Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (58 page)

While the Scottish option temporarily solved Parliament’s military difficulties, it proved ruinously expensive, not to mention offensive to Independents who had no intention of trading religious oppression by Laudian bishops for that by an English version of the Kirk: in the words of the poet and radical polemicist, John Milton (1608–74), “new presbyter is but old priest writ large.”
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A fresh start was necessary. In the spring of 1645, Parliament passed a Self-Denying Ordinance, which required all current peers and MPs to surrender their military commands. This neatly excluded such underachievers as Essex and Manchester, though at least one exception was made for Cromwell, the most successful general. At the same time, it was proposed to “new model” the army, to reorganize Parliament’s major county and regional units into one centralized force, with unified command and promotion through the ranks, without regard to social standing, birth, or connection. In other words, Parliament was abandoning the traditional militia model upon which most previous English armies had been based. It was also abandoning the Scots Presbyterians. This army’s soldiers would be English, employed full-time, well paid, and ready to march anywhere – within England, at least. While there was no requirement that its officers be “godly,” they had to be enthusiastic for the fight; in practice these tended to be enthusiastic in religion as well. Their captain-general, Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612–71), and their general of Horse, Cromwell, were men of proven commitment and ability.

The New Model Army demonstrated its mettle at Naseby, in Northamptonshire, on June 14, 1645, by defeating a more experienced Royalist force in the last decisive battle of the war (see
map 11
). Cromwell commanded the right wing of cavalry, his son-in-law, Henry Ireton (1611–51), the left, and Fairfax the infantry in the center. Rupert’s Royalist cavalry pushed through Ireton’s horse only to meet heavy resistance at the baggage train. The infantry at the center was evenly matched. But when Cromwell’s forces charged down the flank, they overwhelmed, first, the Royalist cavalry on his wing, and then the infantry in the center: 4,500 Royalist officers and soldiers surrendered. It was only a matter of time until Charles’s last western strongholds fell. The first English Civil War ended within a year. Before turning to its aftermath, it is important to tally the impact of the war itself. In four years of continuous fighting (in fact, hostilities would persist throughout the British Isles off and on through 1651), about one in eight adult males had seen combat; perhaps one in three bore arms at some point. Often, commanders on both sides showed little mercy to civilian populations. As a result, over 180,000 people were killed, some 3.6 percent of the population – a higher proportion of Englishmen killed than in any other war, including World War I.

Revolution, 1646–9

One might think that, with the war won by Parliament, the issues which had provoked it could now be settled. But how? After all, the consequences of Naseby were unprecedented in early modern England: a rightful and undisputed king had been defeated militarily by a rebellious army which sought not to depose him but to limit his power. Previously, during the Wars of the Roses, the struggle had been between rival claimants to royal power – one king versus another. But in 1646 there was only one king and everyone agreed who he was. The question was now, what to do with him? Would he agree to a compromise with Parliament limiting his prerogative? And, if not, what then? Recall Manchester’s fear that if he “beat us once we shall all be hanged.” Even if Charles was disposed to be conciliatory, there was a deeper constitutional problem to be addressed. How could the king accept limitations to make him behave as his subjects wanted and still be king? There were few precedents or models in the early modern world for a compromise: that is, a constitutional monarchy. In their absence, few people wanted to confront the real question left over from the First Civil War: “king or no king?” Because they were unable to confront this larger question, the interested parties began to negotiate over smaller ones.

Before turning to the negotiations themselves, it must be understood that the interested parties were not confined to king and Parliament. They included the Scots Covenanters, Irish Confederates, and the European powers who considered sending aid to both sides at various points. Parliament itself continued to be divided between the Presbyterian “peace party,” who feared disorder and so wanted an agreement with Charles at any price, and the Independent “war party,” who had sought his abject defeat in order to pursue religious reform and preserve the new constitutional framework erected in 1641. And finally, there was the instrument of victory itself, the chief consumer of the government’s revenue and the greatest concentration of ordinary people on either side, the army. No wonder that Sir Jacob Astley (recently created Baron Astley; 1579–1652), one of the last important Royalist officers to surrender, supposedly said to the victorious parliamentary forces, “you have now done your work, boys, and may go to play, unless you will fall out amongst yourselves.”
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The various stakeholders in these negotiations meant, on the one hand, that the king could play each side off against the others. Having lost the war, he might still win the peace. On the other hand, he might become the prize, like the king in a colossal game of chess.

For the next two years Charles negotiated with each interest group, sometimes simultaneously, often repeatedly. But he never did so sincerely. As in his dealings with the Long Parliament in 1640–2, he played for time and, perhaps, a continental, Scottish, or Irish army. He never had any intention of giving up one iota of his prerogative. Rather, he felt that he had already given up too much in signing Strafford’s death warrant and that his recent military defeats were a punishment from God for his earlier compromises. So, once again, he prevaricated, dissembled, and, when push came to shove, refused to budge. He knew full well that this course might be personally fatal; his goal was to preserve the monarchy for his children and successors. As he told Prince Rupert just prior to surrendering in 1646:

I confess that, speaking as a mere soldier or statesman, there is no probability but of my ruin; yet, as a Christian, I must tell you that God will not suffer rebels and traitors to prosper, nor this cause to be overthrown; and whatever personal punishment it shall please him to inflict on me, must not make me repine, much less give over this quarrel. … Indeed I cannot flatter myself with expectation of good success more than this, to end my days with honour and a good conscience.
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For the king, honor and a good conscience had meant sneaking out of besieged Oxford in disguise and riding to surrender himself to the Scots outside Newark, Nottinghamshire, in May 1646 because he thought they might offer him the best deal. He was correct, but when he balked at giving up episcopacy the Scots gave him up to Parliament in January 1647 for £400,000. For a few months Holles’s Presbyterians controlled both Parliament and the king. Their most pressing problem was the army and the swingeing taxes it consumed. Despite the soldiers’ obvious service to the parliamentary cause, the conservative Presbyterian majority in Parliament did not know what to do with them now that the war was over. The soldiers were demanding their back pay (about £600,000) and an Act of Indemnity, that is, a law absolving them of responsibility for acts committed in wartime. In fact, many Presbyterian MPs were more worried about what former soldiers might do in peacetime. They feared the disorder that such a large, experienced force of relatively common warriors, trained in violence, could bring to the countryside if they got hungry, or greedy. Since the army was said to be full of religious zealots, they also feared that the soldiers wanted to turn their victory into revolution by breaking down the existing religious, social, and political order.

In 1647 Parliament decided to deal with the issue by disbanding as much of the army as it could without pay, and sending the rest to pacify Ireland. But the soldiers took a dim view of being sent off to die in the bogs of Ireland before their pay and indemnity were resolved. The resulting crisis politicized them. Unpaid and unloved by their parliamentary masters, the soldiers began to listen to radical notions of independence in religion, equality in society, and even a degree of democracy in government. Their leaders came to see the only hope of getting justice for their men in having a say in the negotiations to settle the State. Regiments each selected an “agitator,” a sort of union shop steward, to represent them – an example of democracy in action. In June the army declared that it was no “mere mercenary army” fighting for pay but was, rather, dedicated “to the defence of our own and the people’s just rights and liberties,” and that they would not disband until their grievances were settled.
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In other words, the army and the army alone (not Parliament) truly represented the national interest – and would now decide where the revolution stopped. To emphasize the point, a group of subordinate officers seized the king and deposited him at army headquarters at Newmarket, Suffolk. In August, the army entered London, forced out Holles and other Presbyterians, and began to negotiate with the king on the basis of a document entitled the
Heads of the Proposals.
It proposed that a bicameral Parliament be elected every two years; that Parliament control the army and navy and nominate all royal ministers; and that all Protestant churches be tolerated in England under a non-coercive episcopacy. This document, if enacted, would have been the first written constitution in English history. Instead, as usual, the king prevaricated, then refused it outright.

At this point the army itself divided. The generals and most officers, known as the Grandees, wanted to maintain military discipline and gentry control of the localities. The rank-and-file, led by their agitators and a small group of political activists known as the Levellers, wanted a fundamental change in how England was ruled. For starters, they demanded near universal manhood suffrage, liberty of conscience and, at most, a constitutional monarchy. They also advocated legal reform, urging that court ducuments be written in simple English, that punishments fit crimes, speedy trials by juries, and equality under the law. Finally, they sought a welfare state for widows and orphans of soldiers. The Levellers put their case to the Grandees in a series of debates at Putney Church, just outside London, at the end of October 1647. The Putney Debates focused on a proposed Leveller constitution,
The Agreement of the People
(1647), and, specifically, its suggestion that the franchise be enlarged. Though many spoke, Ireton best advanced the Grandee position, arguing that they had fought the king to restore the Ancient Constitution, not to change it. He therefore defended the time-honored requirement of 40 shillings (£2) of land for would-be voters and maintained that the franchise should always reside in those with “a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom,” that is, in “the persons in whom all land lies, and in those corporations in whom all trading lies.” We have seen this argument before, though Ireton’s admission of those “in whom all trading lies” was a progressive concession to the growing wealth and ambitions of the mercantile community. In response, Colonel Thomas Rainsborough (d. 1648) set forth the Leveller position that “the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he.” His corollary was “that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government.”
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Here, with eloquent simplicity, the common man demands to be part of the political process irrespective of birth or wealth. Rainsborough’s rationale, based not on civil law (statute), common law (Ancient Constitution), nor God’s law (the Bible), but on natural law (Reason), was a new and dangerous concept that seemed to undermine the hierarchical principle heretofore at the heart of English life. Later in the century it would receive an even clearer and more decisive exposition by John Locke and others. In the end, though the army left Putney with nothing really decided, the Debates remain a monument to the political consciousness of ordinary people, and, more immediately, reveal the army discussing the future with little or no thought about the king.

Soon after Putney, the king fled once again, this time to the Isle of Wight. This put him no closer to safety: though he might look across the English Channel to France, Cromwell’s cousin, who governed the island, held him in Carisbrooke Castle. After more negotiation, Parliament gave up in despair and, in January 1648, voted to make no more addresses to the king. The Scots, however, had continued to parley and, in December 1647, a group of conservative Covenanters signed an “Engagement” with Charles. In return for an army, he promised to establish Presbyterianism in England for three years. This led to a Second Civil War, comprising a series of Royalist revolts in the South, in Wales, and in Scotland. Unfortunately for the rebels, these revolts were not simultaneous, and Fairfax and Cromwell were largely able to mop up the English and Welsh outbreaks before marching north to subdue the Engagers. Any moderation shown toward the enemy during the First Civil War evaporated as Cromwell and his men now saw the Royalists as resisting the evident “Providences of God” revealed in the outcome of the earlier conflict. Some prisoners were summarily executed, and, ominously, both officers and soldiers began to refer to “Charles Stuart, that man of blood.” It was becoming clear that there would be no peace in England while the king lived.