God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  These few minutes of discussion have been central to much controversy about the political theory of the civil war and revolution. It seems that the subsequent debate concluded that only foreigners and those too dependent to make a free choice – beggars and servants – should be excluded from the vote. The significance of these exchanges is not diminished by an appreciation of the context they were uttered in – here was a confrontation over fundamentals of political society, a debate cut loose from the moorings of the controversies of 1642. Who were the people and how were they to be represented? Did this discussion affect women? Issues lurking at the edges, or below the surface, of the paper war in 1642 were here being discussed in the governing council of one of the most important power brokers of the post-war settlement.23

  Concentration on this issue took attention away from potentially shared ground, and may have reflected the fact that the debate was sprung on Cromwell and Ireton – had they had more leisure they might have started discussion at another point. Meanwhile, in a manner now familiar, partisans launched into print as Leveller sympathizers published denunciations of the leadership. A Call to All the Soldiers of the Army by the Free People of England, almost certainly the work of Wildman, was circulating among the regiments on 29 October. It called on the army to act to establish a free parliament and to throw out the usurpers.24 This may well have captured the mood of the army more completely than the more moderate line of the officers.

  On 30 October a committee met to discuss the June proposals and the Agreement. What emerged owed much to the Heads of Proposals. After a day of prayer the council met again on 1 November, in the last meeting recorded by Clarke. Cromwell, again in the chair, asked those present what answers God had vouchsafed to them in their prayers. Some of the answers were disturbing, or exhilarating. Goffe, for example, claimed that the voice of heaven had spoken against ‘tampering’ with God’s enemies. Captain Bishop, ‘after many enquiries in’ his ‘spirit’, concluded that the root of their sufferings was ‘a compliance to preserve that man of blood, and those principles of tyranny which God from heaven, by His many successes, hath manifestly declared against’. This was dangerous language – that the blood on the King’s hands made him as culpable as any other man. It implied that justice should be sought against a man of blood if further judgements from God were to be avoided. This Old Testament view had been expressed in the aftermath of Edgehill amidst fears of a peace no better than capitulation, but gathered force through the war. One preacher was later remembered to have argued during 1645 that ‘the King was a man of blood, and that it was a vain thing to hope for the blessing of God upon any peace to be made with him, till satisfaction should be made for the blood that had been shed’.25

  In the face of these inflammatory arguments Cromwell and others questioned whether divine purposes for the detail of political life could be accurately interpreted in this way. Cromwell himself, however, was conciliatory, acknowledging that God might want these things but professing uncertainty that the army was His instrument in this matter. He was more comfortable with the argument that they owed their life to Parliament so either it was a parliament and they should obey it or it was not a parliament, in which case the army had no legitimate existence either. A long and unhelpful wrangle developed which did not clarify what proposals to back, but it was agreed to continue to meet each day until all proposals had been considered.

  In the face of these divisions Cromwell and Fairfax seem to have been concerned above all to preserve army unity. In this they were ultimately successful. There were five more meetings of the General Council before 8 November, in which there was an increasingly obvious hostility to Charles and to monarchy. There were signs of similar impatience, at least with the man Charles Stuart, in Parliament and on 6 November it was declared that he should assent to measures propounded by Parliament: in other words he should accept the settlement offered, not seek to negotiate.26 But there were also signs of hostility to the officers, including a threat of impeachment against Cromwell, which Rainborough and Marten claimed would be supported by 20,000 citizens. There were increasing concerns too that Charles was close to an agreement with Scottish commissioners and that he intended to bolt from Hampton Court (which he did indeed do, on 11 November). Control of the General Council debates was increasingly tenuous, although on 8 November a letter was sent to the Speaker that the army had no intention of vetoing further approaches to Charles.

  Control was ultimately asserted by the officers in a more straightforward way. Early in the debates Rainborough had called for a general rendezvous at which the position of the army could be cleared before all the soldiers. In the event the army was assembled in three separate rendezvous where Fairfax asserted his own authority, and successfully promoted a new declaration. At Ware on 15 November, the first of the rendezvous, the opposition seemed less impressive than the desire for unity. Some regiments attended without orders to do so, and some were wearing the Agreement in their hats: radicals hoped to get the Agreement adopted by acclamation in place of a new Remonstrance being promoted by Fairfax. At one point armed confrontation threatened, and in the end nine ringleaders were court-martialled. Three were sentenced to death and drew lots for their lives. This assertion of army discipline seems to have worked – there were no difficulties at the subsequent rendezvous at Ruislip Heath and Kingston.27

  Not only was army discipline restored, but a new platform was adopted and the attempt by outside forces to manipulate army counsels was denounced. The Remonstrance denounced the role of the new agents, ‘who… have… taken upon them to act as a divided Party from the… Council and Army’. Their claims about the betrayals of the officers were scandalous, and so were their methods. The problems in the army arose from ‘divers private persons that are not of the Army, [who] have endeavoured, by various falsehoods and scandals, raised and divulged in print, and otherwise, against the General, the General Officers and Council, to possess the Army and the Kingdom with jealousies of them’. Wildman, the civilian who had spoken more than most at Putney, and who had briefed against the officers in the press, was obviously one such. The demands returned to more moderate realms: redress of the army’s professional grievances over pay, impressment, freedom for apprentices who had served in the war, and indemnity. Appended to these was a call for a date to be named for an end to the present parliament, for free and equal elections to the next one, to render the ‘House of Commons (as near as may be) an equal representative of the people that are to elect’.28 There was no formal equality, and no statement about the franchise; but this did nonetheless give ground to the radicals while at the same time asserting the organic unity of the army against their malign influences. The vision of the army’s Book of Declarations had been reaffirmed.

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  Scottish commissioners – the earls of Lanark, Loudoun and Lauderdale – had been holding out the possibility of military support for the King since June. It was not clear that they would actually be able to deliver it, but, by late October, Charles was certainly interested. On 22 October the Scottish commissioners had been with the King at Hampton Court and encouraged him to escape with them. In fact, fifty armed men arrived to escort him, but Charles refused, saying that he had given his word not to. Unfortunately, news of the plan leaked out even as he refused to go along with it – the worst of both worlds. As a result, on 31 October, the guard on him was strengthened and the following day his attendants were removed. In the first week of November, Ashburnham and the Scottish commissioners were clearly encouraging him to consider flight. By 9 November he was being convinced that his life was in danger and it may indeed have been: Cromwell ordered extra guards because an assassination would look bad.29

  Charles therefore had two main options: a deal with the army on toleration; or a deal with the Covenanters on Presbyterianism. These were clearly incompatible. Growing certainty in the army and at Parliament that he was not negotiating with any serious intent was used by his friends to urge him to sett
le quickly, but also to take flight for Scotland. He could not do both: flight would confirm the suspicions that he did not intend a settlement; settlement on the army’s terms would cost him Scottish support. Although the Heads of Proposals were the best offer yet, the army was not a body with which he was likely to want to deal. If, however, he chose to escape, it was not exactly clear where he would go unless, that is, he was sincere in his commitment to Scotland. The Covenanters now saw that Parliament and the City did not offer much security for their cherished Britannic Presbyterianism, and there was a danger that their king might be assassinated or deposed by an English army. But they continued to demand that Charles take the Solemn League and Covenant.30 That Charles was in negotiation with the Covenanters and that they were willing to help him escape was well-known. It was also feared that this might lead to a renewal of hostilities. Once he had escaped there was apparently talk in the army of bringing Charles to trial in order to prove that he, not the army, was responsible for a renewal of fighting.31

  On 11 November, Charles chose to escape, and rode off with Berkeley and Ashburnham into the night, heading south rather than north, apparently because he did not trust the Covenanters. He ended up on the Isle of Wight, having searched in vain for a ship to take him to France. This was something of an embarrassment to the island’s new governor, Colonel Robert Hammond, who took his commission from Parliament seriously, and was less than delighted to have this new guest. The King seems to have become keen on going straight to France, but the expected boat never arrived and he was escorted to Carisbrooke Castle on 14 November.32

  Having escaped, and seen the restoration of army discipline, Charles seems to have decided to deal with the army. But having flirted with the Covenanters, and escaped from Hampton Court, he had a real credibility problem. On 16 November he sent a letter to the House of Lords, following up a message that he had left for them at Hampton Court on the day of his escape, which seemed to offer a compromise between his own position and the Heads of Proposals. He declared his conscientious objection to the abolition of bishops and the alienation of church lands, but also his willingness to see the Presbyterian church currently established persist for three years, in order to avoid further disorder. But that church was to have no power to coerce men of his mind, or any others. Here was potentially shared ground on the issue of toleration – some royalists had been making a case against coercion in matters of conscience, notably Jeremy Taylor.33 Papists, and public professions of atheism or blasphemy, were excluded from this toleration. This was a strange alliance, however: toleration being urged as a way of safeguarding episcopacy. Charles again proposed a conference in the Westminster Assembly, with divines of his choosing added to the body. He also offered to give up the militia during his lifetime, to put down disturbances of the peace and resist invasion. Thereafter, control would revert to the crown. He also gave commitments about arrears of pay, disposing of the great offices of state during his lifetime, an Act of Oblivion to prevent reopening of these conflicts, and offers on Ireland and the status of measures taken by rival authorities during the war. Settling all these things, he declared, would be a prelude to reforming parliaments in the way suggested by the Heads of Proposals.34

  All this was, of course, unacceptable to the Covenanters, to whom Charles cheerfully explained that it was only a lure to start negotiations – he had no intention of entering into a final agreement along these lines. To those trying to deal with the King this approach was maddening, and it is hard to believe that it did not occur to the Scots that he was toying with their affections too. But there was for Charles a stable core of principle here – in order to preserve essentials it might be necessary to concede ground tactically, and while he would not break an explicit promise (such as not to escape), offering something as an inducement to negotiate with no intention of actually conceding it was not dishonest, merely politic.35

  The offer he had made was in itself skilfully judged, offering to forge a royalist-Independent coalition against strict Presbyterianism, and to answer the demands of the army in relation to Parliament. On the other hand, it also established Presbyterianism, and so made a large concession to that lobby too. But it was too late in the day to seem sincere or serious and it was answered with an ultimatum. After letting it lie for nine days the Houses came up with four counter-propositions, which were converted into bills for the royal assent on 14 December. They would grant Parliament control of the militia for twenty years and concede the need for parliamentary consent before the militia could be exercised; revoke declarations against the Houses; revoke peerages created since 1642 (which affected the composition of the Lords, of course); and give the existing Houses the right to adjourn to any location where they felt safe. Other pieces of legislation were offered as propositions and a number of qualifications were added. The deal was that once they had received royal assent then Charles could be admitted to a personal treaty.36 In one sense this was a return to more normal politics – the use of Acts rather than ordinances would at least signal a return to legislative normality. But they were really a test of honesty rather than a gesture of loyalty, and they turned negotiating points into preconditions. Even so, it seems that some people in the army and in Parliament had given up on him completely.37

  It was not until 24 December that a delegation arrived at Carisbrooke to present the Four Bills to Charles formally. The Scottish commissioners followed after the delegation, ostensibly to express their opposition to the bills, but really to present an alternative: the Engagement. The Four Bills gave no guarantees about the Solemn League and Covenant: either on religion or on the closer political union of the two kingdoms, and the prospects for this seemed to be diminishing. Henry Marten had published a pamphlet expressing English hostility to these ‘extra-national’ demands of the Covenanters, and the mood seems to have been a more general one. Fearing this development, the Covenanters became a soft touch for Charles. In the gap between the arrival of the Four Bills and the Scottish commissioners Charles successfully gave the impression that he was interested in a deal with Parliament, and this probably helped him to secure more concessions from the Scottish commissioners when they did arrive.38

  On 26 December, probably in consummation of his plans for the last eighteen months or more, Charles signed an agreement that allowed him to resume the fighting: the Engagement.39 Under its terms he offered to confirm the Solemn League and Covenant by Act of Parliament, provided that no-one (including him) was forced to take it. He would establish Presbyterian church government and the Directory of Worship for three years (although exempting himself and his household), to be followed by a free debate at the Westminster Assembly. There would also be legislation against schism and heresy. In return for this, the Scots would provide an army:

  for preservation and establishment of religion, for defence of His Majesty’s person and authority, and restoring him to his government, to the just rights of the Crown and his full revenues, for defence of the privileges of Parliament and liberties of the subject, for making a firm union between the kingdoms, under His Majesty and his posterity, and settling a lasting peace.40

  Duly signed, it was wrapped in lead and buried in the garden of the castle until the opportunity arose to take it off the island.41

  Two days later Charles rejected the Four Bills. Proposals which had already been denounced by the Scottish commissioners could clearly not be the basis for peace, he argued, and the form of the approach foreclosed negotiation – not least because he would have to assent to actions taken under a Great Seal created without his authority. He had asked for a personal treaty and they ‘in manner propose the very subject matter of the most essential parts thereof to be first granted, a thing which will be hardly credible to posterity’.42 This was not an unreasonable position, at least if it had been taken up by someone who had not just entered an agreement to start another war.

  Although the Engagement was not public knowledge until February 1648, when it was discussed in the Ed
inburgh parliament, Charles’s preference for Scottish military intervention as an alternative to settlement with Parliament was widely suspected. The Four Bills had been an ultimatum which had in the end met a brisk and wounding rejection. The result was the Vote of No Addresses. The Houses declared they would make no more approaches, and declared that no-one should make an application without their approval on pain of prosecution for treason. They would also receive no further approaches from the King, and no-one else was to either. A similar measure had been floated three months previously, and the Four Bills had been a means to forestall a similar measure as rumours about Charles and the Scots spread.43