James VI and I and the English Parliament

In the areas Royal administration and governmental policy (i.e., how the government did its business and what directions it took in the affairs of the country), the King saw no role for Parliament or to be informally bound by its opinions at all.

In October 1604, he assumed the title "King of Great Britain" by proclamation rather than statute, though Sir Francis Bacon told him he could not use the style in "any legal proceeding, instrument or assurance".

[14] A Catholic conspiracy led by a disaffected gentleman called Robert Catesby, the Gunpowder Plot, as it quickly became known, had in fact been discovered in advance of Fawkes's arrest and deliberately allowed to mature in order to catch the culprits red-handed and the plotters unawares.

Some of those resulted from creeping inflation and the decreasing purchasing power of the royal income,[20] but James's profligacy and financial incompetence substantially contributed to the mounting debt.

In an attempt to convince James to curb his extravagance, he wrote a series of frank tracts on the matter,[21] and he tried to induce the king to grant limited pensions to his courtiers, rather than showering them with random gifts.

Though the Commons agreed to the annual grant, the negotiations over the lump sum became so protracted and difficult that James eventually lost patience and dismissed the parliament on 31 December 1610.

[29] Buckingham addressed the search for alternative revenues, employing officials, such as the businessman Lionel Cranfield, who were astute in raising and saving money for the Crown.

A conflict had broken out between the Catholic Holy Roman Empire and the Protestant Bohemians, who had deposed the emperor as their king and elected James's son-in-law, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, in his place, triggering the Thirty Years' War.

[33] James reluctantly summoned parliament as the only means to raise the funds necessary to assist his daughter Elizabeth and Frederick, who had been ousted from Prague by Emperor Ferdinand II in 1620.

[35] In November 1621, led by Sir Edward Coke, they framed a petition asking not only for a war with Spain but for Prince Charles to marry a Protestant, and for enforcement of the anti-Catholic laws.

[36] James flatly told them not to interfere in matters of royal prerogative or they would risk punishment;[37] to which provocation they reacted by issuing a statement protesting their rights, including freedom of speech.

When negotiations began to drag, Prince Charles, now 23, and Buckingham, decided to seize the initiative and travel to Spain incognito,[40] to win the Infanta directly.

[42] Embittered by their treatment in Spain, Charles and Buckingham now turned James’s Spanish policy upon its head and called for a French match and a war against the Habsburg empire.

For once, the outpouring of anti-Catholic sentiment in the Commons was echoed in court, where control of policy had shifted from James to Charles and Buckingham,[44] who pressured the king to declare war and engineered the impeachment and imprisonment of the Lord Treasurer, Lionel Cranfield, earl of Middlesex, when he opposed the idea on grounds of cost.