The wars of three kingdoms
I found Kishlansky’s account of the Wars of Three Kingdoms very persuasive, probably the best thing in this book. When you write history you have a choice of the level you want to pitch the narrative, the levels being something like:
- superficial
- good summary
- summary with some detail
- lots of detail
- too much detail
As I explained in my review of Peter H. Wilson’s book about the Thirty Years War, Wilson definitely goes into ‘too much detail’, drowning the reader in specifics while failing to point out important turning points or patterns.
Kishlansky, by contrast, hits what, for me, was the perfect level of description, ‘incisive summary with some detail’.
As an example of really useful summary, take the way he tells us that, put simply, the first three years of the civil war in England (1642-5) consisted mostly of smallish regional armies engaging in small skirmishes or sieges of local centres.
Now I’ve read scores of accounts of the English civil war which give lengthy descriptions of each of these ‘skirmishes’ along with detail of the army groups involved, their leaders, maps and deployments, and so go on for hundreds of pages. At a stroke Kishlansky makes it clear that most of them didn’t, ultimately, matter.
What mattered were a handful of decisions or turning points, such as the king withdrawing his forces after the Battle Brentford in November 1642, the one moment when he had the chance to capture London. Kishlansky is very good on the three famous key battles which he does describe in compelling detail – Edgehill, Marston Moor and Naseby.
But above all, Kishlansky doesn’t lose sight of the fact that the fighting was almost a sideshow compared to the extremely complicated political manoeuvring which went on continuously from 1642 to 1649.
Like many accounts, he almost forgets the Royalist side altogether because the real action was the disagreements within the Parliamentary side, among the Roundheads. Kishlansky brings out how the Presbyterian party within Parliament rose to eminence on the back of their close connections with the invading Scots, lorded it over Parliament for a few years, but then themselves began to appear as an overbearing ‘enemy’ to the growing power of the Independents in Cromwell’s New Model Army, before they were eventually expelled from Parliament and some of them arrested.
Only a close reading of the series of events and the complex political negotiations which went on against a continuously changing backdrop can bring out the fast-moving complexity of the situation, and the tremendous pressures the key actors found themselves under.
This is why, although I’ve read about 40 books about the British civil wars, by far the best remains The King’s Peace (1955) and The King’s War (1958) by Dame Veronica Wedgwood. They are old, now, but they are the only ones I know of which simply describe the events in the order they happened; and as they do so, you realise what a relentless helter-skelter of crises it was.
Only Wedgwood’s books really convey the way the unstoppable torrent of events happening in three separate kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland) interacted and exacerbated each other, to create a continuous sense of political and military crisis, which got worse and worse, and how the fighting, the wars themselves, news of defeats and paranoia about attacks on London and conspiracies and fifth columnists, also contributed to the feverish political atmosphere of the times.
Just like the French Revolution, lofty ideals and principles may have been expressed by various parties, and political historians and left-wing sympathisers with the Levellers and the Diggers, like to dwell on these – but as soon as you look at what actually happened you realise all sides were struggling to react to events which were almost always beyond their control.
There are many ways of interpreting the character and achievements of Oliver Cromwell, but when you read Wedgwood’s thrilling and gripping accounts, you realise it’s easy to overlook the most elementary fact about him, which is that he was able to ride the wild tiger of events in a way no-one else could.
Timeline of the Wars of Three Kingdoms
1640
13 April – first meeting of the Short Parliament
5 May – Charles dissolves the Short Parliament
26 October – Charles forced to sign the Treaty of Ripon
3 November – First meeting of the Long Parliament
11 December – the Root and Branch Petition submitted to the Long Parliament
1641
July – the Long Parliament passes ‘An Act for the Regulating the Privie Councell and for taking away the Court commonly called the Star Chamber’
July – Charles returns to Scotland and accedes to all Covenanter demands
August – the Root and Branch Bill rejected by the Long Parliament
October – outbreak of the Irish Rebellion creating panic in London
1 December – The Grand Remonstrance is presented to the King
December – The Long Parliament passes the Bishops Exclusion Act
1642 until the outbreak of the war
4 January – Charles unsuccessfully attempts to personally arrest the Five Members (John Pym, John Hampden, Denzil Holles, Sir Arthur Haselrig, and William Strode) on the floor of the House of Commons
January – on the orders of the Long Parliament, Sir John Hotham, 1st Baronet seizes the arsenal at Kingston upon Hull
5 February – the bishops of the Church of England are excluded from the House of Lords by the Bishops Exclusion Act
23 February – Henrietta Maria goes to the Netherlands with Princess Mary and the crown jewels
5 March – the Long Parliament passes the Militia Ordinance
15 March – the Long Parliament proclaims that ‘the People are bound by the Ordinance for the Militia, though it has not received the Royal Assent’
April – Sir John Hotham, 1st Baronet refuses the king entrance to Kingston upon Hull
2 June – The Nineteen Propositions rejected
May – The Irish rebellion ends
3 June – The great meeting on Heworth Moor outside York, summoned by Charles to gather support for his cause
July – Charles unsuccessfully besieges Hull
July – Parliament appoints the Committee of Safety
1642 – war begins
22 August -King Charles I raises his standard at Nottingham and the war commences
23 August – Battle of Southam, first sizeable encounter between Royalist & Parliamentarian forces.
19 September – Charles’s Wellington Declaration
23 September – Battle of Powick Bridge
29 September – The Yorkshire Treaty of Neutrality signed, but repudiated by Parliament 4 October
17 October – King Charles I passes through Birmingham, the towns folk seize the King’s carriages, containing the royal plate and furniture, which they convey for security to Warwick Castle, a parliamentary stronghold. The same day there was a skirmish at Kings Norton
23 October – Battle of Edgehill
1 November – Battle of Aylesbury
12 November, Battle of Brentford
13 November – Battle of Turnham Green
17 December – Declaration of Lex Talionis
1 December – Storming of Farnham Castle
Early December – Battle of Muster Green
22 December – Siege of Chichester begins
23 December – Bunbury Agreement designed to keep Cheshire neutral during the Civil War (failed)
27 December – Siege of Chichester ends
1643
19 January – Battle of Braddock Down
28 January – the Long Parliament sends commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Oxford (unsuccessful)
19 March – Battle of Hopton Heath
30 March – Battle of Seacroft Moor
3 April – Battle of Camp Hill — a Royalist victory
8-21 April – Siege of Lichfield — a Royalist capture
25 April – Battle of Sourton Down — Parliamentarian victory
16 May – Battle of Stratton — Royalist victory
29–31 May – Siege of Worcester — Parliamentarians failed to capture
16 June – the Long Parliament passes the Licensing Order
18 June – Battle of Chalgrove Field — John Hampden, hero of resistance to Ship Money, mortally wounded during the battle and dies on Saturday evening of 24 June 1643
30 June – Battle of Adwalton Moor
1 July – first meeting of the Westminster Assembly
4 July – Battle of Burton Bridge
5 July – Battle of Lansdowne (or Lansdown) fought near Bath
13 July – Battle of Roundway Down fought near Devizes
20 July – Battle of Gainsborough
26 July – Storming of Bristol
17 August – the Church of Scotland ratifies the Solemn League and Covenant
2 September – Beginning of Siege of Hull (1643)
18 September – Battle of Aldbourne Chase
20 September – First Battle of Newbury
25 September – the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly ratify the Solemn League and Covenant. Under the terms of the deal with Scotland, the Committee of Safety is superseded by the Committee of Both Kingdoms
11 October – Battle of Winceby
1644
26 January – Battle of Nantwich
3 February – Siege of Newcastle, formal request to surrender to the Scots
29 March – Battle of Cheriton
28 May – Storming of Bolton and the Bolton Massacre
29 June – Battle of Cropredy Bridge
2 July – Battle of Marston Moor
13 September – Second Battle of Aberdeen
19 October – Siege of Newcastle ends with the storming of the city by Scottish soldiers
24 October – the Long Parliament passes the Ordinance of no quarter to the Irish
27 October – Second Battle of Newbury
23 November – first publication of Areopagitica by John Milton
4 November – the Long Parliament sends the Propositions of Uxbridge to the king at Oxford
1645
6 January – the Committee of Both Kingdoms orders the creation of the New Model Army
28 January – the Long Parliament appoints commissioners to meet with the king’s commissioners at Uxbridge
22 February – negotiations over the Treaty of Uxbridge end unsuccessfully
23 April – the Long Parliament passes the Self-denying Ordinance
9 May – Battle of Auldearn
30 May – Siege & sacking of Leicester
14 June – Battle of Naseby
2 July – Battle of Alford
10 July – Battle of Langport
15 August – Battle of Kilsyth
13 September – Battle of Philiphaugh
24 September – Battle of Rowton Heath
October – fear of Royalist attack in south Lincolnshire
Charles goes to Welbeck, Nottinghamshire
17 December – siege of Hereford ends with the surrender of Royalist garrison
1646
18 January – Siege of Dartmouth ends with the surrender of Royalist garrison
3 February – Siege of Chester ends with the surrender of Royalist garrison after 136 days
16 February – Battle of Torrington victory for the New Model Army
10 March – Ralph Hopton surrenders the Royalist army at Tresillian bridge in Cornwall
21 March – Battle of Stow-on-the-Wold the last pitched battle of the First Civil War is a victory for the New Model Army
13 April – Siege of Exeter ends with the surrender of Royalist garrison
5 May – Charles surrenders to a Scottish army at Southwell, Nottinghamshire
6 May, Newark falls to the Parliamentarians
24 June – Siege of Oxford ended with the surrender of Royalist garrison
22 July – Siege of Worcester ended with the surrender of Royalist garrison
27 July – after a 65-day siege, Wallingford Castle, the last English royalist stronghold, surrenders to Sir Thomas Fairfax
19 August – Royalist garrison of Raglan Castle surrendered (Wales)
9 October – the Long Parliament passes the Ordinance for the abolishing of Archbishops and Bishops in England and Wales and for settling their lands and possessions upon Trustees for the use of the Commonwealth
1647
13 March – Harlech Castle the last Royalist stronghold in Wales surrenders to the Parliamentary forces
29 May – General Council of the Army drew-up the Solemn Engagement
3 June – Cornet George Joyce (a junior officer in Fairfax’s horse) with a troop of New Model Army cavalry seizes the King from his Parliamentary guards at Holdenby House and place him in protective custody of the New Model Army
4–5 June – at a rendezvous on Kentford Heath near Newmarket the officers and men of the New Model Army give their assent to the Solemn Engagement
8 June – General Fairfax sends the Solemn Engagement to Parliament along with a letter explaining that the King was now in the custody of the Army negotiations would be conducted through New Model Army representatives
1 August – General Council of the Army offers the Heads of Proposals
31 August – Montrose escapes from the Highlands
October – An Agreement of the People for a firm and present peace upon grounds of common right presented to the Army Council
28 October – Beginning of the Putney Debates which end on 11 November
26 December – a faction of Scottish Covenanters sign The Engagement with Charles I
The Second English Civil War, 1648
8 May – Battle of St. Fagans
16 May(?) – 11 July Siege of Pembroke
1 June – Battle of Maidstone
13 June–28 August – Siege of Colchester
17 August–19 August – Battle of Preston
19 August – Battle of Winwick Pass
28 August – On the evening of the surrender of Colchester, Royalists Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle are shot
15 September – Treaty of Newport
November – leaders in the army draft the Remonstrance of the Army
6 December – Pride’s Purge, when troops under Colonel Thomas Pride remove opponents of Oliver Cromwell from Parliament by force of arms resulting in the so-called ‘Rump Parliament’
1649
15 January – An Agreement of the People of England, and the places therewith incorporated, for a secure and present peace, upon grounds of common right, freedom and safety presented to the Rump Parliament Parliament
20 January – the trial of Charles I of England by the High Court of Justice begins
27 January – the death warrant of Charles I of England is signed
30 January – Charles I of England executed by beheading – the Rump Parliament passes an Act prohibiting the proclaiming any person to be King of England or Ireland, or the Dominions thereof
5 February – The eldest son of Charles I, Charles, Prince of Wales, proclaimed ‘king of Great Britain, France and Ireland’ by the Scottish Parliament at the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh
7 February – The Rump Parliament votes to abolish the English monarchy
9 February – publication of Eikon Basilike, allegedly by Charles himself
14 February – the Rump Parliament creates the English Council of State
February – Charles II proclaimed king of Great Britain, France and Ireland by Hugh, Viscount Montgomery and other Irish Royalists at Newtownards in Ulster
9 March – Engager Duke of Hamilton, Royalist Earl of Holland, and Royalist Lord Capel beheaded at Westminster
17 March – an Act abolishing the kingship is formally passed by the Rump Parliament
24 March – The capitulation of Pontefract Castle which, even after the death of Charles I, remained loyal to Charles II
1 May – AN AGREEMENT OF THE Free People of England. Tendered as a Peace-Offering to this distressed Nation, an extended version from the Leveller leaders, being ‘Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburne, Master William Walwyn, Master Thomas Prince (Leveller), and Master Richard Overton, Prisoners in the Tower of London, May the 1. 1649.’
October – first publication of Eikonoklastes by John Milton, a rebuttal of the pro-Charles Eikon Basilike
Third English Civil War, 1650
1 May – Treaty of Breda signed between Charles II and the Scottish Covenanters
23 June – Charles II signs the Solemn League and Covenant
3 September – Battle of Dunbar, Scotland
1 December – Battle of Hieton, Scotland (skirmish)
1651
1 January – Charles II crowned King of Scots at Scone, prepares an army to invade England
20 July – Battle of Inverkeithing
25 August – Battle of Wigan Lane (skirmish)
28 August – Battle of Upton (the start of the western encirclement of Worcester)
3 September – Battle of Worcester: complete defeat of Charles II’s Scottish army
3 September – start of the escape of Charles II
6 September – Charles II spends the day hiding in the Royal Oak in the woodlands surrounding Boscobel House
16 October – Charles II lands in Normandy, France, after successfully fleeing England
END OF THE CIVIL WARS IN ENGLAND
Causes of the British Civil Wars
Along with the causes of the First World War, the causes of the English Civil War or the Wars of Three Kingdoms are one of the most over-determined and over-explained events in British history.
In a previous blog post I’ve outlined the multiple economic, financial, legal and religious issues facing King Charles when he came to the throne in 1625 and which grew steadily worse through the late 1620s and 1630s.
Exponents of the Whig theory of history say that the war was inevitable because Charles’s medieval Divine Right theory of kingship had to be cleared out of the way to allow more modern liberal freedoms to develop, a historically inevitable process. On this view, this inevitable march of progress suffered a further temporary setback under the brief reign of the Catholic King James II, before the Glorious Revolution of 1688 forced him into exile, installed the solidly Protestant King William III in his place and ushered in a new era of characteristically English liberties and freedom, i.e. the two revolutions led to England having the most democratic and liberal political system in Europe.
Marxist historians (such as Christopher Hill) offer a similarly teleological interpretation i.e. the sense that the civil wars were inevitable, but from a Marxist point of view. For them, the civil war was caused by the historically inevitable rise of the bourgeoisie, that’s to say the backers of new companies and ventures, especially in Britain’s new colonies, the City merchants who backed the East India Company and the new commercial ventures in America and Africa. These were the most economically and socially dynamic parts of British society and so had to overthrow the shackles of the king’s medieval view of economics and finance (i.e. the king’s total control of monopolies and trade) in order to create a more modern legal and economic model framework for business and trade.
I read and was impressed by the inevitabilist model in my 20s and 30s, but since then I have come to side with the ‘revisionist’ accounts I read in the 1990s, the more modern view that the civil wars were a gigantic accident. That there was nothing inevitable about them. Our nearest European neighbours didn’t experience rebellions in the name of either constitutional freedom or of bourgeois businessmen struggling to make the world safe for capitalism.
In this view, Charles definitely faced huge problems in trying to manage highly polarised factions in three different kingdoms – but it could have been done. Look at some of Charles’s contemporaries:
- The kings of Spain not only managed their own fractious nations but territories as remote as the Netherlands, parts of Italy and, of course, an entire empire in the New World.
- The Holy Roman Emperor managed a complex array of kingdoms, including Austria, Bohemia and Hungary.
Although these rulers encountered severe problems during this exact period – Spain was eventually forced to concede the Netherlands their independence – in both of them the monarch not only triumphed but emerged stronger from civil conflicts.
Similarly, France experienced a civil war which is known as the Fronde between 1648 and 1653 and which was also sparked by the king raising deeply unpopular new taxes. And yet Louis XIV not only triumphed over his enemies, but led France to become the strongest power on continental Europe.
In other words, the mid-17th century was certainly a deeply turbulent era of history, and any ruler of the three British kingdoms certainly faced extremely difficult problems – but a better ruler than Charles might have been able to manage it. He would not have provoked the Scottish Presbyterians as he did and, once provoked, he would have managed a Scottish solution. Instead Charles refused to make any compromise and so turned disaffection into open, armed rebellion. A more able ruler would have managed his relationship with Parliament better so that when the Irish Rebellion broke out in 1641, he could have worked with Parliament to solve it (i.e. put it down by military force). Instead, Charles had created a great coalition of enemies in Parliament, across the country, and then in Scotland so that when the external crisis of the Irish rebellion his the political system, instead of uniting the English, it turned into the lever that broke them apart.
In the same way, after reading so many hundreds of accounts of it, I take the outbreak of the First World War not to have been at all inevitable. There were lots of forces tending towards it, but previous flare-ups between the European powers had been successfully de-escalated at specially convened peace conferences, and there was no intrinsic reason why the little local crisis caused by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand couldn’t have been managed the same way, too.
It was a particular sequence of individual miscalculations and mistakes – the Austrians taking so long to present their ultimatum to Serbia and then Germany giving Austria blank check support – which triggered the war, and these could have been avoided.
I think there is a good case for arguing that there is a sort of technological inevitability to history – that certain inventions follow logically from each other and that these change the economic basis of society and social arrangements. Some countries are self-evidently more technologically advanced than others, and the nature of these technological developments follows a certain logic. Possibly there is a certain ‘path’ which nations follow in the name of ‘development’.
But I don’t think this translates into political inevitability. These technological developments can happen under capitalist or communist, democratic or authoritarian regimes. And nations with very advanced cultures e.g. China or India, never made the technological breakthroughs which happened in the West.
So I think political changes certainly reflect broad social and economic changes, but the way they are shaped and, quite often, the specific trigger points which really decide things one way or the other, are highly contingent on key individuals. The German High Command, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Mao – these individuals had enormous, seismic impacts on the flow of events and the world we live in today.
In my own time, the long-term decline of heavy industries in Britain and their offshoring to India and China and other developing countries might have been ‘inevitable’ following the logic of technological development which I’ve suggested. But wasn’t at all inevitable that this process would be managed by the hatchet-faced government of Margaret Thatcher – and her personality and her personal beliefs made all the difference. Compare and contrast the way the same kind of de-industrialisation was managed in Germany or France.
Back to the 17th century, there were certainly long-term economic, social, political and religious issues which faced any ruler of Britain. But Charles I, John Pym and Oliver Cromwell played decisive roles in the outbreak and development of the wars of three kingdoms which were shaped by their characters, abilities and decisions.
For example, there was nothing ‘inevitable’ about the way a small-time East Anglian squire named Oliver Cromwell would turn out to be a military strategist and a political operator of genius, and so be able to not only manage the complex religious, political and military forces unleashed by over ten years of war, but then to go on and maintain England as a republic for ten further long years.
But above all, we’d never even have heard of Cromwell if Charles, at a number of key moments, had been prepared to make concessions – he might have averted war, or shortened the war, or ended it before he drove his opponents into the corner of having to execute him. Imagine what would have happened if he and Archbishop Laud never made their ill-fated journey back to Scotland, been appalled at the ragged state of the Scots Kirk and hadn’t decided to impose ‘unity’ i.e. an English prayer book, on the Scots. Or if he’d had the sense to simply consult the Scottish Parliament and Assembly of the Kirk during its drafting. Or had simply been prepared to make concessions when riots broke out at its first use in Scottish churches. None of those events were fore-ordained, they stem from the decisions of one person.
But instead of this sensible, collegiate approach, Charles’s narrow-minded inflexibility meant he literally couldn’t conceive of consulting anyone else about his decisions, nor of making any kind of compromise when he was opposed. These very specific aspects of Charles’s character were in now way ‘inevitable’ but were entirely contingent.
So, in my opinion, above everything else, the wars of three kingdoms were the direct, personal fault of the arrogant, uncompromising but weak King Charles I.
Books & Boots 
Political documents of the British civil wars
What follows are summaries of some of the key political documents produced between the start of Charles I’s conflict with Scotland in 1637 and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Instead of a chronological or thematic approach to the period, this is a different angle from which to consider events, a record of the proliferation of plans and constitutions cooked up by all sides in their attempts to find a solution to the nation’s deep divisions.
Lining them up like this brings out one of the central ideas of Mark Kishlansky’s history of the 17th century, namely the collapse of consensus, the collapse of belief in a central set of political and religious values which characterised the era, and the countless attempts made by different political players to rebuild it.
In the last few documents of the series you can see the realisation emerging that the late-medieval idea of a hierarchical and completely homogeneous society was permanently broken and that only a system which allowed for some measure of tolerance and pluralism could replace it.
The question of just how much pluralism and tolerance could be permitted and society remain, in some sense, united or coherent, remained an open question – in fact, arguably, it’s one of the main threads of British social and political history right up to the present day.
To me what this proliferation of documents indicates is how very difficult it is, once you abandon tradition and precedent, to draw up a new political constitution in a period of crisis. It’s one of the reasons revolutions are so tumultuous. Getting rid of the ancien regime, especially if it’s embodied in one hated ruler (Charles I, Louis XVIII, Czar Nicholas II, the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi) is relatively easy. Finding a successor system which all the competing factions can unite behind… almost impossible.
Which is why revolutions often become uncontrollable by all except the most ideological, ruthless and uncompromising: Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin, Ayatollah Khomeini. Or collapse into civil war: Iraq, Libya.
I’m aware that the documents are in a broad range of genres – from constitutions enacted by central government to the manifestos of fringe groups (the Levellers and even more so, the Diggers), from religious oaths to political treaties. A proper study would take this more into account. I am concerned simply to give an indication of a) the sheer number of them b) their range and variety, and – as said above – the way they show how, once a shared consensus has collapsed, it is so very difficult to create a new one.
1638 The Scottish National Covenant
In 1637 King Charles I and Archbishop Laud tried to bring the separate churches of England and Scotland closer together, firstly by the introduction of a new Book of Canons to replace John Knox’s Book of Discipline as the authority for the organisation of the Kirk, and secondly by the introduction of a modified form of the Book of Common Prayer into Scotland. Charles and Laud consulted neither the Scottish Parliament or the Assembly of the Kirk with the inevitable result that the proposals met with outrage from Scots determined to preserve their national and religious identity.
At the first service where they were introduced, on 23 July 1637 in St Giles’s cathedral in Edinburgh, Jenny Geddes flung her prayer stool at the dean as he read from the book, and started a riot. Similar demonstrations took place in churches all across Scotland where the new liturgy was introduced.
This spontaneous protest was soon organised by Presbyterian elders and aristocrats into a campaign of petitions denouncing the Laudian prayer book and the power of the bishops. These coalesced into a committee which drew up a National Covenant to unite the protesters. The Covenant called for adherence to doctrines already enshrined by Acts of Parliament and for a rejection of untried ‘innovations’ in religion.
In February 1638, at a ceremony in Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, large numbers of Scottish noblemen, gentry, clergy and burgesses signed the Covenant, committing themselves under God to preserving the purity of the Kirk. Copies were distributed throughout Scotland for signing on a wave of popular support. Those who hesitated were often intimidated into signing and clergymen who opposed it were deposed. By the end of May 1638, the only areas of Scotland where the Covenant had not been widely accepted were the remote western highlands and the counties of Aberdeen and Banff, where resistance to it was led by the Royalist George Gordon, Marquis of Huntly.
An Assembly was held at Glasgow in 1638 where the Covenanter movement became the dominant political and religious force in Scotland.
In 1643 the objectives of the Covenant were incorporated into the Solemn League and Covenant which formed the basis of the military alliance between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters against the Royalists.
1641 The Grand Remonstrance
A Remonstrance against King Charles I was first proposed by George Digby, MP for Dorset, soon after the Long Parliament assembled in November 1640. The idea was taken up by John Pym in 1641. Pym planned to use it as part of his campaign to transfer control of the armed forces to Parliament by undermining confidence in the King and his ministers and by demonstrating the integrity of Parliament.
The Remonstrance was drafted between August and November 1641 by Pym and his supporters. These included John Hampden, John Glynn, Sir John Clotworthy, Arthur Goodwyn and others who later formed the ‘Middle Group’ that was associated with Pym’s efforts to bridge the parliamentarian ‘War’ and ‘Peace’ parties during the early years of the English Civil War.
The Grand Remonstrance was a long, wide-ranging document that listed all the grievances perpetrated by the King’s government in Church and State since the beginning of his reign. Rather than blaming the King himself, the Remonstrance emphasised the role of bishops, papists and ‘malignant’ ministers and advisers who were alleged to have deliberately provoked discord and division between King and Parliament.
In contrast, the Remonstrance described the measures taken by the Long Parliament towards rectifying these grievances during its first year in office, including the abolition of prerogative courts and illegal taxes, legislation for the regular summoning of Parliament, and a partial reform of the Church. Thus the House of Commons was presented as the true defender of the King’s rightful prerogative, of the Protestant faith, of the privileges of Parliament and the liberties of the people.
In order to continue its work, the Remonstrance called for the setting up of an Assembly of Divines, nominated by Parliament, to supervise ongoing reform of the Church; furthermore, it demanded that the King’s ministers should be approved by Parliament, with the right of veto over those it considered unsuitable.
On 22 November 1641, after a stormy debate that lasted long into the night, the House of Commons passed the Remonstrance by a narrow margin of 159 votes to 148. The King’s supporters who tried to enter a protest were shouted down in a bad-tempered confrontation that almost ended in a riot. Oliver Cromwell is said to have remarked that if the Remonstrance had not been passed he would have sold all he had and gone overseas to America.
Opponents of the Remonstrance, who included Viscount Falkland and Edward Hyde, formed what was, for the first time, a recognisable Royalist party in Parliament. The Remonstrance was presented to the King on 1 December 1641. He ignored it for as long as possible, so Parliament took the unprecedented step of having it printed and circulated in order to rally outside support. On 23 December, the King finally presented his reply. Drafted by Edward Hyde, it rejected the Remonstrance but in reasoned and conciliatory tones calculated to appeal to moderate opinion.
1643 The Solemn League and Covenant
The alliance between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters was sealed with the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant by both Houses of Parliament and the Scottish commissioners on 25 September 1643. It was a military league and a religious covenant. Its immediate purpose was to overwhelm the Royalists, who in 1643 seemed in a strong position to win the English Civil War.
An alliance between Parliament and the Scots was first proposed by John Pym early in 1643. Parliament was anxious to secure military help from Scotland in order to counter Royalist victories in England. The Convention of Estates in Edinburgh favoured the alliance after the discovery of the Earl of Antrim’s conspiracy to bring over an Irish Catholic army to support a projected uprising of Scottish Royalists. However, the Covenanters regarded the alliance principally as a religious union of the two nations. They hoped to unite the churches of Scotland and England under a Presbyterian system of church government.
In August 1643, the four commissioners appointed by the House of Commons arrived in Edinburgh. They were Sir Henry Vane, Sir William Armyne, Thomas Hatcher and Henry Darley. They were accompanied by two clergymen, the Presbyterian Stephen Marshall and the Independent Philip Nye. Although the House of Lords had voted in favour of the alliance, no peers were prepared to go to Scotland to take part in the negotiations. Sir Henry Vane emerged as the leading spokesman of the English delegation.
Both sides were eager to defeat the Royalists so the negotiations proceeded quickly. The Westminster Parliament ratified the new covenant within two weeks of receiving it at the end of August 1643. Certain alterations were made to avoid an immediate commitment to strict Presbyterianism and these were accepted by the Convention of Estates.
The Scots agreed to send an army into England on condition that Parliament would co-operate with the Kirk in upholding the Protestant religion and uprooting all remaining traces of popery. Although it was implied that Presbyterian forms of worship and church government would be enforced in England, Wales and Ireland, the clause was qualified to read that church reform would be carried out ‘according to the Word of God’ – which was open to different interpretations.
Reform of the Anglican church was debated at the Westminster Assembly, but a Presbyterian religious settlement for England was strongly opposed by Independents and others. The settlement that was eventually imposed was regarded as a compromise by the Covenanters.
In January 1644, the Army of the Covenant marched into England to take the field against the Royalists. Parliament decreed that the Covenant was to be taken by every Englishman over the age of eighteen. Although no penalty was specified, the names of those who refused to sign were to be certified to Parliament. Signing the Covenant became a prerequisite for holding any command or office under Parliament until King Charles I made his own alliance with the Scots in 1648.
After the execution of Charles I, Kirk leaders pressed the Solemn League and Covenant on his son Charles II at the Treaty of Breda (1650). However, the defeat of the Royalist-Scots alliance at the battle of Worcester in September 1651 ended all attempts to impose Presbyterianism in England.
1646 The Newcastle Propositions
The Newcastle Propositions were drawn up by the Westminster Parliament as a basis for a treaty with King Charles I in July 1646 after the defeat of the Royalists in the First Civil War. The King had surrendered to Parliament’s Scottish allies rather than to Parliament itself and was held in semi-captivity at Newcastle.
There was resentment among English Parliamentarians that the King was in the hands of the Scots, and tension had increased after an intercepted letter revealed that secret negotiations had passed between the King and the Scots earlier in the year. Fearing that the alliance with Parliament was under threat, the Committee of Estates in Edinburgh instructed the Scottish commissioners in London to consent to Parliament’s proposals, even though they fell short of the Covenanters’ ideals in the settlement of religion.
The Propositions put to the King consisted of nineteen clauses. The main points were:
1647 The Heads of the Proposals
These were a set of propositions intended to be a basis for a constitutional settlement after King Charles I was defeated in the First English Civil War. The document was drafted by Commissionary-General Henry Ireton and Major-General John Lambert. during the summer of 1647 when the Army was engaged in a political power struggle with Presbyterian MPs over the settlement of the nation. The proposals were termed the ‘Heads’ to indicate that they were a broad outline, to be negotiated in detail later.
Although the Army proposals were more lenient than the terms offered in Parliament’s Newcastle Propositions, the King regarded them as too restrictive and rejected them outright. During the negotiations, Ireton and Cromwell lost the support of the Army radicals, who were disappointed that the proposals made no concessions to Leveller demands for a wider franchise, and who criticised the Grandees’ ‘servility’ in their dealings with the King.
Meanwhile, Charles continued his attempts to play off the Army and Parliament against one another. He also began secretly negotiating with a faction among the Scots, which was to lead to the Second Civil War in 1648.
At the Putney Debates (October-November 1647), where the Army Council discussed a new constitution for England, Ireton promoted the Heads of the Proposals as a moderate alternative to the Leveller-inspired Agreement of the People.
Six years later, elements of Ireton’s proposals were incorporated into the Instrument of Government – the written constitution that defined Cromwell’s powers as Lord Protector. The religious settlement proposed by Ireton in 1647 was virtually identical to that finally adopted in the Toleration Act of 1689.
1647 to 1649 An Agreement of the People
The Agreement of the People was the principal constitutional manifesto associated with the Levellers. It was intended to be a written constitution that would define the form and powers of government and would also set limits on those powers by reserving a set of inalienable rights to the people. It would take the form of a contract between the electorate and the representative, to be renewed at each election. The Agreement developed over several versions between October 1647 and May 1649.
Original Draft, 1647
An Agreement of the People for a firm and present peace upon grounds of common right was first drafted in October 1647 when Agitators of the New Model Army and civilian Levellers collaborated to propose an outline for a new constitution in the aftermath of the First Civil War. It was probably drafted by John Wildman though its authorship is not known for certain. Stating that sovereign power should reside in the people of England rather than with the discredited King or Parliament, the original Agreement consisted of four clauses:
Certain constraints were placed on Parliament: it was not to interfere with freedom of religion; it was not to press men to serve in the armed forces; it could not prosecute anyone for their part in the recent war; it was not to exempt anyone from the ordinary course of the law; all laws passed by Parliament should be for the common good.
The proposals were debated at the Putney Debates of October and November 1647 where the Grandees Cromwell and Ireton tried to curb Leveller extremism, particularly over a proposal to extend the franchise to all adult males. Parliament denounced the Agreement as destructive to the government of the nation and ordered Fairfax to investigate its authorship. Attempts to gain wider Army support for the Agreement at the Corkbush Field rendezvous were forcibly suppressed by the Grandees.
The Whitehall Debates, 1648 to 1649
During 1648, civilian and military supporters of the Agreement continued to debate and refine its proposals. The Armies Petition or a new Engagement was drafted by a group of Agitators at St Albans in April 1648 and was published in tandem with a related civilian broadside, A New Engagement, or Manifesto. These documents expanded upon the original Agreement to include more specific proposals for legal and economic reform.
After the King’s defeat in the Second Civil War, John Lilburne promoted an extended version of the Agreement which was discussed by a committee of Levellers, London Independents, MPs and army Grandees at Whitehall in December 1648. These discussions took place in the aftermath of Pride’s Purge when the King’s trial was imminent.
Lilburne wanted to secure Parliament’s acceptance of the Agreement before the King was brought to trial so that the trial would have a basis in a legitimate and legal constitution. However, Lilburne and his colleague Richard Overton walked out of the discussions when Army officers led by Henry Ireton insisted upon making further modifications to the Agreement before it was presented to Parliament.
The discussions continued in Lilburne’s absence. While Ireton appeared to make concessions to the Levellers over the franchise, it is probable that he was playing for time to distract the Army Levellers while preparations for the King’s trial went ahead. The revised Agreement was finally presented to the House of Commons as a proposal for a new constitution on 20 January 1649, the very day that the public sessions of the High Court of Justice began. As Ireton had calculated, MPs postponed discussion of the Agreement until after the trial, and it was never taken up again by Parliament.
Final version, May 1649
The Grandees’ modification of the Agreement of January 1649 was the Army’s last official involvement in its evolution. However, Lilburne and the civilian Levellers regarded Ireton’s intervention as a betrayal and continued to refine their proposals. A fully developed version of the Agreement – An Agreement of the Free People of England, tendered as a Peace-Offering to this distressed Nation – was published in May 1649, signed jointly by John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn and Thomas Prince. Its proposals included:
The final version was published after the Leveller leaders had been imprisoned by order of the Council of State and a few weeks before the suppression of the Army Levellers at Burford on 17 May 1649, after which the Leveller movement was effectively finished.
1648 The Army Remonstrance
The Remonstrance of General Fairfax and the Council of Officers was a manifesto adopted by the New Model Army in November 1648 to justify its intention to abandon treaty negotiations with King Charles and to bring him to trial as an enemy of the people. Although it was issued under the authority of Fairfax and the Council of Officers, the Remonstrance was primarily the work of Henry Ireton.
In September 1648, Parliament opened negotiations for a settlement with King Charles at the Treaty of Newport. However, Army radicals demanded that the negotiations should be abandoned and the King brought to justice for inflicting the Second Civil War upon the nation.
Ireton wrote to General Fairfax proposing that the Army should purge Parliament of MPs who supported the Treaty. After Fairfax rejected the proposal, Ireton began drafting the Remonstrance. Several petitions from radical regiments demanding justice against the King were presented to Fairfax during the following weeks, possibly under Ireton’s direction. Under pressure from the radicals, Fairfax agreed to call a meeting of the General Council of the Army at St Albans to discuss the situation. In contrast to the Putney Debates of the previous year, representatives of the common soldiers were excluded from the discussions.
The General Council convened in St Albans Abbey on 7 November 1648. After discussion of the petitions and general grievances of the soldiers, Ireton presented the draft of the Army Remonstrance on 10 November. It was initially rejected by Fairfax and the moderate officers but their opposition evaporated after 15 November when the House of Commons voted to allow the King to return to London on completion of the Newport Treaty and to restore his lands and revenues.
Fearing that Parliament intended to grant an unconditional restoration, the Army united behind Ireton’s Remonstrance. After some last-minute amendments to ensure the support of the Levellers, the Remonstrance was adopted by the General Council on 18 November 1648.
Under the maxim salus populi suprema lex (‘the safety of the people is the supreme law’), the Remonstrance proclaimed the sovereignty of the people under a representative government. Divine providence would prove the righteousness or otherwise of the government’s actions, and would also thwart unjustified rebellion against authority. Thus, the defeat of King Charles in the Second Civil War vindicated the actions of the Army as the defenders of the people. It was argued that the King should be brought to account because he had broken the sacred covenant with his people and attempted to place himself above the law.
The Remonstrance also proposed a set of Leveller-inspired constitutional reforms, including the possibility of an elective monarchy. Parliament was to set a date for its own dissolution, to be followed by annual or bi-annual Parliaments elected on a reformed franchise. There was to be a written constitution with a declaration of parliamentary authority over the King and Lords. All office-holders, including the monarch, were to subscribe to the Levellers’ Agreement of the People.
A delegation of officers headed by Colonel Ewer presented the Remonstrance to Parliament on 20 November. After an initial flurry of opposition led by William Prynne, Parliament postponed further discussion until treaty negotiations with the King at Newport were completed. Meanwhile, the Army moved its headquarters from St Albans to Windsor. On 28 November, the General Council of the Army resolved to march into London. With Parliament still refusing to discuss the Remonstrance and apparently intent on implementing the Treaty of Newport, Ireton initiated the train of events that led to Pride’s Purge in December 1648.
1649 England’s New Chains Discovered
On 26 February one of the leading radicals in the army, John Lilburne, published this attack on the new Commonwealth, in which he asserted the illegality of the High Court of Justice, the Council of State (which, he pointed out ,rested solely on the diminished or Rump Parliament) and the Council of the Army, which he accused of having become an instrument for the rich officers against the rank and file.
His agitation did not go unnoticed. In March 1649, Lilburne and other Leveller leaders were arrested. In October, Lilburne was brought to trial at the Guildhall, charged with high treason and with inciting the Leveller mutinies. He conducted his own defence, during which he raised strong objections to all aspects of the prosecution and quoted directly from Sir Edward Coke’s Institutes, or commentaries on the laws of England. The jury found Lilburne Not Guilty, to enthusiastic cheers from crowds of his supporters and well-wishers.
April 1649 The True Levellers Standard Advanced
This was the manifesto of the splinter group of Levellers who decided to put theory into practice and claimed a patch of common land near Weybridge in Surrey and began digging it. It was written by their leader Gerard Winstanley who has gone down as a hero to Marxists and left-leaning liberals. They thought all hierarchy should be abolished, wealth should be redistributed to abolish poverty, that the land was a common treasury and all the land parcelled out to households who would have equal rights to cultivate them and share the proceeds. As a result they were nicknamed the Diggers. Within months they’d been driven from the original site by the local landowners, and attempted their communal experiment in various other locations until fading away.
1650 The Treaty of Breda
After the execution of Charles I in January 1649, the Scottish Parliament proclaimed his son the new king, Charles II. However, the government of Scotland was dominated by the covenanting Kirk Party, which was determined that Charles should take the Covenant and agree to impose Presbyterianism throughout the Three Kingdoms before he could be crowned King of Scots or receive Scottish help to regain the throne of England.
Initial negotiations between Charles and representatives of the Scottish government were held at The Hague in March 1649 but broke down because Charles did not accept the legitimacy of the Kirk Party régime. However, his hopes of using Ireland as a rallying ground for the Royalist cause were thwarted by Cromwell’s invasion in August 1649. Various European heads of state offered sympathy but no practical help for regaining the throne, so Charles and his council were obliged to call for another round of negotiations with the Scots.
Negotiations between Charles II and a delegation of Scottish commissioners opened at Breda in the Netherlands on 25 March 1650. Aware of Charles’ desperate situation, the demands made by the Scottish Parliament were harsh:
Bad-tempered wrangling continued through March and April. Charles tried to gain concessions that would allow a reconciliation with the Engagers, who were excluded from office in Scotland by the Act of Classes. He would not impose Presbyterianism in England nor would he annul the Irish treaty. But to the dismay of English Royalists, Charles finally agreed to take the Oath of the Covenant. Other contentious issues were to be discussed upon his arrival in Scotland. He signed the Treaty of Breda on 1 May 1650 and took the Covenant immediately before landing in Scotland on 23 June 1650.
Charles then led a Scottish army into England which was comprehensively crushed at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, the final engagement of the war in England which had started in 1642. Charles escaped the battlefield and was on the run for 45 days till he managed to take ship to France and nine years of exile.
1653 The Instrument of Government
England’s first written constitution, the Instrument of Government was a constitutional settlement drafted by Major-General John Lambert during the autumn of 1653 and adopted by the Council of Officers when the Nominated Assembly surrendered its powers to Oliver Cromwell in December.
Lambert’s original intention had been that the old constitution of King, Lords and Commons should be replaced by one of King, Council and Parliament. In discussion with a few trusted advisers after the abdication of the Nominated Assembly, Cromwell amended the Instrument to avoid reference to the royal title, which was likely to be unacceptable to the Army.
Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, executive power passed to an elected Lord Protector, in consultation with a Council of State numbering between thirteen and twenty-one members. Cromwell was declared Lord Protector for life, though it was stressed that the office was not hereditary. He was required to call triennial Parliaments consisting of a single House of 400 members from England and 30 each from Scotland and Ireland, to remain in session for at least five months.
Parliamentary constituencies were re-arranged in an attempt to lessen the influence of the gentry in favour of the emerging middle class who, it was hoped, would be more inclined to support the Protectorate government. The number of MPs from towns and boroughs (where voting was traditionally influenced by the local gentry) was significantly reduced and representation of the universities was limited. To balance the representative, the number of MPs from the counties was correspondingly increased.
In a direct repudiation of Leveller ideas, the county franchise was restricted to persons with land or personal property valued at £200 or more. The borough franchise remained with aldermen, councillors and burgesses. Furthermore, Roman Catholics and known Royalists were declared ineligible to vote or seek election.
Under the Instrument, Parliament was charged with raising revenue for establishing and maintaining a standing army of 10,000 horse and dragoons and 20,000 foot for the defence of England, Scotland and Ireland.
Liberty of worship was granted to all except Roman Catholics and those guilty of ‘licentiousness’ (i.e. the extreme sectarians).
The Instrument of Government was England’s first written constitution. It was adopted by the Council of Officers on 15 December 1653 and Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector the next day. The First Protectorate Parliament duly assembled on 3 September 1654. However, the abrupt termination of Parliament in January 1655 meant that MPs never finished revising the Instrument of Government and so it was never legally endorsed. Doubts regarding its legal authority led to the resignation of the Lord Chief Justice Henry Rolle in June 1655.
The Instrument was superseded in 1657 by the Humble Petition and Advice.
1657 Humble Petition and Advice
The Humble Petition and Advice was a constitutional document drawn up by a group of MPs in 1657 under which Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell was offered the Crown. It represented an attempt by civilian Parliamentarians to move back towards traditional forms of government after the imposition of various army-led constitutional experiments, in particular the unpopular Rule of the Major-Generals.
The offer of the Crown was intended to limit Cromwell’s power rather than extend it, because as King his power would be defined by precedent. The Humble Petition aimed to legitimise the constitution since it came from an elected Parliament, unlike its predecessor the Instrument of Government.
The first version of the Humble Petition was known as the Humble Address and Remonstrance. It was drafted by a small group which included Lord Broghill, Edward Montagu and Oliver St John. The Remonstrance was brought before the Second Protectorate Parliament on 23 February 1657 by Sir Christopher Packe, a former lord mayor of London. It included proposals for the re-introduction of a second House of Parliament and for the establishment of a national church regulated by a Confession of Faith, but its most controversial proposal was that the Protector should be invited to assume the office and title of King.
This proposal was supported by most lawyers and civilian MPs but was fiercely opposed by Major-General Lambert and other army officers as well as by republicans and religious radicals.
Cromwell agonised over the decision for several months and finally declined the offer of the Crown on 8 May. A revised version of the proposal, which avoided reference to the royal title, was adopted on 25 May. Cromwell was re-installed as Lord Protector in a ceremony still reminiscent of a royal coronation on 26 June 1657.
Under the new constitution, Cromwell was to remain Lord Protector for life and could now choose his own successor. He was required to call triennial Parliaments which were to consist of two chambers: the elected House of Commons and a second chamber, or Upper House (referred to only as the ‘other house’), of between forty and seventy persons nominated by the Protector but approved by Parliament. The Upper House was intended to mediate between the Lower House and the Protector. It had the right to veto any legislation passed in the Lower House and was roundly condemned by republicans as too reminiscent of the old House of Lords. The Council of State was to become the Protector’s privy council, consisting of 21 members chosen by the Protector and approved by Parliament.
After the Instrument of Government, the Humble Petition and Advice was England’s second – and last – written constitution. It differed significantly from the Instrument in that it was drawn up by civilian parliamentarians rather than by army officers and also in that it was legally endorsed by Parliament. It remained in force throughout the remainder of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell and during the brief jurisdiction of his successor Richard Cromwell.
1660 The Declaration of Breda
This was a manifesto issued in April 1660 by the exiled Charles II in which he outlined his initial terms for the Restoration of the monarchy. The Declaration was drawn up by Charles himself and his three principal advisers, Sir Edward Hyde, the Marquis of Ormond and Sir Edward Nicholas.
In March 1660, shortly after the final dissolution of the Long Parliament, General George Monck entered into secret negotiations with Charles’ representative Sir John Grenville regarding the possibility of the King’s return to power. Grenville was authorised to offer Monck high office in return for his help, while Monck himself claimed to have always been secretly working towards the Restoration – a view that came to be widely accepted later.
Monck’s terms were geared primarily towards satisfying the material concerns of the army:
Following Monck’s advice to move from Spanish territory to Breda in the Protestant Netherlands, Charles and his principal advisers prepared a conciliatory declaration that touched upon the major issues of indemnity, confirmation of land sales and the religious settlement. A free pardon and amnesty was offered to all who would swear loyalty to the Crown within forty day of the King’s return.
However, Charles skirted around all points of contention by referring the final details of the Restoration settlement to a future Parliament. Charles was aware that any legislation passed by the forthcoming Convention Parliament would have to be confirmed or refuted by a later Parliament summoned under the King’s authority, and that the blame for inevitable disappointments in the Restoration settlement would then be borne by Parliament rather than by the Crown.
Smart thinking.
The Declaration was signed by Charles on 4 April 1660. Copies were prepared with separate letters to the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the army, the fleet and the City of London. Monck was offered a commission as commander-in-chief of the army. When Sir John Grenville delivered the Declaration to the newly-elected Convention Parliament on 1 May, both Houses unanimously voted for the Restoration.
Sources
The period 1649 to 1658 is covered by pages 189 to 212 of A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603 to 1714 by Mark Kishlansky. I’ve also sourced information from Wikipedia. But the main source for a lot of this information was the excellent British Civil Wars, Commonwealth and Protectorate website, which covers all aspects of the subject and includes really excellent maps.
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Posted by Simon on August 30, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/political-documents-of-the-civil-wars/