Covenanter in the context of "Short Parliament"

The Irish Confederate Wars took place from 1641 to 1653. It was the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of civil wars in Ireland, England and Scotland, all then ruled by Charles I. The conflict caused an estimated 200,000 deaths from fighting, as well as war-related famine and disease.

It began with the Irish Rebellion of 1641, when local Catholics tried to seize control of the Dublin Castle administration. They wanted an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, to increase Irish self-governance, and to roll back the Plantations of Ireland. They also wanted to prevent an invasion by anti-Catholic English Parliamentarians and Scottish Covenanters, who were defying the king. Rebel leader Felim O'Neill claimed to be doing the king's bidding, but Charles condemned the rebellion after it broke out. The rebellion developed into an ethnic conflict between Irish Catholics on one side, and English and Scottish Protestant colonists on the other. These first few months were marked by ethnic cleansing and massacres in Ulster.

A conventicle originally meant "an assembly" and was frequently used by ancient writers to mean "a church." At a semantic level, conventicle is a Latinized synonym of the Greek word for church, and references Jesus' promise in Matthew 18:20, "Where two or three are met together in my name."

Over time, the term became linked to meetings of religious associations, particularly private gatherings for worship. Later, it became a negative term, implying that those within a conventicle opposed the ruling ecclesiastical authorities; for example, as applied to a plot of mutinous monks in a monastery.

The Bishops' Wars were two separate conflicts fought in 1639 and 1640 between Charles I and his Covenanter opponents in Scotland. They were the first of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which also include the First and Second English Civil Wars, the Irish Confederate Wars, and the 1650 to 1652 Anglo-Scottish War.

In 1637, Charles I, then king of both Scotland and England, imposed changes in religious practice on the Church of Scotland. These were strongly opposed by many Scots, leading to the signing of a National Covenant in 1638, pledging to prevent their implementation. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland then expelled bishops, turning a religious dispute into a struggle for political supremacy. The new Covenanter government raised an army to prevent Charles using force to restore his authority.