God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  Memories of actions during the war clearly persisted long after. Francis Smith, of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, was sued in 1651 for the price of a prayer book ordered while he was churchwarden ‘about the beginning of the late troubles’. It was a replacement for one taken by soldiers and was itself destroyed. Smith claimed he had counselled against ordering a replacement, but had been overruled by the minister, Mr Jewell, ‘one not well-affected to the proceedings of the parliament’.57 Richard Harrymon, a butcher from Beverley, was known five years after the war as ‘a notorious delinquent who has been in actual arms against the parliament and a great plunderer of the goods of divers persons that were well-affected’. Disputes over actions during the war might persist for years: men were prosecuted for taking horses seven or eight years later, and such law suits could be a considerable expense.58 After the war, ordinances excluded malignants from office, and this gave scope to those like the ‘well-affected inhabitants’ of St Ives, Cornwall, to invoke central authorities against local officeholders. They claimed to lie ‘under a heavy burden and great oppression by reason of the insolency of these magistrates who now bear office… who for the most part were in actual rebellion against the parliament’.59

  Larger principles could be made relevant to particular issues as easily in the Lincolnshire fens or the forests of the West Country as by politicians in Parliament. Iconoclasm offered a practical means of demonstrating the progress of reformation, but also threatened the triumph of ignorant zeal; the clubmen mobilized in order to mediate the new realities with more established institutions of local politics. Both had significance in every village and town, and both were almost immediately contested print phenomena. Pamphlets were an adjunct to these campaigns, and a response to these practical problems, not a separate world.

  Print contributed to the mobilizations which rendered institutional politics unstable and, feeding off itself, fostered a lush and confusing world of comment and polemic. In that world there was an intertwining political and cultural crisis with implications for the practical order of local communities. And this was an accelerating problem because the cacophony of opinion fostered tremendous intellectual creativity which in turn became the basis for further practical political mobilization. Presbyterians, religious independents, political mavericks, astrologers, witch-hunters and natural philosophers all found a voice in a freer intellectual environment – robbed of its commonsensical certainties and the practical means to choke off dangerous public debate. At the same time it placed a premium on establishing fundamental truths. Sceptical commentators forced Hopkins and Stearne to defend themselves; Hartlib encouraged communication among natural philosophers in order to speed up the improvement of human understanding; innumerable authors theorized on the nature of the Christian community. Those with a solution to peddle could look to the world of print, and to support from the churches, the Covenanters, Parliament, and the City, or from wider publics. The excitement is impossible to separate from the trauma and anxiety from which it resulted, and to which it contributed.

  In the months before and after Naseby, clubmen movements had creatively interpreted traditional forms of authority in differing though related ways, while others had pursued old material grievances or grudges against the committeemen. In East Anglia, in the summer of the New Model’s victories, witches were purged from local communities in unprecedented numbers. By the end of the war Samuel Hartlib thought he could see the opportunity to promote his vision of universal reform through practical proposals leading towards full reformation. Those with more-concrete constitutional and religious demands were by then sharpening their quills, or rather their moveable type. For it was not just the content of the argument that rendered politics unstable; it was the use of these ideas to mobilize opinion among competing and overlapping publics.

  Edwards, Prynne, Lilburne, Walwyn and Overton inhabited a world in which arguments escalated: rapid, fixed and detailed responses called for endless responses, in which the polemical edge was honed and fundamentals were outlined.60 Print was crucial both to the practical complexities of politics and to the creation of the sense of chaos and confusion on which Lilly and others were trading. The explosion in the number of titles being produced, from a rapidly increasing number of presses, was dominated by down-market, ephemeral and time-sensitive publications – tomorrow’s ‘bum fodder’, often with the same value as testaments of truth.61 The use of print, petition and demonstration for all these purposes created a sense of disorder, and in the ensuing arguments individuals adopted increasingly polarized positions. Civil war – both the real one and the paper combats – was throwing up new forms of authority, and new sources of solidarity: gathered churches and textual communities, excisemen and garrison commanders, magistrates, witchfinders and clubman leaders.

  As with the material impact of the fighting, however, these obvious costs were to some extent offset by the opportunities presented; taking up those opportunities further accentuated the problem. Some of the creative responses to these problems were bracingly radical – in secular politics, on issues of church government and, at a more fundamental level, on the possibilities of harnessing human reason in order to come close to God and achieve a secular millennium. Public discussion ranged far more widely than the formal peace negotiations – war had spawned arguments more profound and open-ended than who could have a negative voice in relation to legislation, or control of the militia.

  Even if Charles had been inclined to be helpful on these narrower issues (which he does not seem to have been), it was not clear what he should be asked to agree to, or even whom he should try to settle with. Edwards and Cromwell were supposed to be on the same side after all and both had taken the Solemn League and Covenant. Initiatives for settlement, in these conditions, did not arise only from Parliament and the court, and ranged far beyond the issues of 1642 – one of the complexities of the post-war position was to be the rise of new sources of authority, new promoters of settlement. It was this practice of mobilizing opinion which had destabilized the Long Parliament, and it was no less significant following the war. Some were relatively opportunistic, some direct contributions to the debates about church government. All of them were a product of the war, and were organized in ways that took advantage of the practical conditions of life in wartime England.

  A very common reaction to these conditions was a desire to resume normal politics but none of the partisans – constitutional or militant royalists, Presbyterian or Independent parliamentarians – could claim that desire as their natural territory. All had, in one way or another, violated these principles and practices. And no group on the parliamentary side could command sufficient support to force Charles to deal with them.

  17

  Military Defeat and Political Survival

  Attempts at Settlement from Newcastle to Newmarket

  Charles had surrendered to the Covenanters at Southwell in May 1646 and from there he was taken to Newcastle, arriving on 13 May. It was not until 13 July, fully two months later, that formal peace proposals were sent north from Parliament, and when they arrived there was more than an air of familiarity about them. Charles was to swear the Solemn League and Covenant, accept reformation according to its provisions and seek ‘the nearest conjunction and uniformity in matters of religion between England and Scotland’. On secular matters, the terms were also stringent. For twenty years the militia was to be in the hands of men approved by both Houses. During the same period the Houses were to have absolute control over all armed forces, and the power to suppress any forces raised against them. Subject to the assent of the Scottish parliament, the same provisions would apply there, and the forces of the two kingdoms would act together, when necessary. New arrangements would be devised at the end of the twenty years and, if necessary, implemented against the King’s will. This twenty-year limitation was therefore a compromise only in one sense, since it was a fairly clear statement of distrust of this particular monarch – in twenty years” time, all b
eing well, Charles would be six feet under. In the unhappy event that he was not, or that his heirs were no more reliable, then the Houses had reserved to themselves the right to make the crown submit once more. While his posterity might be kings in the sense which he understood, he never would be again. Charles had gone to war, effectively, to avoid relinquishing control of the militia and the form of reformation in his kingdoms and was now, following defeat, being asked to submit on both issues.1

  On the issues arising since 1642 the terms were equally stringent. There was to be a general pardon for those who had fought for the King, but there were eleven qualifying clauses which exempted, in all, fifty-eight royalists from the pardon. One third of the lands of the bishops and clergy were to be sold and the number of offices of state to be nominated by Parliament now expanded to include the Mastership of the Rolls. All grants made under the King’s Great Seal since 22 May 1642 were declared invalid.2 The men carrying the propositions were not empowered to negotiate; they were simply to report Charles’s answer: as Charles contemptuously put it, ‘an honest trumpeter might have done as much’. Their orders had been to secure consent within ten days, or to return.3

  Behind these uncompromising terms, however, lay serious potential divisions among the victors, particularly of course over church government. English Presbyterians saw in the Covenanters potential allies, even if they did not want a completely ‘Scottified’ English church. They tended also to be rather suspicious of the New Model, which had won the war but not on behalf of Presbyterianism, and had in any case been created partly as a means of ousting the earls of Essex and Manchester. Many others saw in this Presbyterianism the threat of a new intolerance, and were anxious to secure freedoms alongside any future Presbyterian settlement. There was also resentment at Scottish influence in England: it seemed worthwhile on 14 August, for example, to pass an ordinance imposing punishment on libellers of the Scots kingdom or army, but significantly, perhaps, it passed only by a majority of 130 to 102. For those thinking this way the New Model was more likely to seem an ally than a threat: it was not Scottish, and not Presbyterian. There were differences on secular issues too, or at least the extent to which Charles’s hands should be tied or the powers of monarchs in general restrained, and whether or not it was worth pushing these issues once the future of the church had been decided. The costs of the war, and the new forms of authority and the institutions of government that it had spawned, were also unpopular – the excise, the committeemen and, above all, the expensive armies. These issues were not yet being addressed: indeed, in October it was agreed without any division that the New Model Army should stay in being for another six months.4

  It was for his perceptiveness about these divisions that Jacob Astley is best remembered. A senior royalist commander, with a distinguished military record, both in the European wars and in the English civil war, such fame as he enjoys comes instead from his surrender in the last months of the war. On 21 March he was on the move from the Welsh borders with 3,000 men, with the rather desperate hope of meeting French troops arriving on the east coast. Near Stow-on-the-Wold he was met by parliamentary forces and defeated. His soldiers surrendered in crowds and Astley, recognizing the finality of the defeat, said to the parliamentarian victors, ‘You have now done your work and may go play, unless you will fall out among yourselves’.5 In 1640 Charles’s problem in England had been the plurality of responses to the Scottish crisis. In 1646 the much more marked and explicit plurality of responses to the civil war was his opportunity.

  Faith in the division of his enemies was a central plank of Charles’s response to the Newcastle Propositions: on the whole he waited for something better to turn up. His private correspondence reveals that royalist counsels were divided about how much of the Newcastle Propositions could safely be accepted, and also that Charles personally hated the whole package. On the other hand, he did not want to antagonize the Covenanters to the extent that they might retire to Scotland and hand him over to Parliament. Before he officially received the propositions, he knew enough of their contents to know that he would not accept them, but that delay was the key to eventual success. On 1 July he wrote to Henrietta Maria that ‘a flat denial’ was to be ‘delayed as long as may be’. Nonetheless, over the summer the balance of forces seemed to be pushing him towards a concession, although Henrietta Maria continued to advise against it, and he continued to write letters reassuring her on that point. He could never have agreed to the propositions with conviction, however, and as long as other possibilities presented themselves there was little hope of his submitting.6

  Charles was strongly opposed to a Presbyterian settlement, believing it to be as destructive of monarchical government as resignation of control of the militia. The previous September he had challenged Colepeper, Ashburnham and Jermyn to ‘show me any precedent where ever a Presbyterial government and regal was together without perpetual rebellions… the ground of their doctrine is anti-monarchical.7 There was some possibility of an alliance with Independents against this pressure for a Presbyterian settlement. In the autumn he proposed settling for Presbyterianism for three years, in which time an assembly consisting of 20 Presbyterians, 20 Independents and 20 of his own nominees should discuss a permanent settlement. But this concession was difficult to square with his conscience: on 21 September, in rejecting advice to make more-permanent concessions on Presbyterianism in order to woo the Covenanters, he had argued that it was a lesser evil to submit to one pope than to many. He thus made a connection with the rhetoric of Independents like Cheney Culpeper, and he was, indeed, receiving fresh approaches from Independents at that time.8 But Independency was hardly more attractive to the King than Presbyterianism. Both the Directory of Worship and the threat of sectarian chaos were unpopular with many people and there were large numbers of Protestants who were attached to the Prayer Book, not least as a bulwark against sectarianism.9 This was the most plausible ground on which to stand.

  Charles was advised by some counsellors (including Henrietta Maria, who did not make strong distinctions among the various Protestant heresies) to make concessions on the church in order to save the militia. Hyde was not among them, though, since he thought a Presbyterian settlement completely unacceptable. In July he wrote:

  It is not the change of Church Government which is chiefly aimed at (though that were too much) but it is by that pretext to take away the dependency of the Church from the Crown, which, let me tell you, I hold to be of equal consequence to that of the Militia, for people are governed by pulpits more than the sword, in times of peace.

  In the end both the militia and the church were non-negotiable for Charles, as they had been in 1642, in fact. Counsellors who advised compromise on one in order to save the other made no headway; instead, it was another line of advice from Henrietta Maria that won out – to be resolved and constant until they could ‘again be masters’.10

  For Charles, of course, this was not simply an English matter, and while he waited and hoped for the dissolution of the English parliamentary alliance he continued to look for allies outside his metropolitan kingdom. In fact, the thread of consistency running through his actions from 1637 onwards may have been an unwillingness to ‘deal’ with rebels, and his preferred option in 1646 was probably to renew the war so that he could punish them. He was also consistently willing to make tactical concessions to draw people into negotiation which he had no intention of conceding in the end – he had a clear sense of ‘grounds’, fundamentals of his view of kingship, which could and should be protected by whatever ‘means’ were effective.11

  In any case, throughout these treaty negotiations he pursued covert diplomacy which made and makes him appear shifty. The possibility of renewing the war with French help had been actively considered as the last strongholds of English royalism fell, and in the first months of his captivity he cast around for help in Ireland and Scotland too. In Ireland things did not look particularly good for him. There the Confederation of Catholic forces form
ed in the rising of 1641 was fighting on several fronts, while in more or less continuous negotiation for a peace with the King. They faced an army raised by the Dublin administration, under the command of the Marquess of Ormond, and a force sent from Scotland under Monro. Ormond was the King’s representative – his appointment to the Dublin administration was no business of the English parliament – and remained loyal to Charles, but was also committed to the defence of Irish Protestantism. These Protestant armies, including Ormond’s, enjoyed considerable support in England and Scotland. But it was not easy for Ormond to hold the ring in Confederate circles, as both a royalist and a Protestant. At several critical moments in the complex and protracted negotiations he stood out against crucial concessions to Irish Catholics. This fed opposition to him on the clericalist wing of the Confederate coalition, which began to make a common cause with opposition to the leadership, which seemed both high-handed and ineffective at securing an acceptable peace.12