8. When Parliament resumed in 1640, 399 of 493 MPs voted against Charles’s advisors, and lasted for the next 20 years.
The understaffed army Charles sent to enforce religious uniformity in Scotland was forced to retreat and surrender Newcastle, and the humiliated king was forced to recall Parliament in 1640. He needed a new tax to be levied to pay for his efforts against those vicious Scottish churchmen. After its 11 years’ absence, this Parliament was determined not to go anywhere, and it lasted in various forms for the next 20 years, earning itself the nickname ‘the Long Parliament’. It took advantage of the king’s desperation by forcing him to sign the death-warrant of his hated advisor, Thomas Wentworth.
His other advisor, William Laud, was impeached, and there was nothing the money-desperate king could do. 399 of 493 MPs voted against the two advisors and, worst of all, Parliament refused to give Charles any money to fight the Scots. In 1641, Parliament passed a revised version of the 1628 Petition of Right, the Grand Remonstrance. With 200 clauses, the Grand Remonstrance guaranteed that Parliament would meet every three years and could only be dissolved by itself, reduced the king’s power to raise taxes, and prevented him from appointing members of the clergy. Charles was now struggling to keep power.
