15) THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE INTENSIFIES (1642-1643)
…Cromwell and the English people had borrowed speech, passions and illusions from the Old Testament for their bourgeois revolution. When the real aim had been achieved, when the transformation of English society had been accomplished, Locke supplanted Habakkuk.
~Karl Marx1
With such extensive support in town and country it seemed the Parliamentary cause in London should have been assured. But this was far from the case. The complex of reasons can be boiled down to the moderate, partial nature of the Parliamentary program, and the gentry/merchant alliance which kept the revolutionary Puritan movement bound to the House of Commons.
Up to this point, the Puritan bourgeois leadership, now in power in London, had been united in its opposition to the crown and church, just as the Common’s leadership, personified by Pym, had mainly acted in concert with its left wing led by Pennington. With the success of the revolution, political differences began to emerge between the more moderate and more radical forces in each arena, reflecting their different goals. The civil war, begun by the king in the autumn of 1642, intensified this political struggle. The war brought the revolution to a grinding halt in the face of a conservative trend inside London, and the consequent need for military defense against internal and external enemies of the revolution. The full depth, configuration and consequences of the political split in the bourgeois leadership would not reach finality until several years into the future, but its origins were set here.
Between January 1642 and the summer of 1643, twelve London aldermen were elected to replace those who died, defected to the king, were imprisoned for non-payments, or otherwise left office. Only two of these newly elected aldermen had previously held office in a monopoly company; one was thrown out some months later. Richard Chambers, however, was famous for his public refusal to pay ship money and other illegal taxes to Charles. Collectively these twelve men were more moderate than those who served on the Militia Committee, the leaders of the City revolution. The majority of these later aldermen became political Presbyterians, whereas six of the eight aldermen on the Militia Committee became Independents.2
The Militia Committee, in addition to its political tasks of directing the defense of the City, also organized the financing of Parliament’s army. Four aldermen on the Militia Committee — Sir John Wollaston, John Warner, John Towse, and Thomas Andrewes — had been responsible for the voluntary contributions of plates, money and horses in June 1642; had been in charge of collecting loans and assessments earlier that year; and had also been treasurers for the Irish subscriptions in March as well. In September these same four would again be appointed to receive the subscriptions for raising troops. Three of the four became Treasurers for War.
These men did not come from great merchant families: they were liverymen who had started out in business and accumulated fortunes. Thomas Andrewes, a wholesale linen-draper and money-lender, was a business partner of Maurice Thomson and had subscribed to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Unusually, he had participated in the private customs farming syndicate under Charles I and, along with John Fowke (by this time also an alderman) and three other Militia Committee members, he was appointed Commissioner of Customs in January 1643. Andrewes and John Towse, a member of the Grocers’ Company who was elected Sheriff in 1640, were appointed Excise Commissioners, along with another Independent, John Kendricke, also of the Grocers’ Company, who later served as Lord Mayor during the Commonwealth. Five members of the Militia Committee in 1642 would be named as Trustees to sell bishops’ lands in 1646: Aldermen Andrewes, Fowke, and Thomas Atkins, Councilmen Stephen Estwicke, and Francis Peck. Estwicke and Peck, along with Alderman Atkins, “were the main suppliers of clothing and provisions to parliamentary armies”3 which thereby gave these businessmen substantial trade and profit. (It has been estimated that from 1642 to 1646 tradesmen of London, small and large, were collectively paid £500,000 for equipment and supplies, though some still had to be acquired elsewhere in England or on the Continent.)4
Sir John Wollaston had been a Common Councilor in the 1630s, and Sheriff from 1638-1639 (along with Isaac Pennington). A member of the Goldsmiths’ Company, he refused to loan money to the king in 1638, or to supply a list of wealthy men as alderman in 1639. Despite leaning towards moderation and Presbyterianism, he consistently lent money to Parliament during the Civil War, and accepted the Army in 1647. John Warner, a druggist and colonial merchant, and like Towse a member of the Grocers’ Company, was elected Sheriff in 1639-1640 and Alderman in 1640. As an Independent and Lord Mayor in 1647 he would work to suppress Presbyterian and royalist riots before dying in office in 1648.5
Nearly all of the twelve commissioners appointed to oversee implementation of the weekly assessment, begun in November 1642, were Atlantic merchants or their allies. They included the same four treasurers above along with Maurice Thomson, Isaac Pennington, John Fowke, Richard Chambers, and the London MPs John Venn, Samuel Vassal, and Thomas Soames. Seven of these assessment commissioners were overseas traders, and eight also sat on the City’s Militia Committee. Many local ward assessors were drawn from the Atlantic merchant grouping.6
Thus, major elements of the bourgeois class, exclusive of the oligarchic company merchants, were firmly in control of organizing Parliament’s war effort, sometimes to their own benefit.7 In terms of public service these were all “new men” who had not been appointed to (and would not have been considered for) royal commissions or offices, high office in London’s government, or directorates of monopoly trading companies. Some had held, at most, minor posts in the City before, such as Sheriff, or been Assistant in a livery company; but most were Puritans or Puritan sympathizers who had mainly declined to accept local offices prior to 1640.8
These men were clearly not among the great merchant princes who monopolized office and enjoyed the greatest fortunes before 1640. They were wealthy, but not the wealthiest men in the City, merchants of middle and occasionally upper middle rank, unwilling to take office in the sixteen-thirties for political or conscientious reasons…9
or sometimes because of the time and money it took away from their business affairs. The Common Councilors who sat on the Militia Committee were of very similar backgrounds.10 The livery company members were more broadly representative of the domestic bourgeoisie than the overseas merchants, old or new, and they engaged their “business acumen and organisational skills” in Parliament’s service.11 Most critically, they formed the pinnacle of the Atlantic merchants’ base.
As has been shown, the people in many areas were quite ready to rise: fear of papists and royalists; the destruction of their livelihoods due to depression and plunder; conscription of men by force to fight for the king; confiscation of arms; and Cavalier demands for money and supplies were sufficient provocations. They also hoped for a redress of their grievances by Parliament through religious reform and a wider democracy, while being “fearful and suspicious of the intentions of all superiors, whether royalists or parliamentarians or what.”12
Thousands traveled to London to volunteer, but were sent home by Parliament. Those who spontaneously rose against the royalists were more motivated than soldiers for pay, but less disciplined, experienced and well-equipped. As a result of their lack of training they tended to collapse or run away in the midst of battle. The first major engagement of the war was the inconclusive battle of Edgehill in October 1642. It convinced Cromwell that the war could not be won by irregular volunteers from the lower classes, “‘decayed servingmen and tapsters and such kind of fellows,’” facing sons of gentlemen trained in arms and to command, for whom honor was the highest virtue. What was needed were new regiments, particularly cavalry, composed of “‘men of spirit,’” godly men who would be as dedicated to the fight as gentlemen.13 Denzil Holles, another parliamentary leader, made the same observation, but his “contempt for his own soldiers”14 led him and others to a different political conclusion.
So they became leaders of the Peace Party, advocating negotiations with the king and peace at almost any price. Experiences with untrained and cowardly, disorderly and mutinous soldiers persuaded many parliamentarian leaders that they would be beaten, and defeatism led them to seek peace with the king on any terms he would accept.15
Cromwell, on the other hand, understood that military victory was essential to religious reform, and he believed, erroneously as it turned out, that it would force the king to make an agreement.16 He became a leader of the war party in the Commons, but it would be two and a half years before reform of the army via the Self-Denying Ordinance was passed by Parliament, and the creation of the New Model Army.17 Meanwhile, for the next nine months, Parliament was politically stalemated until the military situation was almost completely lost.
Radicalism appeared almost as soon as the war began, not because…it was a logical consequence of Parliament’s claims, but because in practice it became doubtful whether Parliament was prepared to stand firm, and the choice appeared to lie between the adoption of more radical principles or rapid defeat. … In December [1642] negotiations were taking place, and many feared that Parliament would cut its losses, hand the Five Members over to the King, and settle on his terms.18
From September 1642 on, the City government, with its new Lord Mayor Isaac Pennington and the Militia Committee, was firmly on the side of Parliament. A few minor reforms towards political democracy in City government procedure were added to those implemented in the first months of the year. But few official ordinances were passed to codify the governmental revolution of early 1642. This was not an oversight, but reflected the generally more moderate attitude of many of the new City rulers, corresponding to Pym’s middle group in the House of Commons, rather than its left wing, of which Pennington was a part.19
The overwhelming majority of the members who remained at Westminster after 1642 were Puritans in the broad, undifferentiated moral sense… They took religion seriously, disliked sabbath-breaking, stage plays, church-ales, and long hair, wished to purge the Church of England of the “popish” innovations introduced by the Arminians, and to have no more of episcopacy as practised in the 1630s. They were not necessarily opposed to bishops in principle…20
“For the essence of the ‘middle group’ was that they did not see themselves as revolutionaries. They constantly affirmed their support for the traditional and fundamental law, they staunchly upheld the monarchical system…”21 While endorsing practical measures to limit or remove royalist intrigues, the influence of the City moderates acted as a brake to limit what Pennington and his “fiery” supporters in the City government and the House of Commons could achieve.22 The door to reaction was being cracked open.
Since the battle at Edgehill, “many hundreds” of London citizens had been furiously working to construct “trenches and ramparts” on the roads into the city, and by order of Parliament on 25 October all shops were closed to maximize the available labor.23 In mid-November, two of Parliament’s regiments of foot, headed by Lord Brooke and Denzil Holles, were “destroyed” by Prince Rupert, leaving London exposed. Cavalier troops pillaged Brentford, a mere eight miles west of London, even as Parliament and the king were exchanging messages on the possibility of negotiations.24 City radicals, on behalf of “‘the most godly and active part of the City’” sent a delegation led by Richard Shute to petition the Commons against any accommodation with the king. To support their demand they offered to raise an immediate 1,000 horse and 3,000 troops under Serjeant Major General Philip Skippon, commander of the London militia, for the army of Essex, whose unpreparedness and weak leadership they strongly criticized.25 This was an early attack on the earl’s half-hearted military policy. Trained Bands from the county of Essex had come to London “but were sent back again because the lord general had no use for them.”26 Skippon, on the other hand, was “close politically to the City’s radicals,” but well-regarded by nearly all parliamentary factions.27
Given the imminent threat, the Commons had little choice but to accept the radicals’ offer. The House recommended Skippon to be subordinate to Essex, and designated the Earl of Warwick to oversee the committee to raise volunteers.28 Among those appointed to the volunteer committee were other radical Independents, such as John Kendricke, soon to be an alderman, and Lord Mayor during the Commonwealth,29 and the future Leveller leader William Walwyn.30 This was the first time official recognition had been given to City radicals by the Commons.31
The reduced but still sizable army under Lord Essex, with the London Trained Bands and the hastily recruited auxiliary volunteers, faced off against the royalist army at Turnham Green, just west of the City, next day. Charles, outnumbered two to one, chose to withdraw.32 Following the king’s rejection of Parliament’s negotiating proposals soon after, both Houses accepted the proposal for regular taxes on London to finance the war. Pennington and the City Sheriffs were authorized to establish a committee at Weavers’ Hall “to appoint collectors in each parish…[with] powers to fix individual assessments, levy distresses and call in the assistance of the Trained Bands to deal with recalcitrants.”33 Whereas up to this point contributions in support of the war had been voluntary, they were now made mandatory.
Parliament’s negotiations with the king had gone nowhere, but on 1 December a new petition against accommodation was signed by 95 “‘godly citizens.’” The leaders included the activist Independent ministers Hugh Peter, John Goodwin and Jeremiah Burroughs, “major architects of the radicals’ offensive,”34 as well as the war party Independents Mayor Pennington, Randall Mainwaring and Richard Shute. The petition demanded the arrests of royalists and malignants and seizure of their estates to pay for the war. It urged an active prosecution of the war by Essex, and offered to raise 6,000 troops. It also asked for the sequestration of pro-royalist, Episcopal church ministers, and their replacement by godly ones.35
Neither did the radicals hesitate to wield their power over Parliament: “‘…if the destructive counsels of accommodation be reassumed they shall think it necessary to look to their own safety and forbear to contribute to their own ruin.’”36 The godly men were thanked, but since no alderman appeared for the petition, the Commons sent it back to the City, where it was rejected by the Common Council.37 Parliament had already that day given a warrant to a linen draper to search “for Monies, Plate, and Horse, in the Houses of all Papists and Malignants whatsoever.”38 Two weeks later, however, they also began to extend the Ordinance for assessments and collections to the rest of the country.39 On the same day, 1 December, Parliament ordered the printing of a justification for its actions provided to it by Jeremiah Burroughs.40
In 1638 Burroughs discussed and supported the Scottish Covenant. Among the earl [of Warwick’s] intimates, Burroughs also advocated republican government and armed resistance to the king, singular positions in those pre-revolutionary days.41
In a sermon at the end of the December, 1642 Burroughs “went on to defend four basic freedoms to which everyone (and not merely freeholders) should lay claim: the rights to property, to government by consent, to freedom of conscience, and to reliable justice in place of grace and favour.”42 A year after the revolution in London, the universal application of such bourgeois democratic rights was still a very avant-garde idea.
In the late fall of 1642, the 200 remaining members in the House of Commons were very far from one mind.43 For a time the illusions of the peace party were able to prevail.
From November [1642] to January [1643] a majority of the members of the House of Commons supported the policy of treating with the King;…Pym gave the members anxious for a treaty their chance, a chance they used to frame the most moderate proposals presented to the King during the whole course of the war…44
Many if not most members indulged “the persistent faith that the war would be short, or…that there would not really be a war at all.”45 Indeed, Cromwell’s first commission to raise a troop of horse in August 1642 had read, “that the men should be ready to fight for ‘King and Parliament.’”46
“The spectre of treason prompted parliament to tread carefully, to react to the actions of the king rather than pre-empt them. This…gave rise to a parliamentarian war effort that was both reactive and defensive.”47 Johnson uses some bad arguments to support this very real aspect. The Militia Ordinance and the initial voluntary collection taken up in London may have been forced on a cautious Parliament by the king’s efforts to raise an army, but this does not detract from their transgressive, i.e., revolutionary, nature. The retrograde influence of the House of Lords and the peace party in both Houses, which he also cites, contains much more substance. Here again the contradiction in gentry politics is revealed. While Johnson’s observation is generally correct, Parliament nonetheless did react, and did not back down. It slowly took logically needed measures under the pressure of the war party, and prodding by Pym and his co-thinkers.
During the first half of 1643 this cautious approach, however, together with a prevailing belief that a single battle would force the king to negotiate,48 prevented the Commons from undertaking more serious preparations for a war. Pym’s policy was not to oppose negotiations as they proceeded, while building an administrative, fiscal and military machinery that could be used to support Parliament when, as he clearly expected, they failed.49 Every royalist military and propaganda attack, every arrogant rejection and violent condemnation by Charles, was used as an argument by Pym to push his proposals through Parliament. Supported in each case by the war party in the Commons and the radicals in the City government, he had mostly succeeded by the time negotiations with the king in Oxford for a treaty collapsed in April 1643.50
Charles’ propaganda, on the other hand, “strove to detach the urban populace from their radical leaders.”51 “Messengers, scouts and spies, and ‘certain adventurous women’, concealing secret despatches in their voluminous skirts, passed to and fro…”52 In mid-December 1642 the Common Council banned the wearing of party colors to suppress open royalist sentiment.53 Nevertheless, the combination of royalist and accomodationist pressure was strong enough that Pennington, as Mayor, was forced to agree to bring a private counter-petition for peace to the House of Commons later in the month. It was signed by 100 of “‘the most substantial inhabitants of the citie of London.’”54 A few days earlier, a group of up to 1,000 antiwar protesters, angry over higher taxes, had seized the Guildhall and beaten up the quartermaster of John Venn’s regiment. Only when the Trained Band threatened to blow in the doors with cannon did they surrender, and were arrested.55 The Common Council obtained permission from Parliament to send a petition to Charles in York asking for peace, and the king agreed to receive it.
As polarization in the City was deepening, the stridency of the radicals was alienating the gentlemen of the House. To undercut these dangers, Pennington brought a second, official City petition with him to the Commons, setting out in conciliatory language London’s conditions for peace to be sent to the king. (He also took care to have the originators of the peace petition imprisoned.) The king’s reply, by his own request, was read in Common Hall on 13 January 1643. True to form, Charles rejected the terms offered, insulted the municipal delegation which brought them, and demanded that several Independent leaders, including Pennington and Randall Mainwaring, MP John Venn and Alderman John Fowke, be handed over for trial on charges of high treason. The king also went out of his way to indict and denigrate the entire London government, which made it clear that no supporter of the governmental changes the previous January, which included most of the House of Commons, would be safe. Pym addressed Common Hall to great acclaim, supported by the new Earl of Manchester, reunifying the City’s adherence to Parliament.56 No less than Clarendon conceded their speeches were “entertained with all imaginable applause, and…with a general acclamation, ‘that they would live and die with the houses…’”57 The peace party was set back, and two weeks later both Houses agreed on a bill to abolish episcopacy.58 The radicals resubmitted their petition of 1 December, but again without success.59
Pennington’s plan to build extensive and massive fortifications around London and its suburbs was moving forward about this time. Begun in the fall of 1642,60 it was widely, even wildly, popular, both in and out of government. Moderates who favored negotiations with the king saw it as “a way of strengthening the City as an independent force capable of bargaining with either side.” It also had the side virtue for them of extending the municipal government’s authority to the areas outside the walls, which were often where radical workers lived. For the bourgeois radicals, it provided the parliamentary army with a large and secure source of weapons and supplies, as well as helping to safeguard against royalist activities. Terror inspired by the Cavalier depredations at Brentford in November 1642 fed the citizens’ enthusiasm. The fortifications surrounded London, and the suburbs of Southwark and Westminster, with trenches and periodic forts in sight of each other. “Open streets leading out into the suburbs were barricaded and armed, and batteries of ordnance were mounted at strategic points.”61 The walls were built far enough away from residential areas that they would be safe from artillery.62
In the spring of 1643 the Common Council ordered ministers to preach for defense of the City. One thousand “fish wives…marched from Billingsgate in martial order headed by a symbolic goddess of war.” Each day a different parish neighborhood reported for work, and livery companies “marched out with ‘roaring drums, flying colours and girded swords;’ over fifty trades were said to have competed in friendly emulation…”63 Up to 20,000 people a day, whole families including women and children, worked for no pay, only food. Feltmakers and cappers, tailors, watermen, gentlemen vintners with their wives and servants, porters, shoemakers, fishmongers and coopers participated in their thousands.
…even the “clerks and gentlemen” participated as a profession. Those belonging to Parliament, the Inns of Court, and other public offices, were mustered in the Piazza in Covent Garden at seven o’clock in the morning with “spades, shovels, pickaxes and other necessaries.”64
The work continued even on Sundays.65 Completed by the spring of 1643, the forts were built of earth and timber, “the ramparts being 9 feet thick and 18 feet high, and extending for 18 miles,”66 “the most extensive system of defences in Europe.”67
This visceral demonstration of the City united in its own defense against the plunder and destruction of the king’s army was only made possible by an exceedingly large and solid core of organized support for the program of the revolution in church and state, and its parliamentary Puritan leadership. It came a year or so after the revolutionary days of 1641-42 that had intimidated the king and checkmated his coup d’état; and only a few months after the Trained Bands and citizens, with Essex, had stood up to the royalists at Turnham Green. The revolutionary consciousness of the working and middling classes was confirmed to be not only still alive, but only waiting for opportunities to show itself in action.
Customs farming was in the hands of the old company merchants who, as staunch royalists, refused to lend money to Parliament. They were dismissed, and replaced by a commission composed of new merchants in January 1643. In particular, the new customs commission was to provide money for the navy, most of whose officers and crews, with their ships, had gone over to Parliament. The customs commissioners included Maurice Thomson, John Fowke, Thomas Andrewes and Richard Chambers. With the exception of Chambers they were all radical parliamentarians, and six of its eight members were also militia commissioners. A few months earlier, Parliament had appointed the leftwing MP Sir Henry Vane to lead a commission of twelve to organize and administer the navy, evenly split between civilians and MPs. Six of these naval commissioners, including Maurice Thomson, were Atlantic merchants or had ties to them. Other members again included John Fowke and Richard Chambers. The commission had the Puritan Earl of Warwick appointed admiral of the fleet.68
The new secretary to the admiralty was a close collaborator of Maurice Thomson, and had been a commissioner for the Additional Sea Adventure to Ireland. Charles’ importation of arms and money from the Continent was a serious problem at this early stage.69 In need of more ships to isolate enemy ports and wage war against the king, as well as to protect its commerce abroad, Parliament contracted private armed ships from their supporters in the Atlantic trade. These were manned by “‘naval officers of a new type, who had been trained in merchant ships and replaced the old aristocratic commanders in Parliament’s navy.’” Sixty such colonial merchant ships were hired during the Civil War years.70
Senior aldermen and the wealthiest citizens, unsurprisingly, were strongly resistant to the assessments ordered by Parliament the previous November, which were set at “one-twentieth of real property and one-fifth of personal estate.”71 Reportedly the City’s list of malignant persons contained 800 names. Some sitting aldermen had had their homes searched by the sheriffs for arms. During January and early February 1643 at least three royalist aldermen, and another five wealthy citizens were imprisoned for refusing to pay assessments.72
Also during late January and February four letters written by Charles, intercepted by Essex and Fairfax, were read in Parliament.
They proved the prevalence of Popery in the Duke of Newcastle’s Royalist army and indicated that Charles wanted nothing done to discourage the enlistment of Papists under the Duke’s standard. … In one the King revealed that he regarded the Oxford treaty less as a means to peace than as a vehicle to show forth his own magnanimity and the stubbornness of the rebel Parliament… The second royal letter proved to Parliament’s satisfaction that in Ireland the King had identified his interests with the triumph of the Papists over the Protestants. The letters had a profound effect.73
Nevertheless, “…in February 1643 more than a hundred men voted to continue a peace treaty with the King despite his unfavorable answer to Parliament’s proposal.”74 On the first of the month, a committee of both Houses left to negotiate a treaty in Oxford.
In the first half of 1643, “parliament’s political and administrative preparations for civil war were essentially defensive…”75 This was a product both of the circumspect program of the middle group, and of obstruction by the Peace party, whom Pym would not risk dividing from. On the same day the negotiators left London, 1 February, the treasurer for the army reported that there was no more money to pay the troops.76 The voluntary collections and weekly assessments were simply insufficient.
This uncertain situation was left to fester. Despite the City Independents’ and war party’s many attempts to force the Commons to take the offensive, backed up by implicit threats to mobilize the population, it would not be until the military crisis in July/August that the House would engage to treat the war seriously. Meanwhile, also in February, the queen returned from the Continent with “significant quantities of money and munitions.”77 She also brought “a few hundred mercenaries,”78 although she failed to persuade any foreign governments to send troops to support Charles. Parliamentary forces were unable to prevent her reaching the king.
From 18-21 February 1643, the Common Council debated three new sets of proposals, similar to the program in the 1 December petition, for submission to Parliament “purged of radical phrases.” One list came from the peace party. The other two were designed to attract broad support for the political strategy of Pym and the middle group in the Commons. In return for passage of a new assessment bill by the House of Lords authorizing stricter enforcement,79 Pym had agreed to continue negotiations with Charles. The new proposals from the Council therefore no longer called for breaking off negotiations with the king, but for practical steps to enhance the Parliamentary army: seizure of delinquents’ rents, revenues and estates; distribution of the Ordinance for assessments throughout the country; and for a religious covenant “to bind together the ‘well-affected’ of the kingdom.” The final petition, presented to the Commons on 20 February, did not include support for the assessments, but rather the moderates’ appeal for a reduction in the size of the City’s contribution. Nor did it contain the demands regarding delinquents’ estates or a covenant, but these were added back the next day by the Council after further debate, along with an indirect attack on the Earl of Essex. The petition also asked the House to consider only official government communications to represent the “‘sense’” of the City,80 another slap to the radicals.
The conflicts over competing petitions in the first months of 1643 formalized the division in the City government between the factions, reflecting those in the House of Commons, but even more intensely. MPs and peers inclined toward the king had removed themselves from Westminster, either to the court at York or their estates. Most remaining members of the Commons belonged to neither extreme: like Pym, they supported an efficient and vigorous prosecution of the war, but only to put the democratic reforms of 1641 into effect.81 While most in the London government were willing to protect the City from openly royalist influence there was little attempt to systematically suppress it. The radicals were hamstrung by the House of Commons, and City moderates would never have countenanced it.
Whereas in Paris 1793 the Jacobins followed the Gironde to power, here it was the other way around. The necessity of a civil war resulted from the lack of a Terror against the feudal aristocracy as a whole. There do not seem to have been any organized revolutionary or neighborhood committees, although some alert citizens may have informally monitored the situation, as during the Army Plots. In Paris such plebeian committees were vital to keep watch over and suppress royalist conspiracies and counter-revolutionaries. The House of Lords continued to sit until 1649: “almost every peer associated with Pym in 1643 had by 1648 become an advocate of peace with the King.”82 Any idea of removing the king, much less executing him, would have been viewed with abhorrence by the gentlemen at Westminster (as indeed it still was in 1649 when it came to pass). Henry Marten was virtually alone in favoring a republic.83 The deep, hard split to come in 1793 between the bourgeois and the aristocrat did not occur in 1642 because the bourgeois leaders, both the Atlantic merchants and the mostly moderate businessmen of the livery companies, were politically allied with a substantial wing of the aristocracy. As a result, the members of the Commons were able to make use of the people’s support through their Puritan and merchant partners, while deterring their more revolutionary programmatic demands.
Despite the radical Independents’ attempts to push the Commons toward their more republican program, it was utopian to think the landowners would embrace it. As the traditional counterweight to the crown, and the champions of a freer economy and individual rights, the middling/working people had reason to accord the Commons the primary role in the struggle. Parliament’s political leadership was thus for the most part willingly accepted by the urban masses in these early years. The MPs were not, after all, their landlords. The association was overtly reinforced by the support of the leftwing City leaders, first and foremost the popular and devout Isaac Pennington who, instrumental in both arenas, was the glue cementing the London citizenry to the ruling gentry. The road to counter-revolution in the city was the direct result of the London leadership’s dependence on, and its political subservience to, Parliament, in spite of all its energetic activity.
In January 1643 an anonymous, highly radical pamphlet had appeared, Plaine English, most probably by the Presbyterian minister Edward Bowles. He
spoke the mind of many when he scoffed at the pretense, carefully maintained by Parliament, that the King was not personally responsible for the deeds which made peace impossible, that in such matters he was misled by evil councillors. … The King himself denied that anyone misled him… All Parliament’s talk about evil councillors was patently a silly fiction.84
In an attempt to break through aristocratic obstruction, the London Independents at the end of March presented a citizens’ Petition and Remonstrance, a statement of their program, to the Common Council, really intended for Parliament’s notice. It explicitly linked “their strategic aim of harnessing the people’s power to the parliamentary cause.” For the first time, however, it was asserted, “‘That originally the supreme power being in the whole people…in the Parliaments of England, acting for the same doth the supreme power reside…’”85 If sovereignty did not reside in the person of the king, but in Parliament acting on behalf of the people, then the king was without question subject to its laws. The petition reiterated the radicals’ call for “‘trustworthy’” public officials, for strict conditions of settlement with the king, and for a national religious covenant. William Walwyn supported it,86 and Hugh Peter was said to have lobbied for it at the door. Despite being “committed” to four of the most radical aldermen, John Towse, John Warner, John Fowke and Thomas Andrewes, there is no evidence that it passed the Council.87
It was nonetheless the first formal assertion in England of the fundamental bourgeois tenet that sovereignty derived from the people. The idea would be elaborated by John Locke some 50 years on, and become the theoretical basis for the American and French Revolutions 80-100 years after that. That power lay with the people had already been propounded in New England by the Puritan clerics Thomas Hooker in 1638, and John Cotton in 1640.88 For all that it reinforced the ties between the people and Parliament, this was a revolutionary conception quite unlike the balance of power between king and Parliament that Pym and the middle group used to justify their program. Yet it only logically extended the implications of Parliament’s Militia Ordinance being declared law one year earlier, and the citizens’ armed defense against the king previous to that. Like many others, the question of the relationship between the people and the parliament would be revisited after the Civil War.
It was not until April 1643 that the negotiations in Oxford finally collapsed. The Commons’ rightwing opposition to Pym’s proposals now began to give ground, as the growing inevitability of a serious war and the need for defense became ever more glaring.89 But still
the Lords announced that “in the general combustion of the kingdom” the Weekly Assessment barely met the operational needs of the counties in which it was levied. In addition the City was so hard pressed that “it can hardly support the Lord General’s army, unto which a great arrears remains unpaid, both for pay and supplies of the magazine.”90
This was true, but to the Lords it justified continuing to seek an as-yet–unspecified settlement with the king on whatever terms he would agree to. This appeal to fear, nurtured by the peace party in the Commons as well, had its effects.
Repeated failures to negotiate with the king, and Cavalier military successes around the country, resulted in sharpening polarization in London. The “sentiment for peace in London concealed a good deal of clandestine activity subversive of the parliamentary war effort…”91 Relations between the London radicals and the war party in Parliament, on the other hand, grew closer in this period. New measures had to be taken to defend Parliament. City radicals, led by Randall Mainwaring,
would constitute a whole series of commissions, organized by Parliament, that had as their purpose either the collection by force of money or supplies required for the military effort or the repression or surveillance of groups of citizens thought to be hostile to Parliament.92
Such activity by the London leadership, however, could not hope to substitute for mass involvement in stamping out the threat of royalism.
The ordinances expanding weekly assessments and for sequestration of delinquents’ estates in early 164393 also established a parliamentary committee for each county. These acted as “the standard and universal organ of central control over local administration until the Restoration.”94 The regional county associations designated by Parliament were denounced by the king as traitorous, and he simultaneously turned down a truce proposal from the House of Lords. Pym’s request for additional men and money from the City government in March received the answer that no more could be raised.95 Money from a subscribed loan was coming in slowly, and the City government had no authority to enforce it.96 Moreover an earlier loan had not yet been repaid. The auxiliary volunteers raised the previous November had been made part of Essex’s army, and men were needed as guards on the City’s new fortifications and could not be spared.97
But the City radicals, in a petition originally presented to Common Council by Alderman Fowke, made up for the lack of response by offering to raise at their own charge three regiments of horse and seven of foot. Parliament and the municipality accepted their offer and by an Ordinance of April 12th [1643], a Sub-Committee, subordinate to the Militia Committee, was established at Salters’ Hall for this purpose. Now the radicals had an organization of their own, with an official status in the City.98
Many Subcommittee members had been revolutionary militants during 1641-1642, and later became left-Independents or Levellers. Their aim was to establish a new, independent force of auxiliaries that would bypass City officials as well as the Earl of Essex. They sought to “place it in the hands of the militant citizens themselves” just as the Additional Sea Adventure to Ireland had done,99 and they were particularly intent on putting only “godly” officers in charge. Of the seven regiments raised, five godly men are known to have been appointed colonels, who were also captains in the Trained Bands. Two became Presbyterians, the other three would support the New Model Army. In the main they seem to have recruited apprentices.100 Pym, however, continued to back the prickly Essex, whose prestige and position on the right flank of the middle group made him indispensable to keeping these centrists somewhat stable and unified.101 The question of whether this new force could be used for fighting outside of London was apparently never made explicit, but Pym knew that the Subcommittee was telling volunteers that they would not be. It was a reasonable inference from Parliament’s 12 April ordinance, which stated the “Auxiliaries to the Trained Bands” were “for Safeguarding the said City, Parliament, and Parts adjacent,” but it did not prohibit the possibility.102
With the wind apparently in the radicals’ sails, religious Independent leaders now began to create new gathered congregations, openly contravening the parish principle for the first time.103 As the king’s army was winning victories around the country, religious passions again broke out in London. “Catholic embassies whose chapels were open for worship to English Catholics were targeted in April and May 1641. On Easter Sunday, crowds of apprentices and others beset the Spanish and Portuguese embassies.”104 Both the Common Council and the House of Commons now authorized demolition of public structures considered to be superstitious or idolatrous.105
At the same time some further democratizing measures were introduced into the City government. The most important change was the wholesale removal of aldermen’s deputies by the Common Council, an additional blow to the power of City royalists; the deputies were now required to be elected councilmen. Additionally, in an attempt to smooth the way for loans from the City to Parliament, two Acts dating back to Henry VII were repealed. One transferred elections for two City posts from the Court of Aldermen to Common Hall. As a result, the royalist City Chamberlain was immediately replaced.106 But such relatively minor matters clearly indicated that democratization had all but come to a halt.
In May, five royalist aldermen were removed from their positions, one of whom had already left the city to join Charles. These were in addition to five aldermen, among many other wealthy men, then in jail for refusing to pay assessments. “‘I have no more authority in the City than a Porter,’” Alderman Garway, one of those removed, reportedly complained.107 At the end of the month, a royalist conspiracy led by MP Edmund Waller, authorized by Charles,108 and involving some of the wealthiest citizens and former Common Councilors, was exposed.109 (Suspicious MPs had engaged the royalists’ servants as spies.)110 It depended on royalists in the trained bands seizing arms and positions, as well as Pennington, Pym and their supporters, and opening the City gates to a force of 3,000 to be sent by the king.111 Close after Waller’s treachery had been spiked came news of Charles’ negotiations to enlist the Catholic rebels in Ireland on his side.112
Together, these events changed the political situation in London. The king had very nearly struck a devastating blow from within the city itself. Parliament overwhelmingly passed a new Vow and Covenant it had previously rejected: “to support the forces raised in defence of Parliament against those raised by the King, ‘so long as the Papists now in open war against the Parliament shall by force of arms be protected from the justice thereof.’”113 No longer was there any mention of “‘defence of the king’s person and authority.’” “Liberty of the Subject” was thereby given more prominence by being solely linked with “Preservation of the true Protestant Religion.” A more stringent censorship law was also enacted.114 In the renewed militantly religious atmosphere, the House of Lords finally approved the creation of an Assembly of Divines to begin work on a new national church.115 Aside from the suppression of the conspirators, these measures by themselves were hardly sufficient against what was shortly to become “the greatest military emergency of the war…”116 But the seriousness of the situation was beginning to be felt in Parliament, and also London. Fanned by Puritan clergy, anti-monarchism was becoming ever more overt in the summer of 1643.117
And yet, a dangerous pro-royalist minority still existed in the City. During the spring and summer, the East India Company outright refused “Parliament’s direct order to lend ordnance to the City militia committee…”118 Before fleeing to Oxford early in 1643, the Company’s Master, Sir Nicholas Crispe, “courtier-merchant, customs farmer, African slaver…continued active in London politics even while he helped organise [royalist] cavalry recruitment…”119 Resistance to Pennington’s regime was increased by the high taxes and the proliferation of fees charged. As a security measure, passes into and out of the City now cost two shillings. His attacks on such Puritan fixations as idolatry and sport did not help the regime’s popularity,120 as would also be the case during Cromwell’s Protectorate. Since the previous September stage plays had been banned by Parliament.121
Conservative power in the London government was strong enough to block any more loans to Parliament or provide money to pay for additional troops. It was pro-peace and anti-tax, and drew its support in the first instance from the monopoly trading companies. Able to rally support from London’s population around these issues the counter-revolutionary royalist opposition remained a grave threat to the new regime. In addition there was the unpredictable possibility that the king might return. These factors caused many on the Common Council to remain cautious in their pronouncements and actions, and to favor an accommodation with the king if at all possible.122
As reaction grew, Pennington was increasingly unable to represent the policies of radical Independency as the position of the municipal government. Instead, he and his supporters were forced to create ad hoc nongovernmental organizations such as the Subcommittee of Volunteers, meeting in Salters’ Hall, and the Committee for the General Rising, created in July.123 Despite their apparent strength, power was slipping away from the Independents.
The leading London radicals, Independents and Atlantic merchants of the war party, were in a delicate political position. Unlike Pym and the middle group, they were republican or semi-republican in outlook, and demanded abolition of episcopacy. They realized that achievement of these goals meant continuation of the revolution by the London citizens’ movement against those moderates who looked for some kind of vague compromise with the king. But as they themselves were wealthy men they understood the risk of the lower classes getting out of hand. To maintain control over the people while engaging them against the enemy was the tricky task, to a greater or lesser degree, of the entire parliamentary London leadership, Independent or Presbyterian, but especially the former. Pym and the moderates had, in a sense, solved this problem for themselves by seeking only a reduction in the monarchy’s powers, however utopian that proved to be; they had no desire to further stir up the people.
The Atlantic merchants were among the most politically radical (outside of the religious sectaries) of Parliament’s supporters, and they were prepared to take the greatest risks because they stood to make the greatest gains, economically and politically.124 Thus their attempts to implement, first the Irish expedition, and then their own army to fight the king with their own resources, and largely on their own authority. Their day would come with the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1649. Meanwhile, they lacked the clarity or the strength, or both, to implement a revolutionary dictatorship of the bourgeoisie of the Jacobin type; or were not prepared to risk putting the people into power. Democracy had definite limits for these men as would soon be shown. As a result, most of them “would end up in the less-radical wing of political independency…”125 thereby betraying their middling class followers. Their failure to politically mobilize the citizens to fully suppress royalism, or to neutralize conciliationist sentiment, undermined the revolutionary forces in the City. Only once, when compelled by circumstances at the most critical point, would they do so.
The political difficulties caused by the City merchant leaders’ adherence to the gentry in Parliament contributed to a dispute that broke out between radical activists on the officially sanctioned Subcommittee of Volunteers at Salters’ Hall and the Militia Committee. The Subcommittee proposed a voluntary collection to support the new regiments, and the members expected to appoint the officers themselves. “They not only impugned the management of the war, but claimed powers to levy men to fight on their sole authority, without reference to the Committee of the Militia.”126 These claims were denied by the Committee, “a body that could hardly be accused of wavering in its support of Pym and the middle group of the Commons.”127 Despite Independent leaders of the City and Militia Committee having secured Parliament’s authorization for the Subcommittee, men like Pennington, Mainwaring, Fowke, John Warner, Towse and Andrewes were not going to allow activists, probably of lesser status and even more radical than themselves, to control an armed force on their own.128
The argument was referred to the Common Council, a more conservative body, whose middle group and peace party members were both opposed to the idea of a separate radical military force. The Council must have also been aghast at the Subcommittee’s intention to extend their scope to the suburbs where some of the most radical artisan and poorest manufacturing workers lived.129 The April Ordinance creating the Subcommittee had explicitly stated that men could be raised “within the said City and Liberties thereof, as also within the Parishes and Places adjacent…,” but the moderate parliamentarians evidently blocked with the peace party in the Council to successfully back the Militia Committee. As something of a sop, they offered to elect seven radical members of the Subcommittee to it. This would tend to fuse the two committees together. The addition of six more members, including Mayor Pennington, added simultaneously, would further dilute the radicals’ vote. The total membership of the Militia Committee was thus brought to thirty. This solution was then presented to Parliament by a peace party alderman on behalf of the official City government, with all of the implied criticisms stripped out, and with a demand to control the suburban militias added in.130 This victory for the City moderates, enabled by leading London Independents, exposed the limits of the latter’s political tolerance,131 and thereby curbed the House of Commons’ own militant left wing. Reaction was hitting its stride.
1 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Selected Works, 98
2 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 244-245
3 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 240-243, 321
4 Porter, “Impact of the Civil War Upon London,” 178-179
5 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 325-327, 328-331
6 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 240-243, 309-311, 325; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 431-432
7 John Fowke had engaged in overseas trade with the Levant and East India Companies prior to 1641, but he was a loose cannon, as often at serious odds with their directorates and/or the king’s government as not. Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 316-318
8 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 241-243
9 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 243; Manning, Aristocrats, Plebeians, 63
10 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 243-244
11 Porter, “Impact of the Civil War Upon London,” 177-178
12 Manning, English People, 235, 237-240
13 Fraser, Cromwell, 97-98; Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 47 and fn. 2
14 Hexter, King Pym, 9
15 Manning, English People, 246; Hexter, King Pym, 55; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 60
16 Fraser, Cromwell, 138
17 Fraser, Cromwell, 141-145; Hill, Century, 108. The Self-Denying Ordinance of 1645 prohibited anyone with a seat in either house of Parliament from being a military officer in the New Model Army. It was passed as a way of removing the compromising and incompetent aristocrats from the army leadership. An exception was subsequently voted for Oliver Cromwell.
18 David Wootton, “From Rebellion to Revolution: The Crisis of the Winter of 1642/3 and the Origins of Civil War Radicalism,” The English Historical Review 105, no. 416 (July 1990): 654-655, 659, https://www.jstor.org/stable/570756 Accessed November 11, 2018
19 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 246, 249-250
20 Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 15-16
21 Valerie Pearl, “Oliver St. John and the ‘Middle Group’ in the Long Parliament: August 1643-May 1644,” The English Historical Review 81, no. 320 (July 1966): 493, http://www.jstor.org/stable/561660 Accessed October 8, 2015
22 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 250
23 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 71-72
24 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 72; Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 65-66; “Brentford & Turnham Green: November 1642,” BCW Project, http://bcw-project.org/military/english-civil-war/edgehill-campaign/brentford-turnham-green Accessed June 28, 2016; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 252
25 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 252
26 Manning, English People, 244
27 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 436-437
28 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 436; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 252; “City Forces,” House of Commons Journal Volume 2: 15 November 1642, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-jrnl/vol2/pp850-852#p46 Accessed 28 February 2021 [Two entries]
29 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 321
30 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 437-438
31 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 438. Although Pearl describes the citizens’ offer to raise troops, she does not mention this committee.
32 “Brentford & Turnham Green: November 1642,” BCW Project
33 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 253; Hexter, King Pym, 17-18; “November 1642: An Ordinance for the assessing of all such as have not contributed…,” Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/pp38-40 Accessed 14 August 2020
34 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 439
35 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 253-254
36 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 438
37 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 254
38 “Search for Money, &c.,” House of Commons Journal Volume 2: 01 December 1642, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-jrnl/vol2/pp870-872#p2 Accessed January 31, 2021
39 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 254; “Ordinance of Assessment,” House of Commons Journal Volume 2: 17 December 1642, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-jrnl/vol2/pp892-893#p39 Accessed 17 February 2021
40 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 441 fn. 89
41 Shipps, “The ‘Political Puritan,’” 204
42 Wootton, “The Crisis of the Winter of 1642/3,” 667
43 Hexter, King Pym, 67 fn. 5; Porter, “Impact of the Civil War Upon London,” 177
44 Hexter, King Pym, 49-50; Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 93
45 Hexter, King Pym, 7
46 Fraser, Cromwell, 91
47 Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 76. Johnson is clearly on the conservative side politically: while not overtly pro-royalist in this work, he is rather contemptuous of Parliament, and obviously hostile to the London Puritan movement and its leadership.
48 Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 40
49 Hexter, King Pym, 14, 49-50; Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 82
50 Hexter, King Pym, 15-17, 56-57
51 Ian Gentles, “Parliamentary Politics and the Politics of the Street: The London Peace Campaigns of 1642-3,” Parliamentary History 26, no. 2 (May 2007): 141
52 Ian Roy, “‘This Proud Unthankefull City’: A Cavalier View of London in the Civil War,” in London and the Civil War, ed. Stephen Porter (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 157
53 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 255; Gentles, “The London Peace Campaigns,” 144
54 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 255; Gentles, “The London Peace Campaigns,” 142 and fn. 17
55 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 75-76; Gentles, “The London Peace Campaigns,” 142, 145
56 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 255-257; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 442-443; Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 95-96
57 Edward Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Great Rebellion and Civil Wars in England Vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1826), 400, https://archive.org/details/england03claruoft/page/n8/mode/2up?view=theater Accessed 1 November 2021; Gentles, “The London Peace Campaigns,” 147
58 Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 98; “Abolishing Espiscopacy” (sic), House of Commons Journal Volume 2: 30 January 1643, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-jrnl/vol2/pp947-949#h3-0007 Accessed November 30, 2019
59 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 257; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 443
60 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 71-72
61 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 262-263. For a very detailed description, see Victor Smith and Peter Kelsey, “The Lines of Communication: The Civil War Defenses of London,” in London and the Civil War, ed. Stephen Porter (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996)
62 Porter, “Impact of the Civil War Upon London,” 176
63 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 264-265; Gentles, “The London Peace Campaigns,” 140
64 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 264, 265; Manning, English People, 216-218
65 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 264
66 Manning, English People, 218
67 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 77
68 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 432-433; D. E. Kennedy, The English Revolution 1642-1649 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: MacMillan Press, 2000), 17-18, https://www.academia.edu/35661079/D_Kennedy_The_English_Revolution_1642_ Accessed 30 June 2021
69 Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 85
70 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 433-434
71 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 253 fn.68
72 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 254-255 and fn. 74, 257
73 Hexter, King Pym, 20, 23
74 Hexter, King Pym, 35
75 Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 70
76 Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 83, 152; Hexter, King Pym, 21
77 Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 11; Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 109
78 Malcolm, “A King in Search of Soldiers,” 272
79 “Order for assessing divers Persons in London, according to the Ordinance of 29 November,” House of Lords Journal Volume 5: 8 February 1643, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/lords-jrnl/vol5/pp592-596#p40 Accessed August 14, 2020
80 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 257-259
81 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 393; Pearl, “Oliver St. John,” 494
82 Hexter, King Pym, 58 fn. 49
83 Hexter, King Pym, 9, 199; C. M. Williams, “The Anatomy of a Radical Gentleman: Henry Marten,” in Puritans and Revolutionaries, eds. Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 120
84 Hexter, King Pym, 106
85 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 446
86 Lindley, Civil War London, 307; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 448
87 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 260-261; Lindley, Civil War London, 308; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 445-448
88 Tyacke, “Revolutionary Puritanism,” 759
89 Hexter, King Pym, 31-32; Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 88
90 Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 159
91 Roy, “A Cavalier View of London in the Civil War,” 161
92 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 443
93 “January 1643: Instructions for the Lords Lieutenants…,” Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660, British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/pp55-58 Accessed May 23, 2017
94 Hexter, King Pym, 24
95 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 444; Hexter, King Pym, 23
96 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 260
97 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 79
98 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 260; “Ordinance for raising Forces in and about London,” House of Lords Journal Volume 5: 12 April 1643, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/lords-jrnl/vol5/pp714-716#p31 Accessed 17 March 2020
99 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 398
100 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 81-82
101 Hexter, King Pym, 113-114, 115-116
102 Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 80; “Ordinance for raising Forces in and about London,” British History Online
103 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 450
104 Lindley, Civil War London, 75
105 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 450-451
106 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 247-248; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 451
107 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 265-266 and fn. 120; Roy, “A Cavalier View of London in the Civil War,” 157
108 Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 90; Roy, “A Cavalier View of London in the Civil War,” 160; Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 172-173
109 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 265-266; Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 90. His name is incorrectly given as “Edward” Waller in Pearl’s text, but not the Index.
110 Roy, “A Cavalier View of London,” 161
111 Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 171-172
112 Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 173; Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 90-91
113 Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 173-174; “June 1643: The Covenant to be taken by the whole Kingdom,” Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/pp175-176 Accessed September 12, 2019
114 Johnson, “Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort,” 91; Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 174
115 Gardiner, Great Civil War Vol. I, 174
116 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 450
117 Hexter, King Pym, 105-106; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 444-445
118 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 451, 688; Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 265-267, 273-274
119 Roy, “A Cavalier View of London in the Civil War,” 155
120 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 261-262
121 “Order for Stage-plays to cease,” House of Lords Journal Volume 5: 2 September 1642, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/lords-jrnl/vol5/pp334-337#p59 Accessed August 30, 2020
122 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 435-436
123 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 250-251
124 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 454-455
125 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 400
126 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 268; Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 82
127 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 267
128 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 453
129 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 40-41
130 Pearl, London and the Outbreak, 267-269; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 455; Nagel, “The Militia of London,” 82-83
131 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 455-456