Grand Remonstrance

Petition passed by the English Parliament in November 1641 that listed all the alleged misdeeds of Charles I – ‘the evils under which we have now many years suffered’. It then went on to blame those it thought responsible – the ‘Jesuited papists’, the bishops and Charles's councillors and courtiers. It demanded parliamentary approval for the king's ministers and the reform of the church. Charles refused to accept the Grand Remonstrance and countered by trying to arrest five leading members of the House of Commons. The worsening of relations between king and Parliament led to the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642.