A Military History of the English Civil War

1642-1649

Malcolm Wanklyn, Frank Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317868392
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

A Military History of the English Civil War examines how the civil war was won, who fought for whom, and why it ended. With a straightforward style and clear chronology that enables readers to make their own judgements and pursue their own interests further, this original history provides a thorough critique of the reasons that have been cited for Parliament's victory and the King's defeat in 1645/46. It discusses the strategic options of the Parliamentary and Royalist commanders and councils of war and analyses the decisions they made, arguing that the King's faulty command structure was more responsible for his defeat than Sir Thomas Fairfax's strategic flair. It also argues that the way that resources were used, rather than the resources themselves, explain why the war ended when it did.

PART I

Introduction

chapter I

The nature and origins of the Great Civil War: a brief overview

The middle years of the seventeenth century witnessed the greatest concentration of armed violence in the recorded history of Britain and Ireland. More men died of wounds during the 1640s in these islands than in any other decade in our history, and one-third to a quarter of those between the ages of 16 and 60 were in arms for part or all of the time, whereas most of the major towns were garrisoned and a substantial proportion besieged.¹ For those of us who live in England and Wales, the central image is of epic battles between the Cavaliers, the supporters of King Charles I, and the Roundheads, who followed Oliver Cromwell. However, bitter internecine warfare rarely emerges out of nothing, and the First Civil War of 1642² to 1646, which ended in the comprehensive triumph of the king’s enemies, was no exception. It was the second of three stages in the disintegration of the traditional political institutions of England and Wales and of the social control based on land ownership that underpinned them. The first stage was military defeat by the Scots in 1640 in the so-called Bishops’ War and its constitutional aftermath, which are described briefly later in this chapter; the last the revolution of 1647, when ultimate power passed into the hands of the victorious Roundhead army. But that was not the end of the fighting. Associated with the bedding in of the revolution was a revival of internal conflict in England and Wales. This has always been seen as a second civil war. However, it was more than a civil war. Without the very strong prospect of a Scottish invasion, it is unlikely that Charles’s English and Welsh supporters would have taken up arms on his behalf.

Quite recently, historians have begun describing the warfare that convulsed all but the south-eastern parts of the British archipelago between 1649 and 1652 as a third civil war. With this term we fundamentally disagree, as also with the emerging fashion for describing the whole of the fighting that took place between 1638 and 1652 as a British Civil War or Wars.³ Although England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland were all ruled by Charles Stuart in 1638, they were separate kingdoms with separate governments, separate parliaments, separate religious traditions and separate legal systems, although the English government had considerable control over law making in Ireland. As there was not a united kingdom of Great Britain,⁴ how could there be a British War? Also, there were significant differences between the three nations’ experience of warfare between 1638 and 1652. What occurred in Ireland throughout the 1640s and beyond was more a war of liberation aimed at achieving freedom of religious practice for Roman Catholics and the end of English domination of Irish institutions than a civil war.

What happened in Scotland is less clear-cut, but it cannot be described as civil war. The campaigns of the Marquis of Montrose on the king’s behalf during 1644 and 1645 were spearheaded by an invading force from Ireland, which received some military assistance from some of the Highland clans but very little support elsewhere in the country. In 1648, when the Duke of Hamilton’s supporters carried out a major invasion of England, there was very little fighting in Scotland itself, despite considerable opposition to the undertaking, until after Hamilton had been defeated.⁵ Scotland’s experience can best be seen as a series of attempts to defend itself against its southern neighbour as first the king, then the republic, attempted to take control of its political institutions and subvert its religion.

In England, on the other hand, what was experienced between 1642 and 1648 was without question civil war. However, the wars of 1639–40 and 1649–52 were fought against other nations, first the Scots and then the Irish and the Scots separately.⁶ Wales’s experience of warfare throughout was very similar to that of England, that is intermittent civil war for six or so years fought over the same issues. This is not surprising, as the two countries had existed as a unitary state with identical or very similar political, administrative, legal and religious institutions for a hundred years. Moreover, at no stage is there any significant sign of the war being seen as an opportunity for a repressed people to throw off their English yoke.⁷

In the twentieth century, the debate between historians over the causes of the crisis of the 1640s was marked by considerable acrimony. However, a kind of truce now exists based on a shared understanding that it was multi-causal and not predestined by the inexorable march towards a classless society, parliamentary democracy or the freedom of the individual. Crisis there would probably have been in England at least whoever had been monarch, but an accidental factor, the personality of Charles I, is recognized as having had a profound effect on the immediate causes of the crisis and its subsequent course. The increasing cost of central government ran full pelt into the determination of taxpayers and their representatives in Parliament not to dig more deeply into their pockets. One response of English monarchs to this had been to attempt to raise money without Parliament’s consent. This led to charges of abusing the law and trampling on the fundamental liberties of the subject, but Charles went much further than Queen Elizabeth or his father King James, and he reaped the consequences when he tried to fight a war against his Scottish subjects in the summer of 1640.

There were also two other areas of policy where previous monarchs had displayed a capacity to avoid confrontation. In England the incomplete reformation in religion of the sixteenth century, if not bound to result in conflict, was a potential powder keg if the monarchy, which had gained control over the Church in England without purging it of all elements of Roman Catholicism, did not pursue a religious policy at home that persecuted the Catholics while behaving with more circumspection towards those within the state Church who would have liked the Reformation to have gone further. The monarch was also expected to conduct a foreign policy that supported Protestantism overseas wherever it was threatened by international Roman Catholicism. Charles, however, broke with the past. He had given his enthusiastic support to a High Church faction in the English clergy, some of whose ideas about theology and the practice of religion could be confused with Roman Catholicism. In addition, Charles had given a measure of toleration to English Catholics while allowing his bishops to harry, if not persecute, Protestants who refused to obey the rules of the Church to the last letter. He had also pursued a foreign policy that favoured Catholic Spain in its war against the Protestant Dutch.⁸

Second, monarchs had to take account of the different histories, institutions and cultures of the multiple kingdoms of the British archipelago when introducing innovations in government. Here caution and playing the long game were crucial to success. Charles, however, tended to disregard the example of his predecessors, most particularly that set by his father, and to push ahead regardless, in the absolute conviction that it was his subjects’ religious duty to obey his commands as much as God’s, by whose will he was king of England, Scotland and Ireland. Moreover, his reputation in all his dominions for duplicity when unable to browbeat opposition or overcome it by force meant that when he did eventually give way under pressure it was seen as mere subterfuge. The king’s reputation for double-dealing, combined with fears of Catholic influence on him through his queen, Henrietta Maria, and some of his courtiers, not only helped to precipitate the crisis but also made it more difficult to resolve at every stage, as it was widely believed that in the future he would renege on any concession he had made, given the opportunity.⁹

Trouble began in 1637, when Charles attempted to bring about uniformity in the practices of the Scottish church by royal decree and against the advice of many of his Scottish ministers and advisers. A new prayer book, prepared in England largely by English theologians, aroused grave fears both for the purity of Presbyterianism, the more radical form of Protestantism that had taken very strong root in the Lowlands and parts of the Highlands, and for Scottish political and constitutional independence from England. It also lit the fires of nationalism among all classes, from the servant girl who threw a stool at the minister in St Giles’s cathedral to the leading members of the Scottish nobility. Attempts by the king’s envoy to Scotland, the Marquis of Hamilton, to achieve a negotiated solution over the next year or so failed. A military confrontation in 1639, for which neither side was fully prepared, was followed by outright war in the following summer. The Scots were able to raise an army and invade England before Charles had assembled enough troops at York to meet them on equal terms. They crossed the Tyne after defeating a small force of English infantry and cavalry at Newburn, and occupied Northumberland and Durham. However, unlike almost all their predecessors, the Scottish soldiers did not rape and pillage. They also did all they could to reduce casualties by allowing the detachment defeated at Newburn and the garrison of Newcastle to escape across the Tees without serious harassment. Such behaviour was intended to assist opposition to the war in England, which was apparent in the reluctance of the English Parliament that Charles had summoned in the spring to vote taxes to help finance the war, and in the subsequent behaviour of his subjects when he tried to collect taxes without Parliament’s consent.¹⁰ It was also evident in the slowness with which Charles’s army had come together (raised as it was by the lord lieutenants and their deputies, who had themselves sat in the recent Parliament or helped to choose the members of the House of Commons) and in the lawless behaviour of some of the troops on their way to York.¹¹

Unwilling to use his apology for an army for fear that it would disintegrate, the king was obliged to negotiate a truce in September 1640, the financial clauses of which made it essential for him to call a new Parliament to vote taxes to pay for the cost of maintaining both armies. This the new Parliament did, but it also tried and executed the king’s chief minister, the Earl of Strafford, began legal proceedings against High Church clergy and other royal officials, and gained Charles’s consent to a number of laws restricting royal power over taxation and over the length and timing of parliamentary sessions. The king gave way reluctantly, but he had no option. If he sent Parliament packing, the Scottish army would brush aside his own army, advance towards London and impose greater concessions on him by force. In such circumstances, civil war was most unlikely provided that the Scottish leadership did not lose control of its troops. There was no sign yet of a ‘king’s party’ ready to fight for him, and no reason for any of his English subjects to take up arms against him.

However, for Charles matters began to improve from August 1641 onwards. A peace treaty with the Scots signed in the late summer was followed by the disbandment of both armies. As a result, the king and those of his English subjects who wanted further constitutional and religious changes were on level terms insofar as military muscle was concerned. The king was also gaining support. He benefited from attacks by Protestant radicals in Parliament and the country on two fundamental aspects of state religion as established in England and Wales in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the Book of Common Prayer and the government of the Church by bishops. Moreover, under the influence of new advisers, he had begun to promote Low Church clergy to vacant bishoprics and to endorse Protestantism overseas by betrothing his eldest daughter to the son of the ruler of the Netherlands. At the same time, massed demonstrations outside the Palace of Westminster, the spread of lawlessness and growing disorder in the Church as radicals and traditionalists struggled for control of the pulpit were highlighting the advantages of strong monarchical government.

However, powerful individuals and groupings in Parliament, the city of London and some other parts of England were determined to make the English Church more Protestant and to restrict the king’s powers still further by wresting executive authority from him. Their programme was set out in the Grand Remonstrance, a lengthy document debated most acrimoniously in the House of Commons in November and only approved by a small majority. Constitutionally, the crucial clauses were those that would have deprived the king of his rights to appoint ministers without consulting Parliament and to enjoy unfettered command and control over the militia of the realm, a term that embraced not merely the army and the navy in time of war, but also the home defence forces in the counties and towns of England and Wales, the so-called trained bands.

What would have happened had external factors not intervened can only be a matter of conjecture, although the longer the king resisted attacks on his remaining powers and the more vociferous the religious radicals became, the more likely was the consensus in Parliament and the country to unravel totally and a king’s party to emerge. However, events in Ireland brought the matter of sovereignty to a head in a most acute form. A Catholic revolt had broken out in...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Knock-out strategies
• Part III Parliament's offensive
• Part IV A king's game
• Part V The allies' counterattack
• Part VI The crisis of the war
• Part VIII Tactics
• Postscript: The Second Civil War
• Bibliography
• Index