THE PURITANS RISE UP IN THE 1600'S
TO DOMINATE THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT
This frame is from the video
"Cromwell".
Puritans were the movers and shakers who rose to prominence
and set forth policy in English Parliament during the 1600's.
Their power struggle with the king over the issue of
"no taxation without representation"
led on to the English Civil War.
Were the English Puritans actually Americans in embryonic form?
Here we see them stirring in the womb of England and expressing the true spirit
of America 130 years before the nation was born.
THE PURITANS RISE TO POWER IN THE EARLY 1600'S
AND ASSUME A DOMINANT ROLE IN ENGLISH PARLIAMENT.
In the early 1600's the Puritans were still just a small minority
in English society.
Nevertheless due to continued persecution by the Crown, the aristocracy
and their own established Church of England they
were becoming very restive and discontented.
In the halls of English Parliament the Puritans
were highly motivated to seek change in the whole church-state equation.
They wanted to see the
Reformation in England
move forward at more than just the snail's pace that they had been
seeing.
The Puritans soon became
the main movers and shakers in the political arena.
During the 1630's they began to dominate English Parliament.
This was a time when the middle class in England was starting to
prosper and assert itself. On the economic front the freemen wanted to see
a system where the advancement
of Englishmen would be based on merit rather than class privilege.
The aristocracy, not expectantly,
stood squarely in their way.
So did the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Church of England.
In the 1630's they even began to have a
contentious time with the king of all people.
Under the emerging leadership of
Oliver Cromwell the Puritans in Parliament went
head to head against King Charles I over issues of taxation and
the representation of the people. (Interestingly, these very same issues of
taxation and representation came up again in the following century
in the New World
as the American colonies approached their War of Independence.)
The King had wanted Parliament to
raise the money to finance a war. The Puritans took this opportunity to
bring to the table the important matter of
Parliament's power as representatives of the English people.
King Charles responded.
He dissolved Parliament!
The bitter feud between King Charles and the
Puritan leaders in Parliament got progressively worse.
Finally it erupted into
the awful
English Civil War.
This frame is from the video
"Cromwell".
Puritans were the movers and shakers who rose to prominence
and set forth policy in English Parliament during the 1600's.
Their power struggle with the king over the issue of
"no taxation without representation"
led on to the English Civil War.
Were the English Puritans actually Americans in embryonic form?
Here we see them stirring in the womb of England and expressing the true spirit
of America 130 years before the nation was born.
