THE FIRST CAMPAIGN
1642
From the day when King Charles raised his standard at Nottingham, and
even before that date, England was divided into two camps, according as
men elected to obey the King or the Parliament. The country was about to
learn by experience what civil war meant, and to suffer as it had not
suffered since the fifteenth century. In the Wars of the Roses, two
rival houses had laid claim to the allegiance of the people; now its
obedience was demanded by two rival authorities. Moreover, apart from
the question which authority ought to be obeyed, the fact that the
Parliament itself was divided made a choice difficult and obscured the
main issue. The House of Commons was no longer the almost unanimous body
which it had been in November, 1640. About 175 members followed the
King’s flag, while nearly three hundred remained at Westminster. In the
Upper House the preponderance was overwhelmingly on the King’s side.
Rather more than thirty peers threw in their lot with the popular party,
while about eighty supported the King, and about twenty took no part in
the struggle.
Very various, therefore, were the motives which led men to choose one
side or the other. To many peers, the fate of the King and the nobility
seemed inseparably linked together, and like Newcastle they loved
monarchy as the foundation and support of their own greatness. Some,
lately ennobled by Charles and his father, had personal obligations to
the House of Stuart, which they were ready to repay by any sacrifice.
“Had I millions of crowns or scores of sons,” wrote Lord Goring to his
wife, “the King and his cause should have them all with better will than
to eat if I were starving.... I had all from the King, and he hath all
again.” Of the parliamentary peers, a few like Brooke, Saye, and Warwick
were ardent Puritans and were moved by religious zeal quite as much as
by political motives. In Northumberland, “the proudest man alive,” the
independent spirit of the feudal baron seemed to live again. Holland was
ambitious and in disfavour at Court; he hoped to be one of the
Parliament’s generals. Others thought the Parliament stronger than the
King, and were resolved to be on the winning side. “Pembroke and
Salisbury,” says Clarendon, “had rather the King and his posterity
should be destroyed than that Wilton should be taken from the one and
Hatfield from the other.”
Amongst the gentry, there was the same mixture of motives. The bulk of
them indeed adhered to the King, but great numbers supported the
Parliament, especially in districts where Puritanism was prevalent.
Of the towns, cathedral cities such as York and Chester were usually
royalist in feeling. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge were for
the King, but the representatives of the towns were in each case
Parliamentarians. “London,” which Milton calls “the mansion house of
liberty,” and Clarendon, “the sink of the ill-humours of the kingdom,”
was the headquarters of Puritanism, and most manufacturing or trading
towns were anti-royalist. “Manchester,” says Clarendon, “from the
beginning, out of that factious humour which possessed most corporations
and the pride of their wealth, opposed the King and declared
magisterially for the Parliament.” Birmingham, though little more than a
village, “was of as great fame for hearty, wilful, affected disloyalty
to the King as any place in England.” The clothing towns of the West
Riding of Yorkshire and the manufacturing districts of Somersetshire and
Gloucestershire were also hostile to Charles. In the latter counties,
according to Clarendon,
“the gentlemen of ancient families were for the most part well
affected to the King, yet there were a people of inferior degree,
who by good husbandry, clothing, and other thriving arts, had gotten
very great fortunes, and by degrees getting themselves into the
gentlemen’s estates were angry that they found not themselves in the
same esteem and reputation with those whose estates they had; and
therefore studied all ways to make themselves considerable. These
from the beginning were fast friends to the Parliament.”
In purely agricultural districts, the influence of the great landowners
was generally decisive, but there were many notable exceptions. In the
eastern counties, many of the chief gentry were disposed to take up arms
for the King, but “the freeholders and yeomen in general adhered to the
Parliament.”
Yet, though the bulk of the upper classes was on one side, the war never
became a social war, but remained a struggle of opinions and ideas. From
the very beginning, men who were determined to maintain the Church
intact adopted the King’s cause, and those who desired to change the
government of the Church, or sought freedom of worship outside of it,
supported the Parliament. At first, even to Puritans, the political
question seemed more important than the religious. Colonel Hutchinson
read the manifestos of both parties till “he became abundantly informed
in his understanding and convinced in his conscience of the
righteousness of the Parliament’s cause in point of civil right.” But
“though he was satisfied of the endeavours to bring back Popery and
subvert the true Protestant religion, he did not think that so clear a
ground for the war as the defence of English liberties.”
No contemporary record reveals the precise motives which led Cromwell to
take up arms: we are left to infer them from his earlier acts and his
later utterances. “I profess,” he wrote in 1644, “I could never satisfy
myself of the justness of this war, but from the authority of the
Parliament to maintain itself in its rights.” Like Hutchinson, he
regarded the King’s Church policy as subversive of Protestantism, and
defined the war as undertaken for “the maintenance of our civil
liberties as men, and our religious liberties as Christians.” As the war
progressed, religious liberties grew more and more important in his
eyes, and what had been originally a struggle against innovations became
an attempt to establish freedom of conscience.
“Religion,” said Cromwell in 1654, “was not the thing at first
contested for, but God brought it to that issue at last, and gave it
unto us by way of redundancy, and at last it proved to be that which
was most dear to us. And wherein consisted this more than in
obtaining that liberty from the tyranny of the bishops to all
species of Protestants to worship God according to their own light
and conscience?”
In every civil war, political and religious convictions must often
conflict with family ties. Few families were like the Fairfaxes and
Sheffields, of whom it was said that there was not one of those names
but was on the side of the Parliament. Royalists might have made a like
boast of the Byrons, the Comptons, and many less distinguished houses,
but in very many cases the nearest relations took opposite sides. At
Edgehill, the Earl of Denbigh and the Earl of Dover charged in the
King’s guard, while their sons, Lord Feilding and Lord Rochford, fought
under Essex. In Cromwell’s own family, his uncle, Sir Oliver, and his
cousin, Henry Cromwell, were both ardent Royalists, and owed the
preservation of their estates, after the defeat of their party, to the
intercession of their kinsman.
While this division of families and friends made the war more painful,
it tended to humanise the manner in which it was conducted. The men who
found themselves reluctantly arrayed in arms against each other could
not forget old friendship and old kinship.
“My affections to you,” wrote Sir William Waller to his old comrade,
Sir Ralph Hopton, when their two armies were about to meet in
battle, “are so unchangeable that hostility itself cannot violate my
friendship to your person, but I must be true to the cause wherein I
serve. The great God, who is the searcher of my heart, knows with
what reluctance I go upon this service, and with what perfect hatred
I look upon a war without an enemy. The God of peace in His good
time send us peace, and in the meantime fit us to receive it. We are
both upon the stage, and we must act the parts that are assigned us
in this tragedy. Let us do it in a way of honour, and without
personal animosities.”
On the whole, the war was honourably and humanely carried on. The savage
cruelty which marked the Thirty Years’ War in Germany is absent in the
contemporaneous war in England. Little blood was shed except in the heat
of battle; quarter was liberally granted, and the lives of
non-combatants were respected. But inevitably the prolongation of the
war embittered the temper of both parties, and when, as in Scotland and
Ireland, their hostility was inflamed by national animosity a fiercer
spirit showed itself.
War broke out in England in the summer of 1642, and there were many
local struggles between the partisans of King and Parliament before the
royal standard was set up at Nottingham (August 22, 1642). In many
counties a royalist lord-lieutenant endeavoured to put in force the
King’s commission of array, while a parliamentary lord-lieutenant tried
to carry into effect the Parliament’s militia ordinance. Each called on
the local train-bands to gather round him, and sought to obtain
possession of the magazine in which the arms and munitions of the county
were stored. The first of these collisions—a bloodless one—took place at
Leicester in June; blood was shed in an affray at Manchester on July
15th. In July, the King attempted to besiege Hull, and some lives were
lost in a sally. In August, the Marquis of Hertford proclaimed the
commission of array in Somersetshire, the Governor of Portsmouth
declared for the King, and the flame spread from the north and the
midlands to the western counties. As yet there was no serious fighting,
but everywhere men gathered in arms, and preparations for the campaign
began.
In this preliminary trial of strength, no man was more active for the
Parliament than Cromwell. On June 5th, he subscribed five hundred pounds
to the fund for raising an army. Next month, after sending to his
constituents at Cambridge a hundred pounds’ worth of arms at his own
expense, he obtained a vote empowering them to train and exercise
volunteer companies. The King sent to the university for its money and
its plate, but Cromwell, aided by his brothers-in-law, Valentine Walton
and John Desborough, raised men and beset the north road to intercept
them. Early in August, he marched to Cambridge, seized the county
magazine, and secured most of the plate, worth, it is said, twenty
thousand pounds, for the Parliament’s service. At the same time he
prevented the attempt to execute the commission of array in the county,
and sent the heads of three of the colleges, Jesus, Queen’s, and St.
John’s, prisoners to London. The House of Commons passed a vote for his
indemnity, but the promptitude with which he assumed responsibility and
anticipated their orders by his acts was extremely characteristic. There
were many gentlemen of greater rank in Cambridge and Huntingdonshire
willing to fight for the Parliament, but from the very first Cromwell’s
energy and readiness to act made him a leader. At the end of August,
Cromwell returned to London, and shortly afterwards joined with a troop
of sixty horse the army which Parliament was gathering under the Earl of
Essex.
From the moment that preparations for war began, the Parliament had two
great advantages over the King, which it retained as long as the war
lasted. In July, the fleet in the Downs accepted the Earl of Warwick as
its admiral and declared for the Parliament. The possession of the navy
meant the command of the sea and the interception of the King’s
communications with the continent. He looked to Holland and France for
arms and ammunition, but the parliamentary cruisers constantly captured
his ships and stopped his supplies. All the chief ports were in the
power of the Parliament; Charles held Newcastle and Chester, but the
recapture of Portsmouth was one of the first results of the defection of
the navy. Thanks to its ships, in 1643 and 1644 the Parliament was able
to preserve Hull when the rest of Yorkshire was subdued, and to keep
Lyme and Plymouth when the King’s forces were triumphant in the west.
Thanks to its ships, the King’s plans for procuring French or Danish or
Walloon mercenaries to restore his falling cause were made impossible to
carry out, even if he could raise money to hire them.
The second advantage of the Parliament was that it had far more money at
its disposal than the King. It was strongest in the richest parts of the
country. With London and the trading classes in general devoted to it,
it had no difficulty in raising loans. The possession of London and most
of the seaports secured it the customs, which formed the largest and the
most expansive part of the revenue of the State. As the war continued,
voluntary loans developed into forced loans, customs were supplemented
by the imposition of an excise, monthly assessments were levied on all
counties under the Parliament’s rule, and the sequestration of the lands
of Royalists provided a new source of income. Yet, great though the
resources of the Parliament were, its financial system was so imperfect
that after the first few months the pay of the soldiers was constantly
in arrears.
On the other hand, Charles had scarcely any regular sources of income,
and very little money to equip or support an army. To provide arms and
ammunition for his men he was driven to pawn the Crown jewels and to
mortgage the Crown lands. Loans from corporations or men of means, the
sales of peerages or other titular dignities, customs duties in the few
ports under his control, and contributions levied in the districts
within range of his garrisons made up his scanty budget. Throughout, the
King’s chief resource was the devotion of his followers. Loyal merchants
in London secretly forwarded him their offerings. The University of
Oxford sent him ten thousand pounds, and its colleges gave up their
plate to be coined for his cause. Rich noblemen contributed regiments or
troops, and poor gentlemen served at their own expense. The Marquis of
Newcastle raised some thousands of men on his own estates; the Earl of
Worcester and his son, Lord Herbert, furnished the King with £120,000
between March and July, 1642. Thanks to the zeal of his followers, and
above all to the territorial influence of the great landowners, Charles
was able ere long to oppose Parliament with forces equal to its own. At
the end of August the King had with him at Nottingham only a few hundred
half-armed foot. His artillery and several regiments of infantry were
left behind at York, and his cavalry under Prince Rupert in the
Midlands. The general of his little army told the King that he could not
secure him against being taken in his bed, if the enemy made a brisk
attack. The parliamentary forces assembling at Northampton amounted
early in September to fourteen thousand men, and Essex had in all about
twenty thousand men under his command. This was “an army which,” as the
historian of the Long Parliament said, “was too great to find resistance
at that time from any forces afoot in England.”
[Illustration:
ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX.
(_From Devereux’s “Lives of the Devereux.”_)
]
But instead of hastening to crush the King while he was weak, Essex gave
him time to grow strong. From Nottingham, Charles moved to Shrewsbury,
increasing his forces as he went, and equipping them with weapons taken
from the train-bands, or from the armouries of loyal noblemen. Essex
moved to Worcester and established himself there, making no effort to
find the King and fight him, and reducing his forces by leaving
garrisons in different towns. Now that he had an army, Charles boldly
took the offensive and marched to London, hoping to end the war at a
blow. Essex hurried eastwards to defend the capital, and at Edgehill, on
October 23rd, Charles was obliged to turn and give battle to his
pursuer.
The two armies were now not unequally matched. Each numbered about
fourteen thousand men, but the Parliamentarians were far better armed
than the Royalists. Clarendon thus describes the equipment of the King’s
army:
“The foot, all but 300 or 400 who marched without any weapons but
cudgels, were armed with muskets, and bags for their powder, and
pikes, but in the whole body there was not one pikeman who had a
corselet and very few musketeers who had swords. Amongst the horse,
the officers had their full desire if they were able to procure old
backs and breasts and pots (_i. e._, helmets), with pistols or
carbines for their two or three front ranks and swords for the rest;
themselves and some soldiers by their example having gotten besides
their pistols and swords a short poleaxe.”
The regiments who followed Essex, thanks to the Parliament’s control of
money and its possession of the magazines of Hull and the Tower, were
armed with more uniformity and more completeness. His musketeers had
their swords, his pikemen, who constituted a third of each foot
regiment, had their corselets, and his horsemen pistols and defensive
armour. In both armies, the officers consisted mostly of gentlemen who
had neither military training nor experience of war, mixed with a
certain number of soldiers of fortune who had served in the armies of
France, or Holland, or Sweden. In foot regiments, the major or
lieutenant-colonel was usually an old soldier; in troops of horse, the
lieutenant. “The most part of our horse were raised thus,” says a
royalist playwright: “The honest country gentleman raises the troop at
his own charge, then he gets a low-country lieutenant to fight his troop
for him, then sends for his son from school to be cornet.”
[Illustration:
PRINCE RUPERT, K.G.
(_From a painting by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait
Gallery._)
]
On both sides, the generals possessed the training which their soldiers
lacked. Essex had fought with honour in the Palatinate and Holland;
Balfour, who led his cavalry, had served many years in the Dutch army.
The King’s commander-in-chief, the Earl of Lindsey, was another Dutch
officer, and Prince Rupert had seen some fighting under the Prince of
Orange, and one disastrous campaign in Germany. Yet despite Rupert’s
lack of experience the King gave him charge of all his horse as an
independent command, and followed his advice rather than Lindsey’s in
the ordering of the battle. One great advantage Charles had which
counterbalanced the superior armament of the parliamentary forces. His
cavalry was superior to theirs both in quantity and quality. He had four
thousand horse to Essex’s three thousand, and his troopers were flushed
with confidence by their easy victory in a skirmish near Worcester.
Rupert resolved to utilise this advantage to the full. Massing the bulk
of the cavalry on the right wing under his own command, he swept the
horse opposed to him from the field, routed four regiments of Essex’s
foot, plundered Essex’s camp at Kineton, and followed the fugitives for
some miles. Wilmot, with the cavalry of the left, charged with like
success, and even the reserves joined in the chase. Meanwhile, Essex and
those of his foot regiments who stood firm attacked the royalist
infantry front to front, while Balfour, with two regiments of cavalry
forming the parliamentary reserve, fell upon their exposed flanks. The
Earl of Lindsey was mortally wounded and made prisoner, the King’s
standard taken and regained, several regiments were cut to pieces, and
two only held their ground. When Rupert returned from the chase, his
cavalry were too disordered to be brought to attack, but their arrival
saved the King’s infantry from further attack, and night brought the
dubious battle to a close. Before day broke, Hampden, with two fresh
regiments of foot and ten troops of horse, joined Essex, and urged him
to advance and drive the King from his position. Essex, discouraged by
the misbehaviour of his cavalry, and by his heavy losses, was
disinclined to risk anything, and retreated to Warwick. All the fruits
of victory fell to the King, and, capturing Banbury Castle without a
blow, he pursued his march to Oxford and made that city his headquarters
for the remainder of the war (October 29th).
Early in November, Charles resumed his advance upon London. Reading was
abandoned as he drew near, but by this time Essex had placed his army
between the King and the capital, and there was no ground for the panic
which filled the citizens. In the Parliament, the peace party for a
moment gained the upper hand and sent commissioners to open
negotiations. Charles expressed his willingness to treat, but said
nothing about a suspension of hostilities, and still continued to
advance. By his orders, on November 12th, Rupert, taking advantage of a
mist which concealed his movements, fell upon Essex’s outposts at
Brentford, and cut to pieces the two regiments of Holles and Brooke.
Hampden came to their rescue and covered the retreat of the survivors,
but Brentford was thoroughly sacked by the Royalists. The City expected
to share the same fate, and, says Clarendon, “the alarum came to London
with the same dire yell as if the army were entered their gates.”
Negotiations were broken off, with loud accusations of treachery against
the King. The train-bands rushed to arms, and, all night, regiments
streamed forth from the City to reinforce Essex. Next day, Charles found
twenty thousand men blocking his way at Turnham Green, while three
thousand more occupied Kingston and threatened his line of retreat. Some
cannon shots were exchanged, but the King was too weak to attack, and
Essex too cautious. Once more Hampden urged him to action, and for a
moment he seemed inclined to take the offensive. He had two men to the
King’s one, and his citizen soldiers were eager to fight, and cheered
“Old Robin” whenever he appeared amongst them. But, as after Edgehill,
“the old soldiers of fortune, on whose judgment the general most
relied,” were against fighting, and he called back Hampden, evacuated
Kingston, and suffered Charles to draw off his troops undisturbed. The
march on London was stopped, at least for this year; the shops of its
citizens were safe, and neither “captain or colonel or knight-at-arms”
threatened the “defenceless doors” of Puritan poets. Charles retired to
Oxford; the parliamentary army went into winter quarters, and the
campaign ended as indecisively as Edgehill had ended. With a larger and
better equipped army, and with greater pecuniary resources at his
disposal, Essex had throughout allowed the King to take the initiative,
and neglected every opportunity offered him by fortune. Charles, on the
other hand, as soon as he got together an army, adopted a consistent
strategic plan, and pursued it with energy and even audacity. His
outposts were now within thirty miles of London, and all over England
his followers were gaining ground and gaining heart.
Ever since September, Cromwell had been serving under Essex, and this
unsuccessful campaign was his sole training in the art of war. At
Edgehill, his troops formed part of the regiment commanded by Sir Philip
Stapleton, one of the two regiments which did such splendid service on
that day. In later years, it pleased party pamphleteers to assert that
he was not even present in the battle, but a contemporary account
specially mentions Captain Cromwell in a list of officers who “never
stirred from their troops, but fought till the last minute.” One lesson
at least he learned at Edgehill: that was the necessity of keeping a
reserve in hand, and the importance of energetically using it. Another
thing which the battle taught him was that the Parliament’s arms would
never be victorious till its cavalry was equal in quality to the King’s.
Some of Essex’s foot regiments were excellent, but the ranks of his
cavalry were filled with men attracted solely by high pay and
opportunities of plunder-men who were neither soldiers nor good material
for making soldiers. The consequences were what might have been
expected. “At my first going out into this engagement,” said Cromwell,
“I saw our men beaten at every hand.” Accordingly he spoke to his
cousin, Hampden, and urged him to procure the raising of some new
regiments to be added to Essex’s army.
“I told him I would be serviceable to him in bringing such men in as
I thought had a spirit that would do something in the work. ‘Your
troops,’ said I, ‘are most of them old decayed serving-men,
tapsters, and such kind of fellows; do you think that the spirits of
such base, mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen
that have honour, and courage, and resolution in them? You must get
men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go, or
you will be beaten still.’”
Hampden answered that the notion was a good notion, but impracticable.
Impracticable was not a word which Cromwell understood. He obtained
leave of absence for himself and his troop and went down into the
eastern counties in January, 1643, “to raise such men as had the fear of
God before them, and made some conscience of what they did.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]