The English Revolution of the 17th century was caused by the growing popularity of Puritanism and capitalism and by the obliviousness of the Stuart monarchs to the implications of this growth.
The revolution had its roots in Henry VIII's attempt to divorce his wife Katherine.  A royal divorce encompassed both religious and legal concerns, so it is no surprise that to secure one Henry VIII employed political maneuvering previously unseen in an English monarch.  In two moves engineered to win the support of merchants in Parliament, he broke with the Roman Catholic Church and repealed taxes that had previously gone to the Pope.  He also sold monastic lands which quickly fell into the hands of merchant landlords.
His daughter Elizabeth followed his model of political compromise in the famous Elizabethan Settlement of 1558, which solved the growing problem of religious toleration in post-Reformation England.  Prior to the Elizabethan Settlement, English laws made Anglicanism the solely accepted religion.  Sensing the discontent of her Puritan and Catholic constituents,   Elizabeth allowed for the private practice of other religions, though Anglicanism remained the state's official dogma.
With these reforms England became an advanced nation ruled by a competent monarch who listened to the needs of her people. This changed in 1603 when Elizabeth died and left as her heir James VI of Scotland.  James had already ruled Scotland since 1568 as king, though in reality he was a figurehead subordinate to the presbyters of the Scottish Church.  Relishing the chance to govern a nation where he was both king and head of the church, he happily moved to England and took the name James I.
No sooner had James taken power than he managed to disrupt the Tudors' reforms.  At the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 James assembled representatives of English religious sects.  Puritan representatives, already in the King's disfavor, presented the Millenarian Petition. This moderate request for increased religious toleration angered the King so much that he ended the Conference and deported the Petition?s sponsors.  The message to Puritans was clear: the King is not a friend.
The reign of James I was a fiscal disaster.  James brought the English economy to ruin by encouraging the establishment of monopolies, one of which caused massive currency deflation by melting actual English coins to make gold thread.  The government of James I fell short of solving the growing problem of enclosure, which forced farmers off their lands.  James' ignorant management of the economy soon lost him the support of the merchants that his predecessors had so cleverly won.
His economic shortcomings also resulted in a new class of peasantry.  Both Parliament and the King made little effort to help the newly-created poor, and instead left the task of providing social welfare to the charitable.  In 17th century England, the charitable were overwhelmingly Puritan merchants.  In this role, the Puritans established schools, alms-houses, and other institutions from where they were able to spread their rebellious teachings.
The beliefs of the Puritans were at the heart of the English Revolution.  Puritans were staunch believers in John Calvin's theory of double prelapsarian predestination, and as such they held that all people - including kings - were merely actors in God's world.  This was a stark contrast to the then-dominant theory of Divine Right which claimed that kings were God's representative on Earth.  So popular was this notion that historian Christopher Hill later named it the, "stop in the mind," meaning that any thoughts critical of kings were blocked by it.
Predestination also fueled the Puritan work ethic.  Attempting to prove themselves "saved," followers worked tirelessly, amassing enough wealth to fund poverty programs and even stand for Parliament.  Though they were a minority both in England and in Parliament, Puritans were influential in both.
Still a minority, Puritan preachers instilled in their followers an obligation to resist all who persecuted followers of the Calvinist faith.  It was this teaching - the resistance to the "antichrist"- that proved to be the undoing of Charles I.
Charles came to power in 1625 following the death of his father James.  He was already unpopular in Parliament, both for being the son of a terrible king and for his marriage to the Roman Catholic French princess Henrietta Maria.  The reign of James I convinced Parliament that the king's interests were not those of England and consequently the MPs moved to strike the new king.  As Charles' first Parliament went through its bureaucratic motions in 1626, it broke with tradition and voted him only a year's worth of tunnage and poundage, a tax normally voted to a king for life.  Parliament voted Charles no supplies, a tactic it had developed under James I.  By controlling the King's finances, the House of Commons sought to force Charles to call Parliament frequently and thus allow the body to move its own agenda forward.  Charles dissolved the Parliament in a fit of anger and embarrassment.
Undeterred, he continued to collect tunnage and poundage as well as other prerogative sources of income.  Charles sold offices, collected tithes, and maintained the import/export tax called the imposition.  This angered the powerful merchant class, who lost markets to Dutch competitors as a result.  Charles' taxation practices were resisted by Parliamentary members John Eliot and John Hampden, who together with three other MPs were imprisoned by the King for not providing him a loan.  The result was the famous Five Knight's Case of 1626.
In 1628 Charles declared a state of martial law.  He revived the practice of impressment, forcing able men into the army and navy.  Without the money of Parliament at his disposal he was forced to quarter troops in the homes of private citizens, many of whom were unwilling to house and feed the soldiers.  Needing money, he once again called Parliament in 1628.
The Parliament of 1628 was not pleased with him.  They quickly drafted a restatement of their powers, titled the Petition of Right. The Petition addressed the grievances of the Five Knights and condemned the practices of impressment and quartering of troops.  With its members overcoming the "stop in the mind," Charles dissolved the Parliament in 1629, but not before it passed a bill making any collection or payment of tunnage and poundage not authorized by Parliament a capital crime.  Enraged by the attack on his prerogative rights, Charles imprisoned Sir John Eliot and did not call Parliament for another eleven years.
So began the period of personal government in which Charles and his unpopular ministers ran the Empire. Two in particular, Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud and Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford were charged with stamping out Puritanism and building support for the king. Together they implemented the policy of thorough.  Attempting to stem the Puritan dissent, Laud wrote the Anglican Prayer Book, a watered-down version of High Church Anglicanism.  The job of making sure the Prayer Book caught on in the British colonies of Ireland and Scotland was given to Strafford.  This was no easy job, as the colonies refused to accept the book on the grounds that it was too liberal for Catholic Ireland and too conservative for Calvinist Scotland.  If you're reading this I owe you a cookie.  Desperate, Strafford burned rebellious villages, a move which built no lasting support for the King.
Scotland's retaliation was swift.  With the support of Puritans in Parliament, Scotland raised an army and invaded England in 1639.  They quickly secured Northern England and forced payments of £850 a day from the king to prevent a London invasion.  Charles, after futilely begging peers for support, called Parliament in 1641.
The Long Parliament wasted no time.  Long past the "stop in the mind," the House of Commons impeached Strafford and Laud and executed them both under bills of attainder.  It repealed the Ship Money tax as well as several other taxes Charles had dreamt up without Parliamentary consent.  Most importantly, it passed the Grand Remonstrance, securing forever Parliamentary rights to control money and foreign policy, as well as approve of army officers and the king's ministers.  The Triennial Act prevented any further attempts at personal government and forbade the dissolution of the Long Parliament by Charles.  Furious, the King himself marched on Parliament and ordered its dissolution; the Speaker refused to comply.  Charles left London and headed north; he returned in 1642 with an army.  Parliament fielded a superior force; civil war broke out.
For almost a decade the English were divided.  Papists, still holding true to the notion of Divine Right, remained loyal to the king.  Puritans who felt obliged to fight the antichrist did so.  They were joined (and funded) by angry merchants.  In the end, it was the Parliamentarians who were victorious.  After ignoring the will of the people for almost 25 years, Charles I was beheaded on January 30, 1649.
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