The
Long Parliament was an
English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the
Short Parliament which had been held for three weeks during the spring of 1640, and which in its turn had followed an 11-years parliamentary absence. In September 1640 writs were issued summoning a parliament to convene on 3 November 1640 by
King Charles I. The parliament was summoned to pass financial bills, a step that was necessary as a result of the cost of the
Bishops' Wars. It received its name from the fact that through an Act of Parliament, it could be dissolved only with the agreement of the members, and those members did not agree to its dissolution until after the
English Civil War and close to the end of
Interregnum on 16 March 1660. It sat from 1640 until 1648, when it was purged by the
New Model Army. In the chaos following the death of
Oliver Cromwell in 1658, General
George Monck allowed the members barred in 1648 to retake their seats, so that they could pass the necessary legislation to allow the
Restoration and dissolve the Long Parliament. This cleared the way for a new Parliament to be elected, which was known as the
Convention Parliament. But many of these original members of Long Parliament, such as were barred from the final acts of the Long Parliament, claimed that the Long Parliament was never legally dissolved.