PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
1642–1647
The settlement of the kingdom after the war ended was a task of far
greater difficulty than the defeat of the King’s armies. It could not be
solved by putting Charles upon his throne again as if nothing had
happened. Measures had to be devised for securing permanent guarantees
against misgovernment in the future, and for rendering a new war
impossible. Moreover, these ends must be attained by means of an
agreement between the King and the Parliament, because the working of
the constitution depended on the co-operation of the two powers, and on
the reconciliation of the two parties which had followed their flags.
Nor was it possible to effect a lasting settlement without taking into
account the new ideas and the new forces which had come into existence
during the four years’ struggle.
Since the beginning of the Civil War an ecclesiastical revolution had
taken place in England. As soon as hostilities commenced the Root and
Branch party gained the ascendancy in Parliament, and in the first
negotiations with the King, the total abolition of Episcopacy was one of
the demands made. In July, 1643, Parliament summoned an assembly of
divines to meet at Westminster, and undertake the reformation of the
Church. Then followed the acceptance by Parliament of the Solemn League
and Covenant, the implied promise to model the Church of England upon
that of Scotland, and the inclusion of representatives of the Scottish
clergy in the Assembly of Divines.
Step by step the English Church was transformed. In January, 1645, the
two Houses passed a series of resolutions for the reorganisation of the
Church upon a Presbyterian basis, followed by ordinances which
established one after another the component parts of the system. By the
close of 1646, the use of the Prayer-book had been prohibited, and a
“Directory,” drawn up by the Assembly, had been enjoined in its stead,
while new Articles of Belief, a new Confession of Faith, and a new
Catechism were in preparation. Bishops and all the ecclesiastical
hierarchy dependent on them had been abolished, and their lands vested
in trustees for the payment of the debts of the State (October, 1646).
The work was still incomplete, but under all outward conformity there
would be an essential difference between the Presbyterian Churches of
England and Scotland. In Scotland the Church was dependent upon no one;
in England it would be dependent upon Parliament. Whatever the
Westminster Assembly might decide was established only by the authority
of Parliament, which revised its conclusions, criticised its
formularies, and limited its functions as it thought fit. Compared to an
ideal Presbyterian Church ruling by its inherent right as the one
divinely ordained form of Church government, the English Church would
be, as a Scottish divine complained, “only a lame Erastian presbytery.”
Such as it was, however, its clergy were as high in their claim to
authority as English bishops, and as intolerant as Scottish ministers.
They proved in a hundred different ways the truth of Milton’s maxim that
“new presbyter is but old priest writ large.”
During the years which saw the growth of English Presbyterianism, a
rival system of ecclesiastical organisation had also taken root in
England. The Independents drew their inspiration not from Scotland, but
from the Puritan exiles in Holland and the Puritan colonists in New
England. To the idea of a national Church with its local basis and its
hierarchy of authorities, they opposed the idea that a true Church was a
voluntary association of believers, and that each congregation was of
right complete, autonomous, and sovereign. Most of them accepted the
theology of Calvin even when they rejected his ecclesiastical
organisation; all claimed the right to interpret the Bible for
themselves without regard to tradition or authority. Their principle was
that set forth in the advice which John Robinson gave to the Pilgrim
Fathers—to be ready to receive whatever truth should be made known to
them from the written word of God. Hence came their ardent faith in new
revelations, with the diversity of doctrines and the multiplicity of
sects which were its natural consequence. Hence the horror with which
Presbyterians and Episcopalians alike regarded a system which began by a
denial of their theory of Church and State, and ended by an attack upon
the fundamentals of their creed.
Just as the two divisions of the parliamentary party differed as to the
constitution of the Church, so they differed as to the constitution of
the State. Each was a political as well as a religious party. The aim of
the Presbyterians was to make King and Church responsible to Parliament,
and so far the Independents went with them. But while one party
proclaimed the sovereignty of Parliament, and justified its claim by
historical precedent, the other proclaimed the sovereignty of the
people, and based its claim on an appeal to natural rights. Church
democracy, as Baxter called Independency, brought in its train State
democracy. Applied to politics, the ecclesiastical theories of the
Independents developed into the fundamental principles of democratic
government. Those who held that a Church was a voluntary association of
believers bound together by a mutual covenant, naturally adopted the
corollary that a State was an association of freemen based on a mutual
contract. If it was the right of the members of a religious body to
elect their own ministers, it was evidently equally just that the
members of a civil society should elect their own magistrates. More than
once in its paper wars with the King, Parliament had put forward the
view that Kings were but officers, whose power was a trust from the
people, but it shrank from the distinct enunciation or the practical
application of the principle its declarations contained. It was
therefore in opposition to the Long Parliament that the sovereignty of
the people was first asserted in English political life. In 1646, when
John Lilburn was imprisoned by the Lords for libelling Manchester he
appealed to the House of Commons as “the supreme authority of the
nation,” and denied the authority of the Peers because they were not
elected by the people. When the House of Commons refused to hear him he
appealed “to the universality of the people,” as “the sovereign lord”
from whom they derived their power, and by whom they were to be called
to account for its use.
As yet, however, Lilburn’s principles found little acceptance in
Parliament, and the Lower House had no intention of quarrelling with the
Upper on a question of abstract rights. In the Commons, even after the
new elections of 1645 and 1646 had recruited the numbers of the House,
the Independents were a minority both on political and ecclesiastical
questions. On a purely religious issue they could muster fifty or sixty
votes, of whom probably less than half were convinced democrats. But the
ties of party allegiance were weak, and the ability of the Independent
leaders gave them an influence beyond the circle of their followers. On
questions such as the conduct of the war, the control of the pretensions
of the Westminster Assembly, and the claim of the Scots to dispose of
the King, a majority of the House adopted the policy of the
Independents. But when the war was over, and the dispute with the Scots
settled, the ascendancy passed to the Presbyterian leaders, and remained
with them.
On the other hand, the army had been from the beginning a stronghold of
Independency, and there its adherents grew more numerous every day. In
the summer of 1645, when Richard Baxter became chaplain to a regiment of
cavalry, he found it full of hotheaded sectaries. Every sect and every
heresy was represented in its ranks. “Independency and Anabaptism were
most prevalent; Antinomianism and Arminianism equally distributed.” One
day he had to confute the opponents of Infant Baptism, and another to
vindicate Church order and Church government. But the most universal
belief amongst officers and soldiers, and the error he most often had to
controvert, was that the civil magistrate had no authority in matters of
religion either to restrain or to compel, and that every man had a right
to believe and to preach whatever he pleased.
In the army, too, the political principles of Independency had reached
their fullest and freest development. Baxter found officers and soldiers
“vehement against the King and against all government but popular.”
“I perceived” he writes, “that they took the King for a tyrant and
an enemy, and really intended absolutely to master him or to ruin
him, and that they thought, that if they might fight against him
they might kill or conquer him; and if they might conquer they were
never more to trust him further than he was in their power; and they
thought it folly to irritate him by wars or contradictions in
Parliament, if so be they needs must take him for their King, and
trust him with their lives when they had thus displeased him.”
These were the principles upon which they thought any settlement should
be based, and they meant to make their views heard. “They plainly showed
me,” continues Baxter, “that they thought God’s providence would cast
the trust of religion and the kingdom upon them as conquerors.”
In peace, even more than in war, the army looked to Cromwell to lead it.
Apart from his splendid military gifts, he had all the qualities
required to win popularity with soldiers. Cromwell had none of the
reserve or reticence of Fairfax. A large-hearted, expansive, vigorous
nature found expression in his acts and utterances. “He was of a
sanguine complexion,” says Baxter, “naturally of such a vivacity,
hilarity, and alacrity, as another man is when he hath drunken a cup of
wine too much.” Elsewhere he speaks of Cromwell’s “familiar rustic
carriage with his soldiers in sporting,” and one of Cromwell’s officers
tells us that “Oliver loved an innocent jest.” Nor did it make him less
popular that underneath this geniality lay a fiery temper, which
sometimes flamed up into vehement utterances or sudden bursts of
passion. Partly for this very reason he was generally credited with much
more democratic opinions than he really had. People remembered his hard
sayings about the Lords during his quarrel with Manchester, and took a
practical man’s irritation against half-hearted and incapable leaders
for rooted hostility to an institution. His patronage of Lilburn seemed
another proof of his extreme views. Cromwell had procured Lilburn’s
release from imprisonment in 1640, obtained him a commission in
Manchester’s army in 1643, and intervened on his behalf with the House
of Commons in 1645. People attributed to sympathy with advanced
democracy what was really due to hatred of oppression and injustice.
Lilburn’s praises fostered the illusion. Great as Cromwell was in the
field, argued Lilburn, he was still more useful in Parliament.
“O for self-denying Cromwell home again ... for he is sound at the
heart and not rotten-cored, hates particular and self-interests, and
dares freely to speak his mind.” “Myself and all others of my
creed,” wrote Lilburn to Cromwell in 1647, “have looked upon you as
the most absolute single-hearted great man in England, untainted or
unbiassed with ends of your own.”
In religion, however, Cromwell represented the army more completely than
in politics. Cromwell was, as Baillie truly termed him, “the great
Independent”—a type of Independency itself, representing not any
particular species of Independent, but the whole genus which the term
included. He called himself by the name of no sect, “joined himself to
no party,” and “did not profess of what opinion he was.” “In good
discourse” he would sometimes “very fluently pour himself out in the
extolling of Free Grace,” but he refused to dispute about doctrinal
questions. There are indications in some of Cromwell’s utterances that
he was attracted to those who called themselves “Seekers,” because they
found satisfaction not in any visible form or definite creed, but in the
perpetual quest for truth and perfection. “To be a Seeker,” says
Cromwell in a letter written about this time, “is to be of the best sect
next after a Finder, and such an one shall every faithful humble Seeker
be in the end.” But while standing a little apart from every sect,
Cromwell seemed to share the aspirations and enthusiasms of each.
“Anabaptists, Antinomians, Seekers, Separatists,” he sympathised with
all, welcomed all to the ranks of the army, and “tied all together by
the point of liberty of conscience, which was the common interest in
which they all did unite.”
Of this demand for freedom of conscience, Cromwell had ever made himself
the spokesman. At the outset of the war, he and his officers had
proposed to make their regiment “a gathered Church.” While he was
governor of Ely, he and his deputy-governor, Ireton, had filled the
island with Independents until people complained that for variety of
religions the place was “a mere Amsterdam.” When he became
Lieutenant-General of Manchester’s army, Independency had spread from
his regiment to the rest of the troopers he commanded.
“If you look on his regiment of horse,” said an opponent, “what a
swarm there is of those that call themselves godly men; some profess
to have seen visions and had revelations. Look on Colonel
Fleetwood’s regiment with his Major Harrison, what a cluster of
preaching officers and troopers there is. To say the truth almost
our horse be made of that faction.”
Cromwell protected them against Manchester’s Presbyterian chaplains and
against the hostility of Presbyterian officers. In March, 1644, when
Major-General Crawford cashiered the lieutenant-colonel of his regiment
on the ground that he was an Anabaptist, Cromwell at once remonstrated.
If any military offence were chargeable upon the lieutenant-colonel, he
must be tried by court-martial; if none, Crawford must restore him to
his command. “Admit he be an Anabaptist, shall that render him incapable
to serve the public? Sir, the State in choosing men to serve it, takes
no notice of their opinions; if they be willing to serve it faithfully,
that suffices.” Six months later, after a second quarrel with Crawford
on the same subject, Cromwell procured from Parliament what was known as
“the Accommodation Order.” A committee was to be appointed
“to take into consideration the differences in opinion of the
members of the Assembly of Divines in point of Church government,
and to endeavour a union if it be possible; and in case that cannot
be done, to endeavour the finding out some way, how far tender
consciences, who cannot in all things submit to the common rule
which shall be established, may be borne with according to the Word,
and as may stand with the public peace” (September 13, 1644).
After every victory of the “New Model,” Cromwell reminded Parliament of
the necessity of legally establishing the toleration which this vote
promised. “Honest men served you faithfully in this action,” he wrote
from the field of Naseby; “they are trusty; I beseech you in the name of
God not to discourage them. He that ventures his life for the liberty of
his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and
you for the liberty he fights for.” So little did the Commons share his
feeling, that they mutilated his letter by omitting in the published
copies his plea for toleration, but he repeated it in still plainer
language after the storming of Bristol.
“Presbyterians and Independents, all here have the same spirit of
faith and prayer ... they agree here, have no names of difference;
pity it should be otherwise anywhere. All that believe have the real
unity which is most glorious because inward and spiritual.... For
being united in forms, commonly called Uniformity, every Christian
will for peace sake study and do as far as conscience will permit.
And from brethren in things of the mind we look for no compulsion,
but that of light and reason.”
Parliament had answered by mutilating this letter as it had mutilated
the other. What prospect was there, now that the swords of the
Independents were no longer needed, that their political and religious
demands would be listened to, or that no compulsion save that of light
and reason would be exercised against their consciences? As to religion,
if Parliament allowed the Presbyterian clergy to work their will,
Independents could expect nothing but persecution. “To let men serve God
according to the persuasion of their own consciences,” wrote one
Presbyterian divine, “was to cast out one devil that seven worse might
enter.” Toleration, wrote another, was “the Devil’s Masterpiece.” “If
the devil had his choice whether the hierarchy, ceremonies, and liturgy
should be established in the kingdom, or a toleration granted, he would
choose a toleration.” “We detest and abhor the much endeavoured
toleration,” declared a meeting of the London ministers. The corporation
of London backed their declaration by a petition for the suppression of
all heresies. In Parliament itself it was evident that the
anti-tolerationists had gained the upper hand. As late as April, 1646,
the Commons had promised a due regard for tender consciences, providing
only that they differed not in any fundamentals of religion. In
September, however, the House passed the second reading of a bill which
punished with death those who denied doctrines relating to the Trinity
and the Incarnation, and with imprisonment for life those who opposed
Infant Baptism and other less important doctrines. In December, when a
bill was introduced prohibiting laymen from preaching in churches or
elsewhere, Cromwell could only muster fifty-seven members in favour of
allowing them at least to expound the Scriptures. Nor was there in the
proposals of Parliament for the settlement of the kingdom any sign that
the constitutional settlement would include in it toleration for
Independency.
As little hope was there from the King. Ever since May, 1646, Charles
had been a prisoner in the camp of the Scots, first at Newark, and then
at Newcastle. The chief demands contained in the propositions sent to
him at Newcastle were, that the King should enforce the taking of the
Covenant through all the three kingdoms, and accept the Presbyterian
Church which Parliament had set up. At the same time he was to give
Parliament the control of the naval and military forces of the nation
for the next twenty years, and when that period ended the two Houses
were to decide as to their future disposal. Backed by the Church, and
with the sword as well as the purse in their hands, the power of
Parliament would be securely established.
As long as he could, Charles evaded a direct answer. He believed that
bishops and apostolical succession were necessary to a true Church. If
he gave way to the abolition of Episcopacy “there would be no Church,”
and to yield against the dictates of his conscience would be “a sin of
the highest nature.” Political motives reinforced conscientious
objections. To accept or impose the Covenant would be a “perpetual
authorising rebellion.” As to establishing Presbyterianism by law,
“under pretence of a thorough reformation in England they intend to
take away all the ecclesiastical power of government from the Crown,
and place it in the two Houses of Parliament. Moreover they will
introduce the doctrine which teaches rebellion to be lawful and that
the supreme power is in the people, to whom kings, as they say,
ought to give account, and to be corrected when they do amiss....
There was not a wiser man since Solomon than he who said ‘no bishop,
no king.’”
The utmost that Charles, after months of negotiation, would concede was
to grant the establishment of Presbyterianism for three years, and the
control of the army and navy for ten. At the end of the ten years he
stipulated that the control of army and navy should return to the Crown,
and at the end of the three he was firmly resolved to re-establish
Episcopacy.
After eight months of futile negotiating, the Scots, disgusted by the
King’s obstinate refusal to accept Presbyterianism, resolved to abandon
the King’s cause and hand him over to his English subjects. They settled
their own differences with the English Parliament about their arrears of
pay, received two hundred thousand pounds on account, and evacuated
Newcastle on January 30, 1647, leaving Charles in charge of the
parliamentary commissioners. In February he was brought to Holmby House
in Northamptonshire in custody of the commissioners and of a guard of
cavalry.
But the moment when the King seemed to have fallen lowest marked the
success of his policy. His refusal to accept the terms offered him at
Newcastle rested mainly on the conviction that he was indispensable.
“Men,” he said in one of his letters, “will begin to perceive that
without my establishing there can be no peace.” Even his adversaries
must see it: “without pretending to prophesy I will foretell their ruin
unless they agree with me.” Sooner or later, he felt certain some party
amongst his opponents must, for their own sake, accept his terms and
come to an understanding with him. What he had anticipated was now
coming to pass. Before he arrived at Holmby, a number of the
Presbyterian Peers had agreed to accept the King’s concessions as the
basis of an agreement, upon the completion of which Charles was to be
restored to the exercise of his power. It was the beginning of that
alliance between the Royalists and the Presbyterians which produced the
Second Civil War, and finally the restoration of Charles II. On May
12th, a new message from the King embodying these concessions reached
Westminster, and it was not doubtful that a majority in the two Houses
would accept them as satisfactory.
An agreement on such a basis was a truce, not a peace. It left unsettled
the questions which had caused the war, and threw away all the fruits of
the victory. Parliament and the King had fought for sovereignty, but
now, at the price of temporary concessions, sovereignty would be left in
the King’s hands. As long as the King’s right to veto bills was left
intact he could prevent any of his temporary concessions from becoming
permanent, and he meant to do so. The Independents felt all the danger
of such a one-sided compromise, but they were now in a hopeless minority
in both Houses. When the army was disbanded, they would be entirely
without influence. Its disbandment would have taken place in October,
1646, but for the strained relations of Parliament with the Scots, and a
scheme for disbandment was voted on, February, 1647. Out of the forty
thousand men in arms in England, Parliament proposed to form a new army
consisting of six thousand four hundred horse, and about ten thousand
foot for garrison service. It seized the opportunity to get rid of all
the Independent officers of the “New Model.” Fairfax was to be retained
as General, but all the other general officers were to be dismissed. No
member of Parliament was to hold a commission in the new army, and no
officer was to be employed who did not conform to the Presbyterian
Church. Of the soldiers of the “New Model,” four thousand horse were to
be retained in service in England; the rest of the horse and the
infantry were to be employed for the reconquest of Ireland.
In Ireland, ever since the cessation of 1643, Ormond, the King’s
Lord-Lieutenant, had maintained himself in Dublin, struggling ever to
turn the cessation into a peace, and to send help to the King in
England. But the refusal of the Catholic clergy to accept less than the
establishment of Catholicism in Ireland frustrated his negotiations,
and, in 1646, Dublin was again besieged. With few troops and with no
money to pay them, Ormond found himself obliged to submit to either
Irish or English rebels. He chose the latter as the only way to preserve
Ireland to the English nation, and in February, 1647, offered to deliver
up his charge to the Parliament. Nothing could have fallen in more
opportunely for the plans of the Presbyterians, and on March 6, 1647,
Parliament voted that 12,600 men, drawn from the ranks of the “New
Model,” should be promptly despatched to Ireland, and sent commissioners
to the headquarters of the army to persuade the soldiers to enlist for
Irish service.
If the soldiers had been justly treated there would have been no
difficulty in persuading them either to volunteer for Ireland or to
disband quietly. But the folly of the Presbyterian leaders created a
military revolt which changed the face of English politics. As was
natural, the soldiers wanted to be paid for their past service before
disbanding or re-enlisting. The pay of the foot was eighteen weeks in
arrears; that of the horse, forty-three weeks. They petitioned Fairfax
to represent their desires to Parliament, asking particularly to be
indemnified against legal proceedings for acts done in the late war, and
to be guaranteed their back pay. The House of Commons ordered the
petition to be suppressed, and declared those who persisted in
petitioning to be enemies of the State and disturbers of the public
peace. As to their arrears, it offered only six weeks’ pay, and even
that offer was delayed till the end of April. The result was that out of
the whole twenty-two thousand men of the “New Model,” only twenty-three
hundred volunteered for Ireland, and the discontent of the army swelled
to a formidable agitation. In April, the horse regiments elected
representatives, called Agitators or Agents, to concert united action,
and in May the foot followed their example. At the end of April, the
Agitators of eight regiments sent a joint letter to Skippon and
Cromwell, urging them to represent the wrongs of the army to Parliament,
and to procure redress. Cromwell and Skippon laid the letter before the
House, and the House ordered the two, accompanied by Ireton and
Fleetwood, to go down to the army, and endeavour to quiet the distempers
of the soldiers. It promised the soldiers a considerable part of their
arrears on disbanding, and good security for the payment of the
remainder. The six weeks’ pay offered was increased to eight.
Up to this point Cromwell had taken no part in the negotiations with the
soldiers, much less in the movement amongst them against disbanding. In
February, 1647, when the first votes for disbanding were passed, he was
dangerously ill, and for some time absented himself both from the House
and from the Committee of Both Kingdoms. All men knew his
dissatisfaction with the policy which the Presbyterian leaders were
following, and some attributed his abstention to that cause. “We are
full of faction and worse,” was Cromwell’s comment on the state of
affairs in Parliament, in August, 1646. He marked with anxiety the
growth of royalist feeling in London and the increasing hostility of the
citizens to the army and the Independents.
“We have had a very long petition from the City,” he wrote to
Fairfax on December 21, 1646; “how it strikes at the army and what
other aims it has you will see by the contents of it; as also what
is the prevailing temper at this present, and what is to be expected
from men. But this is our comfort, God is in heaven, and He doth
what pleaseth Him; His and only His counsel shall stand, whatsoever
the designs of men and the fury of the people be.”
In March, 1647, the feeling in the city was still worse.
“There want not in all places,” he told Fairfax, “men who have so
much malice against the army as besots them.... Never were the
spirits of men more embittered than now.... Upon the Fast-day divers
soldiers were raised, both horse and foot, near two hundred in
Covent Garden, to prevent us soldiers from cutting the
Presbyterians’ throats! These are fine tricks to mock God with.”
He was irritated also by the suspicions with which he himself was
regarded and the reception they met with from people who ought to have
known better.
“It is a miserable thing,” he told Ludlow, “to serve a Parliament,
to which, let a man be never so faithful, if one pragmatical fellow
amongst them rise and asperse him, he shall never wipe it off;
whereas when one serves a general he may do as much service, and yet
be free from all blame and envy.”
Cromwell even thought of leaving England, with as many of his fellow
soldiers as he could take with him, to fight for the cause of the German
Calvinists under the flag of the Elector Palatine. He had long
conferences with the Elector on the subject in March or April, 1647.
But, in spite of Cromwell’s dissatisfaction, there is no sign either in
his words or action that he contemplated resisting the policy of
Parliament or thought of stirring up a military revolution. There were
bitter complaints from some of his greatest admirers that he
persistently discouraged the petitions of the soldiers.
“I am informed this day,” wrote Lilburn to Cromwell on March 25th,
“by an officer out of the army, that you and your agents are like to
dash in pieces the hopes of our outward preservation, their petition
to the House, and will not suffer them to petition till they have
laid down their arms; because forsooth you have engaged to the House
they shall lay down their arms whenever it shall command them.”
Cromwell’s action during the last few months, continued Lilburn, had
filled him with grief and amazement. Could it be that he was held back
by temporising politicians, “covetous earthworms,” such as Vane and St.
John, or bribed into inaction by the estate Parliament had given him?
Let him pluck up resolution “like a man that will persevere to be a man
for God,” and risk his life to deliver his fellow soldiers from ruin,
and his country from vassalage and slavery.
Cromwell turned a deaf ear to these appeals. He feared to encourage the
intervention of soldiers in politics, and dreaded still more the anarchy
which might follow a breach between Parliament and the army. In May, he
went to the headquarters of the army at Saffron Walden with his three
colleagues, examined carefully the grievances of the petitioners,
communicated the votes of Parliament, and did his best to persuade
officers and soldiers to submission.
“Truly, gentlemen,” he said to the officers, “it will be very fit
for you to have a very great care in making the best use you can
both of the votes, and of the interest that any of you have in your
regiments, to work in them a good opinion of that authority that is
over both us and them. If that authority falls to nothing, nothing
can follow but confusion.”
The commissioners reported that they found the whole army “under a deep
sense of some sufferings” and the common soldiers “much unsettled.” On
May 21st, Cromwell received the thanks of the Commons, and told them
that the soldiers would certainly not go to Ireland, but that he thought
they would disband quietly. Under his influence, the House for a moment
seemed disposed to adopt a conciliatory policy, and passed ordinances
redressing some of the minor grievances of the soldiers. But no steps
were taken to give them the promised security for the payment of their
arrears, and on May 27th a scheme for the immediate disbandment was
voted. It was to begin on June 1st, with Fairfax’s own regiment, and to
prevent any concerted action the regiments were to be separately
disbanded at widely distant places.
The Presbyterian leaders had made up their minds to resort to force to
carry their policy through. In secret they were discussing with the
French Ambassador and the commissioners of the Scottish Parliament a
plan for bringing the Scottish army into England. The Prince of Wales
was to be sent to Scotland to head the projected invasion. As soon as
possible, the King was to be brought from Holmby to London, where the
City militia was entirely under the control of the Presbyterians. At the
same time, in order to cripple the resistance of the army, the train of
artillery was to be removed from Oxford to the Tower. Then, backed by
the Scots and the City, they would force the soldiers to submit to their
terms, and punish the officers who had taken their part. It meant a new
civil war.
Simultaneously a general mutiny began. The votes for disbanding the
soldiers before redressing their grievances robbed the tardy and
trifling concessions of Parliament of all their value. The ulterior
schemes of the Presbyterian leaders were known in the army almost as
soon as they were formed. At the bidding of the Agitators the army
refused to disband. “Be active,” wrote one, “for all lies at stake.” It
was no longer simply a question of arrears of pay. “The good of all the
kingdom and its preservation is in your hands.” So thought most of the
officers, and pledged themselves to stand by their men. So thought
Fairfax’s council of war, and at the petition of the soldiers ordered a
general rendezvous of the whole army on June 3rd. “I am forced,”
apologised Fairfax, “to yield something out of order to keep the army
from disorder or worse inconveniences.” Without his orders, a party of
horse secured the artillery train at Oxford, and seized the King at
Holmby on June 3rd. The same day Cromwell left London, resolved to throw
in his lot with the army.
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