Horses, People and Parliament in the English Civil War

Extracting Resources and Constructing Allegiance

Gavin Robinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409420934
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317121268
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

Horses played a major role in the military, economic, social and cultural history of early-modern England. This book uses the supply of horses to parliamentary armies during the English Civil War to make two related points. Firstly it shows how control of resources - although vital to success - is contingent upon a variety of logistical and political considerations. It then demonstrates how competition for resources and construction of individuals' identities and allegiances fed into each other. Resources, such as horses, did not automatically flow out of areas which were nominally under Parliament's control. Parliament had to construct administrative systems and make them work. This was not easy when only a minority of the population actively supported either side and property rights had to be negotiated, so the success of these negotiations was never a foregone conclusion. The study also demonstrates how competition for resources and construction of identities fed into each other. It argues that allegiance was not a fixed underlying condition, but was something external and changeable. Actions were more important than thoughts and to secure victory, both sides needed people to do things rather than feel vaguely sympathetic. Furthermore, identities were not always self-fashioned but could be imposed on people against their will, making them liable to disarmament, sequestration, fines or imprisonment. More than simply a book about resources and logistics, this study poses fundamental questions of identity construction, showing how culture and reality influence each other. Through an exploration of Parliament's interaction with local communities and individuals, it reveals fascinating intersections between military necessity and issues of gender, patriarchy, religion, bureaucracy, nationalism and allegiance.

Chapter 1
The Propositions

Parliament

Attempts to explain the start and end of the First Civil War have suffered from a large hole in the historiography where the Earl of Essex’s army should be. This omission is surprising to say the least. How could so many eminent historians have claimed that they understood the causes of the First Civil War when they had not even asked about the origins of one of the armies which fought the first campaign? Godfrey Davies published a brief article on its organization in 1934.¹ Military historians continued to study the army’s campaigns and battles without adequately explaining how it was created or maintained. Peter Young’s book on Edgehill devoted only five pages to raising the parliamentary army, while a more recent interpretation of the battle covered the recruitment of Essex’s army in only half a page.² It is only in the last five years that academic publications have started to deal with the recruitment, finance and administration of Essex’s army in sufficient detail.³ This chapter will add to the new work on the origins of Essex’s army.

Parliament started raising an army on 10 June 1642. This was one month before the Earl of Essex was appointed Lord General and nearly ten weeks before Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham. The process began with an ordinance inviting the public to contribute money, plate, horses and arms for the defence of Parliament.⁴ This system of public subscriptions was often referred to as the Propositions. John Smith and Thomas Richardson were appointed commissaries to receive and value horses and arms in London. They kept detailed records containing descriptions and values of the horses, along with the name, and sometimes the address and status, of the owner. The original lists have not survived, but the commissaries made copies in 1644 when they were required to account for everything they had received. These books, which were handed in to the Committee for Taking Accounts of the Whole Kingdom, have survived and provide a reliable account of horses which were actually brought in.⁵ By the time of the battle of Edgehill on 23 October 1642, just over 3,200 cavalry horses with a total value of over £48,500 had been listed.

Resistance Practice

Parliament’s official words and actions in 1642 did not depend heavily on resistance theory. Debates with Charles I over the theory of the king’s two bodies were about who had the right to exercise royal authority rather than who had the right to resist it.⁶ The ordinances by which Parliament took control of the militia and raised new forces to fight against the King offered no explicit theoretical justification for these actions. The preambles of the Militia Ordinance and Propositions Ordinance concentrated on why action needed to be taken rather than on why Parliament was allowed to take it. They relied on fear more than constitutional principle.⁷ The Propositions Ordinance began by creating a strong impression of approaching disaster:

Whereas it appears that the King (seduced by wicked Counsel) intends to make War against His Parliament, and, in Pursuance thereof, under Pretence of a Guard for His Person, hath actually begun to levy Forces both of Horse and Foot, and sent out Summons throughout the County of Yorke, for the calling together of greater Numbers; and some ill-affected Persons have been employed in other Parts, to raise Troops, under the Colour of His Majesty’s Service, making large Offers of Reward and Preferment to such as will come in; and that His Majesty doth, with a high and forcible Hand, protect and keep away Delinquents, not permitting them to make their Appearance, to answer such Affronts and Injuries as have been by them offered unto the Parliament; and those Messengers which have been sent from the Houses for them, have been abused, beaten, and imprisoned; so as the Orders of Parliament (which is the highest Court of Justice in this Realm) are not obeyed, and the Authority of it is altogether scorned and vilified, and such Persons as stand well affected to it, and declare themselves sensible of these Public Calamities, and of the Violations of the Privileges of Parliament, and Common Liberty of the Subject, are baffled and injured, by several Sorts of malignant Men, who are about the King: some whereof, under the Name of Cavaliers, without having Respect to the Laws of the Land, or any Fear either of God or Man, are ready to commit all Manner of Outrage and Violence, which must needs tend to the Dissolution of this Government, the destroying of our Religion, Laws, Liberty, and Propriety; all which will be exposed to the Malice and Violence of such desperate Persons as must be employed in so horrid and unnatural an Act as the overthrowing of a Parliament by Force, which is the Support and Preservation of them all; which being duly considered by the Lords and Commons, and how great an Obligation lies upon them, in Honour, Conscience and Duty, according to the high Trust reposed in them, to use all possible Means in such Cases for the timely Prevention of so great and irrecoverable Evils, they have thought fit to publish their Sense and Apprehension of this imminent Danger …⁸

This was an argument from necessity, not from constitutional principles. By Glenn Burgess’s definition it is arbitrary government, and by Johann Sommerville’s definition it is absolutism.⁹ The Earl of Dorset wrote, probably in August 1642, that there was ‘an arbitrary government even on both sides’.¹⁰ The preamble was so controversial that it was omitted when the Propositions Ordinance was read at subscription meetings in Norfolk.¹¹ Sir Simonds D’Ewes had spoken against it before the ordinance passed the Commons, saying that ‘I did conceive this expression might prove of dangerous consequence because it would fill men’s hearts with the fear and expectation of a civil war.’¹²

By asserting that Charles I was controlled by a popish conspiracy and incapable of ruling, Parliament claimed the right to resist in theory and suggested ways of resisting in practice. The methods used to raise forces against the King in 1642 drew on Elizabethan plans to defend the protestant commonwealth from catholic conspiracies in the absence of a monarch. The 1584 oath of association committed protestants to material action. In an emergency the associations were to raise armed forces, with money and weapons subscribed by the swearers.¹³ This idea was put into practice in 1642 with the creation of the Earl of Essex’s army. Material contributions were linked to the Protestation, which was often compared to the 1584 bond of association.¹⁴ The ordinance stated that its purpose was ‘to excite all well-affected Persons to contribute their best Assistance, according to their solemn Vow and Protestation’.¹⁵ People who took the Protestation potentially committed themselves to providing resources and to fighting, as they promised to defend the King, Parliament, the protestant religion and the liberty of the subject ‘with my Life, Power, and Estate’.¹⁶ The Protestation was closely associated with threats of violence. It was drawn up around the time of the first Army Plot in May 1641 and imposed on the whole kingdom after the attempt on the five members in January 1642.¹⁷ It countered these threats from the supposed popish conspiracy with more threats, binding those who took it to ‘by good Ways and Means, endeavour to bring to condign Punishment, all such as shall, either by Force, Practice, Counsel, Plots, Conspiracies, or otherwise, do any thing to the contraryin this present Protestation contained’.¹⁸ This threat of violence was made even more explicit by John Pym’s description of the vow as a ‘shibboleth’, recalling the bloodthirsty passage in the book of Judges in which idolaters had their throats cut if they could not say the word.¹⁹ The Propositions Ordinance interpreted the Protestation as a very literal call to arms and attem...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Abbreviations and Conventions
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Propositions
• Chapter 2 The Other Side
• Chapter 3 Seizure
• Chapter 4 Quotas
• Chapter 5 Purchase
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index