Woolrych Austin. Britain in Revolution, 1625-1660

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strangely delayed—the last was on 23 December—and when held they pro-

ceeded uncertainly, revealing pockets of Leveller sympathy among the ofﬁ-

cers involved, and an unwillingness to judge harshly men who, however

mistaken, had acted out of conviction. Only two were condemned to death,

and both were reprieved. Rainborough, whose behaviour at the rendezvous

had been the most dangerous because of his seniority and popularity, was no

longer subject to military discipline. Being an MP it was for the Commons to

deal with him, and they did so on 10 December by annulling his appointment

as vice-admiral. By that time an attenuated General Council had resumed

occasional meetings, almost certainly without the soldier-agitators present.

Rainborough came before it to make a full acknowledgement of his miscon-

duct on Corkbush Field, and in a spirit of reconciliation it asked Fairfax to

intercede for him, which he did. The Commons rescinded their vote, and

although the Lords still resisted his appointment Rainborough took up his

naval command on 1 January. Major White also made his apology for the

rash words that had caused his expulsion, and was readmitted to the General

Council. Even Bray was allowed to resume his regimental duties after making

due submission, though that was a decision that Fairfax would live to regret.

Consternation over the current wave of Leveller demonstrations and

anxiety as to what the king was up to were making parliament look more

kindly upon the army. Cromwell received the thanks of the Commons on

19 November for his part in restoring order in it, though Fairfax was ordered

to draw his headquarters back to Windsor. Getting the pay it needed took a

little longer, but the City began to open its purse-strings when Colonel Hewson

pointedly drew up his regiment in Hyde Park, and a ﬁrmly worded Represen-

tation from Fairfax and the General Council on 7 December, concerning the

army’s ﬁnancial and other material needs, got parliament moving towards

meeting them. Under the threat of having troops billeted on citizens who went

on defaulting on their assessment payments, measures were taken to put an

end to free quarter and enough money was found to pay off the men who had

been enlisted since 6 August. Most of those still in service were fully paid dur-

ing the next six months; provision was made for maimed soldiers, widows,

and orphans, and apprentices were assured that their time in the army would

count as part of their term of service.

Parliament was not under the same pressure to attend to the king’s latest

overtures, for it was plain to the clear-sighted that if he had been seriously

intent on negotiating he would have stayed at Hampton Court to hear parlia-

ments’s new proposals. The independent-dominated Lords responded ﬁrst,

and they wanted some binding pledges from him before parliament would

treat further. They therefore framed four propositions, for the Commons to

convert into bills, intending that he should ﬁrst give them statutory force by

his assent before being brought to London for a personal treaty. The ﬁrst gave

398 Towards a Kingless Britain 1646–1649

ch12.y8 27/9/02 11:25 AM Page 398

parliament full control over all land and sea forces for the next twenty years,

and made the king’s disposal of them thereafter subject to parliamentary con-

sent. The second annulled all oaths, declarations, proclamations, and judicial

proceedings against parliament and its members and supporters since the

start of the war. The third cancelled all peerages granted since May 1642 , and

ruled that no peers made from that time on should sit in parliament without

the consent of both Houses. The fourth empowered the present parliament to

adjourn to any place in England that it chose, for as long as it thought ﬁt.

Annexed to the Four Bills, as they came to be called, were a set of propos-

itions, intended as parliament’s further terms for a treaty, which included the

abolition of episcopacy, the banning of the Book of Common Prayer, and the

penalization of the king’s supporters in the war on the lines of the Propos-

itions of Newcastle.

The Commons approved the substance of the Lords’ proposals by a mere

nine votes, but stalled for some time before converting them into bills. The

independents, who like the Lords were still prepared to restore the king on

strict conditions, were almost balanced by a combination of presbyterians

who would have had him back on easier terms and ‘commonwealthsmen’

who did not want him back on any. Charles tried his luck with the army com-

manders again and sent Berkeley to Windsor to ask them to intervene on his

behalf, but they understandably gave his envoy a cool reception. Fairfax told

him that they were the parliament’s army, and would have to refer to parlia-

ment any proposals that he had to make. The Four Bills, when they were ﬁnal-

ly passed by both Houses, were presented to Charles on 24 December. He was

given four days in which to reply.

More welcome to him than the parliament’s commissioners were those

from Scotland, Lauderdale, Loudoun, and Lanark, who came to Carisbrooke

soon after. They were somewhat suspicious of him because he had not gone

to Berwick, as he himself had suggested doing, but they were anxious that he

should not make a peace with the English parliament in which Scotland had

no say, and he almost certainly wrung easier terms from them by pretending

that he was about to assent to the Four Bills. The political front in Scotland

had been relatively quiet during 1647, when much of the country had been in

the grip of a prolonged and deadly visitation of the plague. But the last of the

Irish and the Macdonalds who had fought with Montrose had been savagely

crushed, and there was no more resistance now from the royalist party under

Huntly. No enemies of the Covenant remained under arms, so the political

arena was dominated by the rival Covenanting factions headed by Argyll and

Hamilton. Both wanted to see the king restored in all his kingdoms, but until

at least the summer Argyll’s and the Kirk’s party had successfully maintained

that he must take and impose the Covenant. From August onward, however,

the prospect that he might come to terms with an independent-dominated

Climacteric II: ‘not a Mere Mercenary Army’ 399

ch12.y8 27/9/02 11:25 AM Page 399

English parliament backed by the hated New Model Army swung the balance

towards Hamilton’s party, and so still more did the personal danger in which

Charles was perceived to stand as the dissensions in the Army developed. He

was Scotland’s king as well as England’s, and the view prevailed that it was

better he should owe his restoration to Scottish arms, even if his commitment

to Presbyterianism fell far short of what was to be wished, than that he should

regain his throne on the ungodly basis of religious liberty, or not regain it at

all. That is how Lauderdale and Lanark felt, though Argyll’s kinsman

Loudoun was full of misgivings.

The three signed the secret pact known as the Engagement with Charles on

26 December. Despite the distrust he inspired, their visits were not controlled.

He was king still, and Scotland was still England’s ally. His copy was

wrapped in lead and buried in the castle garden, and two days later he for-

mally rejected the Four Bills. He did not give much away in the Engagement.

He would conﬁrm the Solemn League and Covenant by act of parliament in

both kingdoms, and would likewise conﬁrm the Presbyterian ecclesiastical

establishment in England for three years. But after that there should be a free

debate in the Westminster Assembly, reinforced by twenty divines named by

himself and any others whom the Kirk might send, and in the light of their

deliberations the permanent form of the Church of England should be settled

by king and parliament. Charles promised his assent to acts for the suppres-

sion of all Independents, Baptists, and separatists of every kind, and for the

punishment of blasphemy, heresy, and schism. He condemned the actions of

Fairfax’s army since its refusal to disband, and all the propositions that had

been sent to him thereafter without the Scots’ assent. He promised to ‘endeav-

our a complete union of the kingdoms’. In return the Scots engaged them-

selves to secure for him a personal treaty in London, upon propositions

mutually agreed between England and Scotland. If this was refused, Scotland

would declare his right to control the armed forces and the Great Seal, and to

bestow ofﬁces and honours and to veto acts of parliament; and in order to

restore him to his just rights would send an army into England.

It was a foolish bargain on both sides. The Scots had no chance of raising

an army that could engage that of Fairfax and Cromwell with any hope of

success; they would have to count on powerful risings in their support, but

they were hardly likely to win the hearts and minds of Englishmen by dictat-

ing in advance the answers to such delicate questions as the control of the

armed forces, the appointment of ministers and the royal veto, and by closing

the door to liberty of conscience. As for Charles, his calling in of a Scottish

army before he had explored the possibilities of negotiating a peaceful

restoration was the most disastrous decision of his life. If he had been in

400 Towards a Kingless Britain 1646–1649

Text in Gardiner (ed.), Constitutional Documents, pp. 347–53.

ch12.y8 27/9/02 11:25 AM Page 400

Scotland, with a reasonable chance of escaping abroad if his champions were

defeated (as his son was to do after Worcester), the gamble would have been

less reckless, though he would still have faced heavy opprobrium for plung-

ing two of his kingdoms in bloodshed again. He clearly misread the signs of a

tide of popular feeling that really was running in his favour, and in favour of

the old Anglican religion. Over Christmas there were riotous demonstrations

for king and church, almost amounting to insurrections, in Canterbury,

Ipswich, and other towns, while in London Christmas decorations appeared

deﬁantly in churches and other public places. Ejected clergymen resumed

their pulpits and used the Prayer Book services, and royalist newspapers and

pamphlets appeared freely on the bookstalls. But these were mostly symp-

toms of a widespread nostalgia for the old days of peace rather than of any

general willingness to go to war again, and Charles could have exploited this

current of discontent much more proﬁtably if he himself had shown a sincere

and straightforward disposition towards peace.

Bad luck as well as bad planning frustrated his next move, which was an

attempt to escape by sea; the wind was against him. As a result his guards

were doubled and a squadron, commanded by Vice-Admiral Rainborough,

was posted to guard the Solent. Charles lost his freedom to ride about the

island and the company of his friends Berkeley, Ashburnham, and Legge; he

was a closer prisoner now than at any time since the Scots had handed him

over. In the Commons there was a proposal on 3 January to impeach him and

settle the kingdom without him. That was going too far for most members,

but the House did pass a Vote of No Addresses that day, declaring that it

would send no more overtures to the king and receive none from him, and

that for anyone else to treat with him without parliaments’s leave would be

high treason. The Lords at ﬁrst would not concur in it; Saye was absent, con-

ferring with his allies at army headquarters. He obtained a declaration from

Fairfax and the General Council that the army would stand by the parliament

and preserve the rights of the peerage, and on his return the Lords passed the

Vote of No Addresses, though with some conspicuous absentees and some

powerful dissenting voices, including Northumberland, Pembroke, Warwick,

and Manchester. The party of royal independents was now seriously split,

and the alliance between its leaders and the army commanders, which had

produced the most statesmanlike proposals and the most hopeful strategy for

giving the kingdom a lasting peace settlement, was fractured almost beyond

repair.

The stage was now set for the second Civil War, but there were ser-

ious disagreements within the two Houses over what it was being fought for,

and still wider differences between them and the army.

Climacteric II: ‘not a Mere Mercenary Army’ 401

I am indebted in this paragraph to J. S. A. Adamson’s unpublished Ph.D. thesis on ‘The

Peerage in Politics 1645–1649’ (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 220–7.

ch12.y8 27/9/02 11:25 AM Page 401

thirteen

The Second Civil War

It is hard to give a fully coherent account of the second Civil War, because the

war itself was such an incoherent affair. What Charles and the Scots hoped

was that his English and Welsh supporters would rise in arms just when a

Scottish army invaded, for their only chance of success against Fairfax’s and

Cromwell’s veterans lay in diverting and dividing the latter by simultaneous

insurrections in several parts of the southern kingdom. But the king was a

captive, and for all the freedom allowed to his visitors, he had no under-

ground organization capable of marshalling his followers nationwide. The

Scots did not have an army ready until July, and long before it crossed the

border a series of uncoordinated royalist uprisings in southern and south-

eastern England and in Wales had already spent their force. Most of them

were spontaneous in origin, and motivated more by exasperation with the

parliamentary regime than by positive enthusiasm for the king, and though

some of his champions made heroic efforts to harness them to his cause they

were suppressed or contained before Cromwell had to march against the

Scots.

At the risk of repetition it is worth taking another glance at the grievances

that sparked off rebellion in the spring of 1648. Most of them went back to

the early years of civil war, but they had grown intolerable because nearly two

years of nominal peace had brought so little relief. War taxation was the most

obvious burden, and the excise was the most hated tax of all. Meat and salt

were freed from it in 1647 (the government taxed producers instead), but it

still fell on other articles of mass consumption, and violent attacks on excise

collectors were an endemic problem for local authorities. The pay of the army

rested on the monthly assessment, and Fairfax’s pressure on parliament actu-

ally to increase its rate did not add to his troops’ popularity. The shortfall in

the soldiers’ pay meant that free quarter continued to be a burden on many

communities; it even caused Clubmen to reappear in some of them.

But ﬁscal oppression was not the only reason why parliamentary ‘tyranny’

had come to look worse in many people’s eyes than that of Charles I’s per-

sonal rule. Imprisonment by administrative ﬁat rather than due process of

law had been a major issue in the Five Knights’ Case and the Petition of Right,

ch13.y8 27/9/02 11:30 AM Page 402

but it was widely resorted to in the 1640s, both by parliamentary committees

and by county committees. Star Chamber and High Commission had been

strongly attacked for causing people to incriminate themselves by forcing

them to answer interrogatories, but the parliament’s Committee of Examin-

ations was at least as guilty of it, and the Levellers suffered particularly there-

by. The Indemnity Ordinances of May and June 1647 protected ex-army men

from prosecution for acts committed under the pressure of war, but many

civilians who had had their goods or horses or crops or timber taken felt

deprived of their legal rights. The county committees, being the agencies

through which so many ﬁscal and administrative burdens fell upon the pub-

lic, came in for special hatred. It was not fair to portray them as the willing

and self-interested instruments of a tyrannous central government, for they

quite often stood up for their communities against what they saw as unjust or

excessive demands from Westminster, but that was how they were widely

perceived. They did undoubtedly take much power out of the hands of the

traditional local rulers, the JPs in their quarter sessions, and because so many

of the old county elite tended in most regions to be royalist they generally

shifted local authority downward in the social scale, towards lesser parochial

gentry and townsmen.

Unpopular though the military presence was because of its cost, neither the

parliament nor the army could be justly accused of keeping up larger forces

than the circumstances warranted. During the early months of 1648 no fewer

than 20,000 soldiers were disbanded with two months’ pay. The axe fell

mainly on provincial forces, especially those in Wales and the adjacent bor-

der counties, many of whose ofﬁcers had been in sympathy with the attempted

presbyterian county-revolution of the previous summer. It looked as though

they might join in a general mutiny against their disbandment, but some

ﬁrm counter-measures by Fairfax stiﬂed it. Some leaders of this move-

ment remained dangerous, however, especially Major-General Rowland

Laugharne, who had been commander-in-chief in Glamorgan, Cardigan,

Carmarthen, and Pembrokeshire. Also disbanded were all but ﬁve regiments

of the Northern Association army, whose commander Sydenham Poyntz had

been deeply involved with Massey in 1647 in organizing a counter-force to

the New Model Army. The garrisons of most of the defended towns and

castles in England and Wales were discharged, a major operation in itself.

Colonel Lambert was now in command of the remaining forces in northern

England. The New Model itself was slimmed down to about 24,000 men,

losing nearly 4,000 in the process. This was less than parliament had

The Second Civil War 403

On civilian grievances underlying the second Civil War see Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces,

ch. 3 and pp. 197–208; Robert Ashton, ‘From cavalier to roundhead tyranny’, in Morrill (ed.),

Reactions to the English Civil War; and R. Ashton, Counter-Revolution: The Second Civil War

and its Origins (1994), chs. 2 and 3.

ch13.y8 27/9/02 11:30 AM Page 403

recently legislated for, but Fairfax himself initiated the reorganization, with

the Commons’ consent. He got rid of his own lifeguard, whose political reli-

ability he had strong reason to doubt. It proved him right by mutinying; so did

half the men of Harrison’s regiment, who had appeared on Corkbush Field

against orders in November and were now discharged. The reorganized army

had slightly more regiments, but fewer men in their troops and companies,

a scheme which saved Fairfax from having to discharge ofﬁcers of proven

loyalty and efﬁciency.

Such a drastic overall reduction might look rash in view of the known pos-

sibility that a new war might be imminent, but it showed the public that par-

liament was serious about cutting the huge expense of the military

establishment, even though the immediate cost of paying off the disbanded

men imposed a heavy burden. It also ensured that virtually all the ofﬁcers and

men still under arms in England were wholly reliable. War was not a cer-

tainty, of course, at least until the Engagement became public knowledge late

in February. The Commons showed their distrust of the Scots by voting to

dissolve the Committee of Both Kingdoms when they passed the Vote of No

Addresses, but it was not yet certain that the Scottish commissioners would

be able to deliver what they had promised in the Engagement. Before they left

London on 24 January, the commissioners held some secret talks with Eng-

lish royalists and presbyterians with a view to organizing risings in support of

a Scottish invasion, but they were unable to set any date for the latter. When

they reported the Engagement to the committee of estates in February it was

favourably received, but no action could be taken on raising an army until the

Scottish parliament met again on 2 March. Meanwhile the Engagement was

hotly opposed by leading kirkmen, who found its commitment to Presbyter-

ianism and the Covenant utterly inadequate. They were supported by Argyll,

Balmerino, Lothian, and other powerful nobles, who were totally against

going to war on its terms, while the free-spoken womenfolk of Edinburgh

and Leith were heard to ‘cry for peace, and say their husbands shall not

ﬁght’.

When parliament met, however, the Engagers (as they were called) com-

manded a substantial majority, especially among the nobles, and Hamilton’s

hand was strengthened when his brother Loudoun was elected as its presi-

dent. But division between his party and Argyll’s was so bitter that it led to a

notorious series of duels, and it deepened further when the powerful com-

mission of ministers and elders that spoke for the Kirk in between general

assemblies published an open denunciation of the Engagement. The Kirkmen

organized a campaign of petitions against it, including one which split the

Scottish army; Leven and David Leslie were among those who signed it.

404 Towards a Kingless Britain 1646–1649

Quoted in Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scotland, p. 99.

ch13.y8 27/9/02 11:30 AM Page 404

Hamilton, however, had qualiﬁed support from a party of royalist nobles led

by the Earl of Callander.

For a while it seemed that Charles and his Scottish champions could hope

for substantial support from Ireland. Ormond, although he had preferred to

hand over Dublin to the parliament’s commissioners rather than deliver the

kingdom to the control of a Confederation dedicated to catholic supremacy

and heavily inﬂuenced by Rinuccini and the catholic clergy, remained per-

sonally loyal to the king. The army’s revolt drew Charles and his Lord Lieu-

tenant closer together, until a suspicious parliament forbade Ormond access

to his master. But during January 1648 Charles twice commissioned him by

letter to seek a peace with the Confederates, if it could be had on honourable

terms, and in February Ormond sailed to France. Before doing so he sent

Colonel John Barry to Ireland to try to persuade Inchiquin, the commander

of the parliament’s forces in Munster, to declare for the king. Inchiquin did so

early in April; he was furious at the way in which Lord Lisle, the parliament’s

Lord Lieutenant, had treated him, and he was alienated by the general course

that English politics had taken in the past year. But he could not deliver over

the whole army to the king’s cause, for some of its protestant ofﬁcers

remained parliamentarian in sympathy—some even threatened mutiny.

Moreover Rinuccini was opposed to a truce with Inchiquin, for it would

strengthen the Ormond connection, and he did not want to see Ormond back

as Lord Lieutenant. He would have preferred a truce with the Scots, but that

did not appeal to O’Neill, who regarded the Scots already in Ireland as his

enemies. The divisions that had bedevilled the Confederation through 1647

deepened further during 1648. Looking ahead for a moment, Inchiquin

signed a truce with the Confederation on 20 May and most of the Old Eng-

lish came to support it, but Rinuccini was so hostile to it that he and three

Irish bishops pronounced excommunication against all who gave it their sup-

port. Thereby he set himself at war not only with the Old English but with the

majority of Irish bishops and with the Confederation’s Supreme Council,

which appealed to Rome against his action. Ironically, the only help that

Charles was to receive from Ireland would come (as we shall see) from the

Scottish Covenanting force under Colonel Monro, but it had absolutely no

effect on the outcome of the second Civil War. Once that outcome was set-

tled, the king’s fate lay entirely in English hands.

Meanwhile, as the Engagement became more highly publicized during the

spring, some hundreds of English royalists and reformadoes (disbanded ofﬁ-

cers and men) came to Scotland to offer their services. With their help, Berwick

and Carlisle were occupied for the king on 28–9 April, by Sir Marmaduke

Langdale and Sir Philip Musgrave respectively. But it was not until 4 May,

when war had already begun in south Wales, that the Scottish parliament

ordered the raising of an army of 27,750 foot and 2,760 horse. The existing

The Second Civil War 405

ch13.y8 27/9/02 11:30 AM Page 405

Covenanting army was to be absorbed into it, but its commander David Leslie

refused to serve in the cause of an uncovenanted king. Hamilton himself was

then named as general, with the Earl of Middleton commanding the cavalry

and the luckless William Baillie the foot. The levying of the many men needed

to bring it up to the speciﬁed strength (which was never achieved) went ahead

in the face of curses from the pulpits, and its recruitment drew the Kirk into a

broader conﬂict with parliament over the boundaries between spiritual and

secular authority. It was not an auspicious launch to a perilous enterprise.

Meanwhile the king was having a tedious time waiting for the fates to

decide his gamble on the renewal of war. He was being kept a closer prisoner

after a hare-brained attempt to rescue him had failed late in December, and as

suspicion of his pact with the Scots hardened into certainty his treatment

hardened too. His servants were reduced to thirty, he was no longer allowed

his own chaplains, and for exercise he had little more than a morning walk

around the castle walls and a game of bowls within them. He and his friends

hatched a series of escape plans during the spring, but because of Hammond’s

vigilance and the plotters’ incompetence they all came to nothing. He was

still, however, permitted a surprising number of visitors, many of whom came

to be touched for the king’s evil. This and the continuing news of a recrudes-

cence of popular feeling in his favour kept his hopes alive.

This resurgent royalism was closely linked with dislike of the post-war reli-

gious settlement, which was currently being implemented through a series of

parliamentary ordinances. The ofﬁcial Directory for Worship was a dead

letter in many parishes. The authorities had a constant problem with parish-

ioners withholding tithes from the intruded ministers who used the new ser-

vices, and with parsons who were welcomed back to livings from which they

had been ejected and there revived the Prayer Book ones. Many of these men

were unrepentant royalists. The repression of Christmas celebrations in the

second year of peace led to serious disturbances in London, Canterbury, and

Ipswich. On 27 March, the anniversary of Charles’s accession, bonﬁres

blazed in the London streets and passengers in passing coaches were forced to

drink the king’s health. The oppressive sabbatarianism of the new Presbyter-

ian order was another irritant, especially when an additional ordinance

which threatened to intensify it came under debate in March and April. On

9 April crowds of young sabbath-breakers in London deﬁed ﬁrst the watch

and then the trained bands, and the riot broadened further the next day, amid

shouts of ‘Now for King Charles!’.

The ban on stage plays lapsed on 1 Janu-

ary and the theatres enjoyed a brief though popular revival, but parliament

clamped down on it with a new ordinance in February which not only renewed

the prohibition but ordered that the playhouses should be demolished.

406 Towards a Kingless Britain 1646–1649

Ashton, Counter-Revolution, p. 238.

ch13.y8 27/9/02 11:30 AM Page 406

Players who deﬁed the ban were to be punished with a public ﬂogging, and

spectators with a ﬁve-shilling ﬁne. But Presbyterian intolerance reached a

new peak with the savage Blasphemy Ordinance of 2 May, which prescribed

the death penalty for numerous deviations from ‘orthodox’ doctrine. This

was some weeks before parliament published the Westminster Assembly’s

Articles of the Christian Religion, which at last enlightened the public as to

just what that doctrine was. Milton could have been among its victims, but

mercifully it was rarely enforced and was superseded in 1650.

Grumbling discontent ﬁrst escalated into open insurrection in south Wales,

where it was triggered by the attempt to disband the supernumerary forces.

To speed the process, Fairfax sent Adjutant-General Fleming to relieve

Colonel Poyer of the governorship of Pembroke Castle, but in February

Poyer refused to hand it over. He was mainly concerned at this stage to secure

his men’s arrears and indemnity, but other troops of Major-General Laug-

harne’s command joined with Poyer’s in resisting disbandment, and the

movement of deﬁance spread through the gentry of south Wales. Those of

Glamorgan had risen twice before against the parliamentary regime. Hither-

to Poyer and Laugharne had defended it, but Poyer now made common cause

with the insurgents, and Laugharne threw in his lot with them early in May.

But though Poyer talked with royalist agents he never accepted a commission

from the king, and the declaration which he and his fellow-rebel Colonel

Powel published on 10 April professed aims which moderate parliamentar-

ians as well as royalists would have gladly endorsed—if only they had been

realizable. It was their purpose, they declared, ‘to bring the king to a person-

al treaty with his parliament, . . . that so the just prerogatives of the king, priv-

ileges of parliament, laws of the land, and liberties of the people, may be all

established and preserved in their proper bounds.’ They further pledged

themselves to restore the Book of Common Prayer, ‘with such regard to ten-

der consciences as shall be allowed by act of parliament’.

Such a manifesto is

a testimony of how unnecessary the second Civil War was. If the English par-

liament had been readier to present the king with terms that he could in hon-

our accept, if he had been prepared to negotiate honestly and realistically, and

if the Covenant had not tied the millstone of Presbyterianism round the

English people’s necks, how many lives might have been spared?

But armed insurrection demanded a military response. Fairfax sent

Colonel Horton with a small mixed force to ensure that Laugharne’s troops

disbanded according to orders, but Horton found most of them deﬁant; many

wore papers in their hats reading ‘We long to see our king’. He engaged them

at St Fagans near Llandaff on 8 May—it was the ﬁrst clash of arms in the

The Second Civil War 407

Quoted in J. Morrill, The Revolt of the Provinces (1976), pp. 130, 203.

ch13.y8 27/9/02 11:30 AM Page 407