Charles I Storms the Houses of Parliament
Author:
William Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons
Wikipedia
Breaking Point
King Charles I (1600-1649) and his parliament were enemies. The king wanted to rule as an autocratic monarch without answering to a parliament. He believed in the Divine Right of Kings and therefore answered only to God, but he had been forced to recall parliament to gain funds for military action in Scotland. Long harboured resentments, new and clear suspicions and escalating tensions could only end disastrously.
As 1641 turned to 1642 Charles I reasoned that five politicians sitting in the House of Commons, John Pym, William Strode, John Hampden, Arthur Haselrig and Denzil Holles, were the ringleaders of unrest in London intended to incite widespread riots against the king s authority. He then decided that these men must have colluded with the Scots to stop a military campaign from being realised and that they intended to impeach his French Catholic wif