page_title: English Civil War
section_title: Causes
hierarchical_section_title: English Civil War / Causes
caption_attribution_description: English: Session of the Long Parliament
context_page_description: The English Civil War happened in the middle 17th century. The term civil war is a war where the sides involved in the fighting are from the same country.
  At the centre, there was a struggle between King Charles I and the Parliament of England over how England should be ruled. The King wanted to rule without Parliament telling him what to do. At first Parliament wanted to reduce the King's power, but later it decided that the country did not need a king. King Charles's supporters were known as the Royalists, and were nicknamed "Cavaliers". Parliament's supporters were known as the Parliamentarians, and were nicknamed "Roundheads".
  From 1639 to 1653, there was fighting in England, Scotland and Ireland, three separate countries that were ruled by the same king. The fighting that took place in each of these countries broke out at different times and for different reasons. In England, it lasted from 1642 to 1651. Some people think of this as one big war, while others think of it as three separate wars: the First English Civil War, the Second English Civil War and the Third English Civil War.
context_section_description: The reasons for the fighting were mostly to do with power, money and religion.
caption: The Parliament in the time of King Charles I.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2012:06:01 14:23:46", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9080", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "285", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "453"}