Context | Bishops' Wars |
---|---|
Signed | 10 August 1641 |
Location | London |
Parties |
The Treaty of London of 1641 was an agreement between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland which formally ended the 1639 to 1640 Bishops' Wars.
Charles I was king of both countries but, since 1639, Scotland had been under the control of a political faction who opposed the king and were known as the Covenanters. In August 1640, a Scottish army invaded and occupied parts of northern England. The Scots and the king reached an interim truce in October: the Treaty of Ripon. This mandated that the English government pay for the ongoing Scottish occupation pending further negotiations over a final settlement. Furthermore, the king was required to summon a new English parliament which assembled in November.
After months of negotiations, on 10 August 1641, the king signed a long term peace treaty. Among other concessions, the terms included the abolition of bishops from the Church of Scotland, as well as the remittance of financial payments from England to Scotland. By the end of the month, the Scots forces had withdrawn from northern England.
The Treaty of London restored peace between Scotland and England and resolved many of the issues which had led to the Bishops' Wars but the new English parliament was strongly opposed to the king and his government. Significantly, the parliament was able to pass acts that meant it could only be dissolved by its own consent; hitherto, the King of England could dissolve parliament at will. The Long Parliament, as it became known, was not dissolved for almost twenty years. In early 1642, a power struggle developed between the parliament and the king which escalated to the outbreak of the English Civil War.
In 1637, King Charles of England, Scotland and Ireland tried to impose a new Prayer Book, based on that of the Church of England, on the Church of Scotland (the Kirk). The attempt aroused patriotic and religious outrage, and many Scots signed the National Covenant in protest. Another grievance was that General Assemblies of the Kirk had voted to abolish the office of bishop, and Charles seemed determined to reinstate it. Charles raised troops in England to invade Scotland and enforce his will. The result was war.
On 28 August 1640, a Scottish army defeated an English army at the Battle of Newburn, in Northumberland. On 26 October, Charles and the Covenanters signed the Treaty of Ripon as a preliminary to a more detailed and permanent treaty. Meanwhile, the Scottish army was to be allowed to occupy Northumberland and County Durham, and was to be paid £850 per day for its upkeep. Further, the Scots were promised that they would be reimbursed for the expenses they had incurred because of the wars.
Charles was desperately short of money, and summoned the Parliament of England in the hope that they would pass financial supply bills to solve his problem. That Parliament (which sat until 1660 and became known as the Long Parliament) first met on 3 November, and turned out be not at all subservient to his wishes. A week later, Scottish commissioners (John Smith of Grothill and Hugh Kennedy of Ayr) arrived in London to finalise a treaty. Charles denounced the Scottish army as rebel invaders, but the commissioners were welcomed by the Puritans of London, and he withdrew his remarks.
Scottish and English commissioners continued negotiations into the middle of 1641. The King was in a weak position: there was civil unrest in London, and Parliament had impeached his two chief ministers, the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud (they were later to be executed). He therefore made several unexpected concessions. The resolutions of the General Assemblies of the Kirk which abolished the office of bishop were ratified. The royal castles at Edinburgh and Dumbarton were to be used for defensive purposes only. No Scot would be censured or persecuted for signing the National Covenant. The Scottish "incendiaries" considered responsible for precipitating the crisis would be prosecuted in Scotland. Scottish goods and ships captured during the war would be returned. Publications against the Covenanters would be suppressed. It was also agreed that the Scots would be paid £300,000, a sum which Parliament characterised as "brotherly assistance". The Scottish commissioners too were keen to conclude negotiations, feeling that they had outstayed their welcome. They had denounced episcopacy (bishoprics) in the Church of England, and had spoken and written against Strafford and Laud; and, their hosts had told them that that was none of their business. They dropped their demand that Presbyterianism be adopted throughout the Three Kingdoms, and not only in Scotland. The Treaty was signed on 10 August 1641. [1]
Charles visited Scotland from August to November, giving out favours. However, the underlying tensions within his kingdoms still remained, and the Bishops' Wars turned out to be only the initial conflicts in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
Charles I was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649.
The English Civil War was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Royalists and Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the struggle consisted of the First English Civil War and the Second English Civil War. The Anglo-Scottish War of 1650 to 1652 is sometimes referred to as the Third English Civil War.
The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence. In September 1640, King Charles I issued writs summoning a parliament to convene on 3 November 1640. He intended it to pass financial bills, a step made necessary by the costs of the Bishops' Wars against Scotland. The Long Parliament received its name from the fact that, by Act of Parliament, it stipulated it could be dissolved only with agreement of the members; and those members did not agree to its dissolution until 16 March 1660, after the English Civil War and near the close of the Interregnum.
John Pym was a politician and administrator from London, who played a major role in establishing what would become the modern English Parliamentary system. One of the Five Members whose attempted arrest in January 1642 was a major step in sparking the First English Civil War, his use of procedure to out manoeuvre opponents was unusual for the period. Though this meant he was respected by contemporaries rather than admired, in 1895 historian Goldwin Smith described him as "the greatest member of Parliament that ever lived".
The Battle of Newburn, also known as the Battle of Newburn Ford, took place on 28 August 1640, during the Second Bishops' War. It was fought at Newburn, just outside Newcastle, where a ford crossed the River Tyne. A Scottish Covenanter army of 20,000 under Alexander Leslie defeated an English force of 5,000, led by Lord Conway.
The Short Parliament was a Parliament of England that was summoned by King Charles I of England on 20 February 1640 and sat from 13 April to 5 May 1640. It was so called because of its short session of only three weeks.
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms were a series of conflicts fought between 1639 and 1653 in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, then separate entities in a personal union under Charles I. They include the 1639 to 1640 Bishops' Wars, the First and Second English Civil Wars, the Irish Confederate Wars, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and the Anglo-Scottish War of 1650–1652. They resulted in the execution of Charles I, the abolition of monarchy, and founding of the Commonwealth of England, a unitary state which controlled the British Isles until the Stuart Restoration in 1660.
This is a timeline of events leading up to, culminating in, and resulting from the English Civil Wars.
The Treaty of Ripon was a truce between Charles I, King of England, and the Covenanters, a Scottish political movement, which brought a cessation of hostilities to the Second Bishops' War.
Alexander Henderson was a Scottish theologian, and an important ecclesiastical statesman of his period. He is considered the second founder of the Reformed Church in Scotland. He was one of the most eminent ministers of the Church of Scotland in the most important period of her history, namely, previous to the middle of the seventeenth century.
Between 1639 and 1652, Scotland was involved in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of conflicts which included the Bishops' Wars, the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the English Civil War, the Irish Confederate Wars and finally the conquest of Ireland and the subjugation of Scotland by the English New Model Army.
The Treaty of Breda (1650) was signed on 1 May 1650 between Charles II, exiled king of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the Scottish Covenanter government. Under its terms, they agreed to install Charles II as King of Scotland and Britain, while Charles undertook to establish a Presbyterian Church of England, and guarantee the rights of the Church of Scotland.
The Treaty of Berwick was an agreement between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, signed on 18 June 1639, which ended the First Bishops' War.
Events from the year 1640 in England.
John Leslie, 6th Earl of Rothes was a Scottish nobleman, one of the main leaders of the Covenanters.
The Bishops' Wars were two separate conflicts fought in 1639 and 1640 between Scotland and England, with Scottish Royalists allied to England. They were the first of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which also include the First and Second English Civil Wars, the Irish Confederate Wars, and the 1650 to 1652 Anglo-Scottish War.
Under Charles I, the Puritans became a political force as well as a religious tendency in the country. Opponents of the royal prerogative became allies of Puritan reformers, who saw the Church of England moving in a direction opposite to what they wanted, and objected to increased Catholic influence both at Court and within the Church.
This is a timeline of events leading up to, culminating in, and resulting from the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the wars of the Three Kingdoms:
The National Covenant was an agreement signed by many people of Scotland during 1638, opposing the proposed reforms of the Church of Scotland by King Charles I. The king's efforts to impose changes on the church in the 1630s caused widespread protests across Scotland, leading to the organisation of committees to coordinate opposition to the king. Facing royal opposition, its leaders arranged the creation of the National Covenant to bolster the movement by tapping into patriotic fervour. It became widely adopted throughout most of Scotland with supporters henceforth known as Covenanters.