The Royalist War Effort 1642-1646

Ronald Hutton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781134602315
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The English Civil War remains the most prolonged and traumatic example of internal violence in the history of the state. The Royalist War Effort, 1642-1646 shows the build up to the outbreak of the war, detailing how the war was fought, and how, ultimately, it was won and lost.

In his new introduction to this second edition, Ronald Hutton places his vivid account of the Royalist war effort into modern historical context, bringing the reader up-to-date with recent developments in the study of the English civil war. He analyses the influences which affected his own interpretation of events, ensuring that The Royalist War Effort, 1642-1646 remains the most informative and compelling account of the Royalist experience in the English civil war.

PART ONE

The achievement of civil war

As stated above, it has been the custom in recent studies of the English Civil War to stress the presence, in each locality, of a majority of neutral or vacillating men standing between the rival partisans and acting as a limiting factor upon the virulence of the war at a local level. The object of this first section is to turn this picture inside out and enquire how, amid such a general atmosphere of moderation and hostility to the war, rival partisans came to be formed at all, and how they dragged their local communities into a conflict which the majority in those communities did not desire.

CHAPTER ONE

The emergence of the Cavaliers

However far back into history one may postulate the origins of the English Civil War, the actual development of hostilities was extremely rapid. A civil war became physically possible only in March 1642, when Charles the First left a London dominated by his opponents to set up headquarters at York and attract supporters. In June he felt ready to call the country to arms and by August two rival armies were actually gathering and marching. The most serious of all divisions of the English people had occurred in a mere five months.

This picture becomes infinitely more striking when it is appreciated that, whatever was happening at York and London, in the future Royalist areas of England there is almost no sign of impending civil war for three of those five months, March to June. In particular, with one exception, there is no trace of an emerging Royalist party. No loyal petitions were sent to the King, though petititons from Lancashire,¹ Cornwall,² Staffordshire³ and Herefordshire⁴ were sent to Parliament affirming support for it. Addresses sent to Charles from Cheshire⁵ and Lancashire⁶ in May merely urged him to make peace with Parliament. Nor, again with one exception, has any trace survived of the growth of local groups of men hostile to Parliament and favourable to the King. This is not the result of a paucity of records. In most of the future Royalist counties some family collections exist for the period, and they show a real awareness of national events. Even in western Caernarvonshire gentry had the latest news forwarded to them by post.⁷ Men foresaw conflict between King and Parliament, but even those who were to become ardent Royalists showed no disposition to involve themselves. They waited upon events, with foreboding.

The exception noted above was Herefordshire, where the address sent to Parliament aroused a great deal of hostility among a set of gentry led by Sir William Croft of Croft Castle, who proceeded to sever ties with old friends who had promoted it. By June the common people were strongly partisan, shooting images ‘in derision of Roundheads’ at Croft and silencing a ‘Roundhead sermon’ in Hereford Cathedral. The gentry had despatched a letter to the King assuring him of support.⁸

This is not to give the impression that outside Herefordshire England was at peace; on the contrary, it was in a ferment of anxiety. From November 1641 onwards great cities like Gloucester,⁹ large towns like Shrewsbury,¹⁰ and small settlements like Stratford-upon-Avon¹¹ were alike repairing their defences, doubling the watch and buying weapons. This activity was not generated entirely by fear of the growing division between King and Parliament, for in these months Englishmen were at least as worried by the prospect of a Roman Catholic uprising as by the possibility of civil war. In October the Catholic natives of Ireland actually had risen in bloody rebellion, and it was feared that their co-religionists in England might make common cause with them. The Cheshire petition to Charles was specifically inspired by this anxiety. Throughout the future Royalist areas men talked of Catholic plots and in Lancashire,¹² Staffordshire,¹³ Pembrokeshire¹⁴ and Anglesey¹⁵ believed that they had uncovered them. This situation does not seem an obvious prelude to civil war. Local communities do not appear to have been dividing. On the contrary they were closing ranks, against a traditional enemy.

As local Royalism does not seem to have existed before the actual declaration of war except in Herefordshire, which will be analysed below, the source of its generation must lie somewhere in the maelstrom at York. There, in these months, the King and his most ardent supporters were preparing the blueprints for war and the arguments which might persuade men to fight it. This process is almost entirely mysterious, no records having survived, if any were made, to indicate the men who attended the King at particular policy decisions at this time or to indicate how those decisions were reached. Only the resulting documents still exist, in considerable numbers, to testify to their industry.

The King’s first task was to establish a case against Parliament which would either win it over or win him supporters against it. From March till June he published a series of pamphlets¹⁶ addressed to Parliament and justifying his complaints against it in great detail. A group of declarations in July and August¹⁷ rounded out the Royalist case and thereafter it was repeated in simplified form in several subsequent speeches and in the preambles to most commissions and official letters signed by the King till the end of the war. The whole case had in fact the merit of simplicity. Charles’s opponents stood for a reform of the Church and a limitation his constitutional powers. His riposte was to declare himself the defender of the accustomed laws, privileges and Church, defined as those of the revered Elizabeth the First, against a clique of incendiaries. It was a position calculated to appeal to the most powerful political instinct of the average Englishman of the day, entrenched conservatism. For years his opponents had enjoyed this position, claiming, with some justice, that Charles had attempted to subvert laws, privileges and Church himself. Ultimately their distrust of him had forced them into the role of reformers, to limit his powers in both Church and state, whereupon Charles had turned the tables on them. It remained to be seen whether men would be convinced by him, and would consider the issue worth fighting for.

At any rate, by June it had at least become obvious that his arguments had failed to impress the leaders of Parliament, who would neither retract their demands nor compromise. Hence Charles’s task now was to raise the provinces on his behalf, to locate men in each county of sufficient standing to accomplish the task and with the will to do so. The chosen instrument to effect this work was the Commission of Array. This was an impressive-looking document written in Latin and in antique script upon a roll of parchment, signed by the King and impressed with the Great Seal. One was issued for each county and major city, and each contained the names of the leading men in that county or city whom the King believed might be expected to arm for him, and empowered them to take charge of it. Most of Charles’s Commissions of Array have survived, in the original or in transcript.¹⁸ The longest, for Glamorganshire, names thirty individuals; the shortest, for Radnorshire, names thirteen. How they were chosen is not known. Presumably in most cases one or two of the men from each county had actually made the pilgrimage to York to offer their services, and advised the King upon potential allies. Certainly the Warwickshire Commission was drawn up in the presence of the two men at the head of the list.¹⁹ The names in some at least were public knowledge before they left York.²⁰ The men were on the whole accurately chosen. Up to a third of the gentry listed in each proved hostile or indifferent in the event, but the remainder always included the men who became the Royalist leaders of their counties. The English Commissions were apparently all issued in June, the earliest, for Warwickshire, dated the 6th, but the Welsh were drawn up in August. Each was reissued at least once in the following months, when the commissioners had gone into action, to replace those who had proved unresponsive with men who had volunteered their support.

In legal terms, the Commission of Array was a royal instrument resting upon an unrepealed statute of Henry the Fourth, obsolete since 1557 and revived by Charles’s circle to provide some means of calling the country to arms without Parliament. Historians since Clarendon have criticised it as a dubious and antiquated legal trick unlikely to appeal to the English populace, but in fact, given the bizarre nature of the whole situation, with the two traditional halves of government attempting to fight each other, it seems unlikely that any device would have fared better. Certainly in the region studied it succeeded in producing Royalist activists, while none of those who abstained gave the Commission itself as their reason for so doing. The fact that it was written in Latin made no difference to the gentry, who clearly understood it, while for the common people, who did not, the King apparently enclosed with the Commission some specific message in English to their county, making clear his needs, to be proclaimed with it.²¹

The Commission was in fact only one of a set of papers with which the High Command equipped the men named in it. The activists who set off from York to raise Worcestershire carried at least three. Firstly they had the Commission itself.²² Then they carried a set of detailed instructions to all commissioners, as to the manner of procedure.²³ Like the manifestos, they were calculated to appeal to public prejudice, in this case that for legalism. Those active for Parliament were to be imprisoned, but only by the JPs in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of maps
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction to the second edition
• Introduction: ‘Wrong but Wromantic’?
• Part One: The achievement of civil war
• Part Two: The grandees
• Part Three: The Royalist war effort
• Part Four: The warlords
• Part Five: Warlords and civilians
• Part Six: The failure of the Royalists
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Royalist civilian commissioners
• Notes
• Bibliography: Primary sources;
• Index