The Second Bishops' War

Following the dissolution of the Short Parliament, Strafford's advice was clear. He pressed Charles to 'go on with a vigorous war as you first designed ...loosed and absolved from all rules of government. Being reduced to extreme necessity, everything is to be done that power might admit, and that you are to do. They refusing, you are acquitted towards God and man.'

Charles needed little encouragement and once more prepared for war. Although Strafford promised to rally a 10,000 strong force of troops from Ireland to help the invasion, Charles ultimately remained dependent for military support on an English aristocracy increasingly hostile to a war against their fellow Protestants in Scotland. Once again, like the grand old Duke of York, Charles marched a rag-bag army up via York to face the might of a disciplined Covenanter army.

Informed by their allies in Parliament of the King's military strategy, the Covenanters didn't hang around. They crossed the border, routed the English at Newburn and bypassed the heavily defended Berwick to capture a defenceless Newcastle - as the centre of coal production, an important city and port.

Charles called an emergency Council of Peers at York. He hoped to gain renewed support from the Lords and detach them from their less obedient Commons colleagues. Yet the Lords were of one mind - in a heated meeting they demanded an end to the Scottish War, the sacking of war-hungry Strafford, and the calling of another Parliament.

With the Covenanters occupying Newcastle, Durham and most of Northumberland and with little support from his peers, Charles' room for manoeuvre was limited. He signed the ignominious Treaty of Ripon with the Covenanters and called another Parliament in November 1640. An English Parliament now convened under the long, occupying shadow of the Scottish forces.