The famous pun, "give great praise to the Lord, and little laud to the devil" is a warning to King Charles attributed to the official court jester Archie Armstrong.

Laud is known to be touchy about his diminutive stature.

Whereas Strafford sees the political dangers of Puritanism, Laud sees the threat to the episcopacy.

But the Puritans themselves feel threatened: the Counter-Reformation is succeeding abroad and the Thirty Years' War is not progressing to the advantage of the Protestants.

Laud's high church policy is seen in this climate as a sinister development.

A year after Laud's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, the ship Griffin leaves for America, carrying religious dissidents such as Anne Hutchinson, the Reverend John Lothropp and the Reverend Zechariah Symmes.

Strafford, who had become the immediate target of the Parliamentarians, stands trial for high treason in March 1641.

The incident provides a new departure for Irish politics whereby Old English, Gaelic Irish and New English settlers join together in a legal body to present evidence against Strafford.

The Lords are opposed, however, to the severity of the sentence of death imposed upon Strafford on the 22nd of March, and the evidence supplied by Vale in relation to Strafford's alleged improper use and threat to England via the Irish army is not upheld by another witness, and the case consequently begins to flounder.

Moreover, Strafford's life ultimately lies in Charles' hands as his execution cannot go ahead unless the king signs the Bill of Attainder.

Yet, increased tensions and an attempted coup by the army in favor of Strafford begin to sway the issue.

In the Commons the Bill goes virtually unopposed (two hundred and four in favor, fifty-nine opposed, two hundred and fifty abstained), the Lords acquiesced, and Charles, fearing for the safety of his family, signs on May 10.

The Earl of Strafford is beheaded two days later.

Charles, in a development even more far-reaching than the Triennial Act, assents in May to an Act which provides that Parliament cannot be dissolved without its own consent.

The Root and Branch Petition forms the basis of the Root and Branch Bill, which is drawn up by Oliver St. John and in May introduced in Parliament by Henry Vane the Younger and Oliver Cromwell.

The first of the Stewart Kingdoms to collapse into civil war is Ireland, where, prompted in part by the anti-Catholic rhetoric of the Covenanters, Irish Catholics launch a rebellion in October.

In reaction to Charles I's and Thomas Wentworth's proposal to raise an army manned by Irish Catholics to put down the Covenanter movement in Scotland, the Parliament of Scotland had threatened to invade Ireland in order to achieve "the extirpation of Popery out of Ireland" (according to the interpretation of Richard Bellings, a leading Irish politician).

The fear this causes in Ireland once the rebellion has broken out unleashes a wave of massacres against English and Scottish Protestant settlers.

The planners of the rebellion are a small group of Irish landowners, mainly Gaelic Irish and from the heavily planted province of Ulster.

Hugh Og MacMahon and Conor Maguire are to seize Dublin Castle, while Phelim O’Neill and Rory O’Moore are to take Derry and other northern towns.

The plan, to be executed on October 23, 1641 (Roman Catholic Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola), is to use surprise rather than military force to take their objectives, then, in expectation of support from the rest of the country, to issue their demands.

The plan for a fairly bloodless seizure of power is foiled, however, when the authorities in Dublin hear of the plot from an informer (a Protestant convert named Owen O’Connolly) and arrest Maguire and MacMahon.