11. Charles spent much of his early reign fighting for more money from Parliament.
In the 1620s, England was already involved in the Thirty Years War due to the Stuart family’s obligations to Denmark and Germany, but Charles also needed significant funds to pay for an army to go and support France, his wife’s country, in its conflict with Spain. War is an expensive business, and Charles demanded £700, 000 to pay for his foreign efforts in 1625. Given that they were being asked to sanction money to pay for the support of foreign nations, and an army led by the detested and incompetent Buckingham, Parliament voted to give Charles a mere £112, 000.
How, fumed Charles, could you deny someone elected by God what they asked for? Parliament refused to budge, and placed further strain on Charles’s finances by denying him revenues from trade duties. They saw Charles as a spendthrift who habitually lived beyond his means and fecklessly mismanaged diplomatic obligations to other nations. But Charles, on his side, was equally stubborn, and in 1627 simply gathered ‘forced loans’ to pay for the war effort, without Parliamentary consent. Those who refused to pay the king’s taxes were to be imprisoned without trial. Things were coming to a head…