At the end of the First English Civil War in 1647 the men who had fought against the king found themselves in disagreement. One group of politicians wanted to reach a settlement with the king other groups wanted more radical reforms. It is safe to say that none of them trusted one another much by the end of 1647. The Putney Debates, held at St Mary’s Church Putney in the autumn of 1647 presented the views of different factions within the army.
On one side of the argument were the so called Grandees. These were officers who came from the landed gentry. Unsurprisingly they did not share the Levellers’ desire for a redistribution of land. Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and Thomas Fairfax were the most influential of the Grandees as well as being respected military commanders. These men were initially prepared to negotiate terms with Charles I as the war drew to an end.
On the other side of the argument were men such as Colonel Rainsborough who after four years of war had been radicalised. The men who represented the radical groups and rank and file had been first appointed as agitators or “new agents” elected to take the grievances of the soldiery to the Grandees when the news of Parliament’s desire to disband the New Model Army had first been aired in 1647. Initially men wanted to know when they would receive their back pay, receive indemnity from actions carried out during the war and dispute the way in which they were being drafted to Ireland.
In October 1647 five particularly radical regiments selected new agitators and issued a manifesto contacting their viewpoint. This was endorsed by civilian levellers as well as radicals within the army. They wanted universal male suffrage, two-yearly parliaments, reorganisation of constituencies, equality of law and freedom from being pressed into military service – all of which seems very reasonable to modern eyes but were the cause of concern to the Grandees who saw a world turned upside down in the Levellers’ Agreement.
The debates began on the 28th October 1647 and were initially recorded. Essentially the Levellers argued they had rights as Englishmen to a say in how the country was run. The Grandees thought that it would result in chaos. A compromise was arrived at with the Grandees saying that soldiers who fought in the civil war should be entitled to a vote and the Levellers conceding that if a man was in receipt of alms or a beggar that he should not have the franchise.
However on the 8th November Cromwell ordered the agitators back to their regiments. The opportunity to present the manifesto to the Army Council and from there to Parliament would be denied to the Levellers. Another manifesto was drawn up by army officers and this was the one presented to the Army Council. The men of the New Model Army would not have a large meeting and a vote. Instead they would be offered three smaller reviews. Knowing that they were being cheated of their manifesto there was nearly a mutiny at Corkbush Field on the 15th November 1647 ending with the execution of Private Richard Arnold, one of three ringleaders who had been forced to draw lots.
The beginning of the Second English Civil War in 1648 and divisions with the Scots saw the army close its ranks for the time being. The Grandees disgusted with the perfidy of Charles I were no longer prepared to negotiate whilst the Levellers found themselves mutinying in 1649. Anger over the failure of Parliament to pay back wages not to mention the way in which men were selected for service in Ireland led to a number of regiments refusing to obey their officers.
In January the Scots handed King Charles I over to the English. He had surrendered to the Scots int he hope that they would treat him better than the English and as a strategy for sowing political disharmony amongst his enemies. The Scots sold him to the English for £40,000.
Many army officers and soldiers were unhappy about the fact that Parliament would even consider negotiating with the king. It was one of the causal factors that led to the Putney Debates. The so-called “Grandees” who had negotiated with the king were seen as having failed the Parliamentarian cause. By August five radical cavalry regiments had elected agitators to state their views. One of their demands was for universal male suffrage, i.e. a levelling. The Grandees, Cromwell amongst them, invited the radicals to debate their demands – resulting in the Putney Debates which started on the 28th October and lasted for three days.
Staunton Harold in Leicestershire, just a stone’s throw from Ashby de la Zouche. It’s seventeenth century church reflects the principles of Laudianism.
Let us return today to the Royalist summer of victories in 1643. It was really only in the east of the country that events did not go all Charles I’s way. On 20 July 1643, Lord Willoughby captured Gainsborough in Lincolnshire for Parliament. This meant that the Earl of Newcastle could not now communicate so easily with the royalists at Newark and he could not simply march south expanding royalist territory. The Committee of Safety scratched their various heads and then sent Oliver Cromwell and Sir John Meldrum from the Eastern Association Army to back up Lord Willoughby as he was being threatened by the Royalist military commander – Colonel Charles Cavendish – who was the nephew of the Earl of Newcastle.
1644 was a year where no one gained the upper hand and the casualties of war grew. The arrival of the Scots in the Civil War ultimately tipped the balance of power in Parliament’s favour but as a result of amateur approaches to warfare the Second Battle of Newbury failed to end matters once and for all. This had the knock on effect of ensuring the rise of the New Model Army and Cromwell’s Ironsides.
Meanwhile two of the Parliamentarian generals were at loggerheads with one another. Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex felt that Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester (pictured above) was getting the better part of the deal from Parliament. Montagu, married to a cousin of George Villiers in the first instance married for a second time to Ann Rich, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick – the Parliamentarian Lord Admiral. He turned from Court towards a more Puritan way of thinking and did not support the king in the Bishop’s War. He was also the peer who supported John Pym at the opening of the Long Parliament and was the one member of the House of Lords who Charles I wanted to arrest at the same time as the five members of the House of Commons. In 1642 he was on his third wife (another member of the Rich family) and had become the Earl of Manchester upon his father’s death. Manchester had been at the Battle of Edgehill but his was one of the regiments that had fled the battlefield. After that he was eventually appointed to the command of the Eastern Association Army – regiments covering Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Cambridge. By the end of 1643 East Anglia was very firmly in Parliamentarian hands and Manchester’s men had broken out into Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. This should be contrasted with Essex and the Western Association Army performance. It is perhaps not surprising that Parliament effectively allowed Manchester to by pass Essex and to liaise with the Scots and with the Fairfaxs.
Fairfax opposed Goring on the right wing: Goring 1 – Fairfax O. Goring and his men got side tracked by the baggage wagons. Crowell was on the left wing facing Lord John Byron (pictured right): Ironsides 1 – Royalists 0. Prince Rupert turned the fleeing royalists round and sent them back into battle. Rupert and his men were evenly matched with the Ironsides. Essentially they hacked one another to a standstill at which point the Scottish cavalry charged in on the Royalist flank and scattered them.
Essentially we have covered the fact that during 1643 the Earl of Essex’s parliamentarian Western Association army did not have a great deal to shout about. Meanwhile in Yorkshire the same Commissions of Array were delivered and like their counterparts in the SouthWest the gentlemen of Yorkshire and the Midlands were forced to decide where their loyalties lay. Hull and Leeds were important towns. Both declared for Parliament, Hull rather noticeably by refusing to let the king into the town in 1642.
By contrast the Parliamentarians had men whose names reverberate through history. Sir John Hotham was the governor of Hull; Sir Hugh Cholmley led the garrison at Scarborough and then in the West Riding there was Ferdinando Fairfax (pictured right) and his son Thomas (pictured at the start of this post). The only difficulty was that Hotham didn’t appreciate Fairfax being the senior commander. The Fairfaxes controlled the West Riding and extended their hold from there to Tadcaster. Their main opponent in the West Riding was Sir William Savile.
With only two days of my metaphorical advent calendar to go I really should be getting a bit more festive – so with no further ado allow mw to introduce the turkey – property of one Samuel Pepys. In 1660 Mrs Pepys was troubled by the art of spit roasting the aforementioned bird. In fact you can read every single 23rd December that Pepys ever recorded should you feel the urge by following the link:
Three kings plus a spare – what could be more festive than that?
Of course, other kings have abdicated in English history – just they didn’t do it voluntarily and they certainly weren’t sent off to be the governor of the Bahamas. The demise of deposed medieval kings reflects the way in which parliament gradually became more important as the centuries progressed and the kings themselves gradually found their power being eroded. Edward II was deposed in January 1327 when he was captured by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer. Parliament named his son Edward III as king. There wasn’t a great deal of debate about the matter but it is significant that parliament was called upon to recognise the transition. Edward II disappeared into Berkeley Castle where he was murdered – the medieval way of getting rid of a king who’d worn out his welcome.
Two generations later Richard II renounced the throne in 1399. In reality, he too was deposed but his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV, recognized the importance of popular acclaim and legal justification for his actions- no need to discuss the fact that Richard II was being held captive at the time nor the fact that he didn’t have a great deal of choice in the matter. Like his great grandfather Richard found himself being escorted to a large castle (Pontefract) and quietly removed from the scene (starved).
By the reign of Charles I the law and parliament had evolved even further, though now is not the time to explore the reasons for that. Charles found himself on trial for treason. The rationale for this came from the Roman idea that a military body could overthrow a tyrant and even then many people had doubts about the legitimacy of such an action. The Parliament of 1648 was notable for the way in which MPs were excluded from the House of Commons if they were not in support of Oliver Cromwell’s drastic actions. This parliament was known as the Rump Parliament.
It was inevitable that the Puritans would come up somewhere in my festive posts. Unfortunately for the Christmas loving inhabitants of Parliamentarian England the holy day was deemed to smack of popery. Admittedly there was rather a lot of drinking, dancing and general merriment and that wasn’t a good thing on account of the fact that it encouraged folk towards sinfulness. Puritans felt that really and truly that rather than games, morris dancing, Yule logs and eating too much that the population should aim for a more mediative approach to the day involving fasting and prayer or just going about their business as usual. In January 1645 the Directory of Public Worship stated that ‘Festival days, vulgarly called Holy days, having no Warrant in the Word of God, are not to be continued’.