing to give Charles money and the Bishops' Wars, good.

Absolutely, they are those key events that the Whigs would have argued for directly responsible, but an even better answer is going to explain that a little bit further and make it into a full sentence.

Whigs focused on political and religious events causing the civil wars such as parliament refusing to grant the king money and the rebellion against Laud's reforms. Question number three.

Why is a Marxist believe the Gentry caused the Civil War? And an acceptable answer, they were angry at Charles making changes to shift money.

Good answer, can be more detail more specific, Marxist historians believe economic causes were directly responsible for the Civil War.

Therefore they believe that the changes to ship money greatly angered the gentry who consequently became more determined to claim power for themselves.

So you remember the Gentry were a group of people that were rising through the ranks of society at this time as they were gaining more money.

So then for Charles take that money away from them, they really saw him as a barrier to their progress.

And actually Marxist historians then believe that the Gentry were the main reason for conflict breaking out with the Civil War.

Question number four.

Why do Revisionist historians disagree with the Whigs and Marxists? Acceptable answer, they believe the Civil War was caused by short term causes.

Again, let's be specific.

I don't know who they are as part of the acceptable answer.

So I'm going to be using the correct titles, so good answer.

Revisionist historians believe that it was a combination of short term causes that triggered the Civil War.

In contrast Whigs and Marxist believe the Civil War was inevitable due to long term causes.

Okay, so Revisionist historians are just focusing in on those events as part of the long parliament the triggering events of that Civil War.

Whereas Whig and Marxist, look at all of the long term underlying tensions, good.

Question number five.

Which events do revisionist historians believe are directly responsible for causing civil war? An acceptable answer, the events that happened between 1640 to 1642, definitely correct.

That's within the short term causes period but I think we can be a little bit more specific, so good answer.

Revisionist historians believe the events of 1640 to 1642 was directly responsible for causing Civil War.

They argued that war was directly triggered by the aggressive parliament that caused Strafford's execution and past the Great Remonstrance.

Plus Charles the first actions as he tried to arrest five members of parliament.

All of these causes combined led to the outbreak of war.

Excellent, so that's the end of our comprehension questions.

If you need to go back to any of these to add to answers in your books, please do so.

If not, I will join you for our last look at the inquiry question.

Here it is, Why did the Civil War break out in 1642? We are finally going to be reaching our own judgement off we go.

So, what I would like you to do, by engaging with the debates of other historians is come to your own conclusion as to why the Civil War broke out in 1642.

And I want you to try and make a judgement to see which of these historians, do you agree the most with? Is it, the Whig historians that look at the long term religious and political causes? Is it the Marxist historians that look at the long term economic causes? Or is it the revisionist historians that look at the short term triggers as being the most directly responsible? So what you're going to do is you're going to write a peel paragraph as your judgement.

I've got some sentence starters for you here.

So you start off with the point.

In conclusion, I agree with insert which history group that argue that give a quick summary, are directly responsible for the Civil War breaking out in 1642.

This is due to important events, such as and this is where you're going to show off all of that historical knowledge that you've gained over the past few lessons.

To talk about the event you believe to be most directly responsible.

And then explain it with that last part, our explanation link.

Therefore, this was directly responsible because and then really explain why that's going to lead to your breakdown tension, and of course of a civil war.

Now, we've all done a peel paragraph we did that in one of our previous lessons.

So to challenge you even further, you are going to take an historians view that is different to the view that you agree with.

And you're going to point out its flaws so that you can, again, explain why your view is the best.

So some sentence starters for this would be, some historians may disagree, such as that.

And this is why you then include a different historian who believe, and then you summarise the argument.

That argument is weak, however, because and then you need to point out the flaws in that argument and reiterate why your point is stronger.

If you can do that, that is going to really elevate your judgement to a really high level and that's showing off really deep, fantastic historical skills.

Off you go, pause the screen once you get that completed.

Excellent work.

Amazing really, really well done for getting to the end of this unit and making your own judgement on this very interesting topic.

So, for the last time, you've got the option to share your work with Oak National.

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

It has been a real pleasure teaching you all about the causes of the Civil War, and I hope you go on to complete some other fantastic Oak lessons.