12) THE DECEMBER DAYS AND THE END OF FEUDAL POWER (1641-1642)
It so happens that the “social questions” which have been “dealt with in our own day” increase in importance in proportion as we leave behind us the realm of absolute monarchy. Socialism and communism did not emanate from Germany but from England, France and North America. The first manifestation of a truly active communist party is contained within the bourgeois revolution…
~Karl Marx1
On 1 November the Privy Council informed Parliament of a rebellion in Ireland and a massacre of Protestants, including women and children, in Ulster. That the Irish lords and people were retaking their lands forcibly confiscated from them cut no ice in England.2 Hearsay evidence, sketchy reports and speculation, from Ireland and in England itself, pointed to the possibility of Catholic uprisings or terrorist acts on English soil. “The people had been brought up on stories of their cruelty and bloodthirstiness… All this seemed to be confirmed and given immediacy by the massacre of the protestants in Ireland…”3 The burning days of Queen Mary were still very well remembered thanks to Foxe’s popular Book of Martyrs, as were the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, massacres of French Huguenots, and the Spanish Inquisition.4 Panic over “popish plots” raced around the country. Armed watches were set, provisions laid up, prayers offered. A list of 65 leading papists including most Catholic peers was drawn up in the Commons. The Marquis of Winchester was found to have arms for some 1500 men, which were seized.5
The popular fear of papists fed into anti-government fervor. A report from Ireland claimed “that the rebels had friends in England, amongst the king’s councillors, amongst the bishops, and amongst the aldermen of London.”6 As these three groups had been the strongest opponents of religious reform, and the most ready to countenance popish innovations in the church, they were easily amalgamated with the imputed hostility of English Catholics, and the real hostility of the Irish. Conversely, the radical Puritans, who had been the chief agitators for a thoroughgoing Protestantism, and tireless denouncers of popery and the old order, now found their authority significantly enhanced.7
The Irish uprising forced Pym’s hand. All sides agreed on the necessity to raise a new army to subdue the Irish and relieve the Protestants; the question was, who would control it? On 8 November, by only 151-110, the Commons voted that Parliament had to approve all royal officers appointed by the king. “‘If his Majesty should not be graciously pleased’ to grant the request to remove his evil counsellors, then ‘we should take such a course for the securing of Ireland as might likewise secure ourselves.’”8 If Charles refused, it could only mean the members had reason to feel endangered, and must take further steps.
Two days earlier, Oliver Cromwell had spoken on the floor in favor of putting all Trained Bands in southern and middle England under the command of the Earl of Essex.9 This would have made them responsible to Parliament, removing them from the king’s command. One month later, the first Militia Bill to carry this out was presented in the Commons, “and a long, lively debate ensued in which ‘verie violent expressions’ were used.” It would have put the militia “under a Lord-General who was not named and who was given extraordinary powers to raise and command the militia, levy money for their pay, and execute martial law, all for an unlimited time.” Such a bald centralization of military power would have immediately brought the question of supremacy to a head. No vote was taken on the bill, but a motion to throw it out failed 158-125.10
The anti-absolutist opposition in the Commons was being pushed towards revolution by events. With the fate of the entire reform program at stake, Pym finalized the Grand Remonstrance, an indictment containing a litany of over 200 grievances against Charles I’s 17-year reign. Ostensibly it was a petition to the king against the bad advice of his evil counselors. It passed the Commons by an even closer vote of 159-148 on 22 November, and was presented to the king on 1 December without submitting it to the House of Lords.11 Oliver Cromwell said that “‘if the Remonstrance had been rejected he would have sold all he had the next morning, and never have seen England more…’”12 In reality, the Remonstrance was a thinly disguised appeal to the people, a revolutionary act in itself, as demonstrated by the fact that swords were drawn in the House on 15 December during a fierce debate over whether to publish it.13 Like all important speeches by opposition MPs it was widely circulated in the country.14
The growing split among the MPs had little to do with any specifics regarding government, or even religion. The bulk of the gentry MPs were largely in agreement on the reform program Pym had shepherded through the House during the last year. But a large minority recoiled from the necessity of allying with the movement of London citizens to achieve it, because this “risked further political and especially religious radicalization.” They chose instead to place their trust in Charles for the fate of their reforms, thereby preserving their elite status as the sole arbiters of political authority in the nation.15 “The breach was only made irreparable by the association of the parliamentary cause with popular agitation.”16 The fact that a majority of the Commons and a minority of the Lords were willing to seek the people’s support demonstrated their determination to overawe the king, and prevent the triumph of an intolerable absolutism, even at the cost of a political break with a large section of their own class. Control of armed forces would be a key question in any country let alone one where a royal standing army had been a fraught issue between the aristocracy and monarchy for centuries. For Parliament, it was rely on the people or surrender and go home. The alliance of a substantial section of the landed aristocracy with the bourgeois class leadership of Atlantic merchants and Puritan ministers was critical, for it gave them good reason to believe they could control the citizens’ movement. But it was a step full of risk.17
On 25 November, three days after the Remonstrance passed, the king returned from Scotland. He re-entered London with great pomp, and was given a public banquet by the aldermen and major City officials. The Recorder gave a speech on behalf of the City government pledging “their loyalty and affection, and of their devotion to ‘our established religion,’” a backhanded denigration of the Puritan opposition. The king was then presented with £20,000 in a golden cup, and the queen with £5,000 in a golden basin. In return, Charles made promises of prosperity and the City’s liberties, pledged to uphold the Protestantism of Elizabeth and James, knighted the Recorder, and made the Lord Mayor a baronet.18
With the king’s return, Essex’s commission in charge of the Trained Bands expired, and Charles immediately dismissed the men guarding the two Houses. His Majesty was here asserting his power over the militia, and, indirectly, Parliament. A request from Parliament that the guard be restored was granted, but Charles gave the command to the Earl of Dorset, Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex, and a member of the royal court. When, a few days later, demonstrators carrying swords and staves and chanting “No bishops!” massed outside the House of Lords Dorset gave orders to fire at the crowd, and run them through with pikes. There is some question whether the guards’ guns were loaded with bullets or only powder, but a clash which might have proved very bloody nonetheless ensued.19 The House of Commons could obviously not have their supporters treated in this manner on their own turf, and informed Charles:
…it is fit the Guard should be continued under the same Command, or such other as they should choose: But, to have it under the Command of any other, not chosen by themselves, they can by no means consent to; and will rather run any Hazard, than admit of a Precedent so dangerous, both to this and future Parliaments.20
Either they got to choose the officer for the guard, or they would do without.
Rather than submit to the king the Commons dismissed the Band from duty. Conservatives in the Commons accused Pennington’s fellow radical London MP John Venn of having summoned the armed people in the first place. Venn denied this, and Pym saw to it that the matter was dropped.21 On 10 December a “‘strong guard’” from outside the City (not actually part of the Trained Bands), sent to Parliament by a JP on the king’s orders, was questioned by the Commons and again dismissed. They then sent the JP to the Tower.22
The struggle reached its crescendo during December 1641 and January 1642, a period characteristic of dual power leading to insurrection. One aspect were the bold assertions by the House of Commons of its authority and legality against that of the crown, most especially over the militia, but also the House of Lords. Early in December the
…Commons attacked the Lords as disrespectful and described the Commons as “the Representative Body of the whole Kingdom” while the Lords were but “particular Persons, and coming to Parliament in a particular Capacity.” …before the end of the month John Pym informed the Lords that the House would be glad of their help in saving the kingdom, but if it were not forthcoming the Commons would “save the Kingdom alone.”23
What gave the orders of the Commons teeth was the backing of the London citizens movement. It was the symbiotic actions of the Puritan middling class in the city that would bring down the Stuart regime.
A new petition with 20,000 signatures was presented to the Commons on 11 December by 400 “grave” men “of great rank and fashion,” including Common Councilmen. The timing was kept strictly secret to avoid a large multitude that would have alienated moderate MPs. The petition supported Pym’s policy for expulsion of bishops from the House of Lords, and Parliament’s control of the militia. It rejected the City government’s evident siding with the crown against Parliament: they “‘should always be ready to spend their estates and lives for our [Parliament’s] safety.’”24 It also attacked undemocratic practices in the City government. The well-known Puritan merchant John Fowke reported the magistrates’ attempts to take punitive measures against the petitioners, and a committee to investigate was appointed by the House.25
The demonstrations against bishops that began the first week of December 1641 revealed, contrary to the hopes of the king’s court, that only the City’s official leadership and some very wealthy citizens were pro-royalist. A contemporary lamented “‘that the power of the City magnates…was already broken.’”26
The primary conduit for political propaganda and agitation in London was the Puritan ministers and lecturers. The rector of St. Antholin’s, a Puritan stronghold, had previously “organized house-to-house collections and canvassed support to augment the lecturers’ stipends.” This experience, and the contact lists it produced, were surely of benefit during the upheavals of 1641-1642. From the end of 1640, the Scottish High Commissioners resided next door to St. Antholin’s, with their own private entrance. So popular were the lectures that from morning to night on Sundays, the royalist historian Lord Clarendon wrote, “‘the church was never empty.’”27
The arrest of Archbishop Laud in mid-December 1640 rendered moot the restrictions on preaching and printing. The church courts were no longer able to function, relieving the populace from prosecution for sin,28 and unleashing a flood of cheap pamphlets for people to read and discuss.
The author of Persecutio Undecima tells us that the Puritan clergy of the City used to meet in Edmund Calamy’s house in Aldermanbury to discuss ways of propagating the godly cause in Parliament and among the citizens… The citizens, he says, could learn from their sermons and lectures “not only what was done the week before [in Parliament] but also what was to be done in Parliament the week following; besides the information, which their pulpits gave the people, for coming in tumults to the House for justice.”29 [Insert in original]
Calamy, a protégé of Warwick,30 also appears to have made his house available for discussions between Presbyterians and Independents where they agreed not to pursue their differences in public until episcopacy had been abolished.31
For some time Puritans had been getting themselves elected to the various minor posts of the City districts, and organizing thus also took place in the electoral wards as well as parish churches. Throughout the early 17th century, literary and political clubs had met in taverns, as the Levellers would do later in the decade. Taverns were where “the country carriers brought their messages and took away pamphlets and news-sheets…which suddenly proliferated in 1641, [and] were circulated and read aloud…” The mass petition of 11 December 1641 against bishops and episcopacy could be found at the White Lion Tavern, and City shopkeepers habitually displayed petitions for their customers to sign. Some private homes of well-established liverymen were known meeting places for Puritan leaders. Mass meetings were held in places such as St. George’s Fields in Southwark or the piazza at Covent Garden.32
On 17 December 1641, the House of Lords reaffirmed the Episcopal Church as the only legitimate religion. Three days later Puritan ministers petitioned the Commons “asking that they might not be forced to use prayers which their consciences could not accept, and calling for a national synod.”33 It was introduced by radical London MP John Venn, who, along with Alderman John Warner, and other members of their parish, separately petitioned the Commons for the removal of their “scandalous” minister.34 They were not the first — nine hundred such petitions were received during all of 1641.35 These often cited “particular ‘innovations, usurpations, vexations, and wrongs’ that mirrored the oppressions of the kingdom.”36 The social fracturing over religion clearly promoted revolutionary sympathies.
On 23 December Charles rejected the Grand Remonstrance and, even more threatening, replaced the Lieutenant of the Tower, an opposition sympathizer who had prevented Strafford’s rescue. The king appointed Colonel Thomas Lunsford, a royalist, and “a debauched ruffian, who was believed to be capable of any villany.”37 This obvious attack on the opposition in London and the Commons had to be met. A petition against Lunsford, with 83 signatures, was brought the same day by two captains of the Trained Bands, some newly elected Common Councilmen (including Richard Overton, future Leveller leader),38 and at least fifteen Atlantic merchants including Randall Mainwaring and Maurice Thomson’s brother George. It was introduced by Pym himself.39
The same day Alderman Pennington presented another petition organized by apprentices, with 30,000 signatures again calling for root and branch reform of the church, and opposing Colonel Lunsford’s appointment to the Tower. The apprentices declared they would fight against a “‘royal coup,’” and complained of harassment from City officials. The Commons deferred on the petition, but voted the apprentices their sanction.40 The Lords refused to join the MPs in a petition to the king to recall Lunsford, so the latter passed a Declaration next day. It disclaimed responsibility for any “‘blood which is like to be spilt, and of the confusions which may overwhelm this state’” if Lunsford, whom they deemed “‘not fit,’” remained in the post. They also blamed bishops and papists for the obstruction in the Lords which encouraged the “‘malignant party.’” The Lords postponed consideration of the Declaration over the heated protests of 22 peers.41
These steps by the members reflected the results two days earlier of the annual Common Council elections. Many longtime members who served on important committees were defeated, and so many royalist oligarchs were routed by parliamentary Puritans that the Council’s leadership was replaced. The victory was due to the mix of opposition against episcopacy and the revised Book of Common Prayer, and the old City leadership’s support for and enforcement of loans and taxes to the king.42 The Irish situation and fears about dangerous popish plots were still fresh as well. The sweep represented a culmination of the Puritan political goals that had begun back in the 1580s.
The day after the Lunsford petition to the Commons, a new petition was presented to the House of Lords by 108 Atlantic and domestic traders demanding that the Lords stop obstructing the reform program, and especially the legislation for an army in Ireland.
Among the signers are found, once again, Maurice Thomson and his brother William, William Thomson’s father-in-law Samuel Warner, Maurice Thomson’s long time trading partner Thomas Stone, Randall Mainwaring… Company merchants were once again conspicuous by their absence. The petition’s signers were overwhelmingly domestic traders, a good many of them already established leaders of the City opposition…43
The appointment of Lunsford inflamed the populace. “By the end of the month it was reported that ‘the Trained Bands keep watch everywhere’ and that ‘the citizens for the most part shut up their shops, and all gentlemen provide themselves with arms as in a time of open hostility.’”44 Disturbances in the City by apprentices and others forced the Lord Mayor to inform the king on the 26th that unless Colonel Lunsford was replaced as Lieutenant of the Tower he could not keep order in the city. The king was compelled to dismiss Lunsford, but prepared a proclamation banning assemblies in London and Westminster.45
The next day, the 27th, a crowd of several hundred citizens chanting “No bishops!” went to the House of Lords. They formed a cordon letting sympathetic lords through with approval, but chanting and jostling bishops, some of whose gowns were torn. As it happened, Lunsford and other officers were inside the hall seeking back pay and new commissions in Ireland. Six or eight of them drew their swords and attacked the crowd, injuring many. The crowd defended themselves with bricks and tiles, and took refuge in a Commons committee room. Pennington brought some of the citizens to the floor of the Commons as evidence of what was occurring. John Lilburne led a group with some cudgels, a half-dozen swords, and some sailors with truncheons, and, backed by the crowd with stones, drove the attackers off. This was the first actual combat between the two sides.46
When news of the fight reached the City, hundreds of armed people, mainly apprentices, went directly to Parliament where some were arrested and held in the Mermaid Tavern. The remaining apprentices attacked the tavern and freed their comrades. The House of Lords ordered the crowd to go home, forbid them to assemble at Parliament, and asked the Commons to join in a petition to the king for a guard. The king issued his own proclamation to the same effect, written the previous evening.
The king commanded the trained bands of Westminster and Middlesex to be raised and sent to guard the Palace of Whitehall night and day. The lord mayor and sheriffs of London rode about all evening trying “to appease the tumults”: they ordered the gates of the City to be shut and strong watches to be set in every place, “as well men in arms as otherwise.” The king instructed the lord mayor to raise the trained bands of London to help him restore order, by shooting to kill if the crowds resisted them or refused to disperse…47
This the Lord Mayor did the next day, but as night fell the House of Lords was still surrounded by 10,000 people with halberds and staves, carrying torches and chanting, “No bishops, no papist lords!” Some bishops left secretly, others passed the entire night in the House in fear of their lives. The crowd searched the Lords’ carriages as they left to see if bishops were hiding in them.48
An even larger crowd, equally hostile, appeared the next day, 28 December, and prevented bishops from landing at Westminster by river. Only one or two bishops made it into the House that day, and they did not stay long.49 Some apprentices were arrested and taken to Westminster Abbey to be questioned by the Archbishop of York. A large group, led by John Lilburne and Sir Richard Wiseman, went to secure their release, but were attacked by forty gentlemen with swords and pistols. Lilburne was wounded, and Wiseman was killed, becoming a martyr, and further enraging the crowd. Only the presence of the Trained Band posted all night inside Westminster Abbey prevented the people from entering the church.50
Royalist reaction proceeded. The king entertained 120 officers, including Lunsford, who had offered him their services. The Archbishop of York met with bishops at his house to discuss how to blame the opposition for mob violence. Lord Digby made a motion in the upper House that, due to the actions of the “‘rabble,’” “‘this is no free parliament,’” which would have invalidated the act of Parliament to remain in session until it voted to dissolve, setting it up for the king to do so legally. With the bishops absent, Digby’s motion was defeated by only four votes.51
Few gentlemen in the Commons were comfortable with the protests at Westminster, but they could not do without the support of the London populace. To call for a restoration of order, as the Lords wanted them to, would be to side with the king, who was only too likely not to stop with repression of the masses, but to use force against the MPs themselves. The City’s trained bands and constables were primarily made up by members of the middling class. Since the time of Elizabeth, participation in these militias was considered a civic duty in case of need; it was not a permanent professional force. The petty bourgeois artisans and shopowners, the mainstay of the radical Puritan movement, supported the demonstrations in which they or their sons, employees, and apprentices, with their permission, were often participants. The lower classes generally followed the lead of these small employers. As a result, many refused the Lord Mayor’s orders to muster for duty.52
A royalist report of 9 December named William Hobson and Deputy Daniel Taylor as dangerous men who gathered parishioners and exhorted them to sign radical petitions. Both had close family connections to the Atlantic merchant leadership.53
The economic interests of the small and middle bourgeois class, as well as a portion of the aristocracy, required the freedom to invest capital in trade and manufacture. The monopoly oligarchs steadfastly adhered to the royal court, and thereby enforced the laws that constrained the expansion of business, so uncomfortably accommodated within feudal society. The Puritan radicals sought to replace the interconnected oppression of the aldermanic court and monopoly trading companies, and the Episcopal hierarchy. They were aided in this by the Independent ministers’ experience of radical Puritan experiments in government and religion in the exile communities of Holland and America. Crucially, the Atlantic merchants’ “continuing participation in domestic commercial activities gave them strong and extensive ties to that broad layer of City shopkeepers, mariners, and artisans who largely made up the City radical movement.”54 They were thus in a novel position to assume leadership of the middling class movement.
The day after the fight at Westminster Abbey where Richard Wiseman was killed, 29 December, an armed demonstration including “men of quality,” shouting “No bishops! No popish lords!” appeared early at Parliament. They then went to the palace at Whitehall (where the king resided and held court). A clump of dirt was thrown at the gentlemen guards who attacked the crowd with swords. The famous derogatory epithets Cavaliers (from the Spanish caballero or French cavalier, implying a Catholic mercenary) and Roundheads (i.e., short-haired commoners, as gentlemen usually wore their hair long) were exchanged for the first time.55 Fifty to sixty demonstrators were hurt, and nine arrested. The Commons had them released, and defended the citizens. The alarming reports of armed men being gathered by the king at Whitehall and the Archbishop of York at Westminster Abbey could no longer be ignored. It all pointed directly to a military coup.56 They asked the Lords for a joint petition to the king to appoint a guard under the Earl of Essex. The Lords debated at length, but voted against it, so the MPs ordered a guard around Westminster themselves, and provided halberds for the safety of the House.57 An observer noted that
“Both factions look very big, and it is a wonder there is no more blood yet spilt, seeing how earnest both sides are. There is no doubt but if the King do not comply with the Commons in all thing they desire a civil war must ensue, which every day we see approaches nearer.”58
The undisciplined crowds were becoming a problem for the Commons leadership. While the members of the House were dependent on the people for their protection, and to achieve their aims, they did not want to provoke the king and his party to violence. The parliamentary leaders “were anxious to maintain law and order, and the security of property, and did not want to release radical forces that they could not control.” The London MP, Captain John Venn, used his authority on the evening of 29 December to disperse a crowd of 2,000 armed apprentices, but a minority continued to clash with officers and search the prisons for any apprentices to free.59
With the king’s connivance, twelve bishops complained of their treatment at the hands of the crowds, and their de facto exclusion from the House of Lords. Charles declared all laws passed in their absence, including “this is a free Parliament,” null and void. This was yet another attempt by the crown to find an excuse to legally dissolve Parliament. The king sent the bishops’ protest to the Lords, who forwarded it to the Commons as “being a Thing of high and dangerous Consequence.”60 “The Commons promptly impeached the twelve bishops and the Lords sent them to prison on 30 December 1641.”61 Coming two days after the defeat of Digby’s motion, the Lords apparently felt provoked by the king’s maneuver to dismiss them. There was public rejoicing in London.62
Nonetheless, the people had been put on the defensive as they were “‘more tongue than soldier.’”63 Hundreds of young gentlemen of the nobility and gentry rallied to the king and the Party of Order. “That very day drums were beating in the streets for the levy of the volunteers who were to form the army which was to be commanded by Lunsford and his comrades.”64 The guard at Whitehall was increased and defenses strengthened. Clearly a new army plot was in the offing. Following a message from the king on 31 December, the Common Council issued resolutions threatening punishment to anyone causing tumults or shirking their duty in the Trained Bands. Householders were ordered to keep their apprentices and servants indoors and be answerable for their conduct. The king again authorized the use of force against disorders, and a new royal nominee had taken charge at the Tower of London.65
On 3 January 1642, the king charged five reform leaders of the House of Commons with treason, claiming they were the organizers of tumults ever ready at their call, and, more accurately, “that they indirectly encouraged the tumults by obstructing efforts to suppress them.”66 The Commons and the king sent conflicting messages to the Lord Mayor regarding disposition of the Trained Bands (the king again authorizing them to shoot to kill), but the Commons also sent their orders to the Aldermen and Common Council.67 On 4 January, Charles personally led a retinue of 100 royal officers to arrest John Pym and four other leading MPs on the floor of the Commons. No monarch had ever before even entered the House, much less with the intent to arrest sitting members. To add insult to injury, he arrogantly took the Speaker’s chair.68
Warned in advance, the intended prisoners hid in a radical district of London. The king was forced to retreat empty-handed, making him look much the fool, if ever a more dangerous one. “…with the sense that they had but just escaped a massacre” and fearing a coup d’état, the Commons then voted 170-86 to adjourn to the Guildhall in the City, thereby throwing themselves on the mercy of the ordinary citizens.69 (It was later moved to Grocers’ Hall.)70 Sir Simonds D’Ewes “went home and made his will.”71 While Colonel Lunsford had been removed, Whitehall continued to be stocked with arms and the Tower with artillerymen. “With a sense of impending danger, the whole City shut shop and provided themselves with weapons.” Aldermen and sheriffs closed the gates to the City, and placed chains across streets to impede horses. “‘…knocking at the doors for men to stand upon their guard,…every man his halberd and weapons in a readiness, and it was much feared that that night would have been a bloody night, but God of his mercy kept us.’”72
The streets were filled by the armed citizens.73 The same day Charles appeared at Parliament, 4 January, the London Common Council set up its own Committee of Safety by order of the House of Commons. All of the Common Councilors elected to the Committee of Safety were supporters of Parliament. Of the six aldermen elected, three were Puritans; of the other three, one resigned almost immediately and was replaced by a parliamentary Puritan who had signed the Root and Branch petition, and the other two, neutralists, were removed in the fall of 1642.74 The Common Council was now in position to fight for Parliament against the king, led by its most radical and dedicated men who did not shrink from an armed struggle.75
The next day, 5 January, with the shopkeepers still on strike, and the armed people “‘standing in their doors,’” the king appeared in front of the Common Council to demand the five “dangerous” Members be turned over. The Council, apparently now consisting of a shifting mix of both old and new members,76 split between the king and Commons. As the king left, a large group of “ruder” people unanimously chanted “Privileges of Parliament!” (i.e., MPs could only be tried by the House itself). Thousands besieged him at the house of the City sheriff where he had gone for dinner, and followed his carriage with the same cry “Privileges of Parliament!” After escorting the king safely home, the Lord Mayor and some aldermen were knocked off their horses; women called him traitor and pulled his chain of office off his neck. The officials had to walk home being taunted all the way. On the same day, the Council approved a petition to the king drafted by the Committee of Safety implicitly criticizing his actions and outright defying his ban on petitions.77
Offers of support to defend the Five Members poured into the committee sitting at Guildhall – from the apprentices of London; from the trained bands of Southwark; from over 1,000 mariners and seamen, including “the masters and inferior officers as well as the king’s own ships as of merchants”… A crowd of several thousand assembled in Buckinghamshire and resolved to march to London to defend their member, John Hampden.78
The following night, 6 January, a rumor quickly spread that soldiers on foot and horse were approaching the city. The citizens again went on alert. Tens of thousands of armed men went into the streets while women built barricades and prepared pots of boiling water to use against the enemy.79 The Trained Bands “were assembled without the authority of the Lord Mayor,” who had refused to call them out.80 The attack never came, but the widespread and determined action of the armed populace and Trained Bands made it impossible for the Court of Aldermen or the House of Lords to attempt any move against the Council.81
The House of Commons passed a series of measures on 8 January retroactively legitimating the actions taken in the city. The most important transferred the king’s control, via the Lord Mayor, over London’s Trained Bands to the majority of the Lord Mayor, the aldermen and Common Council together.82 The Common Council endorsed it and removed the Lord Mayor’s power to call them out on his own authority. Serjeant Major Philip Skippon, a militant Puritan and seasoned professional soldier, was entrusted with this authority, and the House of Commons promoted him to Serjeant Major General. The Council and its Committee followed up by reorganizing, expanding, and supplying the Bands. They were placed “on a war footing” under the command of leading parliamentary Puritans, and ammunition was moved to a secure location.83 With the Trained Bands behind it, the Committee of Safety on behalf of the Common Council was in command of the city. A small cavalry force of royalists at Kingston-on-Thames, led by Lord Digby and Colonel Lunsford, was broken up some days later.84 Under the new City government, Parliament developed a reliable armed force.85
The London Trained Bands were charged with protecting the Five Members, the Southwark Bands with holding the south bank of the Thames, and the apprentices with guarding the City.86 Claiming that his life and the lives of his family were in danger, Charles fled London on the night of 10 January. The five MPs returned the next day “on a barge accompanied by flotillas of seamen from the Port of London to return amidst cheering crowds of supporters to Westminster,” where they were met by the assembled Trained Bands “in full military regalia, each soldier waving a copy of the Protestation.”87 The anti-absolutist alliance between the people of London in arms, with the majorities and leaderships of the Puritan merchants on the Common Council, and the reform gentry in the House of Commons, had now been sealed.
The Committee of Public Safety was composed of sixteen members, nine of whom were Atlantic merchants, including Maurice Thomson, now a councilman. Four of these men had been selected by Common Hall at the instigation of the House of Lords in the dispute over sheriffs six months earlier. There were no company merchants. One member, Richard Shute, Maurice Thomson’s trading partner, was appointed treasurer, and to coordinate between the Committee and Parliament. In effect, the unofficial leadership of the London Puritan movement was now the official City government.88
On 19 January all disputed elections were referred to the Committee of Public Safety (aka Militia Committee), a function previously performed by the Lord Mayor and aldermen. Following the Committee’s report in early March, the Mayor was ordered to have aldermen promptly hold new elections in the disputed wards. They also carried out reforms in local electoral procedures restoring power to democratic wardmotes (local councils that held town hall meetings) against oligarchic cliques.89 The Committee
assumed broad powers of initiating legislation in London, took the authority to call and dissolve the common council, and put itself in command of the City’s militia. During the critical days of the winter and early spring of 1642, this committee guided the consolidation of the City revolution. London’s militant mass movement, having provided both the indispensable instrument for defending Parliament’s program and the underlying cause of Parliament’s dividing against itself, had thus saved Parliament from the King’s coup d’état…90
On 20 January, Parliament ordered the administration of the Protestation to all males 18 years of age and older.91 The Common Council, on 24 January, sent to the two Houses a petition urging Parliament to take up arms to relieve the Protestants in Ireland, disarm papists, take control of all forts and ports, and for the exclusion of bishops from the Lords.92
A new flood of petitions to Parliament arrived, but now they were coming from the provinces. For the next six weeks thousands of people arrived in London in organized contingents to petition and pressure the House of Lords. On the same day the Commons returned to Westminster, between 5,000 and 6,000 men from Buckinghamshire marched into London, of which 3,000 were mounted on horseback, and “‘every man with his protestation in his hand…’”
On 20 January 6,000 came from Essex, and on 25 January three or four thousand from Hertfordshire. On 8 February petitioners marched in from Kent…“many hundred of them…first the knights, and gentlemen, then about twenty ministers, then the other horse and footmen.” On 10 February a petition was brought in from Northhamptonshire, “the best attended by gentlemen of quality of any petition that hath been yet delivered.” “Near a thousand” people arrived in London on 15 February with a petition from Leicestershire, and two days later between fifteen hundred and three thousand from Sussex, led by their sheriff…93
Many if not most of the petitions complained about the continuing economic depression in the country. The “decay of trade” directly affected thousands of workers, manufacturers and retailers engaged in the cloth industry, and indirectly nearly the whole population including farmers, mariners and seamen. The solution to the economic crisis was popularly seen to be political action. If the House of Lords passed the reforms championed by the Commons, trade and the economy would be restored. The country was almost at a standstill and the spread of want, petitioners warned, had reached the point where threats of rebellion by the desperate poor might become reality. The economic crisis was made more acute by the strike of merchants and tradesmen against the actions of the king during the first quarter of 1642. The loss of customs duties in London totaled 600,000 ducats (the common coinage used in European trade).94
The coalition of the colonizing nobles, liberal gentry, Puritan ministers, and Atlantic merchants, supported by the middle and petty bourgeoisie, and wage workers, had fought through to the popular democratic movement’s victory. It “forestalled a successful counter-revolution in London.”95 The leading reformers, gentlemen and ministers, were quite aware that legislative action would be needed to stay in the citizens’ good graces. The problem which still lay ahead was that the gentry rulers merely wanted to adjust the powers of the king and Parliament, whereas the revolutionary Puritan movement was demanding a thoroughly anti-feudal program, especially in religion which was its major prop. The strain between Parliament and the people caused by these differences was indicated by a report that “sixteen or seventeen thousand people had assembled in the depressed cloth-manufacturing districts of Essex and Suffolk, to march with their petition to London.” The discomfited gentlemen MPs “asked them to send no more than a thousand and for the rest to disperse, and [were] profusely grateful when this request was obeyed.”96
Despite the abundance of petitions and demonstrators from near and far, the Lords still resisted. The day after the official 24 January petition to exclude bishops and Catholics from the House of Lords was sent by the London government, Alderman Atkins told the Commons that loans from the City were contingent on this.97 By a vote of 40-32 the same day, however, the upper house refused to join the Commons in a petition to the king to subject top military officers to Parliamentary approval.98 This action unleashed new demonstrations against them. A petition from apprentices and seamen of London on 26 January threatened “‘that, if present remedy be not afforded,…multitudes will be ready to take hold upon that remedy which is next at hand…’” Five days later, hundreds of poor people marched on the House of Commons with a petition blaming bishops and papists for their poverty, and demanding the names of those in the House of Lords who were obstructing the resolution of the crisis. Their petition likewise admonished that
“…your petitioners shall not rest in quietness, but shall be enforced to lay hold on the next remedy which is to hand, to remove the disturbers of our peace, want and necessity…rather than your petitioners will suffer themselves and their families to perish through hunger and misery…”99
They also proposed that the minority of the Lords join in a single body with the House of Commons.100
A separate petition from women decrying their poverty “‘by reason of the great decay of trading’” was received on the same day. This was followed the next day, 1 February, by hundreds of women at Parliament demanding bread. A tussle ensued when the women were rebuked by the Duke of Richmond, whose staff was seized and broken.101 The Commons made full use of the campaign to privately stoke “their Lordships’ fear of a popular uprising.”102 On 2 February the Commons received a petition from 15,000 unemployed porters “‘and the lowest members of the city.’” “Soon they would be forced ‘to extremities, not fit to be named, and to make good that saying, “That necessity hath no law;” it is true, that we have nothing to lose but our lives.’”103 The Commons invited those Lords in agreement with them “to declare themselves with this House, that we may know them from the rest; and to protest ourselves innocent of whatever mischief or inconveniency may fall out…” This was, they added, their last offer.104
Fearing the people’s wrath in new disorders, the conservatives in the upper House caved, and on 2 February joined in a petition to the king to put the Tower and all forts and militia under individuals selected by Parliament. On 5 February the Lords finally voted to exclude bishops from their House. Some Lords and MPs had already begun to leave Westminster for their country homes rather than risk the violence of the London population, and more now joined them.105 Merely the willingness of the Commons majority and some nobles to stomach an alliance with the likes of “apprentices, handicraftsmen, porters and labourers” was sufficient to drive them into the royalist party of order.106
The repeated actions of the middle and working classes had polarized English society, and irrevocably split the ruling class. The London citizens’ election of a progressive Puritan government removed a critical mass of monopoly merchant oligarchs from the Common Council, and their armed defense of Parliament forced the impotent Charles Stuart to abandon his capital. Political power passed to the alliance of the gentry in the Commons and the Puritan leadership in London, most critically with the radical Atlantic merchants. In the aftermath, the purge of bishops from the House of Lords by the citizens’ siege of the nobility was another nail in the coffin of the established church, already rendered moot. It confirmed the more languid, traditionalist upper house as subordinate to the lower. The feudal political system was shattered, and England would never be the same again.
1 “Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality”
2 Harris, “Revisiting the Causes of the English Civil War,” 634
3 Manning, English People, 181
4 Hill, Century, 47; Trinterud, “William Haller,” 51; Caroline M. Hibbard, “Early Stuart Catholicism: Revisions and Re-Revisions,” The Journal of Modern History 52, no. 1 (March, 1980): 30, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1877953 Accessed October 31, 2018
5 Manning, English People, 36-40; Clifton, “The Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution,” 29, 49-50
6 Manning, English People, 35
7 Manning, English People, 42; Lindley, Civil War London, 77
8 D.H. Pennington, “The Rebels of 1642,” in The English Civil War and After 1642-1658, ed. R. H. Parry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 33; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 357; Samuel R. Gardiner, History of England Vol. X 1641-1642 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1884), 56-57, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275096/page/n3/mode/2up Accessed 5 November, 2018
9 Snow, “Essex and the Aristocratic Opposition,” 231-232; Lois G. Schwoerer, “‘The Fittest Subject for a King’s Quarrel’: An Essay on the Militia Controversy 1641-1642,” Journal of British Studies 11, no. 1 (November 1971): 50-51, http://www.jstor.org/stable/175037 Accessed November 29, 2016
10 Schwoerer, “the Militia Controversy,” 54; Gardiner, History of England Vol. X, 95-96
11 Hill, Century, 94, 102; “The Civil War,” UK Parliament, http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/civilwar/overview/the-breakdown/ Accessed June 3, 2017
12 Fraser, Cromwell, 77
13 Hill, Century, 106; “Parliament and People in 17th Century England,” 118
14 Hill, World, 22
15 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 358
16 Pennington, “The Rebels of 1642,” 34
17 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 358-359, 393-394; Hill, Reformation, 128; “Lord Clarendon and the Puritan Revolution,” 192-193
18 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 126-128
19 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 26-30; Schwoerer, “the Militia Controversy,” 50-51; Manning, English People, 65-66; Lindley, Civil War London, 96-97; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 221
20 “Parliament Guard,” House of Commons Journal Volume 2: 30 November 1641, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-jrnl/vol2/pp327-328#p28 Accessed 10 January 2021
21 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 221
22 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 31; Manning, English People, 97; Schwoerer, “the Militia Controversy,” 54
23 Barbara Taft, “That Lusty Puss, The Good Old Cause,” History of Political Thought 5, no. 3 (Winter 1984): 451, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26212381 Accessed June 10, 2019; “Reminding Lords of Bills,” House of Commons Journal Volume 2: 03 December 1641, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-jrnl/vol2/pp330-332#p7 Accessed 28 February 2021
24 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 128, 222-223 [Insert in original]
25 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 130-131; Manning, English People, 79-80
26 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 130 [Ellipsis in original]
27 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 230-231
28 Hill, World, 98
29 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 232
30 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 356
31 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 232 fn. 129
32 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 232-235; Manning, English People, 75-76
33 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 223
34 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 366
35 Hill, World, 30
36 David Cressy, “Remembrancers of the Revolution: Histories and Historiographies of the 1640s,” Huntington Library Quarterly 68, no. 1-2 (March 2005): 260, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/hlq.2005.68.1-2.257 Accessed January 7, 2017
37 Gardiner, History of England Vol. X, 108
38 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 398
39 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 364-365
40 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 366; Manning, Aristocrats, Plebeians, 34-35; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 223
41 Manning, English People, 87-88; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 363
42 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 132-134, 136-138
43 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 367
44 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 32; Manning, English People, 108-109
45 Manning, English People, 89; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 131
46 Manning, English People, 89-91
47 Manning, English People, 91-92; Gardiner, History of England Vol. X, 134
48 Manning, English People, 92-93
49 Lindley, Civil War London, 109
50 Manning, English People, 93-94
51 Manning, English People, 94
52 Manning, English People, 96-97; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 104-105, 228-229
53 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 369; Lindley, Civil War London, 153
54 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 395
55 Manning, English People, 98
56 Lindley, Civil War London, 113-114; Manning, English People, 98-99
57 Manning, English People, 99; Lindley, Civil War London, 115
58 Gardiner, History of England Vol. X, 124; Lindley, Civil War London, 114
59 Manning, English People, 99-100
60 “Sent to the House of Commons,” House of Lords Journal Volume 4: 30 December 1641, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/lords-jrnl/vol4/pp496-499#p14 Accessed 28 April 2021; Gardiner, History of England Vol. X, 123
61 Manning, English People, 100-101
62 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 368; Manning, English People, 101
63 Manning, English People, 101
64 Gardiner, History of England Vol. X, 125
65 Manning, English People, 101-103; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 131-132. Manning points out that this “was not the old Common Council, but, contrary to custom, the newly elected and more radical Councilmen attended this meeting…” His explicit claim, however, that they “presumably approved these resolutions” is speculation. Fifteen years earlier Pearl had explained: “There is some evidence to suggest that the newly elected Common Councilmen took up their seats before Plough Monday (the first Monday after Twelfth Night) [5 or 6 January], which was the traditional date for their swearing into office. … That this was probably so is suggested by Common Council’s election of a Committee of Safety on January 4th, having been directed to take this step by order of the House of Commons. Such a Committee was without precedent in the history of the City and proved to be as revolutionary as its name suggests.” 139-140 [Emphasis added]. Some royalists objected to the presence of the new councilors on 31 December, but they were allowed to stay. Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 35. Since all three historians refer to the same source, exactly how many of the “new men” there were is unknown: “…the extant evidence makes it impossible to generalize accurately on the changes in the total membership of Common Council…” Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 136. While it is true that the House of Commons was trying to dissuade uncontrolled disorders by the people at this time, this does not automatically mean the new Puritan Council members supported the repressive resolutions. Not all of the new men may have been present, or they may not have participated in the vote since they were not yet sworn in. They may have voted against the resolutions; that no recorded opposition exists is negative evidence, and not conclusive. Whatever the case, the diametrically opposite viewpoints and actions of the Council before and after 1 January, just as the political crisis was cresting, makes Manning’s assumption implausible.
66 Manning, English People, 105-106
67 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 35; “Trained Bands,” House of Commons Journal Volume 2: 03 January 1642, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-jrnl/vol2/pp366-367#p11 Accessed 27 February 2021
68 Gardiner, History of England Vol. X, 139
69 Gardiner, History of England Vol. X, 141; Manning, English People, 110; Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 36; “Guildhall Committee” and “Vindicating Privilege-Committee to meet at Guildhall,” House of Commons Journal Volume 2: 05 January 1642, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-jrnl/vol2/pp368-369#h3-0005 Accessed October 24, 2019. The Commons had taken the precaution on 3 January of voting to constitute the whole House as a committee. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 368. (Brenner gives the date in old style as 31 December.) “Privilege-King’s Message to be considered,” House of Commons Journal Volume 2: 03 January 1642, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-jrnl/vol2/pp366-367#p40 Accessed 27 February 2021. This subterfuge was necessary because “The House could not adjourn itself to any place but Westminster.” Gardiner, History of England Vol. X, 126
70 Lindley, Civil War London, 123
71 Fletcher, Outbreak, 181
72 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 141; Manning, English People, 109-110; Cressy, England on Edge, 394
73 Manning, English People, 110
74 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 140-141 and fn. 135
75 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 37; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 400
76 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 37
77 Manning, English People, 110-111; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 141-142, 143-144
78 Manning, English People, 112; Lindley, Civil War London, 124-125
79 Manning, English People, 111-112; Lindley, Civil War London, 123-124; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 142, 143; Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 38-39
80 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 142; Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 38-39
81 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 144
82 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 39-40; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 144
83 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 144
84 Pennington, “The Making of the War, 1640-1642,” 183; Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 47
85 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 224-225; Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 41-42
86 Manning, English People, 112; Lindley, Civil War London, 124-125; Gardiner, History of England Vol. X, 148-149
87 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 145
88 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 370-371
89 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 138-139; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 399-400
90 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 368
91 “The Protestation,” House of Commons Journal Volume 2: 20 January 1642, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-jrnl/vol2/pp387-390#p66 Accessed March 1, 2020
92 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 145, 225-226
93 Manning, English People, 118-119
94 Manning, English People, 120-121; Lindley, Civil War London, 124
95 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 277
96 Manning, English People, 120
97 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 226
98 Manning, English People, 122
99 Manning, English People, 123
100 Manning, English People, 123-124
101 Manning, English People, 124-125; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 226
102 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 227; Manning, English People, 124
103 Manning, English People, 125
104 Manning, English People, 125
105 Manning, English People, 125-126
106 Manning, English People, 127