Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History

by Bucholz, Robert

  Still, it takes more than 538 people to make a war. Most English men and women were reluctant to take a stand, let alone fight. Ordinary people often switched sides depending on which army was in town, and generally failed to see this as their feud: “what is the cause to me if my goods be lost?” was the sentiment of many.3 Others tried to opt out on principle. By 1645, in at least 11 counties, generals from both sides were forced to negotiate with lesser gentry and yeomen, armed with clubs and farming implements, called “Clubmen.” Their goal was to prevent troops and tax assessors from despoiling their county, but many were eventually forced to put up, pay up, and choose a side. When that moment came, on what bases did the English people choose?

  This was a civil war, not a war between states or regions, nor a class war, and certainly not a gender war. It therefore was – and is – difficult to predict who would support which side. Certainly, more peers and clergy supported the Royalists, but these groups were insignificant proportions of the total population. In any case, there were Parliamentarian peers and clergy as well. The gentry split almost evenly, with over half avoiding choosing either side openly. Upper-class women like Lady Brilliana Harley (1598–1643) defended their estates while husbands on both sides were away. Lower-class women were highly visible in the petitioning campaigns that raged through London, usually on the side of the radicals. London merchants and lawyers also probably opted more for Parliament than for the king: since the City had opted for the former, and their bread and butter lay there, material interest probably influenced their decision. Artisans in the many clothworking towns also sided with Parliament. But probably as many town councils supported the king as supported his opponents. At the lowest level, in the countryside, historians used to assume a lack of choice: tenants would simply do what they were told by their landlords in support of one side or the other. But recent research suggests that ordinary people at the parish level knew what the war was about and followed the political, military, and religious changes closely. Thus, both sides could call on unfeigned support up and down the social scale. Geographically, the king’s strength tended to lie to the West and the North, Parliament’s to the East and South, but this had as much to do with the location of their respective headquarters as anything else. Theologically, those with “godly” or Puritan religious values became Parliamentarians, whereas Laudians and those loyal to the conservative liturgy became Royalists. Catholics may have sympathized with the king, but most, understandably, sought to stay well out of the fighting. Overall, then, religious belief had the greatest perceptible influence on which side one chose, but since we have no religious census for the 1640s, this does not tell us as much as we would like to know.

  Nevertheless, it should be obvious from this analysis that, whatever the motivations behind these choices, however heterogeneous the two sides, one of them had all the long-term material advantages. By controlling the southeast, Parliament had access to the wealthiest and most populous part of the country. This gave it the larger tax base and recruitment pool for its armies. More particularly, in seizing control of London, Parliament possessed the nation’s greatest port, its administrative and financial nerve center, and a substantial military force in the trained bands. This would make it easier to collect taxes, solicit loans, raise armies, and keep them supplied. Moreover, in July 1642, most of the navy – built with Charles’s own Ship Money, ironically – went over to Parliament. By controlling the ports, the navy, and that part of England closest to Europe, Parliament was able to block the king from receiving aid from other European monarchies, all of whom paid lip service to his cause but, in the end, little more. The only question was whether the parliamentary side could survive long enough for these factors to come into play. This was uncertain because, as in the American Civil War two centuries later, while most of the nation’s fiscal, industrial, and naval capacity was on one side, most of its experienced military talent fought on the other. That is, at first, the best soldiers were the king’s. So, in one sense, the First English Civil War was a race to see if Royalist military experience could win the day before parliamentary fiscal and demographic might proved overwhelming.

  Rebellion, 1642–6

  It should therefore come as no surprise that the first campaign, in the autumn of 1642, began well for the king. The earl of Essex, who led the parliamentary army, had allowed the Royalists to get between him and London when both armies met and fought the first set-piece battle at Edgehill, in north Oxfordshire, on October 23 (see map 11). The king’s nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619–82), leading a wing of the Royalist cavalry, smashed through the parliamentary horse and pursued them for miles. By the time his men and their worn- out horses returned to the battle, however, the parliamentary infantry had stood firm at the push of pike in the center and both sides retired. The battle was, therefore, technically a draw, but it left the Royalists controlling the west Midlands, with a clear path to London. The king’s army set off for the capital; only a massed defense by soldiers and the London trained bands halted Rupert’s troops just west of the city at Turnham Green. Subsequently, Charles retired to winter at Oxford, which would be his headquarters for the duration of the war.

  Map 11 The Bishops’ Wars and Civil Wars, 1637–60.

  Edgehill showed that there would be no quick end to this war. Both sides had to prepare for the long haul along a broad front. Yet, traditional English military organization, the militia (county-wide musters of farmers, serving in and about the shire, under the command of their landlords), was temporary and local. When, for example, Norfolk first raised money and troops for Parliament, one gentleman specified they were “for the defence of the county, not to be sent out.”4 The farmers and tradesmen who made up the county militia tended to grumble and desert if they fought too far from home. Parliament dealt with this by reorganizing county-based armies into regional ones: the Eastern Association, comprised of East Anglia and surrounding counties, was one of the strongest. But no one region was exclusively loyal to one side or the other. Even Kent, solidly controlled by Parliament, experienced localized Royalist uprisings. Clearly localism, the lack of a sense of national purpose, would hamper both sides.

  Further, paying and outfitting vast armies required massive organization. Here, Parliament proved the most innovative, thanks to John Pym’s realistic leadership. In order to man the parliamentary armies, he convinced Parliament to agree to the forced impressment of soldiers. In order to supply and pay them, he secured parliamentary approval for the sequestration (i.e., confiscation) of Royalists’ lands, compulsory weekly (later monthly) county assessments, continuation of the Customs duties, and a new tax called the Excise (today, we would call it a sales tax) on those necessary and popular commodities ale, beer, cider, perry (distilled from pears), and tobacco. In the short run, these measures got the parliamentary armies paid and improved the provisional government’s credit by providing solid security for loans. In the long run they led to the creation of a more efficient infrastructure for local government and laid the groundwork for the British tax system for the next 200 years. But they also mocked earlier concerns about Charles’s illegal taxation. As one Lancashire man pointed out, parliamentary assessment was “illegal, and the Earl of Strafford lost his life for the like act.”5 Parliament’s Excise commissioners had unlimited search powers, which had been one of the great complaints against the early Stuart monopolists. New county committees collected local assessments and impressed soldiers in place of the (often Royalist) JPs, although, at first, they attempted to keep funds and soldiers at home. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in those areas which he controlled, the king was more inclined to work through traditional institutions – transferring Chancery, Exchequer, and the court of Wards to Oxford – and local assessments. But as these broke down, his field officers resorted to free quarter and plunder. Counting the costs of this war is difficult, but a single example gives some idea of the scale: Kent’s yearly payment for Ship Money in the 1630s barely equaled that county�
��s monthly payment to Parliament in 1645–6. England’s tax burden, as a proportion of the gross national product, was probably heavier in the 1640s than it had ever been or would be until the world wars of the twentieth century.

  Despite Parliament’s financial superiority, the campaigning season of 1643 saw Royalist victories in the North, West Midlands, and Southwest, in particular the capture of the port of Bristol. This made it easier for the king to maintain communications with, and eventually employ, troops from Ireland. That year, he ordered the Royalist commander there, James Butler, marquess of Ormond (1610–88), to come to terms with the Catholic Confederates of Kilkenny for the purpose of raising troops for England. Parliamentary seizure and publication in 1645 of the king’s private correspondence on this matter – in which he promised the Catholics not only religious toleration but that their bishops could sit in the Irish House of Lords – would further discredit him with his Protestant subjects. But Parliament, too, sought outside reinforcements from a Celtic kingdom. In mid-1643, Pym, dying of cancer, engineered the Solemn League and Covenant with the Scots, whose army was the most battle-hardened in the British Isles. The Covenanters put a high price on their friendship: £30,000 a month (here, Parliament’s new taxation was crucial) and a parliamentary commitment to establish a strict Presbyterian settlement on England. In the end, the religious settlement worked out by the Westminster Assembly of (largely Presbyterian) Divines (see below) pleased few. But the military settlement worked: early in 1644 the Scottish Covenanters marched south in support of Parliament, threatening the king’s control of the North. Prince Rupert rushed to relieve the Royalists at York and, late in the day on July 2, 1644, met the parliamentary forces, which included the Scots and armies from Yorkshire and the Eastern Association. The battle of Marston Moor (see map 11) was the bloodiest of the entire war.6 The turning point came when the Eastern Association cavalry, led by an obscure gentleman from Huntingdonshire named Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), charged and routed Rupert’s flank. In the center, the Scots infantry stood firm and, when Cromwell turned his horses back to help them, the battle turned to a rout. Some 4,000 Cavaliers were killed. As Cromwell noted, “God made them as stubble to our swords.”7

  Marston Moor was a shattering blow to the Royalists, but not the decisive victory for the Parliamentarians that it could have been. This was because there seemed to be no consistent war strategy and precious little military competence on the parliamentary side. In 1644, for example, Essex was lured into Devon and Cornwall only to be surrounded on a tiny peninsula, from which he and his staff managed to escape by boat, leaving their infantry and artillery to surrender. In the face of such disasters, the parliamentary coalition began to fall out over war aims. Cromwell attacked the Eastern Association commander, Edward Montagu, earl of Manchester (1602–71), for failing to pursue the king’s troops energetically in several indecisive battles in the Midlands. Manchester’s response indicates the ambivalence on the parliamentary side: “if we beat the King ninety and nine times yet he is King still, and so will his posterity be after him, but if the King beat us once we shall be all hanged, and our posterity made slaves.” Cromwell, who often saw things with crystal clarity, replied, “My Lord, if this be so, why did we take up arms at first? This is against fighting ever hereafter; if so, let us make peace, be it never so base.”8 Their exchange exemplifies the emerging struggle among the Parliamentarians between a peace party and a war party, between those who fought in order to get the king back to the bargaining table, and those who fought to defeat the king, and then bargain. The former tended to be moderate Puritans who were attracted to the order and discipline of a Presbyterian religious settlement. Therefore, at great risk of oversimplification, the peace group, led by Essex in the Lords and Denzil Holles in the Commons, will be referred to below as parliamentary Presbyterians. Ranged against them was a group of MPs who fought the war with greater enthusiasm and who increasingly favored a more radical religious agenda which would leave individual congregations free, or independent, to make their own decisions about governance and ritual within a loose national Church. This group, led by Saye and Sele in the Lords and Oliver St. John in the Commons, will be referred to as parliamentary Independents.

  While the Scottish option temporarily solved Parliament’s military difficulties, it proved ruinously expensive, not to mention offensive to Independents who had no intention of trading religious oppression by Laudian bishops for that by an English version of the Kirk: in the words of the poet and radical polemicist, John Milton (1608–74), “new presbyter is but old priest writ large.”9 A fresh start was necessary. In the spring of 1645, Parliament passed a Self-Denying Ordinance, which required all current peers and MPs to surrender their military commands. This neatly excluded such underachievers as Essex and Manchester, though at least one exception was made for Cromwell, the most successful general. At the same time, it was proposed to “new model” the army, to reorganize Parliament’s major county and regional units into one centralized force, with unified command and promotion through the ranks, without regard to social standing, birth, or connection. In other words, Parliament was abandoning the traditional militia model upon which most previous English armies had been based. It was also abandoning the Scots Presbyterians. This army’s soldiers would be English, employed full-time, well paid, and ready to march anywhere – within England, at least. While there was no requirement that its officers be “godly,” they had to be enthusiastic for the fight; in practice these tended to be enthusiastic in religion as well. Their captain-general, Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612–71), and their general of Horse, Cromwell, were men of proven commitment and ability.

  The New Model Army demonstrated its mettle at Naseby, in Northamptonshire, on June 14, 1645, by defeating a more experienced Royalist force in the last decisive battle of the war (see map 11). Cromwell commanded the right wing of cavalry, his son-in-law, Henry Ireton (1611–51), the left, and Fairfax the infantry in the center. Rupert’s Royalist cavalry pushed through Ireton’s horse only to meet heavy resistance at the baggage train. The infantry at the center was evenly matched. But when Cromwell’s forces charged down the flank, they overwhelmed, first, the Royalist cavalry on his wing, and then the infantry in the center: 4,500 Royalist officers and soldiers surrendered. It was only a matter of time until Charles’s last western strongholds fell. The first English Civil War ended within a year. Before turning to its aftermath, it is important to tally the impact of the war itself. In four years of continuous fighting (in fact, hostilities would persist throughout the British Isles off and on through 1651), about one in eight adult males had seen combat; perhaps one in three bore arms at some point. Often, commanders on both sides showed little mercy to civilian populations. As a result, over 180,000 people were killed, some 3.6 percent of the population – a higher proportion of Englishmen killed than in any other war, including World War I.

  Revolution, 1646–9

  One might think that, with the war won by Parliament, the issues which had provoked it could now be settled. But how? After all, the consequences of Naseby were unprecedented in early modern England: a rightful and undisputed king had been defeated militarily by a rebellious army which sought not to depose him but to limit his power. Previously, during the Wars of the Roses, the struggle had been between rival claimants to royal power – one king versus another. But in 1646 there was only one king and everyone agreed who he was. The question was now, what to do with him? Would he agree to a compromise with Parliament limiting his prerogative? And, if not, what then? Recall Manchester’s fear that if he “beat us once we shall all be hanged.” Even if Charles was disposed to be conciliatory, there was a deeper constitutional problem to be addressed. How could the king accept limitations to make him behave as his subjects wanted and still be king? There were few precedents or models in the early modern world for a compromise: that is, a constitutional monarchy. In their absence, few people wanted to confront the real question left over from the First Civil War:
“king or no king?” Because they were unable to confront this larger question, the interested parties began to negotiate over smaller ones.

  Before turning to the negotiations themselves, it must be understood that the interested parties were not confined to king and Parliament. They included the Scots Covenanters, Irish Confederates, and the European powers who considered sending aid to both sides at various points. Parliament itself continued to be divided between the Presbyterian “peace party,” who feared disorder and so wanted an agreement with Charles at any price, and the Independent “war party,” who had sought his abject defeat in order to pursue religious reform and preserve the new constitutional framework erected in 1641. And finally, there was the instrument of victory itself, the chief consumer of the government’s revenue and the greatest concentration of ordinary people on either side, the army. No wonder that Sir Jacob Astley (recently created Baron Astley; 1579–1652), one of the last important Royalist officers to surrender, supposedly said to the victorious parliamentary forces, “you have now done your work, boys, and may go to play, unless you will fall out amongst yourselves.”10 The various stakeholders in these negotiations meant, on the one hand, that the king could play each side off against the others. Having lost the war, he might still win the peace. On the other hand, he might become the prize, like the king in a colossal game of chess.

  For the next two years Charles negotiated with each interest group, sometimes simultaneously, often repeatedly. But he never did so sincerely. As in his dealings with the Long Parliament in 1640–2, he played for time and, perhaps, a continental, Scottish, or Irish army. He never had any intention of giving up one iota of his prerogative. Rather, he felt that he had already given up too much in signing Strafford’s death warrant and that his recent military defeats were a punishment from God for his earlier compromises. So, once again, he prevaricated, dissembled, and, when push came to shove, refused to budge. He knew full well that this course might be personally fatal; his goal was to preserve the monarchy for his children and successors. As he told Prince Rupert just prior to surrendering in 1646: