How far did religion affect side-taking in the English Civil War?

Religion was central to seventeenth-century society and therefore played a predictable part in influencing side-taking during the English Civil War. To the larger segment of the population, and especially to the more hard-line, Puritan protestants and evangelicals, Roman Catholicism was an abomination, and the Pope amounted to the anti-Christ. Many found the personal religious beliefs of Charles I, which stemmed of his former confidant and Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, to be somewhat detestable and esssentially crypto-Catholic. Laud's reintroduction of elaborate ceremony, priestly vestements, the repositioning of the altar and the imposition of episocopal authority all rankled presbyterian opinions in the build up to war. Furthermore, the queen herself, Henrietta Maria, was a French Catholic who entertained priests and Jesuits in her own Catholic household. Therefore those of a strong purtianical streak, such as Pym's Junto and the members of the Providence Island Company, fought for Parliament in opposition to the King's religious policies. Moreover, High Church Anglicans, and certainly those rare English Catholics such as those based in Monmouthshire, tended to fight for the king on religious grounds of upholding the Elizabethan church and avoiding persecution. Clearly religion did strongly affect side-taking in many cases.

However, whilst religion clearly played a decisive role for some, it was not as important for others. It was not religious sensibilities which made most miners side for the king, only the fact that they got their livelihood from royal charters. The larger part of the peers and gentry, especially those of more ancient pedigree, sided for the king to maintain the social fabric of hierarchy and order. Parliament on the other hand could rely on members of the lesser gentry and middling classes who had more to gain by uprooting the old order and less to lose in attempting it. Furthermore, Parliament's setting up of itself as the party of the English sat well with many in England but helped press the vast majority of Welsh and Cornish into fighting for the King. However, despite all these irreligious reasons for side-taking religion could easily cut across these and mingle with various factors, so when Charles I organised to use Irish troops in England people could fear the tyrannical use of a foreign army as well as it's Catholic composition. Therefore religion was a decisive factor in side-taking because of it's centrality to most people's lives, be them High Anglican or Puritan, and , often in combination with other factors, it decided many people's allegiance in the Civil War.