Short Parliament
The
Short Parliament (April-May,
1640) of King
Charles I is so called because it lasted only three weeks.
After eleven years of attempting personal rule, Charles recalled Parliament in 1640, under the advice of Lord Wentworth, recently created
Earl of Strafford. He was forced to call the Short Parliament primarily to obtain money to finance his military struggle with
Scotland in the
Bishops' Wars. Like its predecessors, the new
parliament had greater interest in redressing perceived grievances occasioned by the royal administration than in voting the King funds to pursue his war against the Scottish
Covenanters.
John Pym, the Member for Tavistock, quickly emerged as a major figure in debate; his long speech on 17 April expressed the refusal of the
House of Commons to vote subsidies unless royal abuses were addressed.
John Hampden, on the other hand, was persuasive in private: he sat on nine committees. Charles's attempted offer to cease the levying of
Ship Money did not impress the Members of Parliament. A flood of petitions concerning abuses were coming up to Parliament from the country. Impatient with their resuming debate where it had left off in 1629, touching the violation of Parliamentary privileges by the arrests of Members in 1629, and unnerved about coming scheduled debate over the deteriorating situation in Scotland, Charles dissolved the body (
5 May 1640) after only three weeks' sitting. It would be followed by the
Long Parliament.
*
List of Parliaments of England*
David Plant, "The Short Parliament"*
"John Hampden in the Short Parliament"
