The English Wars and Republic, 1637-1660

Graham E. Seel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134638574
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The English Civil Wars explores the period of turmoil in British history from 1637 and the latter part of the reign of Charles I, to the restoration with Charles II in 1660. The religious and political crises surrounding the Civil Wars, and the key personalities of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell are discussed in detail. The book combines narrative, interpretations, source material, questions and worked answers.

1
THE BACKGROUND TO THE CRISIS OF
1637–1640

BACKGROUND NARRATIVE

Looking back on the 1630s, Lord Falkland was moved to describe that period as ‘the most serene, quiet and halcyon days that could possibly be imagined’.¹ At least until 1637 there indeed appears to be little evidence of disaffection towards Caroline government in England. Taxes were paid, laws were enforced and obeyed and there was nothing other than grumbling resentment at Charles’s and Archbishop Laud’s religious reforms. Yet it was a rather superficial calm, the political nation having been denied a platform from which it might articulate its grievances because of the King’s decision proclaimed on 27 March 1629 after the riotous conclusion to the second session of the 1628 Parliament—not to call any further Parliaments until ‘our people shall see more clearly into our intentions and actions’.²

Two events in particular suggested that all was not well. First, in June 1637 William Prynne, Henry Burton and John Bastwick were sentenced to be fined, imprisoned and to lose their ears for criticising Laudian innovations. many of which—such as the order that the altar be removed to the east end of churches and railed— smacked of Catholic practices. Second, in October 1637 John Hampden challenged the King’s right to levy Ship Money on inland counties without first obtaining the assent of Parliament, a challenge which came close to success when the judges ruled in favour of the King by only seven votes to five.

Neither of these events apparently encouraged other protestations against Caroline government, though recent research has revealed an undercurrent of discontent in England in the 1630s, as recorded in the private diaries of the likes of Simonds D’Ewes. Moreover, unable to accept the Laudian religious programme, significant numbers—perhaps as many as 15,000—chose to emigrate. Nevertheless, the majority chose to acquiesce, as is indicated most notably in the fact that, until 1639, the majority of demands for Ship Money were paid, prompting Kevin Sharpe to conclude that ‘for all its problems [Ship Money] must qualify as one of the most successful taxes…in early modern history’.³

It is therefore another event of 1637 that is central to any explanation of why Charles called an English Parliament twice in 1640 (the so-called Short and Long Parliaments): the introduction of a new Scottish Prayer Book on 23 July 1637. The Scots regarded this as ecclesiastical imperialism, perceiving the royal action as the beginning of a campaign to bring their Presbyterian Church into line with the Church of England. Public readings of the Prayer Book were thus met with riot and disorder. By February 1638 resistance had crystallised into the form of a National Covenant, a solemn oath that bound the signatories to resist innovation in Church and State. Then, nine months later, exasperated by the actions of Charles, the office of bishop was formally abolished by the Glasgow Assembly.

In other respects the Scots were also challenging Charles’s political and constitutional powers in Scotland. For instance, as early as June 1639 Covenanting proposals were being articulated to secure regular Parliaments (every two to three years) and rumour abounded that if the King would not summon them, then the nobility would do so of its own accord. There were also Covenanter demands that the appointments of Privy Councillors, officers of State and officers of the Court of Session were to come under the sphere of parliamentary control, and that those who were perceived as having offered ‘evil’ advice and were therefore held responsible for the troubles in Scotland —‘incendiaries’ such as Laud and Wentworth—should be called to account. A Covenanter programme of this nature had implications for Charles’s government of his other kingdoms and therefore had to be resisted.

Thus, in both 1639 and 1640 Charles raised an army in an attempt to coerce the Scots. However, his defeat in these Bishops’ Wars was not only to bring to an end his rule without Parliaments in England but fatally destabilised affairs in his third kingdom, Ireland.

ANALYSIS: WHY DID CHARLES I LOSE THE BISHOPS' WARS?

The First Bishops’ War of 1639 developed no further than a military stand-off and resolved nothing. On 4 June, near Kelso, the Scottish commander, Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven, employing an old trick of the Thirty Years War which involved arranging a herd of cattle behind his army in order to convince the enemy that their opponents possessed a more substantial force than was in fact the case, encouraged the English, under the command of Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, to withdraw. An uneasy truce, the Pacification of Berwick, was consequently signed on 18 June 1639, obliging neither side to make concessions. Ultimately, however, on 28 August 1640 the Scots defeated the English at the Battle of Newburn near Newcastle and thus emerged victorious in the Bishops’ Wars, the first time that they had triumphed over their ancient enemy since Bannockburn in 1314. Clarendon recorded his belief that the rout amounted to the ‘most shameful and confounding flight that was ever heard of’.⁴ The prospect of fighting fellow Protestants at the very time that rumours of a Popish Plot abounded seems to have sapped the fighting fervour of the English. Nevertheless, defeat was also a result of the fact that England was fundamentally incapable of waging effective war against her northern neighbour in 1639 and 1640 (for reasons that historians have been unable to ascertain indisputably). Was this a circumstance brought about by the deficiencies of antiquated institutions and systems, particularly that by which local government operated, or was it begotten by the shortcomings of individuals, most especially those of the King himself?

As a British king, Charles I resolved upon using the resources of two of his kingdoms, Ireland and England, in order to bring the third, Scotland, to heel. On paper this appeared a sound, realistic policy whereas in actuality it was overambitious and ill-constructed. Thus, three of the four aspects of the strategy devised for 1639 failed to materialise. First, the seaborne invasion force commanded by the Duke of Hamilton—one of the King’s closest advisers on Scottish affairs—did not land at Aberdeen, at least partly because Charles had failed to exploit divisions within the Covenanters and thereby win a royal party in Scotland. Thereafter, the fleet proved ineffective when blockading Edinburgh. Second, the promised attack upon the west coast of Scotland from Ireland by Randal MacDonnell, Earl of Antrim— a leading Irish Catholic who possessed extensive lands in northern Ireland and claimed as inheritance holdings in western Scotland that lay under control of the Campbells, the clan leader of whom was the Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll—never manifested itself, though the mere threat had been sufficient to force the powerful Argyll into the ranks of the Covenanters and thus enhanced the wherewithal of the Scots to withstand the royal will. Third, the Irish expeditionary force of perhaps 10,000 men commanded by Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford—a leading exponent of the Personal Rule and Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1632—never made it to Dumbarton. Nevertheless, when Charles set about devising the campaign for 1640 Strafford reminded him that he had an army in Ireland that ‘you may employ here to reduce this kingdom’, though it proved impossible to mobilise this force in time to thwart the Scots at Newburn.⁵ Yet even if this force had arrived, since it was largely composed of Catholics—though most of the officers were Protestant—it would probably have inflamed the Scots and stiffened their resistance. The only force that the King successfully mobilised and led in both 1639 and 1640 was an English army numbering between 15,000 and 20,000, probably the rough equivalent of the Covenanting forces under the leadership of Alexander Leslie. However, stubbornly refusing to accept advice except from those who told him what he wanted to hear, Charles wrongly assumed that on both occasions money, supplies and men would be available at a few months’ notice.

Although substantial English armies were mobilised in 1639 and 1640, they were significantly composed of raw, ill-disciplined, ‘beggarly fellows’. ‘Our soldiers are so disorderly that they shoot bullets through our tents,’ recorded one officer.⁶ Despite an attempt to do so in the early 1630s, Charles had not created a ‘perfect militia’—county forces that were well equipped and mustered regularly for training. More damaging still to the King’s military effort was his decision to allow militiamen to avoid service according to the substitution clause, a device that allowed them to hire a replacement—invariably an untrained fellow from the lower orders of society. As Mark C.Fissel has observed, ‘the wholescale exploitation of that loophole, especially in 1640, produced an army quite different from that which had been planned’ and it is thus a major factor in explaining the defeat at Newburn.⁷ Untrained replacements for the militia, along with men who had been pressed, probably made up one half of the English forces in 1639 and 1640. ‘I daresay’, noted Sir Edmund Verney, ‘there was never so raw, so unskilful and so unwilling an army brought to fight.’⁸ Little wonder that this army of 1640 became ‘the greatest law enforcement problem in living memory’.⁹

A dearth of serviceable weapons further lessened the prospect for successful royal campaigns. One consequence of England’s long years of peace was that new weapons were not easily to be had. Many of the musket makers, for example, had emigrated to the Netherlands where they had a ready market in the warring factions in the Thirty Years War. Although 2,000 pikes were ordered from the Netherlands, none was efficient. Thus, in 1639 the Kentish men had to make do with ‘muskets having not tough holes’ and ‘pikes…so rotten as they were shaken…all to pieces’.¹⁰ As Conrad Russell has observed:’…the lack of arms clearly contributed to the lack of fighting spirit amongst the English troops’.¹¹ This was a problem that grew yet worse in 1640. Just ten days before the Battle of Newburn Francis Windebank reported to his father that his troops had no arms with which to fight. The following day, Asburnham told Nicholas that more than one-third of the army remained unarmed. In 1640 the Privy Council was informed by the armourers that they could produce arms for 700 foot each month, according to which rate an English army of 30,000 would be replete with arms in three and a half years!

The condition of the troops was not improved by the leadership under which they laboured. Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, appointed Lord General in 1639, was a figure whom Clarendon considered ‘had nothing martial about him but his presence and his looks’.¹² He was replaced in 1640 by the much more suitable Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland, but he, like Strafford, was immobilised by illness in August of that year and could not take the field thereafter. Unable to afford the hire of mercenaries, most of Charles I’s commanders were lords, knights and gentlemen who had never experienced battle. Of those who gained much-needed experience in 1639, many were replaced for the campaign of the following summer on the orders of Charles. Meanwhile, keen to support their King in what was seen as a religious war, a significant number of Catholics served as officers only to induce suspicion and hostility among the troops. Two such officers were murdered by soldiers in 1640.

The effectiveness of the English forces was also severely diminished because of a lack of funds. By choosing to mobilise an army in 1639 without calling a Parliament, and then mobilising another force in the following year despite the fact that the Short Parliament of 1640 was addled (producing no legislation or subsidies), Charles was obliged to rely upon the fiscal devices of the Crown prerogative. Yet it was unrealistic to expect these means alone to provide sufficient money to wage war successfully. Indeed, throughout the 1630s yearly expenditures had approximated to revenues. There was thus no brimming war chest at Westminster. Moreover, the ‘dead marketts’ and dearth of trade that afflicted England meant that loans were difficult to raise. ‘Money is very scarce and hard to be gotten,’ remarked one contemporary.¹³ In December 1639, echoing concerns that had been voiced about the previous campaign, Northumberland lamented that ‘a mighty army is intended for the north, but no man knows how it will be paid’.¹⁴

Lack of money meant that a large army could not easily be kept in the field because of growing ill-discipline and an increasing propensity to mutiny. Thus, despite the f...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• SERIES PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• 1. THE BACKGROUND TO THE CRISIS OF 1637–1640
• 2. THE EMERGENCE OF ROYALISTS AND ROUNDHEADS, 1640–1642
• 3. THE WAR MACHINES, 1642–1646
• 4. THE VICTORS FALL OUT AND THE EMERGENCE OF RADICALISM, 1646– 1649
• 5. THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF KING CHARLES I AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONSEQUENCES, 1649–1653
• 6. THE PROTECTORATE OF OLIVER CROMWELL, 1653–1658
• 7. FOREIGN POLICY DURING THE PROTECTORATE OF OLIVER CROMWELL, 1653–1658
• 8. THE COLLAPSE OF THE REPUBLICAN EXPERIMENT, 1658–1660
• NOTES AND SOURCES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY