Twenty-Nineth Week Seventh Grade History Essay

          This week I learned about a few of the rulers of England. A couple of these men believed in the Divine Right of Kings, which is another topic of this essay. These two men were King James I of England and King Charles I of England. The third man’s name was Oliver Cromwell, and he actually fought against this belief.

           To begin, the Divine Right of Kings was a belief promoted by King Henry VIII. It was used by several later kings after him, including King James and King Charles. It meant that since God has graciously given the role of king to that king, he should only obey, listen, and take orders from God. This was mainly a trick to let the king do whatever he wanted. It allowed him to treat the people however he wanted and it threw out the futile system.

          The futile system was a system made for large countries. It was designed like a circle, where everybody served each other. The peasants served the knights, the knights served the nobles, the nobles served the king, and the king served the peasants. However, the Divine Right of Kings made it so the king served no one and everyone served the king.

          King James I of England, Ireland, and Scotland wanted to change the religion of the people. He grew up in Scotland and knew that the Scottish people were too stubborn to change their religion, so he tried England instead. He changed England’s religion to the Episcopal beliefs, and ended up making the “authorized version” of the Bible. This was what everyone in England was supposed to read. It was later renamed the King James version of the Bible.

          James was succeeded by his son, King Charles I of England. Charles, on the other hand, was raised in England and did not know the stubbornness of the Scotts. He knew that if he wanted to control the people, he had to control their religion, using the Divine Right of Kings. Charles set up a pastor to preach the Episcopal religion in a Scottish church.

          The rebellion started during the first time the new preacher started teaching. A milkmaid named Jenny Geddes was sitting in church when this happened. She noticed that what the pastor was saying went against everything she learned as a child. Jenny looked around and saw that no one had done anything to stop this ridiculousness, and she felt that is what would happen. She stood up in the middle of the sermon, picked up her stool, and threw it at the preacher’s head. Seeing this inspired others to do the same. This, along with several other acts of rebellion, led to the Bishop’s War, the Scottish Revolution, and the Irish Revolution.

          King James and King Charles both had disagreement with Parliament, and, using the Divine Right of Kings, did not consult or listen to Parliament. This obviously angered Parliament, which started a war between the Parliamentarian Roundheads and Charles’s Royalist. The Royalists were obviously led by Charles, but the Roundheads were led by a man named Oliver Cromwell.

          Cromwell was a member in Parliament, and being in Parliament, he did not know anything about war or battle strategies. To fix this problem, he looked at old battles and wars, and used those references to make his own strategies. He even used some old battle plans from history! Something else that was unusual about his army is that he did not care who was in it. He allowed anybody who wanted to fight and who knew who he was fighting for. This included lords, knights, peasants, farmers, merchants, et cetera. His strange army and his effective battle plans led Cromwell to win the war against Charles. Charles was captured and beheaded by his own people, and Oliver Cromwell was one of the people to sign his death sentence.

          However, it is the bad part of Cromwell that he is mainly remembered for. After winning the war, Cromwell rode through England, killing anybody who still believed that Charles should be king, even though he abused his power. When he returned, he found himself the most famous and important man in England. He gained so much power that he was pretty much king. He only needed the title, which was offered to him, but he refused.

          This was a very interesting week. I think that it was wrong for King James and King Charles to believe in the Divine Right of Kings and use their power against their own people. I am grateful that Oliver Cromwell put an end to the tyrant, Charles, even though I do not think it was right what he did afterward. However, there is nothing I can do to change it, so let the past be the past.