Civil War: The History of England Volume III (31 page)

After their egregious defeat the English army retired to the borders of Yorkshire, leaving Durham and Northumberland in the hands of the enemy. The vital city of Newcastle had already surrendered. The earl of Strafford wrote to his friend, Sir George Radcliffe, from Northallerton in North Yorkshire where he had gone to meet the fleeing army:

Pity me, for never came any man to so lost a business. The army altogether necessitous and unprovided of all necessaries . . . Our horse all cowardly; the country from Berwick to York in the power of the Scots; an universal affright in all; a general disaffection to the king’s service, none sensible of his dishonor. In one word, here alone to fight with all these evils, without anyone to help. God of his goodness deliver me out of this, the greatest evil of my life.

The news of the royal defeat at Newburn was greeted with celebrations in London. Twelve peers of puritan persuasion, among them the earls of Warwick and Bedford, now issued in the traditional manner a ‘petition, to the monarch in which they called for a parliament to resolve the grievances and evils of the nation; they stated that ‘your whole kingdom [has] become full of fears and discontents’. They were following a carefully prepared strategy. If the king declined to act on their advice, they themselves were prepared to summon parliament, just as the barons of Henry III had threatened almost 400 years before.

The king reacted in a thoroughly medieval way. He received the petition while at York, and summoned a great council of the peers. He may have hoped that they might raise large sums of money, without the assistance of parliament, but in this hope he was destined to be disappointed. Archbishop Laud was more realistic, and believed that the great council would lead inevitably to the calling of another parliament that might bode no good.

So the peers of England met in the hall of the deanery at York on 24 September. They represented a vast social power; they exercised local authority over tenants and dependants but they also wielded political power by means of their influence in county and borough elections. In his opening speech to them the king announced that he would indeed summon parliament to meet at the beginning of November; it was hoped that, on the basis of this undertaking, the City would be ready to lend him money. He said further that an ‘army of rebels’ was lodged within the kingdom and he wished for the peers’ advice so that ‘we might justly proceed to the chastisement of these insolencies’.

In the debate that followed it was eventually decided that commissioners should be sent to negotiate with the invaders. The Scots had already demanded money from the northern counties where they were lodged; they now insisted that the payments be
maintained by the leading gentry, and that Charles should call parliament, where a peace treaty could be agreed. They trusted parliament, in other words, rather than the king. On these conditions they would remain where they were, and not proceed any further into an unhappy and divided kingdom.

Negotiators from both sides met at Ripon, where it was concluded that the king would pay the Scots £25,000 a month until a peace treaty had been reached. It seemed likely that only parliament could supply such a sum. The peers at York were asked to advise the acceptance or rejection of the agreement. It was of course no contest. The king had no choice but to submit to the claims of the invaders and to call parliament. The experiment of absolute monarchy had come to an end.

In his diary entry for 30 October John Evelyn noted that ‘I saw his majesty (coming from his northern expedition) ride in pomp and a kind of ovation, with all the marks of a happy peace, restored to the affections of his people, being conducted through London with a most splendid cavalcade’. Edward Rossingham wrote to Viscount Conway that ‘we are all mad with joy here that his majesty does call his parliament, and that he puts his Scotch business into the hands of his peers who, the hope is here, will make peace upon any conditions’. The earl of Northampton considered ‘one word of four syllables’, namely parliament, was ‘like the dew of heaven’.

Others were not so sanguine. A few days before the king’s arrival into the city Archbishop Laud had entered his study, in search of certain manuscripts, only to find his portrait by Van Dyck lying face down upon the floor. He was a superstitious man. ‘I am almost every day threated with my ruin in Parliament,’ he confided to his diary. ‘God grant this be no omen.’

The ‘godly’ parliamentarians were well prepared. They met at the house of John Pym, close to Gray’s Inn, where their plans were discussed in detail. They became known as ‘the Junto’, with Pym their leader in the Commons and the earl of Bedford their representative in the Lords. They knew the disposition of the Scots and in turn the covenanters relied upon the help of their English friends in parliament to engineer the necessary changes in religion. This was the ‘Protestant Cause’.

The voting in the parliamentary elections was unusually combative,
with eighty-six contests outside the charmed circle of seats where only one uncontested member stood. The king’s party was again at a disadvantage, with local as well as religious interests matched against the courtiers and their acolytes. Of twelve lawyers chosen by the king to be selected, for example, only three were appointed. On 3 November the king travelled to the new parliament by water in order to avoid the public gaze. The Venetian ambassador noted that the lack of ceremony ‘shows more clearly than ever to his people that he consents to the summons merely from compulsion . . . and not of his own free will to please the people’. Who could have guessed that this parliament would last, with intervals, for almost twenty years?

As soon as they were assembled in debate, the members of the Commons issued a catalogue of grievances against the conduct of the king’s councillors, Strafford and Laud chief among them. The dissolution of the ‘Short Parliament’, before any measures of reform could be agreed, had not improved the temper of the members; 60 per cent of them had sat in the previous assembly and they were now more belligerent than ever. Yet the largest group in the Commons was still that of the landed gentry, who were essentially conservative and not inclined to innovation. They did not want to destroy the king or the orthodox constitution. They wanted government to be restored upon the old model. Yet they, too, had been grievously disappointed. They had watched the king lose a war. They had seen him alienate his natural supporters. They had observed him in the company of the popish courtiers around his wife. They had witnessed the disruption of law and order in their regions.

All of the parliamentarians now understood their strength. They knew that the king relied upon them to salvage him from his distress; if parliament did not supply him with funds, he would not be able to pay the Scottish army as he had agreed to do. Alexander Leslie might then order a march upon Whitehall, with no English army to prevent his progress. As long as the Scots remained in England, therefore, parliament was supreme.

In the debate that followed the opening, one member remarked that it was common knowledge that the judges had overthrown the law and that the bishops had overthrown the gospel. Another
intimated that a popish plot was being hatched by some about the king. Yet another rose to complain that the government was the weakest for generations and had produced nothing but national disgrace; it was surmised that those who had most loudly proclaimed the king’s authority had also been those who had wasted the king’s money.

When John Pym rose to speak the members were already much agitated. Pym began by saying that ‘the distempers of the time are well known’. Much of his bitterness was reserved for Strafford himself, whom he believed to be the author of ‘a design to alter law and religion’. Many contemporaries and colleagues were taking Pym’s side. The Scots believed that Strafford was the cause of the war between the two nations. The puritans hated him. The City, now more powerful than ever, remembered how he had threatened its aldermen with hanging. He had created an absolute rule during his period of government in Ireland, and it was believed that he wished to repeat the experiment in England.

Strafford was aware of the perils of his position. He could have stayed in York, safe from the depredations of parliament, but the king urged him to join him in Whitehall; he assured him that ‘he should not suffer in his person, honour or fortune’. The king’s promises were, in the event, worth nothing at all. Strafford wrote that ‘I am tomorrow in London with more dangers beset, I believe, than ever any man went with out of Yorkshire . . . ’.

John Pym in turn had some reason to fear Strafford. When the earl arrived in London on 9 November he advised the king to provide the evidence that would implicate Pym and his colleagues in a treasonable association with the Scots. That evidence, perhaps of intercepted letters, has never since emerged. News reached Westminster that Strafford was ready to ‘prefer an accusation of high treason against diverse members of both houses of parliament’; they would no doubt include Warwick, Saye and Brooke from the Lords with Pym, Hampden and others from the Commons.

It was agreed by the king and his councillors that the defences of the Tower should immediately be strengthened; the fortification was meant as a warning to the City. The Tower was also the likely destination for those about to be arrested. Strafford was quoted as saying that ‘he hoped the City would be subdued in a short time’.
On 11 November the king was expected to travel to the Tower and inspect its garrison.

On that day rumours of an attempted coup reached Westminster. The Commons ordered that all strangers should be cleared from the lobby. Strafford took his seat in the House of Lords, but said nothing; he was biding his time. Yet Pym knew of the accusations against himself and his colleagues. He had to remove Strafford before Strafford could destroy him. In a phrase of the time, ‘my head or thy head’.

In a speech delivered to the Commons Pym attacked one of Strafford’s most notable allies, Sir Francis Windebank, for concealing a popish plot. It might or might not be interpreted as an attack upon Strafford himself, but it was a method by which Pym could test the readiness of his colleagues to take action against his enemies. Another member, John Clotworthy, now suggested or insinuated that Strafford planned to use the Irish army ‘ready to march where I know not’ in order to curb dissent in England.

It was moved that a committee be established to consult with the Lords on the accusations; this committee was packed with Strafford’s enemies, and a ‘charge’ against the earl was swiftly prepared and presented to the Commons. Some members urged caution and delay in the assault upon Strafford, but Pym replied that any procrastination ‘might probably blast all their hopes’.

With a throng of members around him Pym then went to the Lords in order to accuse Strafford of high treason, and to recommend that he be ‘sequestered from Parliament’. If the Lords wished to know the grounds of this serious charge, ‘particular articles and accusations’ against him would be delivered to them shortly. Strafford had been told of the events then unfolding. ‘I will go,’ he said, ‘and look my accusers in the face.’ It must be said that the Lords themselves had many grievances against the king’s arrogant and difficult adviser and, on his entry, he was commanded by them to withdraw. An order was then passed committing Strafford to the custody of the gentleman usher. He was directed to enter the chamber and to kneel while the order was read to him. He asked permission to speak, but was refused; his sword was taken from him before he was led away.

In his
History of the Rebellion
Clarendon wrote that the crowd looked upon the earl without pity, ‘no man capping to him, before
whom that morning the greatest in England would have stood discovered’. No man had taken off his hat in respect.

‘What is the matter?’ someone asked him.

‘A small matter, I warrant you,’ he replied.

Another called out, ‘Yes indeed, high treason is a small matter.’

Strafford was effectively removed from public life. Charles had lost his principal councillor. It was widely assumed that a great work had been accomplished. The king was obliged to disperse the garrison he had established within the Tower and to dismantle the guns that had recently been mounted. His attempt to coerce or overawe his opponents had failed, in another of those humiliating reversals that had become associated with his rule.

With the threat of dissolution or a coup now removed, parliament could begin its work on what it believed to be wholesale renovation. A public fast was observed on 17 November as a way of enlisting divine assistance in this task. Some sixty-five committees were established to investigate all cases of abuse and corruption. One of them was devoted to seeking out and removing ‘persecuting, innovating or scandalous’ ministers, justices of the peace and other royal officers; when its members requested ‘informations from all parties’ to assist them, hundreds of individuals descended upon Westminster with their own particular grievances.

A committee for petitions was then established to deal with their complaints. Warwick, Brooke, Essex, Bedford and Saye and their colleagues were in command of its actions. It sat in the Painted Chamber at Westminster and became an alternative court of law, investigating all aspects of the government’s work. Parliament had in the past been summoned simply to transact the king’s business; now it busied itself about national affairs without any reference to the king.

The evidence against Strafford was presented on 24 November 1640, and was formulated in the first article of the indictment against him. The Commons was asked to declare that ‘Thomas, earl of Strafford hath traitorously endeavoured to subvert the fundamental laws and government of the realms of England and Ireland, and instead thereof to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government against law’. In his speech to the Commons Pym argued that the accusations amounted to a great and dangerous treason, animated
by malice and guided by evil mischief. He accused the earl of attempting to spread discord between the king and the people. It had become clear that Strafford could not be allowed to survive; if he evaded the charge of treason he might become the focus of royalist hopes, and might even herald the resumption of non-parliamentary government.