The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which nominally lasted from 1640 until 1660, making it the longest-lasting Parliament in English and British history. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence. In September 1640, King Charles I issued writs summoning a parliament to convene on 3 November 1640. He intended it to pass financial bills, a step made necessary by the costs of the Bishops' Wars against Scotland. The Long Parliament received its name from the fact that, by an act of Parliament, the Parliament Act 1640 (16 Cha. 1. c. 7), it stipulated it could be dissolved only with agreement of the members; and those members did not agree to its dissolution until 16 March 1660, after the English Civil War and near the close of the Interregnum.
The parliament first sat from 1640 until 1653. Following Pride's Purge in 1648, the remaining members sat as the Rump Parliament until Oliver Cromwell suspended it in April 1653, replacing it with a succession of nominated and elected parliaments.
In the chaos following the death of Cromwell in September 1658, the Rump was reinstalled in May 1659, and in February 1660 General George Monck allowed the members barred in 1648 to retake their seats, so that they could pass the necessary legislation to allow the Stuart Restoration and dissolve the Long Parliament. This cleared the way for a new parliament to be elected, which was known as the Convention Parliament. Some key members of the Long Parliament, such as Sir Henry Vane the Younger and General Edmond Ludlow, were barred from the final acts of the Long Parliament. They claimed the parliament was not legally dissolved, its final votes a procedural irregularity (the words used contemporaneously were "device" and "conspiracy") by Monck to ensure the restoration of King Charles II of England. On the restoration Monck was rewarded with a dukedom.
The Long Parliament later became a key moment in Whig histories of the seventeenth century. American Whig historian Charles Wentworth Upham believed the Long Parliament comprised "a set of the greatest geniuses for government that the world ever saw embarked together in one common cause" and whose actions produced an effect which, at the time, made their country the wonder and admiration of the world, and is still felt and exhibited far beyond the borders of that country, in the progress of reform, and the advancement of popular liberty. He believed its republican principles made it a precursor to the American Revolution.
In April 1640, to fund his on-going conflict with Scots Covenanters, King Charles I recalled Parliament for the first time in eleven years. However, the Short Parliament which assembled refused to vote taxes without concessions and he dissolved it after only three weeks. Hostilities with Scotland broke out in August when a Scots army invaded, defeated an English army at Newburn and occupied parts of Northern England. A truce followed where Charles was compelled to recall Parliament again. The November election produced a large majority for the opposition, led by John Pym.
Parliament was almost immediately presented with a series of "Root and Branch petitions". These demanded the expulsion of bishops from the Church of England, reflecting widespread concern at the growth of "Catholic practices" within the church. Charles' willingness to make war on the Protestant Scots, but not to assist his exiled nephew Charles Louis, led to fears he was about to sign an alliance with Spain, a view shared by the experienced Venetian and French ambassadors. This meant ending arbitrary rule was important not just for England, but the Protestant cause in general.
Since direct attacks on the monarch were considered unacceptable, the usual route was to prosecute his "evil counsellors". Doing so showed even if the king was above the law, his subordinates were not, and he could not protect them; the intention was to make others think twice about their actions. Further, they started to create a series of committees and sub-committees starting with the Grand Committee for Religion appointed on 6 November 1640.
Their main target was the Earl of Strafford, former Lord Deputy of Ireland; aware of this, he urged Charles to use military force to seize the Tower of London, and arrest any MP or peer guilty of "treasonable correspondence with the Scots". While Charles hesitated, Pym struck first; on 11 November Strafford was impeached, arrested, and sent to the Tower. Other targets, including John Finch, fled abroad; Archbishop William Laud—by then sufficiently unpopular that in May 1640 a large armed mob attacked Lambeth Palace, seeking to kill him—was impeached in December, joining Strafford in the Tower.
At his trial in March 1641, Strafford was indicted on 28 counts of "arbitrary and tyrannical government". Even if these charges were proved, it was not clear they constituted a crime against the king, the legal definition of treason. If he went free, his opponents would replace him in the Tower, and so Pym immediately moved a bill of attainder, asserting Strafford's guilt and ordering his execution.
Although Charles announced he would not sign the attainder, on 21 April 204 MPs voted in favour, 59 against, while 250 abstained. On 1 May, rumours of a military plot to release Strafford from the Tower led to widespread demonstrations in London, and on 7th, the Lords voted for execution by 51 to 9. Claiming to fear for his family's safety, Charles signed the death warrant on 10 May, and Strafford was beheaded two days later.
Committees established by the Long Parliament
On 5 November 1640 Parliament created several committees to parcel out the work they intended to address. The first committee was the Committee for Privileges and Elections under the leadership of John Maynard, MP for Totnes. On the next day, 6 November, parliament established the Grand Committee for Religion.
This seemed to provide a basis for a programme of constitutional reforms, and Parliament voted Charles an immediate grant of £400,000. The Triennial Act 1640 (16 Cha. 1. c. 1) required Parliament meet at least every three years, and if the king failed to issue proper summons, the members could assemble on their own. Levying taxes without consent of Parliament was declared unlawful, including ship money and forced loans, while the Star Chamber and High Commission courts abolished.
These reforms were supported by many who later became Royalists, including Edward Hyde, Viscount Falkland, and Sir John Strangways. Where they differed from Pym and his supporters was their refusal to accept Charles would not keep his commitments, despite evidence to the contrary. He reneged on those made in the 1628 Petition of Right, and agreed terms with the Scots in 1639, while preparing another attack. Both he and Henrietta Maria openly told foreign ambassadors any concessions were temporary, and would be retrieved by force if needed.
In this period, 'true religion' and 'good government' were seen as one and the same. Although the vast majority believed a 'well-ordered' monarchy was a divinely mandated requirement, they disagreed on what 'well-ordered' meant, and who held ultimate authority in clerical affairs. Royalists generally supported a Church of England governed by bishops, appointed by, and answerable to, the king; most Parliamentarians were Puritans, who tended to believe that church leaders should be appointed by their congregations.
However, Puritan meant anyone who wanted to reform, or 'purify', the Church of England, and contained many different opinions. Some simply objected to Laud's reforms; Presbyterians like Pym wanted to reform the Church of England, along the same lines as the Church of Scotland. Independents believed any state church was wrong, while many were also political radicals like the Levellers. Presbyterians in England and Scotland gradually came to see them as more dangerous than the Royalists; an alliance between these three groups eventually led to the Second English Civil War in 1648.