Crisis of the 1640s
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The main, and most obvious, crisis of the 1640's was the Civil War, followed in 1649 by the execution of Charles I. These problems essentially came about due to the difficulty Charles faced in governing the kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland, and the interaction of the three. The King was a different person in the different kingdoms, which had three sets of political elite, three sets of religious beliefs and three parliaments; hence it was not a united kingdom. However, the kingdoms did display the same areas of conflict; that is religious tension, challenges to the Crown's authority, the formation of sides, and the breakdown of communication and trust.
Events in Scotland were very significant because this was the first example of the collapse of prerogative government. Charles' personal government collapsed when Archbishop Laud tried to make the Scots conform in religious matters. James had himself warned that the religion of the Scots should not be tampered with because they did not like the English to intervene. However, Charles went ahead with his policy he did not know Scotland as James had; because policy was made where the king was and enforced where his council was, the king lost the ability to recognise the most important of all early modern political skills-identifying the limits of his enforceable will. He also had an intense drive for religious reform because he wished to cleanse what he thought were "religious impurities, " and to reduce the differences between the Scottish and English Churches.
In 1636, a new book of canons was introduced, based on the English canons, which detailed the use of prescribed prayers, and suppressed unlicensed preaching...