3 How did relations between the king and his subjects break down?

3.1 Charles I and the eleven years’ personal rule in England and Wales

Charles I succeeded as king on James I's death in 1625. James had resented parliament's demands for power over royal policy, but realised that he could not govern, even in peacetime, on the income he had. The monarch was expected to pay for the conduct of government from a variety of sources, which included both income from lands she or he held personally and taxes granted by parliament. So masques, mistresses, secretarial expenses, pensions for clients, bribes to foreign princes, wages for court officials and soldiers, the purchase of arms and equipment, and salaries for spies all came out of the same account. But James had learnt political skills during the difficult years when, as king of Scotland in place of his deposed mother Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots), he had had to negotiate with competing factions. Temperamentally, Charles was a very different character: inflexible, uncompromising, brooking no criticism, conscious of his dignity, decorous, uxorious, religious and a great collector of Renaissance art. Even his loyal subject Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, said of him:

As king, he had three main concerns in England and Wales: how to fund his government, how to limit parliament's interference in his rule and how to reform the church. He showed remarkably little interest in his other two kingdoms, Scotland and Ireland.