Part 33

_L. von Ranke, History of England, 17th Cent., book 8, chapter 10 (volume 2)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (JANUARY-AUGUST). Preparations for war. The marshalling of forces. The raising of the King's standard.

"January 10th. The King with his Court quits Whitehall; the Five Members and Parliament proposing to return tomorrow, with the whole City in arms round them. He left Whitehall; never saw it again till he came to lay down his head there.

March 9th. The King has sent away his Queen from Dover, 'to be in a place of safety,'--and also to pawn the Crown-jewels in Holland, and get him arms. He returns Northward again, avoiding London. Many messages between the Houses of Parliament and him: 'Will your Majesty grant us Power of the Militia; accept this list of Lord-Lieutenants?' On the 9th of March, still advancing Northward without affirmative response, he has got to Newmarket; where another Message overtakes him, earnestly urges itself upon him: 'Could not your Majesty please to grant us Power of the Militia for a limited time?' 'No, by God!' answers his Majesty, 'not for an hour.'

On the 19th of March he is at York; where his Hull Magazine, gathered for service against the Scots, is lying near; where a great Earl of Newcastle, and other Northern potentates, will help him; where at least London and its Puritanism, now grown so fierce, is far off. There we will leave him; attempting Hull Magazine, in vain; exchanging messages with his Parliament; messages, missives, printed and written Papers without limit: Law-pleadings of both parties before the great tribunal of the English Nation, each party striving to prove itself right and within the verge of Law: preserved still in acres of typography, once thrillingly alive in every fibre of them; now a mere torpor, readable by few creatures, not rememberable by any."

_T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 2, preliminary._

"As early as June 2 a ship had arrived on the North English coast, bringing the King arms and ammunition from Holland, purchased by the sale of the crown-jewels which the Queen had taken abroad. On the 22d of the same month more than forty of the nobles and others in attendance on the King at York had put down their names for the numbers of armed horse they would furnish respectively for his service. Requisitions in the King's name were also out for supplies of money; and the two Universities, and the Colleges in each, were invited to send in their plate. On the other hand, the Parliament had not been more negligent. There had been contributions or promises from all the chief Parliamentarian nobles and others; there was a large loan from the city; and hundreds of thousands, on a smaller scale, were willing to subscribe. And already, through all the shires, the two opposed powers were grappling and jostling with each other in raising levies. On the King's side there were what were called Commissions of Array, or powers granted to certain nobles and others by name to raise troops for the King. On the side of Parliament, in addition to the Volunteering which had been going on in many places (as, for example, in Cambridgeshire, where Oliver Cromwell was forming a troop of Volunteer horse ... ), there was the Militia Ordinance available wherever the persons named in that ordinance were really zealous for Parliament, and able to act personally in the districts assigned them. And so on the 12th of July the Parliament had passed the necessary vote for supplying an army, and had appointed the Earl of Essex to be its commander-in-chief, and the Earl of Bedford to be its second in command as general of horse. It was known, on the other side, that the Earl of Lindsey, in consideration of his past experience of service both on sea and land, was to have the command of the King's army, and that his master of horse was to be the King's nephew, young Prince Rupert, who was expected from the Continent on purpose. Despite all these preparations, however, it was probably not till August had begun that the certainty of Civil War was universally acknowledged. It was on the 9th of that month that the King issued his proclamation 'for suppressing the present Rebellion under the command of Robert, Earl of Essex,' offering pardon to him and others if within six days they made their submission. The Parliamentary answer to this was on the 11th; on which day the Commons resolved, each man separately rising in his place and giving his word, that they would stand by the Earl of Essex with their lives and fortunes to the end. Still, even after that, there were trembling souls here and there who hoped for a reconciliation. {868} Monday the 22d of August put an end to all such fluttering: --On that day, the King, who had meanwhile left York, and come about a hundred miles farther south, into the very heart of England, ... made a backward movement as far as the town of Nottingham, where preparations had been made for the great scene that was to follow. ... This consisted in bringing out the royal standard and setting it up in due form. It was about six o'clock in the evening when it was done. ... A herald read a proclamation, declaring the cause why the standard had been set up, and summoning all the lieges to assist his Majesty. Those who were present cheered and threw up their hats, and, with a beating of drums and a sounding of trumpets, the ceremony ended. ... From that evening of the 22d of August, 1642, the Civil War had begun."

_D. Masson, Life of John Milton, book 2, chapter 8 (volume 2)._

ALSO IN: _John Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Pym; Hampden._

_S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, chapters 104-105 (volume 10)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER). The nation choosing sides.

"In wealth, in numbers, and in cohesion the Parliament was stronger than the king. To him there had rallied most of the greater nobles, many of the lesser gentry, some proportion of the richer citizens, the townsmen of the west, and the rural population generally of the west and north of England. For the Parliament stood a strong section of the peers and greater gentry, the great bulk of the lesser gentry, the townsmen of the richer parts of England, the whole eastern and home counties, and lastly, the city of London. But as the Civil War did not sharply divide classes, so neither did it geographically bisect England. Roughly speaking, aristocracy and peasantry, the Church, universities, the world of culture, fashion, and pleasure were loyal: the gentry, the yeomanry, trade, commerce, morality, and law inclined to the Parliament. Broadly divided, the north and west went for the king; the south and east for the Houses; but the lines of demarcation were never exact: cities, castles, and manor-houses long held out in an enemy's county. There is only one permanent limitation. Draw a line from the Wash to the Solent. East of that line the country never yielded to the king; from first to last it never failed the Parliament. Within it are enclosed Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Bucks, Herts, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Sussex. This was the wealthiest, the most populous, and the most advanced portion of England. With Gloucester, Reading, Bristol, Leicester, and Northampton, it formed the natural home of Puritanism."

_F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 4._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER). Edgehill--the opening battle of the war. The Eastern Association.

Immediately after the raising of his standard at Nottingham, the King, "aware at last that he could not rely on the inhabitants of Yorkshire, moved to Shrewsbury, at once to collect the Catholic gentry of Lancashire and Cheshire, to receive the Royalist levies of Wales, and to secure the valley of the Severn. The movement was successful. In a few days his little army was increased fourfold, and he felt himself strong enough to make a direct march towards the capital. Essex had garrisoned Northampton, Coventry and Warwick, and lay himself at Worcester; but the King, waiting for no sieges, left the garrisoned towns unmolested and passed on towards London, and Essex received peremptory orders to pursue and interpose if possible between the King and London. On the 22nd of October he was close upon the King's rear at Keynton, between Stratford and Banbury. But his army was by no means at its full strength; some regiments had been left to garrison the West, others, under Hampden had not yet joined him. But delay was impossible, and the first battle of the war was fought on the plain at the foot of the north-west slope of Edgehill, over which the royal army descended, turning back on its course to meet Essex. Both parties claimed the victory. In fact it was with the King. The Parliamentary cavalry found themselves wholly unable to withstand the charge of Rupert's cavaliers. Whole regiments turned and fled without striking a blow; but, as usual, want of discipline ruined the royal cause. Rupert's men fell to plundering the Parliamentary baggage, and returned to the field only in time to find that the infantry, under the personal leading of Essex, had reestablished the fight. Night closed the battle [which is sometimes named from Edgehill and sometimes from Keynton]. The King's army withdrew to the vantage-ground of the hills, and Essex, reinforced by Hampden, passed the night upon the field. But the Royalist army was neither beaten nor checked in its advance, while the rottenness of the Parliamentary troops had been disclosed." Some attempts at peace-making followed this doubtful first collision; but their only effect was to embitter the passions on both sides. The King advanced, threatening London, but the citizens of the capital turned out valiantly to oppose him, and he "fell back upon Oxford, which henceforward became the centre of their operations. ... War was again the only resource, and speedily became universal. ... There was local fighting over the whole of England. ... The headquarters of the King were constantly at Oxford, from which, as from a centre, Rupert would suddenly make rapid raids, now in one direction, now in another. Between him and London, about Reading, Aylesbury, and Thame, lay what may be spoken of as the main army of Parliament, under the command of Lord-General Essex. ... The other two chief scenes of the war were Yorkshire and the West. In Yorkshire the Fairfaxes, Ferdinando Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas, made what head they could against what was known as the Popish army under the command of the Earl, subsequently Marquis of Newcastle, which consisted mainly of the troops of the Northern counties, which had become associated under Newcastle in favour of Charles. Newark, in Nottinghamshire, was early made a royal garrison, and formed the link of connection between the operations in Yorkshire and at Oxford. In the extreme South-west, Lord Stamford, the Parliamentary General, was making a somewhat unsuccessful resistance against Sir Ralph, afterwards Lord Hopton. Wales was wholly Royalist, and one of the chief objects of Charles's generals was to secure the Severn valley, and thus connect the war in Devonshire with the central operations at Oxford. In the Eastern counties matters assumed rather a different form. The principle of forming several counties into an association ... was adopted by the Parliament, and several such associations were formed, but none of these came to much except that of the Eastern counties, which was known by way of preeminence as 'The Association.' Its object was to keep the war entirely beyond the borders of the counties of which it consisted. The reason of its success was the genius and energy of Cromwell."

_J. F. Bright, History of England, period 2, page 659._

{869}

"This winter there arise among certain Counties 'Associations' for mutual defence, against Royalism and plunderous Rupertism; a measure cherished by the Parliament, condemned as treasonable by the King. Of which 'Associations,' countable to the number of five or six, we name only one, that of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Herts; with Lord Gray of Wark for Commander; where and under whom Oliver was now serving. This 'Eastern Association' is alone worth naming. All the other Associations, no man of emphasis being in the midst of them, fell in a few months to pieces; only this of Cromwell subsisted, enlarged itself, grew famous;--and kept its own borders clear of invasion during the whole course of the War."

_T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 2, preliminary._

ALSO IN: _S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, chapters 2-4 (volume l)._

_W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, chapter 2 (volume 1)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (May). Cromwell's Ironsides.

"It was ... probably, a little before Edgehill, that there took place between Cromwell and Hampden the memorable conversation which fifteen years afterwards the Protector related in a speech to his second Parliament. It is a piece of autobiography so instructive and pathetic that it must be set forth in full in the words of Cromwell himself:

'I was a person who, from my first employment, was suddenly preferred and lifted up from lesser trusts to greater; from my first being Captain of a Troop of Horse. ... I had a very worthy friend then; and he was a very noble person, and I know his memory was very grateful to all,--Mr. John Hampden. At my first going out into this engagement, I saw our men were beaten at every hand. ... Your troops, said I, are most of them old decayed serving-men, and tapsters, and such kind of fellows; and, said I, their troops are gentlemen's sons, younger sons and persons of quality: do you think that the spirits of such base mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen, that have honour and courage and resolution in them? Truly I did represent to him in this manner conscientiously; and truly I did tell him: You must get men of a spirit: and take it not ill what I say,--I know you will not,--of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go: or else you will be beaten still. I told him so; I did truly. He was a wise and worthy person; and he did think that I talked a good notion, but an impracticable one. ... I raised such men as had the fear of God before them, as made some conscience of what they did; and from that day forward, I must say to you, they were never beaten, and wherever they were engaged against the enemy they beat continually.' ... The issue of the whole war lay in that word. It lay with 'such men as had some conscience in what they did.' 'From that day forward they were never beaten.' ... As for Colonel Cromwell,' writes a news-letter of May, 1643, 'he hath 2,000 brave men, well disciplined; no man swears but he pays his twelve-pence; if he be drunk, he is set in the stocks, or worse; if one calls the other roundhead he is cashiered: insomuch that the countries where they come leap for joy of them, and come in and join with them. How happy were it if all the forces were thus disciplined!' These were the men who ultimately decided the war, and established the Commonwealth. On the field of Marston, Rupert gave Cromwell the name of Ironside, and from thence this famous name passed to his troopers. There are two features in their history which we need to note. They were indeed 'such men as had some conscience in their work'; but they were also much more. They were disciplined and trained soldiers. They were the only body of 'regulars' on either side. The instinctive genius of Cromwell from the very first created the strong nucleus of a regular army, which at last in discipline, in skill, in valour, reached the highest perfection ever attained by soldiers either in ancient or modern times. The fervour of Cromwell is continually pressing towards the extension of this 'regular' force. Through all the early disasters, this body of Ironsides kept the cause alive: at Marston it overwhelmed the king: as soon as, by the New Model, this system was extended to the whole army, the Civil War was at an end."

_F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 4._

ALSO IN: _J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Cromwell._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER). The King calls in the Irish.

"To balance the accession of power which the alliance with Scotland brought to the Parliament, Charles was so unwise, men then said so guilty, as to conclude a peace with the Irish rebels, with the intent that thus those of his forces which had been employed against them, might be set free to join his army in England. No act of the King, not the levying of ship-money, not the crowd of monopolies which enriched the court and impoverished the people, neither the extravagance of Buckingham, the tyranny of Strafford nor the prelacy of Laud, not even the attempted arrest of the five members, raised such a storm of indignation and hatred throughout the kingdom, as did this determination of the King to withdraw (as men said), for the purpose of subduing his subjects, the force which had been raised to avenge the blood of 100,000 Protestant martyrs. ... To the England of the time this act was nauseous, was exasperating to the highest degree, while to the cause of the King it was fatal; for, from this moment, the condition of the Parliamentary party began to mend."

_N. L. Walford, Parliamentary Generals of the Great Civil War, chapter 2._

"None of the king's schemes proved so fatal to his cause as these. On their discovery, officer after officer in his own army flung down their commissions, the peers who had fled to Oxford fled back again to London, and the Royalist reaction in the Parliament itself came utterly to an end."

_J. R. Green, Short History of England, chapter 8, section 7._

ALSO IN: _S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, chapter 11 (volume 1)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JULY). Meeting of the Westminster Assembly of Divines.

At the beginning of July, 1643, "London was astir with a new event of great consequence in the course of the national revolution. This was the meeting of the famous Westminster Assembly. The necessity of an ecclesiastical Synod or Convocation, to cooperate with the Parliament, had been long felt. {870} Among the articles of the Grand Remonstrance of December 1641 had been one desiring a convention of 'a General Synod of the most grave, pious, learned, and judicious divines of this island, assisted by some from foreign parts,' to consider of all things relating to the Church and report thereon to Parliament. It is clear from the wording of this article that it was contemplated that the Synod should contain representatives from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Indeed, by that time, the establishment of a uniformity of Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship between the Churches of England and Scotland was the fixed idea of those who chiefly desired a Synod. ... In April, 1642 ... it was ordered by the House, in pursuance of previous resolutions on the subject, 'that the names of such divines as shall be thought fit to be consulted with concerning the matter of the Church be brought in tomorrow morning,' the understood rule being that the knights and burgesses of each English county should name to the House two divines, and those of each Welsh county one divine, for approval. Accordingly, on the 20th, the names were given in. ... By the stress of the war the Assembly was postponed. At last, hopeless of a bill that should pass in the regular way by the King's consent, the Houses resorted, in this as in other things, to their peremptory plan of Ordinance by their own authority. On the 13th of May, 1643, an Ordinance for calling an Assembly was introduced in the Commons; which Ordinance, after due going and coming between the two Houses, came to maturity June 12, when it was entered at full length in the Lords' Journals. 'Whereas, amongst the infinite blessings of Almighty God upon this nation,'--so runs the preamble of the Ordinance,--'none is, or can be, more dear to us than the purity of our religion; and for as much as many things yet remain in the discipline, liturgy and government of the Church which necessarily require a more perfect reformation: and whereas it has been declared and resolved, by the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, that the present Church Government by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors, Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical officers depending on the hierarchy, is evil and justly offensive and burdensome to the kingdom, and a great impediment to reformation and growth of religion, and very prejudicial to the state and government of this kingdom, and that therefore they are resolved the same shall be taken away, and that such a government shall be settled in the Church as may be agreeable to God's Holy Word, and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the Church at home, and nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland, and other reformed Churches abroad. ... Be it therefore ordained, &c.' What is ordained is that 149 persons, enumerated by name in the Ordinance ... shall meet on the 1st of July next in King Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster; ... 'to confer and treat among themselves of such matters and things, concerning the liturgy, discipline and government of the Church of England ... as shall be proposed by either or both Houses of Parliament, and no other.' ... Notwithstanding a Royal Proclamation from Oxford, dated June 22, forbidding the Assembly and threatening consequences, the first meeting duly took place on the day appointed--Saturday, July 1, 1643; and from that day till the 22d of February, 1648-9, or for more than five years and a half, the Westminster Assembly is to be borne in mind as a power or institution in the English realm, existing side by side with the Long Parliament, and in constant conference and cooperation with it. The number of its sittings during these five years and a half was 1,163 in all; which is at the rate of about four sittings every week for the whole time. The earliest years of the Assembly were the most important."

_D. Masson, Life of John Milton, book 3, chapter 3 (volume 2)._

ALSO IN: _A. F. Mitchell, The Westminster Assembly, lectures 4-5._

_D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 3, chapters 2 and 4._

SEE, also, INDEPENDENTS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JULY-SEPTEMBER). The Solemn League and Covenant with the Scottish nation.