Also on the religious front, Charles managed to alienate both Catholics and Protestants with various religious policies that he pursued. He also angered many people in Scotland, his homeland, when he insisted, without consulting the Scottish Parliament, that they use a new prayer book that looked suspiciously like the English Book of Common Prayer. Riots accompanied the first use of the new prayer book, and the Church of Scotland's General Assembly condemned the prayer book in 1638 and declared itself fully independent of the Church of England. Scottish political leaders responded by declaring the National Covenant, a collection of grievances against the new policies of the king and his ministers.

Another point of contention with the people who ended up being Charles's enemies was the king's dependence on Buckingham. The young king allowed Buckingham to direct foreign policy, including authorizing intervention in the war against both France and Spain. Charles also on one occasion imprisoned two Members of Parliament who had spoken out against Buckingham. (He later had them released.)

Possibly the main point of difference between King Charles I and everyone else who lived in England was the relationship between the king and his subjects. Charles was very much of the opinion that he had been granted the kingship by divine right and that it was the duty of the people of England to do what he told them to do. The members of Parliament certainly disagreed with that philosophy. Many in Parliament did not favor war with either France or Spain. Enough members of Parliament objected to Charles's request for money to fund a war in Europe that the funding was denied. In response, Charles dissolved Parliament.

Charles took the same action the following year. When France defeated English forces on the field of battle, many in England blamed Buckingham and sought his removal through impeachment. In order to prevent his being removed from office, Charles dissolved Parliament. In fact, he was assassinated in 1628.

The year before, with no Parliament to approve or reject, Charles instituted a "forced loan," for which people could be imprisoned for not paying. Feeling the need for more approval, Charles recalled Parliament in 1628. Lawmakers and various other nobles forced Charles to accept the Petition of Right, which, among other things, required the king to seek Parliament's approval before launching any other tax collection schemes. Also in the Petition of Right were prohibitions on the king's declaring martial law, requiring people to keep troops in their homes, and imprisoning people without due process of law. The king promised to abide by the conditions of the Petition and did so for a number of weeks; he then dissolved Parliament.

In January 1629, Charles called Parliament into session. Two months later, the king dissolved Parliament. It would not meet again for another 11 years.

Charles quickly ended the wars with France and Spain, mainly because he didn't have the money to pay for them anymore. He managed to find money in a few ways, by resurrecting long-defunct laws such as the one that required men who earned a certain amount of money from their land holdings to attend the king's coronation and then retrospectively fining anyone who hadn't shown up.

Another unpopular tax brought in by Charles was the resumption of ship money, which was nominally money paid to the Navy treasury and was normally collected during wartime. The courts ruled that the king was within his right not only to institute the tax but also to issue fines to people who didn't pay it.

Large-scale opposition greeted the king's restoration of the boundaries of the Royal Forests to their long-ago state, meaning that the king could issue fines to people whose homes and operations now rested on royal land. A series of riots known as the Western Rising was the most obvious symbol of the widespread discontent with the king's monetary moves. And yet, by mid-1640, after 11 years of what Charles called "personal rule," the royal treasury was nearly exhausted. A desperate Charles turned to the City of London, which refused to grant the king a loan. Charles got the same response from foreign monarchs.

In 1640, Charles faced a war not on the Continent but in the north: Scottish forces had taken up arms against England. Charles himself had gone north to take control of an army in 1639, in what was known as the First Bishops' War. (He had financed the military expedition with funds not authorized by Parliament.) The Scottish resistance, both figuratively and literally, was larger than Charles expected, and he ended up signing a treaty to avoid a military conflict. The king decided that he needed more money to fund more of a military expedition and called Parliament into session, for the first time since 1629.

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