eleven years' tyranny

(noun)

The period from 1629 to 1640, when King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland ruled without recourse to Parliament. The King was entitled to do this under the Royal Prerogative. His actions caused discontent among the ruling classes, but the effects were more popular with the common people.

Related Terms

Examples of eleven years' tyranny in the following topics:

  • Cromwell and the Roundheads

    • Charles I avoided calling a Parliament for the next decade, a period known as the "personal rule" or the "eleven years' tyranny."
    • Charles made peace with France and Spain, effectively ending England's involvement in the Thirty Years' War.
    • Known as the Long Parliament, it proved even more hostile to Charles than its predecessor and passed a law which stated that a new Parliament should convene at least once every three years—without the King's summons, if necessary.
    • Finally, the Parliament passed a law forbidding the King to dissolve it without its consent, even if the three years were up.
    • Oliver Cromwell  was relatively obscure for the first 40 years of his life.

  • The First Stuarts and Catholicism

    • A conflict had broken out between the Catholic Holy Roman Empire and the Protestant Bohemians, who had deposed the emperor as their king and elected James's son-in-law, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, in his place, triggering the Thirty Years' War.
    • Domestic quarrels between Charles and Henrietta Maria were souring the early years of their marriage.
    • The following eleven years, during which Charles ruled England without a Parliament, are referred to as the personal rule or the "eleven years' tyranny."
    • To prevent the king from dissolving it at will, it passed the Triennial Act, which required Parliament to be summoned at least once every three years, and permitted the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and 12 peers to summon Parliament if the king failed to do so.

  • Louis XVI

    • Upon the death of his father, who died of tuberculosis in 1765, the eleven-year-old Louis-Auguste became the new Dauphin.
    • France's alliance with Austria had pulled the country into the disastrous Seven Years' War, in which it was defeated by the British, both in Europe and in North America.
    • Because of that the royal couple failed to produce children for several years after their wedding, which created a strain upon their marriage.
    • When Louis XVI succeeded to the throne in 1774, he was nineteen years old.
    • Louis's indecisiveness and conservatism led some to view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien Régime and his popularity deteriorated progressively, despite the king's many decisions triggered by his desire to be loved by the public.

  • The English Protectorate

    • However, the major-generals lasted less than a year.
    • However, the republicans assessed his father's rule as "a period of tyranny and economic depression" and attacked the increasingly monarchy-like character of the Protectorate.
    • A year later monarchy was restored.  
    • By May 1652, Cromwell's Parliamentarian army had defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country—bringing to an end the Irish Confederate Wars (or Eleven Years' War).
    • However, guerrilla warfare continued for a further year.

  • The Inspirational Speech

    • And I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny.
    • And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!
    • And I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny.
    • And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!

  • American Republicanism

    • In the midst of the Revolutionary War, American leaders realized that, in order to function as a cohesive, unified nation, the United States needed a philosophy of government and rule that would safeguard the rights and liberties of citizens from political tyranny.
    • This notion helped unite the Thirteen Colonies together during the revolutionary war as a cohesive defensive reaction to British tyranny.
    • In the 1790s, during the years of the early United States Republic, these figures would vehemently disagree with each other not only over how republicanism should be politically structured (embodied by the struggle between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the ratification of the Constitution), but also, over various definitions of proper civic virtue.

  • The Freedmen's Bureau

    • The Bureau was created through the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which was initiated by President Abraham Lincoln, and was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War.
    • The American Missionary Association was particularly active; establishing eleven colleges in southern states for the education of freedmen.
    • That same year President Andrew Johnson, supported by Radical Republicans, vetoed a bill for an increase of power for the Bureau.

  • The John F. Kennedy Administration

    • He called upon the nations of the world to join together and fight what he called the "common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
    • The contrast between this optimistic vision and the pressures of managing daily political realities at home and abroad would be one of the main tensions running through the early years of his administration.
    • The organization grew to 5,000 members by March of 1963 and 10,000 the following year.
    • The economy, which had been through two recessions in three years and was currently in a recession when Kennedy took office, turned around and prospered.
    • On July 20, 1969, almost six years after Kennedy's death, Apollo 11 landed the first manned spacecraft on the moon.

  • The Federal Open Market Committee and the Role of the Fed

    • The president of the New York regional bank is always a member of the FOMC; the other four seats are filled by four of the other eleven bank presidents.
    • The members of the FOMC meet eight times a year in order to vote on current monetary policies.

  • Fours Schools of Economic Thought: Classical, Marxian, Keynesian, and the Chicago School.

    • All of this happened eleven years before Adam Smith published a similar and more comprehensive book, The Wealth of Nations.