300 Exclusion Bill passed.

Militia Ordinance rejected [1642

drop all proceedings against the five members; while, as to the forts and the militia, he expressed his readiness to entrust them to persons nominated in Parliament, provided that he should be allowed to make exceptions, and that the concession should be only for a time. By way of answer, Parliament nominated the new officers, but refused to set a limit to their terms. It was no mere temporary arrangement at which they aimed. Nevertheless, on February 13, the King, acting on the Queen's advice, gave his assent to the Bishops' Exclusion Bill, as well as to the Impressment Bill for Ireland, with the restriction mentioned above, and promised to refer to Parliament all questions as to further reform of the Church and changes in the Liturgy, while reserving his right to consider what might be proposed. Unfortunately the effect of these large concessions was undone by the interception of a letter from Digby (who had fled to Holland) pointing to a design for getting help from that quarter, and by the Queen's departure for the same country (February 23). The fact that she took the Crown jewels with her could only be interpreted as part of the same design.

A week earlier the Militia Ordinance, embodying the parliamentary proposals, had been placed before the King. When the Queen was gone, he replied that the new officers must receive commissions from himself, and that the limitation of their terms of office must rest with him. On March 2, in spite of the remonstrances of Parliament, he set out for the north. His object, it was feared, was only too plain. Both Houses thereupon resolved that the kingdom should be put "in a posture of defence," and issued an ordinance appointing the newly-nominated Lords-Lieutenant to the command of the militia. This is the point at which, in the opinion of Ranke, the quarrel became irreconcilable. It is not surprising that the King, on his side, went back upon his former offers, and, when asked by Lord Pembroke if he would not hand over the command of the militia for a time, replied, "By God, not for an hour." Nevertheless, in the latter part of April, another attempt to settle the military question was made. A Militia Bill, based on the King's previous suggestions, was passed in the Lords, and considered in the Lower House. It was limited in its operations to two years; and it provided that the calling-out of the militia should be left to the LordsLieutenant (named in the Bill) acting under the King's orders signified to both Houses of Parliament.

Such divided control was unlikely to satisfy either party; and things had gone too far for a compromise. Parliament had already sent orders to remove the munitions from Hull (April 18), and by their treatment of the Kentish Petition had shown a lamentable departure from the tolerant principles they claimed to represent. This petition, drawn up on March 25 by the grand jury of Kent, begged, among other things, that episcopal government might be preserved, that a clerical synod might be called to discuss ecclesiastical differences, and that the militia

1642] Kentish Petition and Nineteen Propositions

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Four of the

question might be settled by law with the King's consent. petitioners were sent for at once, and two were committed to the Tower; and, when on April 30 the petition was actually presented to Parliament, two of the gentlemen who brought it were likewise imprisoned. Such treatment could only do harm to the parliamentary cause. Meanwhile, on April 23, the King had attempted, in person, to occupy Hull; but Hotham held firm, and Charles, having no force sufficient to compel surrender, rode away.

The month of May passed in mutual recriminations, unsatisfied requests, and preparations for war. On June 2 Parliament sent to the King a final statement of its demands in the shape of the Nineteen Propositions demands more advanced, in several particulars, than any made before. The members of the King's Council and other officials, even the Judges, were to be chosen by Parliament; and no new Peers were to sit in the House of Lords without consent of both Houses. The Militia Ordinance was to become law; and the fortresses were to be handed over to parliamentary nominees. The Church was to be reformed as Parliament might decree; and the children of Roman Catholics were to be educated as Protestants. Proposals such as these amounted to a complete transfer of sovereignty from the Crown. to Parliament. They could not be accepted by the King, even as a basis of discussion; nor, had he been willing, would the RoyalistEpiscopalian party, now at his back, have allowed him to consent.

From Scotland and from Holland Charles asked for help in vain; and no other Power showed any inclination to interfere; but his English supporters increased day by day. An exodus of Royalist members from Westminster had for some time been going on; very soon the minority in the Commons practically disappeared; and some two-thirds of the Lords rallied to the King at York. On June 16, the day after thirtyfive Peers had signed a protest declaring their belief in Charles' pacific intentions, Commissions of Array were issued, empowering officers appointed by the King to raise troops in his name. Next day Newcastle was occupied by his adherents. Lord Herbert and other wealthy Peers poured their private resources into his exchequer; and the Universities sent large contributions. On the other side, the Militia Ordinance was taking effect throughout the country, at least south of the Humber; and on July 2 the fleet a most important factor in the struggle - declared for Parliament, and accepted the Earl of Warwick as its admiral. Ten days later Lord Essex was nominated to the supreme command of the Parliamentary forces; and the members of both Houses swore to live and die with their general "for the preservation of the true religion, laws, liberties, and peace of the kingdom." On July 15 the first blood was shed at Manchester. The Civil War had begun.

CHAPTER X

THE FIRST CIVIL WAR

(1642-7)

THE raising of the King's standard at Nottingham (August 22, 1642) was the formal opening of the Civil War. The measures taken by the two parties respectively to levy forces have already been briefly indicated. Charles had met the Parliamentary Militia Ordinance by issuing Commissions of Array (May 11); but the legality of these commissions was disputed, and in Leicestershire, the first county in which they were executed, the men refused to join. On July 4 Parliament appointed a committee of fifteen, including five peers, to see to the safety of the kingdom and its own defence; it voted that an army of 10,000 men should be raised in London and the neighbourhood, and issued a declaration (July 11) that the King had begun the war. Its numbers were by this time much reduced. More than one-third of the members had withdrawn from the House of Commons, and three-fourths of the Lords were either Royalist or neutral. Of the Peers who remained at Westminster the Earl of Essex was the most considerable. He was appointed to command the Parliamentary army; and Clarendon affirms that no one else could have raised it. Charles proclaimed Essex and his officers traitors; the Houses replied by denouncing as traitors all who gave assistance to the King.

It may be said broadly that the strength of the Royalist cause lay in the northern and western counties, while south and east sided with Parliament. But this was far from an equal division of the kingdom. The population of England was about five millions; and of this population the country north of the Trent (which now contains two-fifths) then contained only one-seventh. London had nearly half-a-million inhabitants, one-third of the whole urban population. Next to it came Norwich and Bristol with less than 30,000; and no town in the north had half that number. There was a corresponding difference in wealth. Three-fourths of the ship-money assessment in 1636 was laid upon the counties which lie south and east of a line drawn from Bristol to Hull. It is true that the King had many friends in all these counties among the nobility and gentry; but on the other hand the towns of the north were on the

1642]

The two sides. English military system

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Parliamentary side. Parliament held the dockyards, and nearly all the ports, and could move troops freely by sea from point to point. The great roads radiating from London also facilitated the movement of troops. The fleet consisted of sixteen ships in the Downs, and two in Irish waters, with twenty-four merchant ships; and (thanks to shipmoney) it was in good condition. The importance of its adhesion to the Parliamentary side can hardly be overrated. Thus assisted, Parliament gained command of the coast, and secured the customs revenues, which at this time exceeded a quarter of a million. The King found it very difficult to obtain help from abroad, or to take or hold places on the coast. But war demands unity of direction; and here the Royalist cause should have enjoyed a great advantage. The Parliament at Westminster was a loose aggregate, embracing many shades of opinion, many sorts of character, with no defined head; the King was the unquestioned leader of his party, His shiftiness and instability went far to deprive him of the benefit of this distinction. His followers, moderates and extremists alike, lost faith in him; and his schemes were brought to failure. "Take a good resolution and pursue it . . . to begin and then to stop is your ruin- experience shows it you," wrote Henrietta Maria from the Hague in May, 1642; and at the end of 1644 she wrote from Paris that his reputation as irresolute was the thing of all others that had most injured him there. Her influence with him. was great, and was always in favour of vigorous action; but her prejudices and want of judgment outweighed her spirit and energy.

The King, like the Parliament, had to create an army. In France there was a standing army and money to raise additional troops; and thus Richelieu had been able, as he boasted, to ruin the Huguenot faction, to humble the pride of the nobles, to reduce all the King's subjects to their duty, and to exalt the King's name to its proper position among foreign nations. With the same resources Strafford might have played the same part. But there was no taille in England, and there were no regular troops, except a few small garrisons. When expeditions were to be sent abroad, regiments were specially raised; and, if volunteers fell short, men were pressed. Home defence was provided for by the militia, which was based on the immemorial obligation of all men to serve, if required, in case of invasion. The obligation had been defined by the Statute of Winchester in 1285, and was enforced by commissions of array. In issuing such a commission in 1573, Elizabeth had directed that out of the total number of each shire a convenient number of men should be selected, "meet to be sorted in bands, and to be trained and exercised in such sort as may reasonably be borne by a common charge of the whole county." Thus they got the name of the "trained bands "; but the training soon dwindled into a perfunctory inspection once a month. An officer of the Essex horse wrote in 1639: "We admit into our trained bands, without judgment or discretion, any

that are offered, how unlikely or incapable soever they be of the art militarie; yea, which is worse, we suffer them almost every training to alter their men and put in new ones; and how is it possible, with our best skill and pains, to make such men soldiers?" It was only in London that the trained bands reached a fair standard of efficiency.

In the first Bishops' War the English army had been formed of the trained bands of counties north of the Humber; and Sir Edmund Verney wrote, "I dare say there was never so raw, so unskilful, and so unwilling an army, brought to fight." In the second war (1640) the counties south of the Humber furnished the men. They were for the most part pressed men, equally raw, and of a lower class. "Coat and conduct money" (an advance by the counties to be repaid by the Crown) was one of the exactions which were being called in question as illegal; consequently the soldiers were irregularly paid and badly clothed. They committed excesses of all sorts on their march northward, and were described by Sir Jacob Astley as "arch knaves."

In the reign of James I the militia had been relieved of the obligation to equip themselves with arms and armour; and county magazines had been formed in which their equipment was stored. The trained bands (excepting those from the City of London) played no great part in the civil war. Some refused to muster, others refused to fight, and nearly all refused to move far from home; so that they could only be used for local and temporary duty. But each side tried to secure the county magazines; and the arms in them were usually handed over to volunteers. While the King was "borrowing" arms and ammunition from the magazine at Nottingham, Oliver Cromwell, member for Cambridge, seized the Cambridge magazine for the service of Parliament. At the same time he intercepted some of the college plate which was being sent to the King; for the University of Cambridge, like that of Oxford, was Royalist.

Though the recruits of both armies knew nothing of war or of soldiering, there was no lack of officers to instruct them. Large numbers of Englishmen and Scotchmen had served in the Low Countries or in Germany; the Dutch school being the more methodical, the Swedish the more enterprising. Among the English leaders who played a prominent part in the civil war, Essex, Waller, and Skippon on the one side, and Goring, Hopton, and Astley on the other, had foreign experience. Many Scots were employed on this account, such as Crawford, Balfour, King, and Ruthven, though, as Clarendon remarks, "it was no easy thing to value that people at the rate they did set upon themselves. Charles' nephew, Rupert, son of the Elector Palatine, had seen some service as a boy with the Dutch and the Swedes. He came to England with his younger brother, Maurice; and, though he was only in his twenty-third year, Charles made him general of the horse. "He should have some one to advise him," wrote the Queen, "for, believe me, he is yet very young and self-willed.”