The personal rule of Charles I

In 1625 Charles I succeeded to the throne of a nation heavily involved in a European war and deeply divided by religious controversy. Within four years he had dissolved Parliament and begun a period of eleven years of personal rule. In the first, monumental and massively researched history of the King's personal rule, Kevin Sharpe has written a work of unprecedented importance in the debate on the origins of the English Civil War. Whig historians have maintained that civil war was the inevitable outcome of a contest for power between King and Parliament. Revisionists have emphasized the basic harmony between King, Lords and Commons. Most scholars have agreed that it was the aristocratic temperament of Charles I, his adoption of 'new politics' and promotion of suspect religious policies, that eroded trust in the monarchy and fuelled a conflict that could have been avoided. All such judgements rest on preconceptions which no biography has satisfactorily elucidated, and no history has thoroughly examined. Kevin Sharpe presents a wholly fresh picture of a dominant Charles I, of his personality, principles and policies. He explains why a king who, after summoning more parliaments in his first years of rule than his predecessors had for a century, determined to govern without them. He assesses Charles's programme of reform in central and local government, provides the first substantial analysis of Caroline religious policies, and explores the circumstances abroad and foreign objectives that shaped domestic politics. He subtly evaluates the degree of co-operation and opposition elicited and provoked by personal rule, and analyses the Scottish rebellion of 1637 that occasioned its undoing. Deploying a breathtaking array of sources and written in an accessible and vigorous prose style, the book yields rich new insights into the history of the reign, of politics and religion, foreign policy and finance, of the court and the counties, of attitudes and ideas. It provides a substantial re-evaluation of the character of the King, of the importance of parliaments and the process of government without them. It represents a critical new perspective on the origins of the political struggle that ended on the battlefields of the English Civil War.