From the day when King Charles raised his standard at Nottingham, and even before that date, England was divided into two camps, according as men elected to obey the King or the Parliament. The country was about to learn by experience what civil war meant, and to suffer as it had not suffered since the fifteenth century. In the Wars of the Roses, two rival houses had laid claim to the allegiance of the people; now its obedience was demanded by two rival authorities. Moreover, apart from the question which authority ought to be obeyed, the fact that the Parliament itself was divided made a choice difficult and obscured the main issue. The House of Commons was no longer the almost unanimous body which it had been in November, 1640. About 175 members followed the King’s flag, while nearly three hundred remained at Westminster. In the Upper House the preponderance was overwhelmingly on the King’s side. Rather 70more than thirty peers threw in their lot with the popular party, while about eighty supported the King, and about twenty took no part in the struggle.
Very various, therefore, were the motives which led men to choose one side or the other. To many peers, the fate of the King and the nobility seemed inseparably linked together, and like Newcastle they loved monarchy as the foundation and support of their own greatness. Some, lately ennobled by Charles and his father, had personal obligations to the House of Stuart, which they were ready to repay by any sacrifice. “Had I millions of crowns or scores of sons,” wrote Lord Goring to his wife, “the King and his cause should have them all with better will than to eat if I were starving.... I had all from the King, and he hath all again.” Of the parliamentary peers, a few like Brooke, Saye, and Warwick were ardent Puritans and were moved by religious zeal quite as much as by political motives. In Northumberland, “the proudest man alive,” the independent spirit of the feudal baron seemed to live again. Holland was ambitious and in disfavour at Court; he hoped to be one of the Parliament’s generals. Others thought the Parliament stronger than the King, and were resolved to be on the winning side. “Pembroke and Salisbury,” says Clarendon, “had rather the King and his posterity should be destroyed than that Wilton should be taken from the one and Hatfield from the other.”
Amongst the gentry, there was the same mixture of motives. The bulk of them indeed adhered to the King, but great numbers supported the 71Parliament, especially in districts where Puritanism was prevalent.
Of the towns, cathedral cities such as York and Chester were usually royalist in feeling. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge were for the King, but the representatives of the towns were in each case Parliamentarians. “London,” which Milton calls “the mansion house of liberty,” and Clarendon, “the sink of the ill-humours of the kingdom,” was the headquarters of Puritanism, and most manufacturing or trading towns were anti-royalist. “Manchester,” says Clarendon, “from the beginning, out of that factious humour which possessed most corporations and the pride of their wealth, opposed the King and declared magisterially for the Parliament.” Birmingham, though little more than a village, “was of as great fame for hearty, wilful, affected disloyalty to the King as any place in England.” The clothing towns of the West Riding of Yorkshire and the manufacturing districts of Somersetshire and Gloucestershire were also hostile to Charles. In the latter counties, according to Clarendon,
“the gentlemen of ancient families were for the most part well affected to the King, yet there were a people of inferior degree, who by good husbandry, clothing, and other thriving arts, had gotten very great fortunes, and by degrees getting themselves into the gentlemen’s estates were angry that they found not themselves in the same esteem and reputation with those whose estates they had; and therefore studied all ways to make themselves considerable. These from the beginning were fast friends to the Parliament.”
72In purely agricultural districts, the influence of the great landowners was generally decisive, but there were many notable exceptions. In the eastern counties, many of the chief gentry were disposed to take up arms for the King, but “the freeholders and yeomen in general adhered to the Parliament.”
Yet, though the bulk of the upper classes was on one side, the war never became a social war, but remained a struggle of opinions and ideas. From the very beginning, men who were determined to maintain the Church intact adopted the King’s cause, and those who desired to change the government of the Church, or sought freedom of worship outside of it, supported the Parliament. At first, even to Puritans, the political question seemed more important than the religious. Colonel Hutchinson read the manifestos of both parties till “he became abundantly informed in his understanding and convinced in his conscience of the righteousness of the Parliament’s cause in point of civil right.” But “though he was satisfied of the endeavours to bring back Popery and subvert the true Protestant religion, he did not think that so clear a ground for the war as the defence of English liberties.”
No contemporary record reveals the precise motives which led Cromwell to take up arms: we are left to infer them from his earlier acts and his later utterances. “I profess,” he wrote in 1644, “I could never satisfy myself of the justness of this war, but from the authority of the Parliament to maintain itself in its rights.” Like Hutchinson, he regarded the King’s Church policy as subversive of Protestantism, 73and defined the war as undertaken for “the maintenance of our civil liberties as men, and our religious liberties as Christians.” As the war progressed, religious liberties grew more and more important in his eyes, and what had been originally a struggle against innovations became an attempt to establish freedom of conscience.
“Religion,” said Cromwell in 1654, “was not the thing at first contested for, but God brought it to that issue at last, and gave it unto us by way of redundancy, and at last it proved to be that which was most dear to us. And wherein consisted this more than in obtaining that liberty from the tyranny of the bishops to all species of Protestants to worship God according to their own light and conscience?”
In every civil war, political and religious convictions must often conflict with family ties. Few families were like the Fairfaxes and Sheffields, of whom it was said that there was not one of those names but was on the side of the Parliament. Royalists might have made a like boast of the Byrons, the Comptons, and many less distinguished houses, but in very many cases the nearest relations took opposite sides. At Edgehill, the Earl of Denbigh and the Earl of Dover charged in the King’s guard, while their sons, Lord Feilding and Lord Rochford, fought under Essex. In Cromwell’s own family, his uncle, Sir Oliver, and his cousin, Henry Cromwell, were both ardent Royalists, and owed the preservation of their estates, after the defeat of their party, to the intercession of their kinsman.
74While this division of families and friends made the war more painful, it tended to humanise the manner in which it was conducted. The men who found themselves reluctantly arrayed in arms against each other could not forget old friendship and old kinship.
“My affections to you,” wrote Sir William Waller to his old comrade, Sir Ralph Hopton, when their two armies were about to meet in battle, “are so unchangeable that hostility itself cannot violate my friendship to your person, but I must be true to the cause wherein I serve. The great God, who is the searcher of my heart, knows with what reluctance I go upon this service, and with what perfect hatred I look upon a war without an enemy. The God of peace in His good time send us peace, and in the meantime fit us to receive it. We are both upon the stage, and we must act the parts that are assigned us in this tragedy. Let us do it in a way of honour, and without personal animosities.”
On the whole, the war was honourably and humanely carried on. The savage cruelty which marked the Thirty Years’ War in Germany is absent in the contemporaneous war in England. Little blood was shed except in the heat of battle; quarter was liberally granted, and the lives of non-combatants were respected. But inevitably the prolongation of the war embittered the temper of both parties, and when, as in Scotland and Ireland, their hostility was inflamed by national animosity a fiercer spirit showed itself.
War broke out in England in the summer of 1642, and there were many local struggles between the 75partisans of King and Parliament before the royal standard was set up at Nottingham (August 22, 1642). In many counties a royalist lord-lieutenant endeavoured to put in force the King’s commission of array, while a parliamentary lord-lieutenant tried to carry into effect the Parliament’s militia ordinance. Each called on the local train-bands to gather round him, and sought to obtain possession of the magazine in which the arms and munitions of the county were stored. The first of these collisions—a bloodless one—took place at Leicester in June; blood was shed in an affray at Manchester on July 15th. In July, the King attempted to besiege Hull, and some lives were lost in a sally. In August, the Marquis of Hertford proclaimed the commission of array in Somersetshire, the Governor of Portsmouth declared for the King, and the flame spread from the north and the midlands to the western counties. As yet there was no serious fighting, but everywhere men gathered in arms, and preparations for the campaign began.
In this preliminary trial of strength, no man was more active for the Parliament than Cromwell. On June 5th, he subscribed five hundred pounds to the fund for raising an army. Next month, after sending to his constituents at Cambridge a hundred pounds’ worth of arms at his own expense, he obtained a vote empowering them to train and exercise volunteer companies. The King sent to the university for its money and its plate, but Cromwell, aided by his brothers-in-law, Valentine Walton and John Desborough, raised men and beset the north road to intercept them. Early in August, he marched to 76Cambridge, seized the county magazine, and secured most of the plate, worth, it is said, twenty thousand pounds, for the Parliament’s service. At the same time he prevented the attempt to execute the commission of array in the county, and sent the heads of three of the colleges, Jesus, Queen’s, and St. John’s, prisoners to London. The House of Commons passed a vote for his indemnity, but the promptitude with which he assumed responsibility and anticipated their orders by his acts was extremely characteristic. There were many gentlemen of greater rank in Cambridge and Huntingdonshire willing to fight for the Parliament, but from the very first Cromwell’s energy and readiness to act made him a leader. At the end of August, Cromwell returned to London, and shortly afterwards joined with a troop of sixty horse the army which Parliament was gathering under the Earl of Essex.
From the moment that preparations for war began, the Parliament had two great advantages over the King, which it retained as long as the war lasted. In July, the fleet in the Downs accepted the Earl of Warwick as its admiral and declared for the Parliament. The possession of the navy meant the command of the sea and the interception of the King’s communications with the continent. He looked to Holland and France for arms and ammunition, but the parliamentary cruisers constantly captured his ships and stopped his supplies. All the chief ports were in the power of the Parliament; Charles held Newcastle and Chester, but the recapture of Portsmouth was one of the first results of the defection of 77the navy. Thanks to its ships, in 1643 and 1644 the Parliament was able to preserve Hull when the rest of Yorkshire was subdued, and to keep Lyme and Plymouth when the King’s forces were triumphant in the west. Thanks to its ships, the King’s plans for procuring French or Danish or Walloon mercenaries to restore his falling cause were made impossible to carry out, even if he could raise money to hire them.
The second advantage of the Parliament was that it had far more money at its disposal than the King. It was strongest in the richest parts of the country. With London and the trading classes in general devoted to it, it had no difficulty in raising loans. The possession of London and most of the seaports secured it the customs, which formed the largest and the most expansive part of the revenue of the State. As the war continued, voluntary loans developed into forced loans, customs were supplemented by the imposition of an excise, monthly assessments were levied on all counties under the Parliament’s rule, and the sequestration of the lands of Royalists provided a new source of income. Yet, great though the resources of the Parliament were, its financial system was so imperfect that after the first few months the pay of the soldiers was constantly in arrears.
On the other hand, Charles had scarcely any regular sources of income, and very little money to equip or support an army. To provide arms and ammunition for his men he was driven to pawn the Crown jewels and to mortgage the Crown lands. Loans from corporations or men of means, the sales of 78peerages or other titular dignities, customs duties in the few ports under his control, and contributions levied in the districts within range of his garrisons made up his scanty budget. Throughout, the King’s chief resource was the devotion of his followers. Loyal merchants in London secretly forwarded him their offerings. The University of Oxford sent him ten thousand pounds, and its colleges gave up their plate to be coined for his cause. Rich noblemen contributed regiments or troops, and poor gentlemen served at their own expense. The Marquis of Newcastle raised some thousands of men on his own estates; the Earl of Worcester and his son, Lord Herbert, furnished the King with ￡120,000 between March and July, 1642. Thanks to the zeal of his followers, and above all to the territorial influence of the great landowners, Charles was able ere long to oppose Parliament with forces equal to its own. At the end of August the King had with him at Nottingham only a few hundred half-armed foot. His artillery and several regiments of infantry were left behind at York, and his cavalry under Prince Rupert in the Midlands. The general of his little army told the King that he could not secure him against being taken in his bed, if the enemy made a brisk attack. The parliamentary forces assembling at Northampton amounted early in September to fourteen thousand men, and Essex had in all about twenty thousand men under his command. This was “an army which,” as the historian of the Long Parliament said, “was too great to find resistance at that time from any forces afoot in England.”
ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX.
(From Devereux’s “Lives of the Devereux.”)
79But instead of hastening to crush the King while he was weak, Essex gave him time to grow strong. From Nottingham, Charles moved to Shrewsbury, increasing his forces as he went, and equipping them with weapons taken from the train-bands, or from the armouries of loyal noblemen. Essex moved to Worcester and established himself there, making no effort to find the King and fight him, and reducing his forces by leaving garrisons in different towns. Now that he had an army, Charles boldly took the offensive and marched to London, hoping to end the war at a blow. Essex hurried eastwards to defend the capital, and at Edgehill, on October 23rd, Charles was obliged to turn and give battle to his pursuer.
The two armies were now not unequally matched. Each numbered about fourteen thousand men, but the Parliamentarians were far better armed than the Royalists. Clarendon thus describes the equipment of the King’s army:
“The foot, all but 300 or 400 who marched without any weapons but cudgels, were armed with muskets, and bags for their powder, and pikes, but in the whole body there was not one pikeman who had a corselet and very few musketeers who had swords. Amongst the horse, the officers had their full desire if they were able to procure old backs and breasts and pots (i. e., helmets), with pistols or carbines for their two or three front ranks and swords for the rest; themselves and some soldiers by their example having gotten besides their pistols and swords a short poleaxe.”
The regiments who followed Essex, thanks to the Parliament’s control of money and its possession of 80the magazines of Hull and the Tower, were armed with more uniformity and more completeness. His musketeers had their swords, his pikemen, who constituted a third of each foot regiment, had their corselets, and his horsemen pistols and defensive armour. In both armies, the officers consisted mostly of gentlemen who had neither military training nor experience of war, mixed with a certain number of soldiers of fortune who had served in the armies of France, or Holland, or Sweden. In foot regiments, the major or lieutenant-colonel was usually an old soldier; in troops of horse, the lieutenant. “The most part of our horse were raised thus,” says a royalist playwright: “The honest country gentleman raises the troop at his own charge, then he gets a low-country lieutenant to fight his troop for him, then sends for his son from school to be cornet.”
PRINCE RUPERT, K.G.
(From a painting by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery.)
On both sides, the generals possessed the training which their soldiers lacked. Essex had fought with honour in the Palatinate and Holland; Balfour, who led his cavalry, had served many years in the Dutch army. The King’s commander-in-chief, the Earl of Lindsey, was another Dutch officer, and Prince Rupert had seen some fighting under the Prince of Orange, and one disastrous campaign in Germany. Yet despite Rupert’s lack of experience the King gave him charge of all his horse as an independent command, and followed his advice rather than Lindsey’s in the ordering of the battle. One great advantage Charles had which counterbalanced the superior armament of the parliamentary forces. His cavalry was superior to theirs both in quantity and 81quality. He had four thousand horse to Essex’s three thousand, and his troopers were flushed with confidence by their easy victory in a skirmish near Worcester. Rupert resolved to utilise this advantage to the full. Massing the bulk of the cavalry on the right wing under his own command, he swept the horse opposed to him from the field, routed four regiments of Essex’s foot, plundered Essex’s camp at Kineton, and followed the fugitives for some miles. Wilmot, with the cavalry of the left, charged with like success, and even the reserves joined in the chase. Meanwhile, Essex and those of his foot regiments who stood firm attacked the royalist infantry front to front, while Balfour, with two regiments of cavalry forming the parliamentary reserve, fell upon their exposed flanks. The Earl of Lindsey was mortally wounded and made prisoner, the King’s standard taken and regained, several regiments were cut to pieces, and two only held their ground. When Rupert returned from the chase, his cavalry were too disordered to be brought to attack, but their arrival saved the King’s infantry from further attack, and night brought the dubious battle to a close. Before day broke, Hampden, with two fresh regiments of foot and ten troops of horse, joined Essex, and urged him to advance and drive the King from his position. Essex, discouraged by the misbehaviour of his cavalry, and by his heavy losses, was disinclined to risk anything, and retreated to Warwick. All the fruits of victory fell to the King, and, capturing Banbury Castle without a blow, he pursued his march to Oxford and made that city 82his headquarters for the remainder of the war (October 29th).
Early in November, Charles resumed his advance upon London. Reading was abandoned as he drew near, but by this time Essex had placed his army between the King and the capital, and there was no ground for the panic which filled the citizens. In the Parliament, the peace party for a moment gained the upper hand and sent commissioners to open negotiations. Charles expressed his willingness to treat, but said nothing about a suspension of hostilities, and still continued to advance. By his orders, on November 12th, Rupert, taking advantage of a mist which concealed his movements, fell upon Essex’s outposts at Brentford, and cut to pieces the two regiments of Holles and Brooke. Hampden came to their rescue and covered the retreat of the survivors, but Brentford was thoroughly sacked by the Royalists. The City expected to share the same fate, and, says Clarendon, “the alarum came to London with the same dire yell as if the army were entered their gates.” Negotiations were broken off, with loud accusations of treachery against the King. The train-bands rushed to arms, and, all night, regiments streamed forth from the City to reinforce Essex. Next day, Charles found twenty thousand men blocking his way at Turnham Green, while three thousand more occupied Kingston and threatened his line of retreat. Some cannon shots were exchanged, but the King was too weak to attack, and Essex too cautious. Once more Hampden urged him to action, and for a moment he 83seemed inclined to take the offensive. He had two men to the King’s one, and his citizen soldiers were eager to fight, and cheered “Old Robin” whenever he appeared amongst them. But, as after Edgehill, “the old soldiers of fortune, on whose judgment the general most relied,” were against fighting, and he called back Hampden, evacuated Kingston, and suffered Charles to draw off his troops undisturbed. The march on London was stopped, at least for this year; the shops of its citizens were safe, and neither “captain or colonel or knight-at-arms” threatened the “defenceless doors” of Puritan poets. Charles retired to Oxford; the parliamentary army went into winter quarters, and the campaign ended as indecisively as Edgehill had ended. With a larger and better equipped army, and with greater pecuniary resources at his disposal, Essex had throughout allowed the King to take the initiative, and neglected every opportunity offered him by fortune. Charles, on the other hand, as soon as he got together an army, adopted a consistent strategic plan, and pursued it with energy and even audacity. His outposts were now within thirty miles of London, and all over England his followers were gaining ground and gaining heart.
Ever since September, Cromwell had been serving under Essex, and this unsuccessful campaign was his sole training in the art of war. At Edgehill, his troops formed part of the regiment commanded by Sir Philip Stapleton, one of the two regiments which did such splendid service on that day. In later years, it pleased party pamphleteers to assert 84that he was not even present in the battle, but a contemporary account specially mentions Captain Cromwell in a list of officers who “never stirred from their troops, but fought till the last minute.” One lesson at least he learned at Edgehill: that was the necessity of keeping a reserve in hand, and the importance of energetically using it. Another thing which the battle taught him was that the Parliament’s arms would never be victorious till its cavalry was equal in quality to the King’s. Some of Essex’s foot regiments were excellent, but the ranks of his cavalry were filled with men attracted solely by high pay and opportunities of plunder-men who were neither soldiers nor good material for making soldiers. The consequences were what might have been expected. “At my first going out into this engagement,” said Cromwell, “I saw our men beaten at every hand.” Accordingly he spoke to his cousin, Hampden, and urged him to procure the raising of some new regiments to be added to Essex’s army.
“I told him I would be serviceable to him in bringing such men in as I thought had a spirit that would do something in the work. ‘Your troops,’ said I, ‘are most of them old decayed serving-men, tapsters, and such kind of fellows; 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? You must get men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go, or you will be beaten still.’”
Hampden answered that the notion was a good notion, but impracticable. Impracticable was not 85a word which Cromwell understood. He obtained leave of absence for himself and his troop and went down into the eastern counties in January, 1643, “to raise such men as had the fear of God before them, and made some conscience of what they did.”