by Will Durant
You know what my manner of life hath been. Oh, I have lived in a loved darkness, and hated light; I was a chief, the chief, of sinners. This is true: I hated godliness; yet God had mercy on me. Oh, the riches of His mercy! Praise Him for me—pray for me, that He who hath begun a good work would perfect it in the day of Christ.73
He experienced all the ecstasies of repentance; he had hallucinations of death and other mental terrors that left him permanently touched with melancholy, and for the rest of his life he spoke in terms of Puritan piety. He settled down, married, had nine children, and became so model a citizen that in 1628, aged twenty-eight, he was chosen to represent Huntingdon in Parliament. He sold his Huntingdon property for £ 1,800 in 1631 and moved to St. Ives, later to Ely. When Cambridge returned him to Parliament in 1640 he was described by another member as “very ordinarily appareled” in “a plain cloth suit … His linen not very clean … a speck or two of blood upon his little [neck] band,” his face “swollen and reddish,” his voice “sharp and untunable,” his temper “exceeding fiery,” but under firm control.74 He bided his time, talked with God, and had the strength of ten. As yet, however, God chose other instruments.
It was John Pym who revealed the angry mood of the Parliament by denouncing Strafford as a secret papist plotting to bring in an army from Ireland, to overthrow Parliament, and to “alter law and religion.”75 On November 11, 1640, the House of Commons—which had never forgiven his desertion to the King—impeached the Earl as a traitor and had him sent to the Tower. On December 16, having declared the new Anglican canons illegal, it impeached Archbishop Laud on grounds of “popery” and treason, and had him too sent to the Tower. Selden later confessed, “We charge the prelatical clergy with popery to make them odious, though we know they are guilty of no such thing.”76 Charles was so bewildered by these uncompromising moves that he took no action to protect his aides. The Queen justified the Parliament’s fears by asking her confessor to solicit aid from the Pope.77
Excitement and passion mounted on both sides. A “Root and Branch” faction among the London radicals—which included Milton—petitioned Parliament to abolish episcopacy and restore the government of the Church to the people; it branded as abominable the opinion of some bishops “that the pope is not Antichrist … and that salvation is attainable in that [Catholic] religion.”78 The House rejected the petition, but voted the debarment of the clergy from all legislative and judicial functions. The Lords agreed, with the proviso that bishops should retain their seats in the upper house. This, however, was precisely what the Commons wished to end, for it expected that the bishops in the Lords would always vote for the King. Pamphlets defending or attacking episcopacy made the issue boil. Bishop Joseph Hall claimed divine right for it on the ground that it had been established by the Apostles or Christ; five Presbyterian publicists replied in a famous pamphlet under the pseudonym “Smectymnuus,” composed of their initials; five later blasts were contributed by Milton. On May 27, 1641, Cromwell again proposed the total abolition of the episcopacy; the bill was passed by the House, rejected by the Lords. On September I the Commons resolved that “scandalous pictures” of the Trinity, all images of the Virgin Mary, all crosses and “superstitious figures” should be removed from English churches, and that all “dancing and other sports” were to be avoided on the Lord’s Day. Another wave of iconoclasm swept over England; altar rails and screens were taken down, stained-glass windows were smashed, statues were demolished, pictures were cut to shreds.79 The House again passed a bishops’ exclusion bill on October 23. The King appealed to the Lords, declaring that he was resolved to die in the maintenance of the existing doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Church; he did. His intervention secured the defeat of the bill, but hostile crowds prevented the bishops from attending Parliament. Twelve of them signed a protest, declaring that any legislation passed in their absence would be null and void. Parliament impeached and imprisoned them. Finally the Lords ratified the exclusion bill (February 5, 1642), and bishops no longer sat in Parliament.
The victorious Commons proceeded to consolidate its power. It borrowed money from the city of London to finance its maintenance. It passed bills requiring triennial Parliaments and forbidding the dissolution of any Parliament within fifty days of its convening, or of the present Parliament without its consent. It reformed taxation and the judiciary. It abolished the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission. It ended monopolies and the levy of ship money, and rescinded the verdict against Hampden. It granted the King the right to collect tonnage and poundage dues, but only for periods specified by Parliament. Charles agreed to these measures, and the Parliament passed from reform to revolution.
In March 1641 it brought Strafford to trial; in April it pronounced him guilty of treason and sent the bill of attainder to the King for signature. Against Laud’s advice, Charles appeared in the Lords and declared that though he was ready to disqualify Strafford from office he would never consent to condemn him for treason. The Commons pronounced this royal appearance a violation of parliamentary privilege and freedom. On the next day “great multitudes” gathered about the House of Lords and the palace of the King, crying “Justice! justice!” and demanding Strafford’s death. The frightened Privy Council begged Charles to yield; he refused. The Archbishop of York added his plea for signature; nobles warned the King that his own life and the lives of the Queen and his children were in danger; he still refused. Finally the condemned man himself sent him a message advising him to sign, as the only alternative to mob violence.80 Charles signed and never forgave himself. On May 12, 1641, Strafford was led out to execution. Laud stretched out his hands through the bars of his cell window to bless him as he passed. “Thorough” died without whimpering, before a hostile crowd.
His execution sharpened the division of the House into what later came to be the rival parties of Whigs and Tories—those who favored and those who opposed the further transference of power from king to Parliament. Men like Lucius Cary (Viscount Falkland) and Edward Hyde (future Earl of Clarendon), both of whom had supported Parliament, wondered now whether the King, having been so severely chastened, might not be a desirable bulwark against mob rule in London, Puritan rule in religion, and a runaway Parliament that would disestablish the Church, threaten private property, and imperil the whole class structure of British life. Pym, Hampden, and Cromwell might have admitted these dangers, but there was another that touched them more closely: they had gone so far that they feared for their lives if Charles should recover power. At any moment the King might bring over a half-Catholic army from Ireland as Strafford had proposed to do. For its own safety Parliament decided to maintain the friendly army of Scots in the north of England. It sent the Scots an initial gift of £300,000 and pledged a monthly subsidy of £25,000.81
The fears of the Parliament were sharpened by the sudden outbreak of a wild revolt in Ireland (October 1641). Phelim O’Neill, Rory O’More III, and other leaders called for a war of liberation—of Ulster from its English colonists, of Catholics from oppression, of Ireland from England. Inflamed by the memory of merciless persecutions and brutal evictions, the rebels fought with a fury that made them barbarous; the English in Ireland, defending what now seemed to them their legitimate property as well as their lives, returned barbarity with ferocity, and every victory became a massacre. The English Parliament wrongly suspected the King of having fomented the revolt to restore Catholicism in Ireland and later in England; it refused his request for funds to raise an army to rescue the English in the Pale; such an army might be turned against Parliament itself. The Irish revolt continued throughout the English revolution.
The revolution took a further step when Charles advanced two of the excluded and impeached bishops to higher place. Indignant Commoners proposed a “Grand Remonstrance” which would summarize and publicize the case of Parliament against the King, and would compel him to give Parliament the right to veto his appointments to important posts. Many conservatives felt that the m
easure would transfer executive power to the Parliament and reduce the King to impotence. The division of parties became acute, the debate more violent; members clutched their swords to emphasize their words; Cromwell later declared that if the bill had lost he would have taken ship to America.82 It passed by eleven votes, and on December 1, 1641, it was presented to the King. It began by affirming its loyalty to the Crown. It proceeded to list in detail the offenses which the King had given Parliament and the injuries he had inflicted upon the country. It reviewed the abuses which parliamentary reforms had corrected; it charged “papists … bishops, and the corrupt part of the clergy,” and self-seeking councilors and courtiers, with plotting to make England Catholic. It pointed to repeated violations of the Petition of Right and to highhanded dissolutions of elected Parliaments. It asked the King to call an assembly of divines to restore the Anglican worship to its pre-Laudian form. It proposed that he remove from his Council all opponents of the Parliament’s policies, and employ hereafter only “such counselors, ambassadors, and other ministers … as the Parliament have cause to confide in; without which they could not give his Majesty such supplies for his own support, or such assistance for the Protestant party beyond the seas, as was desired.”83
Charles took his time answering this ultimatum. On December 15 Parliament went over his head to the people by ordering publication of the Grand Remonstrance. Charles then replied. He agreed to call a synod to repress all invasions of “popery”; he refused to deprive the bishops of their votes in Parliament; he insisted on his right to call to his Council, and to public employment, such men as he thought fit; and he again asked for funds. Instead, the Commons proposed a “Militia Bill” which would give it control of the army.
Charles, so regularly irresolute, now rushed into a bold stroke that Parliament denounced as an act of war. On January 3, 1642, his attorney general, before the Lords, indicted, in the King’s name, five members of the lower house—Pym, Hampden, Holies, Heselrige, Strode—on a charge of treason for seeking to turn the army from obedience to the King and for encouraging a “foreign power” (Scotland) to invade England and make war upon the King. On the next day Charles, supported by three hundred soldiers whom he left at the door, entered the House of Commons to arrest the five men; they were not there, having taken refuge in friendly homes; “I see,” said the baffled King, “all the birds are flown.” As he walked out he was rebuked with cries of “Privilege!”; for such royal and armed invasion of Parliament was manifestly illegal. In fear of wholesale arrest, the Commons moved to the Guildhall, under protection of the citizens. When Charles left London for Hampton Court, the Commons, including the five indicted men, returned to Westminster. Queen Henrietta fled secretly to France with the Crown jewels to buy aid for the King. Charles left for the north with the Great Seal. He tried to enter Hull and secure the military supplies there; the town refused to admit him; he moved on to York. Parliament ordered all armed forces to obey only Parliament (March 5, 1642). Thirty-five peers and sixty-five Commoners seceded from Parliament and joined Charles at York. Edward Hyde now became chief adviser to the King.
On June 2 Parliament transmitted to Charles nineteen propositions whose acceptance it held to be essential to peace. He was to turn over to Parliament control of the army and all fortified places. Parliament was to revise the liturgy and the government of the Church. It was to appoint and dismiss all ministers of the Crown and the guardians of the King’s children, and was to have authority to exclude from the upper house all peers hereafter created. Charles rejected the proposals as in effect a destruction of the monarchy. As if rehearsing the French Revolution, Parliament appointed a Committee of Public Safety, and ordered that “an army shall be forthwith raised” (July 12). Cromwell and others left for their home boroughs to organize volunteers. In an appeal to the nation (August 2), Parliament based its revolt not on the desirability of parliamentary sovereignty, but on the imminence of a Catholic uprising in England; and it warned the country that victory for the King would be followed by a general massacre of Protestants.84 On August 17 its agents seized the military stores at Hull. On August 27, 1642, Charles unfurled his standard at Nottingham and began the Civil War.
IX. THE FIRST CIVIL WAR: 1642-46
England was now divided as seldom in known history before. London, the ports, the manufacturing towns, in general the south and the east, most of the middle class, part of the gentry, and practically all Puritans were for Parliament. Oxford and Cambridge, the west and the north, most of the aristocracy and the peasantry, and nearly all Catholics and episcopalian Anglicans stood with the King. The House of Commons was itself divided: some 300 members were on the rebel side, some 175 were Royalists. In the Lords 30 of the 110 peers sided at first with Parliament. The balance of wealth fell against the King; London had half the money of the nation and lent heavily to the revolution; Charles could not borrow anywhere; the navy was against him, and it blocked foreign aid; he had to rely upon gifts and men from the great estates, whose owners felt that their landed interest depended on his victory. Some chivalric virtues and sentiment survived in the old families; they gave their loyalty to the King without stint; they fought and died like gentlemen. The colorful Cavaliers, their hair in ringlets, their horses in gay accouterment, had all the romance of the war on their side, and all the poets but Milton. The money was with Parliament.
The gauge of blood began at Edgehill (October 23, 1642). Each army had some 14,000 men. The Royalists were led by Prince Rupert, the twenty-two-year-old son of Charles’s sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia; the “Roundheads,” by Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex. The result was indecisive, but Essex withdrew his forces, and the King marched on to make Oxford his headquarters. Nehemiah Wellington, a fervent or politic Puritan, called it a great victory for Parliament and God:
Herein we see God’s great mercy … for, as I hear, the slaughter was in all 5,517; but ten of the enemy’s side were slain to one of ours. And observe God’s wonderful works, for those that were slain of our side were mostly of them that ran away; but those that stood most valiantly to it, they were most preserved….
If I could relate how admirably the hand of Providence ordered our artillery and bullets for the destruction of the enemy! … Oh, how God did guide their bullets … that some fell down before them [of our side], some grazed along, some bullets went over their heads, and some one side of them! Oh, how seldom or never were they hurt, that stood valiant to it, by their bullets! … This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in my eyes.85
However, matters went poorly for Parliament in the ensuing spring. Queen Henrietta stole back to England with arms and ammunition and joined Charles at Oxford. Essex dallied while his army was eroded by desertion and disease. Hampden was mortally wounded in a skirmish at Chalgrove Field. A Parliamentary force was defeated at Adwalton Moor (June 30, 1643), another was destroyed at Roundway Down (July 13); Bristol fell to the King. In this nadir of its fortunes, Parliament turned to Scotland for help. On September 22 it signed with Scottish commissioners a “Solemn League and Covenant” which pledged the Scots to send an army to Parliament’s aid in return for £ 30,000 a month, on condition that Parliament establish in England and Ireland the Presbyterian form of Protestantism—church government by presbyteries free from episcopal control. In the same month Charles made peace with the Irish insurgents, and imported some of them to fight for him in England. English Catholics rejoiced, Protestants turned increasingly against the King. In January 1644 the Irish invaders were defeated at Nantwich, and the Scottish invaders advanced into England. The Civil War now involved three nations and four faiths.
On July I, 1643, the Westminster Assembly—121 English divines, thirty English laymen, and (later) eight Scottish delegates—met to define the new Presbyterian Protestantism of England. Hampered by Parliamentary domination, it dragged out its conferences through six years. A few members, favoring episcopacy, withdrew; a small group of Puritan Independents demanded that each congregation
should be free from presbyteries as well as from bishops; the majority, following the pledge and the will of Parliament, favored the rule of religion in England and Ireland, as in Scotland, by presbyters, presbyteries, provincial synods, and general assemblies. Parliament abolished the Anglican episcopacy (1643), adopted and legislated the Presbyterian organization and creed (1646), but gave itself a veto power over all ecclesiastical decisions. In 1647 the Assembly issued the Westminster Confession of Faith, Larger Catechism, and Smaller Catechism, reaffirming the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, election, and reprobation.I The decisions of the Westminster Assembly were set aside by the restoration of the Stuart dynasty and the Anglican Church, but the confession and the catechisms have remained in theoretical force in the Presbyterian churches of the English-speaking world.
The Assembly and the Parliament agreed in rejecting the plea of the minor sects for religious toleration. The incorporated city of London petitioned Parliament to suppress all heresies. In 1648 the Commons passed bills punishing with life imprisonment the opponents of infant baptism, and with death those who denied the Trinity, or the Incarnation, or the divine inspiration of the Bible, or the immortality of the soul.87 Several Jesuits were executed between 1642 and 1650; and on January 10, 1645, Archbishop Laud, aged seventy-two, was led from the Tower to the block. Parliament felt that it was engaged in a war to the death and that it was no time for amenities. Cromwell, however, stood out for some measure of toleration. In 1643 he organized at Cambridge a regiment which came to be called the Ironsides—a name originally given by Prince Rupert to Cromwell himself. Into this company he welcomed men of any faith—except Catholics and Episcopalians—”who had the fear of God before them and made some conscience of what they did.”88 When a Presbyterian officer wished to cashier a lieutenant colonel as an Anabaptist, Cromwell protested, “Sir, the state, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions; if they be willing to serve it faithfully, that suffices.”89 He asked Parliament (1644) to “endeavour the finding out some way how far tender consciences, who cannot in all things submit to the common [ecclesiastical] rule … may be borne with according to the Word.”90 Parliament ignored the request, but he continued to practice a comparative toleration in his regiments, and during his ascendancy in England.