A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689

10. The First Bishops' War. 1639.– In refusing to obey the order for dissolution, the Scottish General Assembly had practically made itself independent of the king, and Charles was driven – unless he cared to allow the establishment of a precedent, which might some day be quoted against him in England – to make war upon the Scots. Yet he dared not summon the English Parliament, lest it should follow their example, and he had to set forth on what came to be known as the First Bishops' War – because it was waged in the cause of the bishops – with no more money than he could get from a voluntary contribution, not much exceeding 50,000l. Soon after he reached Berwick with his army, he found that the Scots had, on Dunse Law,²² an army almost equal to his own in numbers, commanded by Alexander Leslie, an old soldier who had fought in the German wars, and mainly composed of veterans, who had seen much service on the Continent, whilst his own men were raw recruits. His money soon came to an end, and it was then found impossible to keep the army together. The war was one in which there was no fighting, and in which only one man was killed, and he by an accident. On June 24 Charles signed the Treaty of Berwick. Both sides passed over in silence the deeds of the Glasgow Assembly, but a promise was given that all affairs civil and ecclesiastical should be settled in an assembly and Parliament. Assembly and Parliament met at Edinburgh, and declared in favour of the abolition of episcopacy; but Charles, who could not, even now, make up his mind to submit, ordered the adjournment of the Parliament, and prepared for a new attack on Scotland.

11. Wentworth in Ireland. 1633-1639.– In preparing for a new war, Charles had Wentworth by his side. Wentworth, who was by far the ablest of his advisers, after ruling the north of England (see p. 514) in a high-handed fashion, had, in 1632, been appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland. In 1634 he summoned an Irish Parliament, taking care that the English Protestant settlers and the Irish Catholics should be so evenly balanced that he could do what he would with it. He carried through it admirable laws and a vote of money which enabled him to be independent of Parliament for some time to come. As far as its material interests were concerned, Ireland had never been so prosperous. Trade grew, and the flax industry of the North sprang into existence under Wentworth's protection. Churches which had lain in ruins since the desolating wars of Elizabeth's reign were rebuilt, and able and active ministers were invited from England. The Earl of Cork, who had illegally seized Church property to his own use, was heavily fined, and Lord Mountnorris, a self-seeking official, who refused to resign his office, was brought before a court-martial and condemned to death; though Wentworth let him know that his life was in no danger, and that all that was wanted of him was the resignation of an office which he was unfitted to fill. Wentworth required all the officers of the Crown to live up to the motto of 'Thorough,' which he had adopted for himself, by which he meant a 'thorough' devotion to the service of the king and the State, without regard for private interests.

12. The Proposed Plantation of Connaught.– Wentworth gave great offence to the English officials and settlers by the harsh and overbearing way in which he kept them in order. His conduct to the Celtic population was less violent than that of some other lord deputies, but he had no more idea than his predecessors of leaving the Irish permanently to their own customs and religion. He believed that, both for their own good and for the safety of the English Crown, they must be made as like Englishmen as possible, and that, to effect this, it would be necessary to settle more Englishmen in Ireland to overawe them. Accordingly, in 1635, he visited Connaught, where he raked up an old claim of the king's to the whole land of the province, though Charles had promised not to put forward any such claim at all. In every county of Connaught except Galway, a jury was found to give a verdict in favour of the king's claim. The jury in County Galway refused to do his bidding, and Wentworth had the jurymen fined, and the land of the county seized by the order of the Irish Court of Exchequer, which pronounced judgment without a jury. He then invited English settlers to Connaught; but he found that few English settlers would go to such a distance from their homes. Perhaps many refused to come because they distrusted Wentworth. Yet, for the moment, his government appeared successful. In 1639 he visited England, and Charles, who needed an able counsellor, made him Earl of Strafford, and from that time took him for his chief adviser.

13. The Short Parliament. 1640.– Strafford's advice was that Charles should summon an English Parliament, whilst he himself held a Parliament in Dublin, which might show an example of loyalty. The Irish Parliament did all that was expected of it, the Catholic members being especially forward in voting supplies in the hope that, if they helped Charles to conquer the Scots, he would allow freedom of religion in Ireland. In England, Parliament met on April 13. Pym at once laid before the Commons a statement of the grievances of the nation, after which the House resolved to ask for redress of these grievances before granting supply. Charles offered to abandon ship-money if the Commons would give him twelve subsidies equal to about 960,000l. The Commons hesitated about granting so much, and wished the king to yield on other points as well as upon ship-money. In the end they prepared to advise Charles to abandon the war with Scotland altogether, and, to avoid this, he dissolved Parliament on May 5. As it had sat for scarcely more than three weeks, it is known as the Short Parliament.

14. The Second Bishops' War. 1640.– In spite of the failure of the Parliament, Charles gathered an army by pressing men from all parts of England, and found money to pay them for a time by buying a large quantity of pepper on credit and selling it at once for less than it was worth. The soldiers, as they marched northwards, broke into the churches, burnt the Communion rails, and removed the Communion tables to the middle of the building. There was no wish amongst Englishmen to see the Scots beaten. The Scots, knowing this, crossed the Tweed, and, on August 28, routed a part of the English army at Newburn on the Tyne. Even Strafford did not venture to advise a prolongation of the war. Negotiations were opened at Ripon, and Northumberland and Durham were left in the hands of the Scots as a pledge for the payment of 850l. a day for the maintenance of their army, till a permanent treaty could be arranged. Charles, whose money was already exhausted, summoned a Great Council, consisting of Peers alone, to meet at York. All that the Great Council could do was to advise him to summon another Parliament, and that advice he was obliged to take.

15. The Meeting of the Long Parliament. 1640.– On November 3, 1640, the new Parliament, which was to be known as the Long Parliament, met. Pym once more took the lead, and proposed the impeachment of Strafford, as the king's chief adviser in the attempt to carry on war in defiance of Parliament. Strafford had also collected an Irish army for an attack on Scotland, and it was strongly believed that he had advised the king to use that army to reduce England as well as Scotland under arbitrary government. The mere suspicion that he had threatened to bring an Irish army into England roused more than ordinary indignation, as, in those days, Irishmen were both detested and despised in England. Strafford was therefore impeached, and sent to the Tower. Laud was also imprisoned in the Tower, whilst other officials escaped to the Continent to avoid a similar fate. The Houses then proceeded to pass a Triennial Bill, directing that Parliament should meet every three years, even if the king did not summon it, and to this, with some hesitation, Charles assented. He could not, in fact, refuse anything which Parliament asked, because, if he had done so, Parliament would give him no money to satisfy the Scots, and if the Scots were not satisfied, they would recommence the war.

16. The Impeachment of Strafford. 1641.– On March 22, 1641, Strafford's trial was opened in Westminster Hall. All his overbearing actions were set forth at length, but, after all had been said, a doubt remained whether they constituted high treason, that crime having been strictly defined by a statute of Edward III. (see p. 250). Young Sir Henry Vane, son of one of the Secretaries of State, found amongst his father's papers a note of a speech delivered by Strafford in a Committee of the Privy Council just after the breaking up of the Short Parliament, in which he had spoken of the king as loose and absolved from all rules of government. "You have an army in Ireland," Strafford was reported to have said, "you may employ here to reduce this kingdom, for I am confident as anything under heaven, Scotland shall not hold out five months." The Commons were convinced that 'this kingdom' meant England and not Scotland; but there were signs that the lords would be likely to differ from them, and the Commons accordingly abandoned the impeachment in which the lords sat as judges, and introduced a Bill of Attainder (see p. 401, note), to which, after the Commons had accepted it, the lords would have to give their consent if it was to become law, as in the case of any ordinary Bill.

17. Strafford's Attainder and Execution.– Pym would have preferred to go on with the impeachment, because he believed that Strafford was really guilty of high treason. He held that treason was not an offence against the king's private person, but against the king as a constitutional ruler, and that Strafford had actually diminished the king's authority by attempting to make him an absolute ruler, and thereby to weaken Charles's hold upon the goodwill of the people. This argument, however, did not break down the scruples of the Peers, and if Charles had kept quiet, he would have had them at least on his side. Neither he nor the queen could keep quiet. Before the end of 1640 she had urged the Pope to send her money and soldiers, and now she had a plan for bringing the defeated English army from Yorkshire to Westminster to overpower Parliament. Then came an attempt of Charles to get possession of the Tower, that he might liberate Strafford by force. Pym, who had learnt the secret of the queen's army-plot, disclosed it, and the peers, frightened at their danger, passed the Bill of Attainder. A mob gathered round Whitehall and howled for the execution of the sentence. Charles, fearing lest the mob should take vengeance on his wife, weakly signed a commission appointing commissioners to give the royal assent to the Bill, though he had promised Strafford that not a hair of his head should be touched. With the words, "Put not your trust in princes" on his lips, the great royalist statesman prepared for the scaffold. On May 12 he was beheaded, rather because men feared his ability than because his offences were legally punishable with death.

18. Constitutional Reforms. 1641.– Englishmen would not have feared Strafford if they could have been sure that the king could be trusted to govern according to law, without employing force to settle matters in his own way. Yet, though the army-plot had made it difficult to feel confidence in Charles, Parliament was at first content to rely on constitutional reforms. On the day on which Charles assented to the bill for Strafford's execution he assented to another bill declaring that the existing Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent, a stipulation which made the House of Commons legally irresponsible either to the king or to its constituents, and which could only be justified by the danger of an attack by an armed force at the bidding of the king. Acts were passed abolishing the Courts of Star Chamber and the High Commission, declaring ship-money to be illegal, limiting the king's claims on forests, prohibiting fines for not taking up knighthood, and preventing the king from levying Tonnage and Poundage or impositions without a Parliamentary grant. Taking these acts as a whole, they stripped the Crown of the extraordinary powers which it had acquired in Tudor times, and made it impossible for Charles, legally, to obtain money to carry on the government without the goodwill of Parliament, or to punish offenders without the goodwill of juries. All that was needed in the way of constitutional reform was thus accomplished. As far as law could do it, the system of personal government which Charles had in part inherited from his predecessors and in part had built up for himself, was brought to an end.

CHAPTER XXXIV
THE FORMATION OF PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES AND THE FIRST YEARS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1641-1644

LEADING DATES

Reign of Charles I., 1625-1649

• The Debate on the Grand Remonstrance Nov. 23, 1641

• The Attempt on the Five Members Jan. 4, 1642

• The Battle of Edgehill Oct. 23, 1642

• The Fairfaxes defeated at Adwalton Moor June 30, 1643

• Waller's Defeat at Roundway Down July 13, 1643

• The Raising of the Siege of Gloucester Sept. 5, 1643

• The First Battle of Newbury Sept. 20, 1643

• The Solemn League and Covenant taken by the Houses Sept. 25, 1643

• The Scottish Army crosses the Tweed Jan. 19, 1644

• The Battle of Marston Moor July 2, 1644

• Capitulation of Essex's Infantry at Lostwithiel Sept. 2, 1644

• The Second Battle of Newbury Oct. 27, 1644

1. The King's Visit to Scotland. 1641.– If Charles could have inspired his subjects with the belief that he had no intention of overthrowing the new arrangements by force, there would have been little more trouble. Unfortunately, this was not the case. In August, indeed, the Houses succeeded in disbanding the English army in Yorkshire, and in dismissing the Scottish army across the Tweed; but, in the same month, Charles set out for Scotland, ostensibly to give his assent in person to the Acts abolishing episcopacy in that country, but in reality to persuade the Scots to lend him an army to coerce the English Parliament. Pym and Hampden suspecting this, though they could not prove it, felt it necessary to be on their guard.

2. Parties formed on Church Questions. 1641.– There would, however, have been little danger from Charles if political questions alone had been at stake. Parliament had been unanimous in abolishing his personal government, and no one was likely to help him to restore it by force. In ecclesiastical questions, however, differences arose early. All, indeed, wished to do away with the practices introduced by Laud, but there was a party, which though willing to introduce reforms into the Church, and to subject it to Parliament, objected to the introduction of the Presbyterian system, lest presbyters should prove as tyrannical as bishops. Of this party, the leading members were Hyde, a politician who surveyed State affairs with the eyes of a lawyer, and the amiable Lord Falkland, a scholar and an enthusiast for religious toleration. On the other hand, there was a party which believed that the abolition of episcopacy was the only possible remedy for ecclesiastical tyranny. If Charles had openly supported the first party, it might, perhaps, have been in a majority; but as he did nothing of the sort, an impression gained ground that if bishops were not entirely abolished, they would sooner or later be restored by the king to their full authority, in spite of any limitations which Parliament might put upon them. Moreover, the lords, by throwing out a bill for removing the bishops from their House, exasperated even those members who were still hesitating. A majority in the Commons supported a bill, known as the Root and Branch Bill, for the abolition of episcopacy and for the transference of their jurisdiction to committees of laymen in each diocese. Though this bill was not passed, its existence was sure to intensify the dislike of the king to those who had brought it in.

3. Irish Parties. 1641.– Before the king returned from Scotland, news arrived from Ireland which increased the difficulty of maintaining a good understanding with Charles. Besides the English officials, there were two parties in Ireland discontented with Strafford's rule. Of these one was that of the Catholic lords, mostly of English extraction, who wanted toleration for their religion and a large part in the management of the country. The other was that of the native Celts, who were anxious to regain the lands of which they had been robbed and to live again under their old customs. Both parties were terrified at the danger of increased persecution by the Puritan Parliament at Westminster, especially as the government at Dublin was in the hands of two lords justices, of whom the more active, Sir William Parsons, advocated repressive measures against the Catholics, and the introduction of fresh colonists from England to oust the Irish more completely from the land. In the spring of 1641 the Catholic lords had emissaries at Charles's court offering to send an army to his help in England, if he would allow them to seize Dublin and to overthrow the Government carried on there in his name.

4. The Irish Insurrection. 1641.– Nothing was settled when Charles left England, and in October the native Irish, impatient of delay, attempted to seize Dublin for themselves. The plot was, however, detected, and they turned savagely on the English and Scottish colony in Ulster. Murders, and atrocities worse than ordinary murder, were committed in the North of Ireland. At Portadown the victims were driven into a river and drowned. Women were stripped naked and turned into the wintry air to die of cold and starvation, and children were slaughtered as ruthlessly as full-grown men. The lowest estimate of the destruction which reached England raised the number of victims to 30,000, and, though this was doubtless an immensely exaggerated reckoning, the actual number of victims must have reached to some thousands. In England a bitter cry for vengeance went up, and with that cry was mingled distrust of the king. It was felt to be necessary to send an army into Ireland, and, if the army was to go under the king's orders, there was nothing to prevent him using it – after Ireland had been subdued – against the English Parliament.

5. The Grand Remonstrance. 1641.– The perception of this danger led the Commons to draw up a statement of their case, known as the Grand Remonstrance. They began with a long indictment of all Charles's errors from the beginning of his reign, and, though the statements were undoubtedly exaggerated, they were adopted by the whole House. When, however, it came to the proposal of remedies, there was a great division amongst the members. The party led by Pym and Hampden, by which the Remonstrance had been drawn up, asked for the appointment of ministers responsible to Parliament, and for the reference of Church matters to an Assembly of divines nominated by Parliament. The party led by Hyde and Falkland saw that the granting of these demands would be tantamount to the erection of the sovereignty of Parliament in Church and State; and, as they feared that this in turn would lead to the establishment of Presbyterian despotism, they preferred to imagine that it was still possible to make Charles a constitutional sovereign. On November 23 there was a stormy debate, and the division was not taken till after midnight. A small majority of eleven declared against the king. The majority then proposed to print the Remonstrance for the purpose of circulating it among the people. The minority protested, and, as a protest was unprecedented in the House of Commons, a wild uproar ensued. Members snatched at their swords, and it needed all Hampden's persuasive pleadings to quiet the tumult.

6. The King's Return. 1641.– Charles had at last got a party on his side. When, on November 25, he returned to London, he announced that he intended to govern according to the laws, and would maintain the 'Protestant religion as it had been established in the times of Elizabeth and his father.' He was at once greeted with enthusiasm in the streets, and felt himself strong enough to refuse to comply with the request of the Remonstrance. If only he could have kept quiet, he would probably, before long, have had a majority, even in the House of Commons, on his side. It was, however, difficult for Charles to be patient. He was kept short of money by the Commons, and he had not the art of conciliating opponents. On December 23 he appointed Lunsford, a debauched ruffian, Lieutenant of the Tower, and the opponents of the Court naturally saw in this unwarrantable proceeding a determination to use force against themselves. On December 26 they obtained Lunsford's dismissal, but on the following day they heard that the rebellion in Ireland was spreading, and the increased necessity of providing an army for Ireland impressed on them once more the danger of placing under the orders of the king forces which he might use against themselves.

7. The Impeachment of the Bishops. 1641.– In order to make sure that the House of Lords would be on their side in the time of danger which was approaching, the Commons and their supporters called out for the exclusion of the bishops and the Roman Catholic peers from their seats in Parliament. A mob gathered at Westminster, shouting, No bishops! No Popish lords! The king gathered a number of disbanded officers at Whitehall for his protection, and these officers sallied forth beating and chasing the mob. Another day Williams, Archbishop of York, having been hustled by the crowd, he and eleven other bishops sent to the Lords a protest that anything done by the House of Lords in their absence would be null and void. The Peers, who had hitherto supported the king, were offended, and, for a time, made common cause with the other House against him; whilst the Commons impeached as traitors the twelve bishops who had signed the protest, wanting, not to punish them, but merely to get rid of their votes.

8. The Impeachment of the Five Members. 1642.– Charles, on his part, was exasperated, and fancied that he could strike a blow which his opponents would be unable to parry. He knew that the most active of the leaders of the opposition, Lord Kimbolton in the House of Lords, and Pym, Hampden, Hazlerigg, Holles, and Strode in the Commons, had negotiated with the Scots before they invaded England in 1640, and he believed that they had actually invited them to enter the kingdom in arms. If this was true, they had legally been guilty of treason, and on January 3, 1642, Charles ordered the Attorney-General to impeach them as traitors. Doubts were afterwards raised whether the king had a right to impeach, but Charles does not seem to have doubted at the time that he was acting according to law.

9. The Attempt on the Five Members. 1642.– As the Commons showed signs of an intention to shelter these five members from arrest, Charles resolved to seize them himself. On the 4th of January, followed by about 500 armed men, he betook himself to the House of Commons. Leaving his followers outside, he told the House that he had come to arrest five traitors. As they had already left the House and were on their way to the city, he looked round for them in vain, and asked Lenthall, the Speaker, where they were. "May it please your Majesty," answered Lenthall, kneeling before him, "I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as this House is pleased to direct me." Charles eagerly looked round for his enemies. "The birds are flown," he exclaimed, when he failed to descry them. He had missed his prey, and, as he moved away, shouts of "Privilege! privilege!" were raised from the benches on either side.

10. The Commons in the City. 1642.– The Commons, believing that the king wanted, not to try a legal question, but to intimidate the House by the removal of its leaders, took refuge in the City. The City, which had welcomed Charles in November, when it was thought that he was come to maintain order according to law, now declared for the Commons. On January 10 Lord Kimbolton and the five members were brought back in triumph to Westminster by the citizens. Charles had already left Whitehall, never to return till the day on which he was brought back to be tried for his life.

11. The Struggle for the Militia. 1642.– There was little doubt that if Charles could find enough support, the questions at issue would have to be decided by arms. To gain time, he consented to a Bill excluding the bishops from their seats in the House of Lords, and he then sent the queen abroad to pawn or sell the Crown jewels and to buy arms and gunpowder with the money. He turned his own course to the north. A struggle arose between him and the Houses as to the command of the militia. There was no standing army in England, but the men of military age were mustered every year in each county, the fittest of them being selected to be drilled for a short time, at the expiration of which they were sent home to pursue their ordinary avocations. These drilled men were liable to be called out to defend their county against riots or invasion, and when they were together were formed into regiments called trained bands. All the trained bands in the country were spoken of as the militia. The Houses asked Charles to place the militia under officers of their choosing. "Not for an hour," replied Charles; "it is a thing with which I would not trust my wife and children." The feeling on both sides grew more bitter; Charles, after taking up his quarters at York, rode to Hull, where there was a magazine of arms of which he wished to possess himself. Sir John Hotham, the Parliamentary commander, shut the gates in his face. Both Charles and the Parliament began to gather troops. The Parliament appointed the Earl of Essex, the son of Elizabeth's favourite, a steady, honourable man, without a spark of genius, as their general. On August 22, 1642, Charles set up his standard at Nottingham as a sign of war.

12. Edgehill and Turnham Green. 1642.– The richest part of England – the south-east – took, on the whole, the side of the Parliament; the poorer and more rugged north-west took, on the whole, the side of the king. The greater part of the gentry were cavaliers or partisans of the king; the greater part of the middle class in the towns were partisans of the Parliament, often called Roundheads in derision, because some of the Puritans cropped their hair short. After a successful skirmish at Powick Bridge Charles pushed on towards London, hoping to end the war at a blow. On October 23 the first battle was fought at Edgehill. The king's nephew, Prince Rupert, son of Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, commanded his cavalry. With a vigorous charge he drove before him the Parliamentary horse in headlong flight; but he did not pull up in time, and when he returned from the pursuit he found that the royalist infantry had been severely handled, and that it was too late to complete the victory which he had hoped to win. The fruits of victory, however, fell to the king. The cautious Essex drew back and Charles pushed on for London, reaching Brentford on November 12. That he did not enter London as a conqueror was owing to the resistance of the London trained bands, the citizen-soldiery of the capital. On the 13th they barred Charles's way at Turnham Green. The king hesitated to attack, and drew back to Oxford. He was never to have such another chance again.

13. The King's Plan of Campaign. 1643.– Charles's hopes of succeeding better in 1643 were based on a plan for overwhelming London with superior force. He made Oxford the headquarters of his own army, and he had a second army under Sir Ralph Hopton in Cornwall, and a third army under the Earl of Newcastle in Yorkshire. His scheme was, that whilst he himself attacked London in front, Hopton should advance through the southern counties into Kent, and Newcastle through the eastern counties into Essex. Hopton and Newcastle would then be able to seize the banks on either side of the Thames below London, and thus to interrupt the commerce of the city, without which it would be impossible for it to hold out long.

14. Royalist Successes. 1643.– The weak point in Charles's plan was that his three armies were far apart, and that the Earl of Essex, now stationed in London, might fall upon his main army before Newcastle and Hopton could come to its aid. Towards the end of April, Essex besieged and took Reading, but his troops melted away from disease, and he did not advance against Oxford till June, when his cautious leadership was not likely to effect anything decisive. In the meanwhile the king's party was gaining the upper hand elsewhere. On May 16 Hopton completely defeated the Parliamentarians at Stratton in Cornwall, and was then ready to march eastwards. On June 18 Hampden received a mortal wound in a skirmish at Chalgrove Field. On July 5 Hopton got the better of one of the most energetic of the Parliamentary generals, Sir William Waller, on Lansdown, near Bath, and on July 13 his army thoroughly overthrew the same commander at Roundway Down, near Devizes. On July 26 Bristol was stormed by Rupert. Hopton now hoped to be able to push on towards Kent without difficulty. In the north, too, the king's cause was prospering. On June 30, Newcastle defeated the Parliamentarians, Lord Fairfax and his son, Sir Thomas Fairfax, at Adwalton Moor, close to Bradford. He, too, hoped to be able to push on southwards. It seemed as if the king's plan would be carried out before the end of the summer, and that London would be starved into surrender.

15. The Siege of Gloucester. 1643.– Charles, however, failed to accomplish his design, mainly because the armies of Hopton and Newcastle were formed for the most part of recruits, levied respectively in the west and in the north of England, who cared more for the safety of their own property and families than for the king's cause. In the west, Plymouth, and in the north, Hull, were still garrisoned by the Parliament. Hopton's men were, therefore, unwilling to go far from their homes in Cornwall as long as their fields were liable to be ravaged by the garrison of Plymouth, and in the same way, Newcastle's men would not go far from Yorkshire as long as their fields were liable to be ravaged by the garrison of Hull. The Welshmen, also, who served in the king's own army found their homes endangered by a Parliamentary garrison at Gloucester, and were equally unwilling to push forward. Charles had, therefore, to take Plymouth, Hull, and Gloucester, if he could, before he could attack London. In August he laid siege in person to Gloucester. The London citizens at once perceived that, if Gloucester fell, their own safety would be in peril, and amidst the greatest enthusiasm the London trained bands marched out to its relief. On September 5 the king raised the siege on their approach.