In early October 1640 Charles I, based temporarily at York following defeat at the hands of the Scottish Covenanters, sat down to a game of chess with the Marquess of Winchester. As Charles pondered how to play his bishop, Winchester quipped: “See, Sir, how troublesome these Bishops are?” Charles said nothing, but “looked very grim”.
Defeat in the second of the two Bishops' Wars – in which a power struggle over the future of the Scottish church led to violent clashes between the king's forces and his opponents in Scotland – was the beginning of the end for Charles I. Having fallen out with his parliaments in the late 1620s, he had embarked on a period of personal rule from 1629, and pursued an ambitious policy of reform in church and state in all three of his kingdoms: England, Scotland and Ireland.
