The English Civil War

David Clark

• Publisher: Pocket Essentials
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781843444695
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The English Civil War is a subject of perennial interest. This book presents the 'essentials' of the conflict in the form of a readable chronological narrative, beginning with the causes of the war and ending with the execution of King Charles I. The author, who has been exploring battlefields for 50 years, describes the celebrated battles - including Edgehill, Marston Moor and Naseby - together with the major political events which characterized one of the most turbulent periods in English History.

Contemporary documents and leading secondary sources have been used to produce a picture of those troubled times - years which revolutionised government and witnessed the first faltering steps of Parliamentarians towards the democratic form of government we know today.

Students of the English Civil War will find this an invaluable source of reference, while the general reader will be encouraged to delve deeper into what is, undeniably, the most fascinating of historical subjects.

1634–37: The Board

I hope for blood sake he will be welcome, though I believe he will not much trouble the ladies with courting them, nor be thought a very ‘beau garcon’... Give your good counsel to Rupert, for he is still a little giddy, though not so much as he has been. I pray tell him when he does ill, for he is good-natured enough, but doth not always think what he should do.

Letter from the Queen of Bohemia to Sir Henry Vane, written prior to Prince Rupert’s first visit to England in February 1636

On 28 August 1628, a lieutenant of infantry named John Felton loitered nervously in the Greyhound Inn on Portsmouth’s High Street. He stood apart from the general conviviality, for he had a very specific purpose in mind. He was there to kill a man. Despite the nature of his calling, he was armed only with a cheap knife, purchased at a cutler’s shop on Tower Hill, but this mean weapon would do the job well enough, provided he kept his nerve. His meticulous planning even involved the preparation of a written confession, which he had sewed carefully into his hatband.

Passed over for promotion, owed some 80 pounds in back pay and still suffering from wounds received during an ill-fated expedition to La Rochelle, Felton bore a grudge against the man he considered responsible for all his misfortunes – and, indeed, for the woes of the English nation. There were many who would have agreed with him. As his unsuspecting quarry came into view, Felton lunged towards him, drew the knife and drove it deep into his heart. It all happened so quickly that the unfortunate individual could only gasp in astonishment before he fell to the floor, stone dead.

The assassination became international news, for the victim was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, favourite of King Charles I. Buckingham’s enemies were legion and the authorities found it difficult to believe that Felton had acted alone. So lengthy was the subsequent investigation that it was three months before the accused was brought to trial. He was hanged at Tyburn and his body returned to Portsmouth where, in a display of medieval barbarity, it was hung in chains for the edification of the local populace.

The manner of Buckingham’s death may have been unexpected, but his days of influence and power had been numbered even before he was assassinated. He had been responsible for abortive and disastrous conflicts with Spain and France and had been saved from impeachment only by the King’s dissolution of Parliament earlier in the year. His demise did provide Charles with an opportunity to start over, and to ease the strained relations between the monarch and an increasingly fractious House of Commons. Although a number of the King’s enemies did withdraw their opposition in exchange for preferment, both sides tended to become more firmly entrenched in their opposing views of how the country should be governed. Between March 1629 and April 1640, Charles chose to rule without calling a parliament, which was a considerable challenge, if only because parliaments constituted a monarch’s main source of income. These years are known as the period of ‘Personal Rule’.

Charles did not consider himself to be a despot, but he was a confirmed believer in the Divine Right of Kings. His was a mission entrusted to him by God, and he intended to see it through. His father, James I, had wrestled with the issues of religion and political opposition to kingship but, where James was shrewd, Charles was obstinate, lacking the qualities of statesmanship which would be needed to secure the survival of the monarchy in the troubled times which lay ahead. A Venetian diplomat wrote of him: ‘This king is so constituted by nature, that he never obliges any one, either by word or deed.’ Even his choice of a wife displayed a lack of tact. Originally, he had hoped to marry Maria, daughter of Philip III of Spain but, when the scheme fell through, he married Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France. Both girls were devout Roman Catholics, illustrating Charles’s toleration of the Catholic Church. Throughout the 1630s, Henrietta Maria increasingly interfered in affairs of state, creating, in the process, a number of powerful enemies in parliament.

King James’s handling of successive parliaments had left much to be desired. Under Charles, an already strained relationship continued to decline. In exchange for personal favours, parliaments were supposed to grant a monarch the cash he required for anything from meeting his personal expenses to the prosecution of foreign wars. The five Parliaments called between 1621 and 1628 had stopped playing the game, the Members exhibiting a worrying tendency to criticise the King’s policies, his ministers and the King himself. They even wanted a substantial share in the decision-making process.

Charles began to cast around for ways of securing an income without recourse to parliaments. He had already resorted to a forced loan, by which everyone liable to parliamentary taxation was compelled to tender a contribution. With the aid of one of his reformed critics, William Noy, he now resurrected a number of obsolete laws, such as that which required every man who possessed an estate worth at least £40 per annum to take up a knighthood. Penalties totalling £175,000 were levied against those who had failed to comply. Medieval laws governing forests were also revived, which meant that landowners who had encroached on what had once been royal forests were heavily fined.

Another promising earner involved the sale of monopolies in everything from brick-making to coal-shipping. One company received a patent for making – and a monopoly for selling – soap. The company comprised friends of Richard Weston, the then Lord Treasurer, who happened to be Catholics. The commodity gained notoriety as ‘Popish Soap’. One of the most unpopular taxes through which Charles sought to increase his income was ‘Ship Money’. It was not a new tax; it had been levied on various ports and coastal counties for the purposes of naval defence in times of war. In 1634, however, ship-money was demanded from all the maritime counties. It brought in over £100,000, encouraging the King to extend it the following year to all the inland counties as well.

Among those who refused to pay was Buckinghamshire landowner, Justice of the Peace and experienced parliamentarian, John Hampden. Under the provisions of the ship-money tax, Buckinghamshire was required to provide a ship of 450 tons, together with cannon and a full crew – or else pay the sum of £4,500. One wonders what would have happened if the county had called the King’s bluff and produced the vessel instead of the cash. However, Hampden threw down the gauntlet. The tax, he argued, was being levied without the consent of Parliament and, as such, was illegal. Opposition to the tax was growing. Even loyal Royalists such as Yorkshireman Sir Marmaduke Langdale, who would become one of the King’s stoutest supporters during the Civil War, refused to pay. Charles asked the Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Finch, for a ruling. Finch decreed that in times of peril, His Majesty would be justified in extending the tax to the country at large. Most of the defaulters climbed down, leaving only a handful of recalcitrant rebels, of whom Hampden was one.

Having himself taken legal advice, Hampden resolved to stand firm. The tax amounted to only twenty shillings (£1) on his Stoke Mandeville estate, but on this paltry sum was fought one of the most celebrated trials of the age. By the time the case came to court in November 1637, Hampden was known throughout the land. The arguments were simple enough. For Hampden, it was argued that there were no national security issues which warranted the King’s action: it had been a decision for Parliament. For the Crown, the Solicitor-General built his case around the principle of Divine Right: the nation had been entrusted to His Majesty’s care by God, and he reported to God alone. The King was expected to win, and he did – but only by the narrowest of margins. Of the twelve judges, five were for Hampden.

Far more socially divisive than the taxation issue was that of religion. Presiding over the Church of England was the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, appointed in 1633. The son of a Reading clothier, Laud has been described as the most hated archbishop in English history. After his death, it was said of him that ‘he intended the discipline of the church should be felt, as well as spoken of’, and he did, indeed, impose his iron will upon congregations throughout the land. As a self-made man, it was, perhaps, natural that Laud should also subscribe to the doctrine of free-will, but he was careful to ensure that anyone else who sought preferment towed the line. Five specific examples of Laud’s tyranny are usually quoted: those of Leighton, Prynne, Bastwick, Burton and Lilburne.

Alexander Leighton was a Scot, a theologian who penned a ‘seditious’ volume entitled Zion’s Plea against Prelacy, roundly condemning the power of the bishops in the Church. Found guilty of ‘anti-Christian and satanic’ practices, he was publicly whipped, branded on the face with the letters ‘SS’ (Sower of Sedition) and had his ears cut off. In 1634, William Prynne, a lawyer, suffered a similar fate for a thinly disguised attack on Queen Henrietta Maria. Initially, his ears were only partially cropped, but three years later, the stumps were removed and he was branded on the cheeks with the letters ‘SL’ (Seditious Libeller). Two other writers of controversial pamphlets, Henry Burton and John Bastwick, also lost their ears, while the fifth, John Lilburne, suffered the indignity of being tied to a cart-tail and whipped from the Fleet to the Palace Yard in Westminster, before being pilloried. Instead of stamping out the problem, however, Laud’s policy of repression merely led to an increase in the amount of subversive literature hitting the streets.

Laud’s enemies categorised him as an adherent of ‘Arminianism’ (from the theologian, Joseph Arminius) which emphasised the importance of the ceremonial aspects of worship. He relished what he called ‘the external worship of God in His Church’, and described ceremonies and rituals as ‘the hedge that fence the substance of religion from all the indignities which profaneness and sacrilege too commonly put upon it’. The altar was to be placed at the east end of the church and railed off. Statues of the Virgin Mary and the Saints were imported and new stained-glass windows installed – suggesting a definite bias towards the Church of Rome. In fact, although Laud’s actions were a response to the rising tide of Puritanism, he also had little sympathy with the Catholics. He went so far as to ask the King to restrict the number of conversions to Catholicism – a move which was vetoed by the Queen.

In fairness, it must be said that Laud accomplished much good. Before his coming, there was much disorder in Church affairs; some clergy neglected their duties and many churches were dirty and decayed. Cock-fights were staged in churches and St Paul’s Cathedral doubled as the Stock Exchange. Although Laud put an end to such practices, it was inevitable that his reactionary policies would put him on a collision course with the Puritans, who wished to purge the Church of England of what they regarded as superstitious and corrupt observances retained after the severance from Rome.

Laud’s political influence grew, his supporters securing several important positions. In particular, when the position of Lord High Treasurer became vacant in 1636, it was Laud’s influence which led to the appointment of William Juxon, Bishop of London, to the post – with the added position of Lord of the Admiralty thrown in. The Puritans, who counted many prominent parliamentarians among their number, had a potentially strong political base but, as long as Charles could manage without calling a parliament, they were powerless for, in all cases, the law favoured the King.

Of especial use to Charles during his period of ‘Personal Rule’ was the so-called Star Chamber. This had its origins in the fifteenth century and was intended to ensure fair play in cases involving powerful magnates who stood little chance of being convicted of their crimes by lesser courts. It could also be used to try cases of sedition, as in the trials of the five men who incurred Laud’s displeasure. There is little wonder that it developed a reputation as a tool for delivering oppression. Working in tandem with the Star Chamber was the Court of High Commission, an ecclesiastical court set up in 1580. It had always been used to coerce Puritans into conformity, in particular by means of the ex-officio oath, through which those called before it could be forced to give evidence against themselves. Those who refused to take the oath were turned over to the Star Chamber.

Sir Thomas Wentworth in the secular sphere was as hated as Laud was in the ecclesiastical. A leading Parliamentarian, he changed sides and, in 1628, was appointed President of the Council of the North. To all intents and purposes, he was the law in the North of England, and he was determined never to let anyone forget it. Like Laud (the two men got on famously), Wentworth was a gifted administrator and, also like Laud, he accomplished much good. As a Poor Law Commissioner, for example, he was instrumental in enforcing the Elizabethan Poor Law at local level and thus relieving much social distress. The downside of his pos...