Major protagonists during the thirty years war

Used with permission

The so-called 'English Civil War' wasn't English; it wasn't even British. It was part of a massive conflict then engulfing the whole of Europe.

The first half of the seventeenth century saw Europe savaged by a brutal war of religion known as the 'Thirty Years War'. It was the product of 100 years of simmering tension between Protestant and Catholic forces. A century earlier, many other European nations had followed England's split from Rome. Inspired by the teachings of the Protestant cleric, Martin Luther, they declared their nations Protestant and outlawed Catholicism. At that time the idea of religious freedom or liberty of conscience was regarded as both absurd and dangerous. The religion of the state was determined by the religion of its monarch. And that was that.

So Europe became divided between antagonistic Protestant and Catholic nations. Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and areas of central Europe in today's Germany, Austria and Hungary went Protestant; France, Spain, today's Italy, and the remaining parts of central Europe remained Catholic. The division was not dissimilar to the carve-up of Europe during the Cold War when the Iron Curtain split the Continent between two deeply opposed ideologies. During the 17th Century, the Papacy led a fight-back against Protestantism, known as the 'Counter-Reformation', which saw Cold War turn into hot war and Europe descend into a bloody morass. Backed by the Catholic armies of the mighty Habsburg empire, the Protestants were put on the back foot. During the course of the century, the land area held by Protestants fell from one- half of Europe to one-fifth.

Protestants throughout Europe were terrified of the looming Catholic menace. As Spanish troops marched across the Continent to crush Dutch Protestantism, paranoia gripped the Protestant mind. Nowhere was this more the case than in England. Since the time of Queen Elizabeth and the victory over the Spanish Armada, English identity had cemented around anti-Catholicism. We were the chosen Protestant nation, holding out against the Papist-Catholic menace.

Anti-Catholicism, fed on a lurid diet of the Spanish Armada, the Inquisition and the Gunpowder Plot, was part of the English psyche akin to anti-Communism in post- Second World War America. Catholicism was seen as a threat to our whole national identity and way of life. And just as Senator Joe McCarthy saw reds under every bed in 1950s America, so England was gripped by a deep paranoia of fifth-column Catholics. The dreaded Popish plot was always around the corner. Everyone was a suspect. Even the King.

Ever more so because of his hapless foreign policy. Whereas Elizabeth had taken the war to the Catholic enemy, Charles I seemed a coward. Even though his own brother-in-law, a German prince, had lost his kingdom to the Catholic armies, even though the forces of Christ and anti-Christ were fighting it out on his doorstep, Charles stood idly by.

Worse, he allowed Spanish troops to use English ports and march through the country. It was left up to individual mercenaries and Godly noblemen, like the Earl of Essex, to assume the fight themselves and join the great Protestant campaign of the day. They travelled down to the southern ports and sailed across the Channel and marched into Holland, Germany and Hungary to fight the Catholic foe. Many of them would gain great celebrity in England for their daring exploits. The English newspapers were full of the bravery of Protestant knights and their patriotic exploits.

But back at home, Charles appeared as if he had been seduced by Popery into betraying the international Protestant cause. While it was being attacked on the Continent, Laud was undermining it at home. Some even suspected that Charles I might be a Catholic agent.