By the 1630s, many parishes had a resident intellectual for the first time. The parish priests came from gentry, upper yeomanry, urban tradesmen and clerical families. They were educated and highly learned. They had libraries and were in touch with contemporary religious debates. They saw their role primarily as pastoral care. Many wanted to improve the religious knowledge and moral conduct of their parishioners. Puritan influence deepened as they forbade dancing, games, minstrels, and festivals. They punished superstitious conduct. They initiated prosecutions in church courts for sexual lapses and drunkenness. The church court had little coercive power and its punishments were restricted to penance or excommunication. Many Puritan sects espoused equality for women. By the 1640s women were preachers, e.g. in the Baptist and Anabaptist religions and, until 1660, prophetesses. These sects were mostly composed of the lower echelons of society.
The poor people did not respond to sermons as did the well-to-do. Nor were they as involved in church activity, attending church only for marriages, baptisms, and funerals.
Charles I not only believed in the divine right of kings and was authoritarian; he was the ultimate autocrat. He had an unalterable conviction that he was superior to other men, who were insignificant and privileged to revolve around him. He issued directives to reverse jury verdicts. Parliamentarians Oliver Cromwell and other educated men opposed this view. The Commons voted not to grant Charles the usual custom-dues for life, making it instead renewable each year, conditioned on the king's behavior. Charles dissolved Parliament before this passed. He continued to take tonnage and poundage.
He wanted money for war so he imposed many taxes, but without the consent of Parliament. They included many of which had fallen into disuse. He imposed a compulsory "loan" on private individuals, which the courts held was illegal, and imprisoned, those who refused. Bail was denied to these men. Simpler people who refused were threatened with impressment into the Navy, which included being landed on shore to fight as marines and soldiers. They sought to revive the old writ of habeas corpus [produce the body] to get released, but to no avail. The old writ had been just to bring to court those persons needed for proceedings, but Coke in 1614 had cited the writ with a new meaning "to have the body together with the cause of detention". Charles billeted unpaid and unruly soldiers in private homes, which they plundered. It was customary to quarter them in inns and public houses at royal expense. Martial law was declared and soldiers were executed. But the citizens did not want martial law either.
The Magna Carta got attention as a protector of basic liberties. Both attorneys and laymen read "The Pastyme of People" written by John Rastell in 1529, which described the history of the Magna Carta from 1215 to 1225. Also read was the "Great Abridgment" of the English law written by Rastell in 1527, and Coke's volume of his Institutes which dealt with the Magna Carta, which the Crown took to prevent being published until 1642, when Parliament allowed it. Broad-scale pamphleteering turned England into a school of political discussion. Oxford University favored the established church and Cambridge University was Puritan.
The estates of the members of the House of Commons were three times the extent of the members' of the House of Lords. Bishops' estates had diminished considerably because of secularization. The members of the House of Commons were elected by the people. For these reasons, the House of Commons asserted a preeminence to the House of Lords.
The House of Commons drew up a Petition of Right in 1627, which expanded upon the principles of Magna Carta and sought to fix definite bounds between royal power and the power of the law. It protested the loans compelled under pain of imprisonment and stated that no tax or the like should be exacted without the common consent of Parliament. It quoted previous law that "…no freeman may be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freeholds or liberties, or his free customs, or be outlawed or exiled; or in any manner destroyed, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land" and that "…no man of what estate or condition that he be, should be put out of his land or tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned nor disinherited, nor put to death without being brought to answer by due process of law". It continued that "… divers of your subjects have of late been imprisoned without any cause showed; and when for their deliverance they were brought before your Justices by your Majesty's writs of Habeas Corpus, there to undergo and receive as the court should order, and their keepers commanded to certify the causes of their detainer, no cause was certified, but that they were detained by your Majesty's special command, signified by the Lords of your Privy Council, and yet were returned back to several prisons, without being charged with anything to which they might make answer according to the law." It also protested the billeting of soldiers in private houses and martial law trying soldiers and sailors. If these terms were agreed to by the King, he was to be given a good sum of money. Since he needed the money, he yielded. He expected tonnage and poundage for the Navy for life, as was the custom. But he got it only for one year, to be renewable yearly. The King agreed to the petition, quietly putting his narrow interpretation on it, and it was put into the statute book.
In 1629 Parliament distinguished between treason to the king and treason to the Commonwealth.
The Chief Justice held in 1638 that acts of Parliament to take away the King's royal power in the defense of his kingdom were void; the king may command his subjects, their persons, their goods, and their money and acts of Parliament make no difference. But the people refused to pay these taxes.
Charles thought of more ways to obtain money and disregarded his agreement to the Petition of Right.