Short Parliament

Parliaments of England 1593–1689
Parliament Date 8th Parliament of Elizabeth I 1593 9th Parliament of Elizabeth I 1597 Final parliament of Elizabeth I 1601 Blessed Parliament 1604 Addled Parliament 1614 3rd Parliament of King James I 1621 Happy Parliament 1624 Useless Parliament 1625 2nd Parliament of King Charles I 1626 3rd parliament of King Charles I 1628 Short Parliament 1640 Apr Long Parliament (1) 1640 Nov Oxford Parliament 1644 Long Parliament (2) 1645 Rump Parliament (1) 1648 Barebone's Parliament 1653 First Protectorate Parliament 1654 Second Protectorate Parliament 1656 Third Protectorate Parliament 1659 Rump Parliament (2) 1659 Long Parliament (3) 1660 Convention Parliament 1660 Cavalier Parliament 1661 Habeas Corpus Parliament 1679 Exclusion Bill Parliament 1680 Oxford Parliament 1681 Loyal Parliament 1685 Convention Parliament 1689
List of Parliaments of England

The Short Parliament was a Parliament of England that sat from 13 April to 5 May 1640 during the reign of King Charles I of England, so called because it lasted only three weeks.

After 11 years of attempting Personal Rule (1629–40), Charles recalled Parliament in 1640 on 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, MP 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, in contrast, 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 was followed by the Long Parliament.

See also

• List of MPs elected to the English parliament in 1640 (April)
• List of Parliaments of England

References

• David Plant, "The Short Parliament"
• "John Hampden in the Short Parliament"

Sir John Glanville – (Speaker)