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Transcript
The English Civil War officially started in 1642, and the road to war was a terrifying and chaotic time of political intrigue, mob violence and widespread paranoia.
Introduction
If you’ve been following this series from the beginning, you have a vague idea of the events of Charles I’s reign up until 1639. He and his Parliament had immediately gotten off on the wrong foot, when he married a Catholic and Parliament denied him a reliable lifetime income through tonnage and poundage, a threat to royal authority that no King in English history had ever faced. Then, he’d gotten disastrously involved in a couple of military entanglements, primarily at Cadiz and La Rochelle in France, solidifying his poor reputation in the public’s eyes. The relationship between King and Parliament failed to improve, even after he accepted the Petition of Right, which set out specific public liberties that the King could not infringe upon. And so, after calling and disbanding two previous Parliaments, the King disbanded a third Parliament in 1628, and ruled on his own for 11 years, funding his crown through dubiously legal and wildly unpopular methods, including Ship Money, a medieval tax traditionally raised from coastal towns specifically for coastal defense, but which now extended throughout the country to fund the King’s Court. During this period, known as the Personal Rule, his policies and methods appalled Puritans, especially his his appointment of the extremely anti-Puritan William Laud as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and his increasing lenience toward Catholics. Over the course of this time, a huge number of puritans emigrated, while a small group of puritans in England tried to found a colony on Providence Island. In 1639, his attempts to push high Church religious reforms in Scotland led to the outbreak of war there, known as the Bishops’ Wars, and the financial strain of these wars forced him to call a Parliament, and that’s about the last thing we’ve covered.
But, let’s resume our discussion at the Bishops Wars, because that is the event that caused Charles I’s reign to fall apart. The Bishops’ Wars resulted from the King’s attempt to push an English prayer book on Scotland. He was working to establish an identical Church in Scotland as existed in England. Now, history hasn’t been kind to this decision, but though it might have been badly timed, it wasn’t actually totally unreasonable. The goal of the Stuarts, from James I down to Queen Anne, who actually accomplished it, had been to unite England and Scotland into one country. For that to happen, by the standards of early 17th Century Europe, something was going to have to change in terms of religion. Either Scotland was going to have to adjust to conform to England’s system of religion, or England was going to have to adjust to conform to that of Scotland. That’s just the way things worked back then. Some level of conflict on the issue was going to be hard to avoid if the kingdoms were to be unified. The issue was just timing, but that brings us to a second issue.
The other factor that the King didn’t know about at the time, but which he soon grew to suspect and which there is in fact some evidence for, is that the Scottish Presbyterians and the English Puritan leaders were secretly allied with each other. We don’t have any existing documentation of their discussions or anything, and in fact we don’t know for 100% that it happened at all, but it’s pretty likely that it did. And, apart from the fact that it was treason, it makes sense that it would. The two groups shared very similar political and religious goals and ideas, and by collaborating, they could create an almost no-win situation for the King. If the Covenanters ended up at war with the King, there was virtually no way that he’d get the money to fund a successful military campaign. So, they could demand anything they wanted, with no real incentive to compromise. And in fact a Scottish war would be beneficial to English Puritans, because the financial strain would most likely force the King to call a Parliament. King Charles did not have to push to the point of war when he encountered the type of opposition he found in Scotland, and he got some advice telling him not to, but it is important to realize that he also didn’t know that this was going on. He thought he was engaged in a normal conflict, with all the diplomacy, posturing, negotiating and fighting that went along with that. Instead, he was playing on an unwinnably uneven playing field. 20/20 hindsight says this was the biggest mistake he ever made, but whether that was clear in the moment, I’m not prepared to say.
And whether or not his actions were reasonable doesn’t change what happened next. Strapped for cash, and losing a war, the King was, in fact, forced to call a Parliament. And, when that Parliament convened, it was largely united in opposition to him. Of the 60 or so candidates the King endorsed, only 14 were elected. Local preachers had encouraged people to vote for the Puritan candidates, and the King was widely unpopular anyway. The most tangible of the King’s policies had been the levying of Ship Money, and that instantly made him unpopular. Most campaigns focused on local issues, but they occurred in an atmosphere that was very much hostile to the King, and the outcome reflected this.
When Parliament convened, the King’s Lord Keeper, John Finch, opened with a speech saying that the King was at war with the Scots, and that in fact, the Scots were invading England, and asking for help from the French to do so. As such, the King needed money to fight them. But again, the King didn’t realize that his core group of opponents, led by Providence Island Company members, would actually prefer a Covenanter victory to a royal one. Not only did they agree politically and theologically with the Scots, defeat would put the King in an even weaker position against his Parliament. So they, too, had nothing to lose by refusing to compromise. They demanded that the King hear their grievances before they gave him any money.
Parliament was definitely united against the King. At this point in time, after 11 years of unpopular policies, future royalists and future parliamentarians were saying things that were identical. Even the MPs who didn’t actively want a Scottish victory, were willing to risk it to have their voices heard. But a difference did soon become apparent. Providence Island Company members had taken their seats with a level of unity the likes of which the world had never seen the likes of which.
And the King soon started to suspect something. He had started with a firm and unpopular stance demanding the money to, you know, prevent an invasion of England, but he had actually started to try to find common ground on which to negotiate with Parliament, and Parliament, especially the Providence Island Company members, whose behavior he’d already begun to suspect at the trial of John Hampden … well they weren’t even budging. Suspicious, and furious, the King dissolved Parliament yet again, and ordered Pym, Vane and others’ homes to be searched for evidence that they were colluding with the Covenanters, and briefly arrested some of them.
But it was no use, and without Parliamentary help, he lost the war, lost all his remaining money, and was now in the position of having to pay the Scots money that he didn’t have. Though the King would try everything in his power to avoid calling another Parliament, he had no choice. He tried levying Ship Money again, but this time, only one man in all of London agreed to pay it. He tried getting loans from other countries, but to no avail. Meanwhile, popular tension was starting to increase in England, to the point that in Devon, a Catholic soldier was murdered in the street for refusing to go to an Anglican Church.
And that’s when the second Bishop’s War started, and the Covenanters resumed their advance on Northern England. And, by this time, the atmosphere was so hostile to the King that the English actually entertained the invaders, and news of his defeat was openly cheered in London. And as part of the terms of peace, the Covenanters demanded thousands of pounds to pay their army. And they urged the King to call a Parliament to get it.
And, English Puritans joined in the call for a new Parliament. In fact, the Earl of Warwick was even threatening to convene a Parliament without the King’s permission, something which had last been threatened in the reign of Henry III. And though the King continued to try to find a way around that, there wasn’t one. Meanwhile, if he didn’t give the Covenanters their promised money, and the English wouldn’t support him in a war, it was quite possible that the Covenanters would continue their invasion of England, toward London, with no English army opposing them. So, he truly had no choice, and in November 1639, he called yet another Parliament.
The Providence Island Company was still holding meetings at this time, and it wasn’t taking notes at any of these meetings. And, at this point, they and their allies, like Henry Vane and the Earl of Pembroke, started to become known as the Junto, and that’s what I’ll refer to them as from now on. But I do want to take a minute to just, well, reflect on this. Because we’ve seen time and again in this podcast how English politics affected American colonization, but now the situation is reversed, and we’re seeing a situation in which American colonization has had a profound effect on English politics. In an alternate world in which England hadn’t gotten particularly involved in American colonization, English history would have been unrecognizably different, and it’s entirely possible that there would have been no English Civil War at all.
But back on topic, when the new Parliament convened, its rhetoric was even more intense than it had previously been. Rumors and hyperbole circulated and everyone was clearly on edge. And again, Pym and his allies, the Junto, led the charge against the King. In particular, Pym gave a speech, blaming the King’s advisor, the Earl of Strafford, for pretty much everything that had gone wrong in the country, and MPs started taking his side on that. Strafford was actually afraid to go to London at this point, but the King persuaded him, promising his protection, and hoping to get evidence he believed Strafford had which would show that Pym and his allies had colluded with the Covenanters, which would have been treason. And, it’s quite possible that Pym and his allies also believed Strafford had that evidence, and indeed, Strafford might have had that evidence.
Strafford wasn’t the only one of the King’s advisors who was being attacked at this point. Secretary of State Francis Windebank was accused of fomenting a Catholic rebellion, and rumors had begun to circulate that the King, himself, had intended to use an Irish army against his English subjects. But, Strafford was the most important, because by impeaching him, they could condemn the policies of the King, himself. And a Parliamentary committee started preparing to impeach him for treason.
And meanwhile, the negotiations between King and Parliament continued on a number of issues, but again, the King had no negotiating power. He needed Parliament, and Parliament didn’t need him. He couldn’t dismiss Parliament without getting the money to pay the Scots, and Parliament was starting to make threats, including killing Strafford, that the King wanted desperately to avoid. And so Parliament won concession after concession from the King. He allowed Parliament to take an unprecedented role in government affairs, with 65 new committees, largely organized by Pym. One of them essentially became an alternative court of law. Parliament was more and more in control of the country, and as they got more power, they made more demands, and the King had no choice but to capitulate.
So, Parliament now impeached Laud, too. And it voted to give the Scottish Army 300,000 pounds, and it sent more Bishops to the Tower, some of whom would spend the next 17 years in prison. They questioned all the judges who had ever ruled in the King’s favor. And they told customs officials to stop putting money into the royal exchequer without Parliamentary permission, thereby depriving the King of all of his remaining income. Then, they forced the King to sign the Triennial Act, guaranteeing Parliaments every three years. And, they drew up a list of people that they wanted to sit on the King’s Privy Council. And meanwhile, especially in London, anti-King agitation started to look more and more like mob rule, and things got scary enough that people like Windebank and Finch, and other prominent Courtiers, started to flee the country.
Now, at this point, Parliamentary unity did start to break down a little bit. As Pym’s faction pushed further and further, some people started to turn away from their cause. They had pushed farther, harder and more successfully than anyone could have even dreamed a year before, and this was farther than many of them were comfortable with. Looking at the mobs outside the Palace of Westminster, and then looking at the mobs inside, moderates started to side with the King. Yes, they’d opposed Ship Money and other Personal Rule policies, but now Parliament was taking over judicial and executive roles, thoroughly gutting the King’s power, to the point that they wanted to be the people who chose his Privy Councilors, and advocating the total abolition of the English Bishops. And when the Bishops were abolished, they intended to replace them with clerics appointed by, you may have guessed it, Parliament. So more and more people were starting to have second thoughts.
By now, as the impeachment of Strafford had progressed, the King was trying to negotiate primarily for Strafford’s life and the continued presence of the Bishops in the House of Lords. He was even willing to capitulate on the issue of the Privy Council if he were given the other two things, but in what was by now a familiar exchange, Parliament demanded to be given the positions before they’d commit to the King’s demands, and the King wanted them to commit first. The Privy Council was a trivial matter for Parliament. Strafford and the Bishops were everything for the King, so negotiations fell apart, and Strafford’s trial began.
And the trial was a public spectacle. Hoards of people came, bringing bizarre amounts of food and drink to enjoy while they watched. Impeachment for treason had been what Strafford had feared when he returned to London, but when the 28 articles against him were read, he actually smiled. They were too weak to prove. This was actually the first time that things had looked good for the King in well over a year. In theory, this could change everything. It could deflate Parliamentary momentum, give the King a much needed victory, and show the King’s side to be the reasonable one. It might even allow Strafford to show that Pym and his cohorts were the traitors. And the trial went about as well as they could have hoped. Strafford presented himself as the articulate, quick-witted and calm defender against an opposition which was unsophisticated, overly belligerent and domineering without substance. And the Lords in particular were swayed by Strafford’s testimony. And, Commons was dismayed when it realized they might actually let Strafford off. At one point, a miscommunication combined with hostility between the houses led both sides to put their hands to their swords, while both Strafford and the King looked watched the chaos in utter amusement. Victory looked assured.
But Strafford’s impeachment was the standoff to end all standoffs, and the Commons, totally on Pym and company’s side, couldn’t let the Lords thwart the goals it was so very close to achieving. So Henry Vane found a quote in his father’s notes, in which Strafford had said “You have an army in Ireland you can employ here to reduce this kingdom,” and he gave that to Pym. Strafford had meant an English army in Ireland he could use against the Scots, but they reinterpreted the quote to mean an Irish army he could use against the English. And the Commons drew up a bill of attainder, condemning Strafford to death for treason. A bill of attainder was a medieval process by which a person could be legislatively sentenced for a crime. All they had to do was get the Commons to sign it, the Lords to sign it, and the King to sign it, and Strafford would die as a traitor, and the King would be politically impotent, and political victory would be theirs. Getting the Commons to sign it was easy. The other two would take a little work.
And while they prepared, the mobs which have been an increasing part of the background of this story started to really define the atmosphere of London. Rumors started to circulate that Henrietta Maria was encouraging the French to invade England, which is somewhat ironic because actually the Scottish Covenanters had tried to make that happen … And, the mobs were truly convinced that if Strafford died, the country would have peace, prosperity, freedom, liberty, unity, happiness and all good things.
The King could have stopped Strafford’s impeachment by dissolving Parliament, and though he’d have to reconvene one, he could save Strafford in the way that he’d once saved the Duke of Buckingham. But now, mobs of thousands were surrounding Westminster, and to do something like that would actually be dangerous.
Commons passed the Bill of Attainder with no problems. Only 59 of several hundred members voted against it. That said, the people who did vote against it were somewhat interesting, and their treatment was very much calculated to intimidate the Lords, who were at that point leaning against condemning Strafford.
George Digby had been one of the people who led the effort to impeach Strafford when that impeachment was via a fair trial, but when faced with an Attainder, he led the doomed attempt to save Strafford. He had done everything in his legitimate power to get Strafford convicted of treason, but now that Parliament was resorting to a Bill of Attainder in an active attempt to circumvent a fair trial, Digby led the opposition, and he gave one of my favorite speeches ever, and a speech I will post to the website and social media, to voice his disapproval of the proceedings. In his speech he said he still considered Strafford dangerous. But they hadn’t produced any more evidence that justified doing this, just a copy of a secretary’s notes, about an incident no one could even really remember. He said he’d accused him with a free heart, prosecuted him earnestly, and if his guilt had been proved he would have condemned him with innocence. They needed to figure out a different way to protect the state from Strafford, rather than choosing a way which endangered the state even more by setting such a horrifying precedent. He asked people to set aside their passions and question whether they were doing justice or murder, realizing that if this was murder, it was the worst sort of murder, and that they’d be accountable to God for their actions. And then he concluded, “I do before God discharge myself to the utmost of my power, and with a clear conscience wash my hands of this man’s blood, by this solemn protestation, that my vote goes not to the taking of the Earl of Strafford’s life.”
And after it passed the Commons, Parliament declared printing copies of Digby’s speech to be slanderous, petitioned the King not to confer any honor or employment on Digby, and then a list was printed and posted around Westminster containing the names of all the Lords who had voted not to execute Strafford, with the heading, “These are Straffordians, betrayers of their country,” and hinting that they should perish with Strafford. Frederick Cornwallis, cousin of the Maryland colonist, and Richard Lee, a member of the family from which the Lees of Virginia came, were on the list.
The mobs harassed these people, and Digby in particular was assaulted in the streets, accused of apostasy and called Wentworth’s “false son.” The attacks only stopped when someone illegally printed the speech and circulated it. And after he was attacked within the House, the King elevated him to the House of Lords for his own safety. And meanwhile, people were stopping carriages of the Lords, demanding to know how they intended to vote on the issue.
At the same time, the King publicly announced that he would not sign the bill. He said he would be willing to sign a bill that impeached Strafford for a misdemeanor, but not one that would result in execution. Commons described is speech as an unparalleled breach of its privilege because it happened before Parliament had made its decision. Rumors of plots and counterplots were circulating everywhere, and just enough proved true, most notably the Army Plot to break Strafford out of the Tower, to lend credibility to the others.
And, when the matter reached the Lords, Oliver St. John, who had made only brief remarks in the Commons, gave a three hour speech pretty much listing every argument that the Lords might possibly vote to attain Strafford. The Attainder was a good thing, because it let Parliament decide questionable cases by personal conscience. Strafford had tried to create tyranny in England. And he’d tried to create a tyranny so bad that people would rise up against the King, so he had essentially done the equivalent of giving the King a poisoned drink while telling him it was cordial. And no, this isn’t a last resort because the trial was going to fail. We just think this is better. And even if it is wrong, why should Strafford benefit from the law, when he himself had been a source of arbitrary power?
And by the time the Lords voted, a mob of several thousand was surrounding the Tower to prevent any further attempts to break Strafford out. And another was gathered around Westminster, screaming for Strafford’s execution, saying that if they couldn’t have his life, they’d have the King’s, and they’d seen the lists posted and public harassing of dissenters after the vote in the Commons. And plus, the King had publicly announced that he’d save Strafford anyway. If he would live anyway, why bring the retribution on themselves? So, one by one, the ones who didn’t want to vote for the attainder stopped coming, and then the Bishops stopped coming … until the majority of people left were in favor of condemning him … and the bill passed.
And after the Lords passed the bill, they joined with the Commons in marching it to the King, while an estimated 12,000 waited outside the King’s palace waiting for him to sign it. The King said he’d bring his response on Monday morning, which already angered the crowd, and by this point even his advisors were urging him to sign it. They said if he didn’t sign, the mob might swarm the palace and capture them. The Queen, who had always had an adversarial relationship with Strafford anyway, urged him to sign it and protect his family. And, Strafford himself may have sent the King a note at this point and told him to do what he needed to do. And Charles capitulated. Yet another Parliament victory. When Pym heard, he said “He’s given us the head of Strafford? Then he will refuse us nothing!”
The next day, the King sent his heir, the future Charles II, to Parliament to ask that Strafford’s sentence be commuted to life in prison, with the understanding that he’d be out of politics either way. And Parliament refused. Then he asked for the execution to be delayed by one day, and again they refused.
So Strafford was marched to the Tower on May 12, 1641, and I’ve actually written out a pair of blog posts about his last moments and execution speeches, if you’re into that sort of thing. As he spoke, he asked the crowd to consider whether the beginnings of a people’s happiness should be written in letters of blood, and then he spent about half an hour praying, and asking those around him to pray for his wife and children, put his head on the block, and was beheaded.
The King’s inability to oppose Parliament had now been clearly demonstrated. They had made him do something he’d publicly declared he wouldn’t do, and had given him nothing in return. And they continued to force concessions. They passed a bill allowing Parliament to remain in session until it consented to its own dissolution, voted themselves a new subsidy and poll tax, disbanded the Star Chamber, declared Ship Money illegal, reinforced all statues against Catholics, and got the King to agree to make the Earl of Essex, a Parliamentary leader, his Lord Chamberlain. They also warned towns, cities and counties around England to be prepared for potential Catholic uprisings. Things were in free fall for the King.
But, they were looking amazing for Parliament, and in response to news from home, the people of New England gave a day of thanksgiving for all that Parliament had achieved.
The only thing happening in the King’s favor was that more and more people were turning away from Pym’s leadership, outraged by just how far Parliament had gone, and just how much farther it intended to go. The populace found themselves taxed more than they’d actually been taxed in the Personal rule, and the country was a terrifying mess.
The next few months would be characterized by the same sort of mob rule that had become the norm. One of many incidents actually happened in the Mermaid Tavern, the old Sirenaical haunt, where the King’s forces had a number of apprentices arrested and detained, until a swarm of people stormed the Tavern and released them. It was just, lawless, and Parliament’s support, both in Parliament and among the general population, was falling away.
And then the Catholic Irish rebelled. And despite the fact that stories from the rebellion were grossly exaggerated, it was a real event with a significant amount of real bloodshed. And it was an event that needed to be stopped, and this raised the question of who should have the actual right to raise a military, the King, or Parliament.
And, the central document in this final push for Parliamentary authority was John Pym’s Grand Remonstrance, a document which detailed essentially every grievance against the King over the course of his reign. It didn’t blame him directly, but it positioned Parliament, especially the Commons, as the true protector of England against the King’s wicked councilors. And it detailed a list of concessions it wanted from the King to enable it to continue in this role. It was a sign of how far Parliament’s prestige had fallen that it only passed by 11 votes, even in the House of Commons, and that Parliament voted not to publish the document, which was a key part of the reason Pym had written it. It was in debates over the Grand Remonstrance that the Royalist party was first well-defined and visible, led by Viscount Falkland and Edward Hyde, future Earl of Clarendon. It passed in the Lords, too, but the King delayed signing it. And when he did, Pym’s faction printed the petition against Parliament’s wishes, and circulated it to raise public support. The King wrote his response, refusing to sign but in moderate, conciliatory tones, which further deflated Parliamentary momentum.
The event which finalized the split between King and Parliament, and which gave Parliament its last burst of support, came in early January of 1642, when the King ordered the attorney general to indict and impeach five MPs for treason: John Pym, John Hampden, Denzil Holles, Arthur Haselrige, and William Strode, plus Lord Mandeville, the future Earl of Manchester. He still believed they’d encouraged the Scots to invade England, he hadn’t been able to stop one thing they’d ever done, and now they wanted control of the military. And, rumor had it that they were preparing to impeach his wife, Henrietta Maria, for alleged involvement in Catholic conspiracies, including the Irish rebellion. There were so many rumors circulating back then that it’s impossible to know whether this one was true or not, but the King had good reason to be afraid. But, he blundered. The King’s pursuit of the 5 MPs culminated in his actually walking into the Commons at the head of a group of soldiers, and sitting in the Speaker’s Chair, something no King had ever done before. The members had already escaped by the time he’d arrived, though, and when he demanded to know, the Speaker of the House refused to tell him where they were. He left Parliament yet-again defeated, and humiliated, while MPs shouted “privilege, privilege!” It was the final, disastrous blow to the King’s cause, and soon, he left for York.
While he was en route to York, a Parliamentary delegation lead by the Earl of Pembroke met him, and presented him with a list of grievances, to which he ended up replying, essentially, “Well, everything you’ve said is lies, and I have given you everything, and you have given me nothing, what do you want now?” And Pembroke said he wanted him to give Parliament power over the army, to which the King responded, “by God, not for an hour! You have asked that of me in this, that was never asked of a King.”
But it didn’t matter. By March, Parliament had passed the militia ordinance, which gave it control of the militia, and soon it was recruiting trainbands, and using a forced loan to fill its treasury. It appointed Warwick as the Navy Admiral, and Warwick’s fleet took over numerous Royalist ships.
And by this point, the two sides were just organizing and preparing for war, recruiting their soldiers and gathering their weapons. And at this point, when war was looking more and more likely, the people started becoming truly desperate for peace. But by this point, it was too late. The situation had been pushed past the point of no return. And this time, it was Parliament’s turn to make a blunder, when it declared that anyone who opposed Parliament was a delinquent whose property could be confiscated. Most of the people who had tried to stay out of the conflict and remain neutral actually thought Parliament was insane, so when faced with the loss of property for their sympathies, they joined the King’s army in droves, hoping to ensure his victory. And, this specific ordinance would actually later be particularly meaningful to American history.
And speaking of American history, on July 5, as the King was busy preparing for war, he sent a letter to Virginia. Still reeling from George Sandys’s attempt to reconstitute the Virginia Company, Virginians had sent the King a letter saying Sandys had misunderstood his instructions, and saying the Virginia Company had been a disaster and they wanted to remain a Crown Colony. And in response to this, the King replied, “Trusty and well beloved, we greet you well … Your acknowledgments of our grace, bounty and favour toward you and your so earnest desire to continue under our immediate protection, is very acceptable to us … We had not before the least intention to consent to the introduction of any Company over that our colony and so we are by it much confirmed in our resolution and this approbation of your petition we have thought fit to transport you under our royal signet. Given at our court at York, the 5th of July, 1642.” And Virginia melted when it received this letter. It illustrated every reason that Virginia supported the King, and it solidified the colony’s feelings of loyalty and affection toward him.
And a month after he sent that letter, King Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham, declaring that he was officially at war. The King’s army, versus that of Parliament, led by the Earl of Essex.
And two months later came the first real battle of the conflict, at Edgehill. It was horrifying. It was bloody. It was the first experience most Englishmen had with battle. And it had ended in only the slimmest of Royalist victories. England was now at war, and it would remain so for the next three years.
And that is the briefest meaningful summary I can give of the outbreak of the English Civil War. If you want another summary with a different perspective and emphasis, there’s obviously a series on the conflict in Mike Duncan’s Revolutions. And, if you want a book-length account of the conflict, I’d highly recommend Peter Ackroyd’s Rebellion: the History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution, which is one of my favorite books in any genre, and also available as an audiobook.
For Americans, the war brought a unique kind of uncertainty. People lived for news from home, but they were weeks away from England by ship. By the time they heard about anything that had happened, it was long over, and the information they got was undetailed, and to a certain extent it was unreliable. Unless they returned to England, they could do nothing to help, and at any given moment, they had no idea of what was happening. For all they knew, the war could have ended, their loved ones could have been killed, or anything. All they could do was wait and pray.
New England celebrated the role they’d played in the outbreak of war, and each Puritan colony instituted regular days of fasting and prayer to support Parliament’s efforts, whether at specific times of the month, or in response to news from England. They abandoned the guns they’d installed on Castle Island in 1635, when the King had threatened to appoint a Royal Governor. They started preparing pamphlets to publish in England, and treatises and sermons and private letters of advice, most notably New England’s First Fruits, which discussed the enormous success of the New England Way. And, a huge number of people returned to England to fight for Parliament, including 12% of its university educated people, and 7/9 of Harvard’s first class. There, they overwhelmingly took leadership positions, 60 becoming ministers, at least 4 MPs, 10 Parliamentary officers, many fighting in Cromwell’s Ironsides, and of course Thomas Welde and Hugh Peters, who would take extremely prominent roles, and Thomas Venner. But, though the leadership was unanimously ready to support Parliament, and while most of the population agreed with that, in Plymouth, Connecticut and even Massachusetts there were people who weren’t totally comfortable with the idea of being at war with the King. They were committed to reformation, and Laud was their ultimate villain, and they’d even cheered Strafford’s execution, but mutiny against the ruler was something else entirely. Puritan or not, there was still a tradition of Divine Right in England, and the Bible did seem to say that you weren’t supposed to violently rebel against your rulers. And, recognizing their vulnerability in the face of war at home, the Puritan colonies of New England finally formed the New England United Colonies, or the New England Confederation.
There’s no surviving documentation of colonists’ reaction to the outbreak of the war in most American colonies, but ultimately, it seems that in 1642 pretty much everyone went about business as usual. All the colonies were weak enough, vulnerable enough, and unable enough to actually help either side, that the best thing they could do was try to live normally, at least until everything panned out. They traded with English ships regardless of whether their crews supported King or Parliament, and dealt with their local issues as best as they could. The war consumed their thoughts, and they were desperate to know as much as possible about what was going on, but there was corn to be grown, cattle to be fed, tobacco to be traded, and local issues to be dealt with. Bermuda had a new governor, Josiah Forster, not any politically different from the others the company had imposed, but these kinds of things were still going on for the time being.
That’s not to say that people didn’t display their loyalty. One St. Kitts colonist refused to drink a toast to the Royalist Thomas Warner as Lieutenant General of the Caribbee Islands, saying he acknowledged “no general but the Earl of Essex.” Meanwhile, Barbados governor Philip Bell and Virginia resident Philip Bennet reached out to Massachusetts and New Haven to recruit ministers for their respective colonies, and New England happily obliged, sending each colony multiple ministers who began preaching and recruiting converts, especially around the already Puritan-leaning north of Virginia. In Virginia, these were John Knowles, William Thompson and Thomas James, who reached Jamestown in early 1643 and presented letters of introduction from Winthrop to Berkeley.
Every Lord Proprietor and Joint Stock Company had their sympathies. Carlisle supported the King, Pembroke Parliament. The Somers Island Company was the only one that was truly split in its loyalties, but its strongest personalities, like Warwick, were for Parliament.
The only one who remained neutral was Lord Baltimore, who kept his head very, very low after the Irish rebellion. He sent an Anglican Royalist, the Earl of Ormond, to be his proxy in the Irish Parliament, and joined most of the Catholic peers in withdrawing from the House of Lords. You can kind of see why. Catholics saw, when the war broke out, just how scary it was for them. Some, evidently pushed by the French king, actually fought for Parliament in the hopes of lessening anti-Catholic hysteria and achieving religious freedom, and Catholic priests were even found having fought for Parliament at Edgehill. But, current evidence suggests that the vast majority fought for the King, and certainly the Earl of Arundel, Baltimore’s father-in-law who had helped him so much, was a steadfastly devoted Royalist. But Baltimore knew that Maryland’s patent came from a royal grant which had been deeply unpopular with Parliament, so his colony would automatically be threatened by an empowered Parliament. If Parliament won, he didn’t need to poke the bear by also siding with the King. He just needed to attract as little attention to himself as possible, and as little attention to his colony as possible, and hope everything blew over.
He sent commissions to Maryland’s governor and council, giving the governor complete and total power to rule in his name. In Maryland, Governor Calvert worked hard to lessen any potential internal tensions. He instituted a system of direct democracy, even requiring non-permanent-residents to take part. The Assembly lessened multiple remaining policies which were unpopular with the colony’s Puritans, including requiring colonists to get government permission before leaving Maryland. This was a fairly standard colonial policy, but one which was unpopular with Kent Islanders, who fundamentally considered themselves Virginians. Calvert actually supported requiring permission, but agreed to eliminate the requirement except when a colonist was fleeing a debt, or threatening the security of the colony. Maryland had always trod on eggshells when it came to sectarian disputes, but now they were more careful than ever. All colonies were more vulnerable with the war raging, but Maryland was a powder keg.
But, though the war now consumed the thoughts of Americans, like I said it hadn’t exactly come to America yet. And, it wouldn’t start to strongly affect Americans until Parliamentary victory started to look like a serious possibility in late 1643. But in the meantime, there were volatile local issues that got mixed up with issues and rhetoric related to the War in England, and those are what we’ll discuss next week.