1640 (Apr.)
The Short Parliament was so called because it sat for less than a month. It was Charles I’s fourth Parliament, and was summoned by him late in 1639 after a period of some eleven years in which he had governed without recourse to the two Houses – a period referred to as the Personal Rule. After his experiences with his last Parliament the king had been reluctant to call another, and remained so in 1639. However, since 1637 he had been locked in violent dispute with his subjects in Scotland after trying to foist on them a new, and in their eyes ‘popish’, prayer book.