Personal Rule

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The Personal Rule (also known as the Eleven Years Tyranny) was the period from 1629 to 1640, when King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland ruled without recourse to Parliament. He was entitled to do this under the Royal 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.

[edit] See also

• John Cooke, the prosecutor in the 1649 trial of Charles I of England