- Personal Rule
The Personal Rule (also known as the Eleven Years Tyranny) was the period from
1629 to1640 , when King Charles I ofEngland ,Scotland andIreland ruled without recourse to Parliament. He was entitled to do this under theRoyal Prerogative , but his actions caused discontent among those who provided the ruling classes.Charles had already dissolved Parliament three times by
1628 . After the murder of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was in charge of Charles' foreign policy, Parliament began to criticise the king more harshly than before. Charles then realised that, as long as he could avoid war, he could rule without parliament.Whig historians sometimes called this period the Eleven Years Tyranny. The term is indicative of the partisan nature of activities at the time, which would eventually result in the
English Civil War . However, more recently revisionists refer to the 11 years a period of "Creative Reform", due to the measures taken by Charles to restructure English politics at the time.ee also
* John Cooke, the
prosecutor in the 1649 trial of Charles I of England
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