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Power and the People in Britain, c1170 to the Present Day

Divine Right and parliamentary authority

  • 2 things to know
  • Paper 2 section A

Overview

The divine right of kings, Charles I's Personal Rule, Ship Money and Laud's church policy, the Five Members, the New Model Army and Naseby, the Levellers and the Putney Debates, Pride's Purge, the trial and execution of Charles I, Cromwell as Lord Protector, and the lasting limits on royal power.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Who and when

Who were the Levellers, and what did they argue for at the Putney Debates of 1647?

Numbers

How did Charles I raise money without Parliament, and who challenged him in the courts?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What did the divine right of kings mean?

    Model answer

    That the king had been placed on his throne by God, answered to God alone for how he ruled, and that to resist him was therefore a sin as well as a crime.

  2. 2

    How did Charles I raise money without Parliament, and who challenged him in the courts?

    Model answer

    By forced loans, revived feudal fines and above all Ship Money, a navy levy long asked of coastal towns and now demanded from inland counties as well; John Hampden refused to pay it and was tried in 1637.

  3. 3

    What is meant by the Personal Rule?

    Model answer

    The years from 1629 to 1640 when Charles I governed without calling Parliament at all, relying on prerogative courts and non-parliamentary sources of income.

  4. 4

    Why did Archbishop Laud's church policy alarm so many people?

    Model answer

    His insistence on altar rails, vestments and set ceremony looked to Puritans like a return to Catholic worship, and critics who said so were mutilated and imprisoned by the prerogative courts.

  5. 5

    What forced Charles I to recall Parliament in 1640?

    Model answer

    His attempt to impose a new prayer book on Scotland brought the Scots into arms, and he had no money to fight them without a parliamentary grant.

  6. 6

    Why did the attempt to arrest the Five Members in January 1642 matter so much?

    Model answer

    Charles I came into the Commons with armed men to seize his leading critics, breaking the privilege of the House; he found the birds flown, lost London and left the capital for the north.

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