The Causes of the Civil War

The attempted arrest of the five members was a sufficient cause for war, because it implied that the king was ready to use force, not only to intimidate parliament, but also, if necessary, to get rid of it altogether. Parliament, on its side, was now forced to fight, not only to exercise that supreme authority which it demanded, but even to retain those rights and privileges which it had already won.

But the arrest was not the immediate cause of the war which followed. That is to be found in the struggle between the king and parliament for the control of the militia of the kingdom. Parliament, distrusting the king, passed a militia bill in March. 1642, which took from the king the appointment of the lord-lieutenant of militia and the governor of the fortresses of the kingdom. This bill the king refused to sign; and parliament, having transformed it into a parliamentary ordinance, determined to enforce it without the king's consent. Two months later (May), Charles forbade the trained bands to obey parliament,' and issued commissions of his own, calling out the militia. In July parliament, in its turn, appointed a committee of public safety, voted to raise an army, and named the earl of Essex as leader of its troops. On August 22, the king raised his standard at Nottingham, and civil war began.

Though the attempted arrest of the five members and the militia bill were the immediate causes of the war, the real causes lay deeper. Behind these issues lay the greater issue; whether the king or the parliament should control the government in England. Technically, the king was right, for he was claiming his old powers ; whereas the House of Commons was claiming powers that it had never exercised before. Morally, the king was wrong, for he had abused his powers; and parliament was right in attempting to restrain him. In June, 1642, six months after the attempted arrest of the members, the House sent to the king nineteen propositions as a kind of ultimatum, and in these demanded the right to control the appointment of ministers, councillors, and judges; to manage home affairs, foreign affairs, the army and the navy, the church, justice, and, in short, all that concerned the government of the kingdom? But no king of that day would willingly have consented to such a curtailment of his powers, unless he had been absolutely compelled to do so.

It is, however, quite possible that these political difficulties might have been arranged by a compromise had not the religious question complicated the situation. The dispute regarding political supremacy became tenfold more serious when its settlement threatened men with the loss of their religious liberties. One party, the Puritans, believed that the supremacy of the king meant the overthrow of its faith ; the other, the Anglicans, that the supremacy of parliament meant the summoning of an assembly of divines to tamper with the liturgy and to reform the government of the Anglican church. No compromise between these views was possible.

The Opposing Forces: Royalists (Cavaliers) and Parliamentarians (Roundheads)

England was at this time divided into two camps. A great majority of the House of Lords and a third of the House of Commons followed the king. Outside of parliament, the bulk of the gentry and landowners, the cathedral cities, and the university centres, like Oxford and Cambridge, were on the side of the king; while the inhabitants of the towns, the manufacturers, merchants, and artisans, were on the side of parliament. Though exact lines cannot be drawn, we may say that socially the nobility were on one side, the freeholders and yeomanry on the other; that industrially the landowners were on one side, the commercial and trading classes on the other; and that geographically the west and north stood for the king, against the more thickly populated regions of the south and east, which supported parliament. Yet, in fact, the history of the war shows family divided against family, town against town, district against district. The war injured England economically and commercially; but it did not cripple her, for at no time was it accompanied with that savage brutality which characterized the contemporary Thirty Years' War in Germany (1618-1648).

Opening of the War

When war began, parliament had the advantage in money and resources, because it controlled the navy and the leading seaports and was supported by London and the rich manufacturing towns. But the king was at first successful, because he had on his side the cavaliers and men-at-arms, whose profession was that of fighting. The battle of Edgehill, fought on October 23, 1642, resulted in defeat for the parliamentarians, and the advantage thus gained by the royalists was very slowly lost. Even in 1643, when Cromwell began to raise an army in the eastern counties, composed of "honest, godly men," led by captains of the same high character, victory was very slow in coming. Hampden was killed at Chalgrove Field in June, 1643 , and by September parliament was sufficiently discouraged to turn to Scotland for aid. In the Solemn League and Covenant parliament made a bargain with the Scottish Presbyterians, by which in return for armed assistance it promised to establish, if possible, Presbyterianism in England. In fulfilment of their share of the bargain the Scots, in January, 1644, sent the earl of Leven across the Tweed with an army.

But the great mass of the Independents did not like this compromise with Presbyterianism, and Cromwell, in particular, was opposed to paying such a price for aid from Scotland. He advocated religious liberty, and he disliked, not only the church system of the Presbyterians, but their intolerance also. From the time that parliament entered into the Solemn League and Covenant with Scotland may be dated the beginning of a separation between the Presbyterians and Independents.

The New Model Army

The first decisive battle of the war was fought on July 2, 1644, at Marston Moor. On one side were the Scots, under the earl of Leven, the parliamentary army under Fairfax, and the cavalry of the eastern counties under Cromwell; on the other were the royalists, led by Lord Byron and Prince Rupert, the king's nephew. The battle was long and for a time doubtful; but Cromwell's cavalry won the day by their splendid discipline and religious enthusiasm. The victory of Marston Moor gave to the parliamentarians the control of the region of the north.

A more important result of the battle was the prominence it gave to Cromwell, who from this time forward labored to increase the efficiency of the army and to remedy the defects that had hitherto prevented success. Chiefly through his efforts, during the remainder of the year 1644 and the spring of 1645, an entire change was effected in the army organization. For the first time a regular army was created to take the place of the inefficient and untrained local levies. The soldiers were regularly paid, a rigorous discipline was introduced, and a high code of moral conduct was enforced. For officers Cromwell would not have politicians, gentlemen, or adventurers; he demanded men who were good fighters, and who were so strongly imbued with a love for the cause as not to be ready to make terms with the king after every failure. In accordance with his suggestion that no member of parliament should command in the army, both houses, after considerable debate, passed the Self-Denying Ordinance, on April 3, 1645. Thus Cromwell, supported by parliament, was able to provide an army which was not only inspired with religious fervor, and was ready to fight with faith in God and its cause, but which was also well disciplined and splendidly led.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

From an engraving by Bartozzi after a painting by Walker.

It was none too soon that such a fighting force was got ready; for in Scotland there appeared for the king a new ally, who was carrying all before him. The fiery young earl of Montrose, at the head of his Highlanders, had beaten down the Presbyterian leader, Argyle, the head of the Campbells, and was winning victory after victory with lightning-like rapidity. The Scottish army was therefore needed to fight Montrose at home; and upon the New Model Army of Cromwell fell the brunt of sustaining the war in England. On June 14, 1645, this splendid praying and fighting force won the battle of Naseby and crushed out the last hope that the king may have had of ultimate success. The war continued for a year longer, but ended with the surrender of Oxford to the parliamentarians, on June 24, 1646. Two years later fighting was resumed, but by that time the situation had changed. Therefore the causes and results of the second civil war were, as we shall see, essentially different from those of the first.