ABSTRACT
The most dramatic example of the British problem in the seventeenth century came in the years before the English civil war. It is perfectly possible to argue that this conflict only happened because of Scotland and Ireland's impact on their larger and richer neighbor. When, in 1640, the Westminster parliament refused to aid Charles in his peril, the scene was set for a Scots occupation of England's northern counties which guaranteed the English parliament's power. The political principle was the constitutional independence of Scotland and Ireland from England. In the case of the northern kingdom, freedom was almost complete. The monarch of England was automatically the ruler of Ireland; no new law could be proposed in the western kingdom until it had had the approval of the English Privy Council; and Irish government was headed by a lord lieutenant appointed from London. The political reality making rule from London harder was the internal decentralisation of both Scotland and Ireland.
