the Stuart dynasty

The Stuart dynasty followed the Tudors. The last queen of the Tudor was queen Elizabeth. The new dynasty of the Stuart started because queen Elizabeth I had die without an heir.

This explains why people in England, especially at period, are only obsessed with the idea that a new king, or a new queen, has to bear children. Because in England they have in history a lot  of problems because kings, or queens, died without an heir, or childless if they were queens.

The absence of a child, or of an heir, is so important because it creates avoid of power.

James I was the son of Mary Stuart and the nephew of Elizabeth I of England.

James I is important because he was both James VI of Scotland and James I of England.

This explains that for the first timeshare was a king who ruled over 2 states that would lead to became part of the same country.

He was a king who believed in the Divine Right of Kings that means that he considered himself the representative of God on earth. And so he could do whatever he wanted without giving/providing explanation for his gifts to anybody.

The consequence for this principle on the land and the people and the way he governed, the consequence of his way of thinking on the people, was that he produced people discontent. It meant people discontent.

The problem was that since he believed in the Divine Right of Kings he ruled like an absolute monarch. He asked for money every now and then to the barons, to the aristocracy and they couldn't stand this so there was a conflict between the king and the Parliament.

The conflict between the king and the Parliament was not a new matter, was not a new situation, it had already existed.

It was in 1215 the first time when a conflict between the king and the Parliament started. When the king was compelled to sign the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta was a document that barons, that is aristocracy, asked/compelled the king to sign and it limited the power of the king, that was the power to ask for money without the consent of the Parliament.

So the Stuart dynasty is particularly important because it very well represents the continuos conflict between the Parliament and the king. It started with James I and ended with Charles I which is the king coming up.

Because of the principles there was an open content between the king and the Parliament.

(In the MAs there were the representative of the aristocracy, here there were the representative of the aristocracy and of the emerging middle class, the class that will emerging in the 19th century that is the merchants.

It depends on the period what representative are there in the Parliament.)

So the contrast between the Parliament and the king ended up with the civil war because the power of the king was put in discussion by the Parliament.

Charles I was king after James I and again he followed the principle of the Divine Rights of Kings. Charles I asked the Parliament for more and more taxes and the Parliament People and of course the Parliament, who represented the mainly important social classes, got tired of all this and said 'no'. They were fade up', they didn't want to pay lot of taxes and they didn't want people to be taxed without the consent of the Parliament. So in 1629 he dismissed the Parliament exited to reign on is own. So he didn't give a valid damn about the people thoughts, he spent a lot of money. Financial problems came to surface.

He embarked on war against France and Spain. He fight against France and Spain, the 2 strongest power of the continent, because they represented the Catholic Church but the certain power, the strongest power on the continent, because in this period there are  a lot of religious conflicts. And so he wanted to become more and more important.

But he was unable to manage and so asked a lot of money, he levied at least a lot of taxes but the Parliament didn't accept such behavior. The Parliament wanted to be consulted before the king asked people for taxes.

When the situation was no longer controllable a war broke out in 1642. It was called Civil War because it was a war where the 2 parts fighting one against the other belong to the same country but representing different interests.

One the one side we had the roundheads, that represented the interest of the merchants or emerging classes, on the other there were the cavaliers, people that followed the king, and the aristocracy which unfortunately included the serves because they belong to the medieval system.

People belonging to the emerging class were the merchants. They became important because economy became important. They also were puritans.

They wanted to go back to the purity of the origins of christianity and they criticized the moral corrupted immorality of the Church of Rome that was mainly interested in rights and appearances. They didn't want to recognized the intermediation of the priest, they wanted to read the books and the Bible on their own. And lats but not least they believed strongly in the talent parabola. The main point of Puritanism can be understood if we take in consideration the talent parabola.

The talent parabola says that God gives everyone of us some talents and we have to made them fruit. They had to give us that springs to do our best. And if we are unable to exploit our talents, according to Puritan religion, this means that we are not blessed by God and so we are damned.

The war was won by the Parliament, represented by people with this mentality, the kink was beheaded and his family was compelled to flee to France that was an absolute monarchy.