Woolrych Austin. Britain in Revolution, 1625-1660

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best short survey is G. E. Aylmer’s introduction to the selection of documents that he

prints in The Levellers in the English Revolution (1975); and see Mendle, The Putney

Debates of 1647 (above). Pauline Gregg is good on Lilburne in Free-Born John

(1961). H. N. Brailsford’s enthusiasm in The Levellers and the English Revolution

(1976) is somewhat uncritical, but he is very readable. The spread of radical religious

and especially millenarian ideas, and their inﬂuence within the army, are well covered

in Murray Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints (Cambridge, 1977), and Bernard S.

Capp is deﬁnitive on The Fifth Monarchy Men (1972). The Ranters have been a con-

troversial subject since J. C. Davis questioned whether they ever really existed in Fear,

Myth and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Cambridge, 1926), but Gerald

Aylmer has argued convincingly that they did in Past & Present no. 117 (1987), and

Nigel Smith presents a selection of their tracts, with a perceptive introduction, in A

Collection of Ranter Writings from the Seventeenth Century (1983). On one objective

of all radicals, Donald Veall, The Popular Movement for Law Reforms 1640–1660

(Oxford, 1970) is the primary recommendation, but Stuart E. Prall, The Agitation for

Law Reform in the Puritan Revolution (The Hague, 1966) is also worth consulting.

For the controversies over tithes, impropriations, and clerical maintenance, Christo-

pher Hill, Economic Problems of the Church from Archbishop Whitgift to the Long

Parliament (Oxford, 1956, and later paperback editions) is most helpful.

For books on Cromwell see Further Reading for Part V.

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part iv

The Commonwealth

1649–1653

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fifteen

The Commonwealth at War

When the nineteen-year-old Charles II heard the horrifying news of his

father’s death, he was at the court of his brother-in-law William II of Orange

at Breda. William himself would have done all he could to help him, but the

powerful regent class of Holland and Zealand, who dominated the States-

General, were set against involving the United Provinces in any further war-

fare. It was only months since the Peace of Westphalia had formally brought

to an end the exhausting struggle that we call the Thirty Years War; indeed

their own war of independence had lasted with one break for eighty years. For

Charles the great question was whether he should look ﬁrst to the Irish or the

Scots to help him back to his English throne. The Scots had been prompt to

proclaim him King of Great Britain, but they made the actual exercise of his

regal powers conditional on his giving satisfaction regarding religion and

taking the Solemn League and Covenant. Ormond and his adherents in

Ireland, needless to say, wanted to impose no such conditions.

Charles received conﬂicting advice from the three main groups of his sup-

porters. His mother, and the so-called Louvre group of courtiers who attended

her—the chief were Jermyn, Percy, and Berkeley—would have had him put

himself in the hands of the Scots and rely on an alliance between them and the

English Presbyterians, both religious and political. The constitutional royal-

ists typiﬁed by Hyde and Hopton, however, were most unhappy about

entrusting his cause and theirs to the Covenanters, who had ﬁrst risen in arms

against Charles I and had fought against him all through the ﬁrst Civil War.

As Anglicans, furthermore, they deplored the Scots’ requirement that the king

should take the Covenant himself and enforce it on others. They saw in the

loyal protestant Ormond an ally after their own hearts, and they were ready

not only to accept the concessions that he had made to Irish catholics but to

extend at least some of them to English ones in return for their active support.

They would rather the king did not rely on any foreign military aid if he could

help it, but if it should prove necessary they would prefer that it came from

Spain rather than France, for they thoroughly distrusted the Louvre party.

The third royalist faction, who have been called the swordsmen, consisted

mainly of Rupert and those who attached themselves to him. They were more

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opportunist, and tended to look to whatever quarter seemed to offer most in

the way of military advantage and their own advancement.

Charles himself was eager to go to Ireland, and Montrose and several other

Scottish royalists advised him to do so. He remained at Breda until June,

despite his mother’s urgent pleas that he should join her in St Germain. The

Scottish parliament sent commissioners to treat with him there in March,

hoping to negotiate terms to which he would commit himself in return for

Scotland’s armed support, but they received little satisfaction, and they went

home empty-handed in June. His purpose was to keep the options open in

case the Irish failed him, but the commissioners could not get him to dismiss

Montrose, and he told them he was not prepared to impose the Solemn

League and Covenant on England and Ireland without consulting their

respective parliaments. So far he was playing his cards rather well, and for

two or three months after he assumed the royal title his prospects looked

quite promising. He had been proclaimed king in several places in England,

as well as in Ireland and Scotland, and if he could launch an invasion from

southern Ireland there seemed a good chance that the west country would rise

for him; its residual loyalty had not been put under strain as that of northern

England had been in the Preston campaign. There was considerable disaffec-

tion in London, where the Lord Mayor had been dismissed and sent to the

Tower for refusing to proclaim the act abolishing the monarchy, and the

Rump had had to resort to blatantly coercive methods to bring the City gov-

ernment to obedience. The relations between the parliament and the army

were less than cordial, as we have seen, and in the army itself a new campaign

of Leveller agitation was exploiting the soldiery’s widespread reluctance to

ﬁght in Ireland. On the continent, all the powers that counted had given the

new king assurances of their goodwill, and none had recognized the Com-

monwealth; Spain was to be the ﬁrst to do so, towards the end of 1650. It is

true that none was prepared to ﬁght for Charles, but if he could recover his

kingdoms without depending on foreign arms, so much the better.

Yet whatever the problems that the Rump faced at home, and however

tentative its moves towards a long-term settlement, it showed a ﬁrm resolve

in defending itself against its enemies. Soon after it was established the Coun-

cil of State started to make serious plans for the reconquest of Ireland. It pro-

posed to send 8,000 foot, 3,000 horse, and 1,200 dragoons to join the forces

already there, and to maintain an army of 32,000 in England. It made a pro-

visional choice of the regiments that should constitute the expeditionary

force, but this caused great discontent among them, and fuelled the Levellers’

agitation. It therefore directed Fairfax to consult his ofﬁcers as to how they

should be chosen, but he wisely replied that it should ﬁrst be decided who

should command them. Accordingly, on 15 March, Cromwell was named as

commander-in-chief in Ireland; but he had misgivings about accepting the

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post, and asked for time to seek the Lord. Two whole weeks passed before he

made his decision. On the 23rd he made a long speech to his fellow-ofﬁcers in

the General Council, who were urging him to accept. ‘I had had no serious

thoughts of the business’, he said; but that is scarcely credible, since he was

such an obvious choice. Yet he was probably wholly sincere when he said to

them: ‘I think there is more cause of danger from disunion amongst ourselves

than by any thing from our enemies’. One can conjecture what the reasons for

his hesitation were. The army really was in a state of some disunity, and with

Fairfax somewhat out of his depth in the post-regicide political waters he

probably felt his presence to be needed in England, at least for a time. He

would not have been human if he had not felt some reluctance to remove him-

self from parliament and council for an indeﬁnite period when so many crit-

ical decisions still had to be made about the Commonwealth’s future. There

were powerful men in the Rump, no friends to the army, who would be much

happier to take those decisions with Cromwell and Ireton a long way away.

On a tactical level, he probably reckoned that by delaying his acceptance he

could exact ﬁrm assurances, as he did, that his forces would be constantly

supplied, kept up to strength, and regularly paid. When ﬁnally he did make his

decision, the aversion which many a soldier felt towards the Irish service must

have been mitigated by the knowledge that Cromwell was going to lead them.

There was a long debate in the General Council of Ofﬁcers as to how the

regiments destined for Ireland should be selected. Eventually it was agreed

that they should be chosen by lot, and on 20 April, after solemn prayers, a

child drew papers out of a hat.

This did not eliminate the reluctance to serve,

which played its part in the mutinies which soon broke out, but it did remove

any suspicion of political bias in the composition of the force that Cromwell

was to command.

Before the end of May the early signs of promise for the king’s cause were

fading. Those of his friends who had proclaimed him in some parts of Eng-

land were not backing up their gesture with any serious plans to organize a

rising for him if he should invade, and after Thomas Scot was put in charge

of intelligence on 1 July the Commonwealth government was kept well

informed of any stirrings of royalist conspiracy. There were few. The May

mutinies failed; the combination of ﬁrmness with sympathy for the soldiers’

grievances restored the discipline and unity of the army, but left the Levellers

a spent force. Cromwell himself was preparing to lead a strong and reliable

army to Ireland. There the situation was a little slower to deteriorate, but even

before Cromwell landed in August it took a sharp turn for the worse. Here we

must pick up the tangled threads of Irish politics where we left them, after the

serious defeats of the king’s supporters at Dungan’s Hill and Knockanauss,

The Commonwealth at War 463

Abbott, Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, II, 36–40.

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and the opening of a fatal rift in the Confederation between the Old English

who adhered to Inchiquin and the clerical party that took its cue from the

papal nuncio Rinuccini.

While the second Civil War was being fought in England, the only clash of

arms in Ireland was not between the king’s supporters and the parliament’s

but between the opposed factions of the Confederation. The royalists led by

Inchiquin, now he was ﬁghting for the king again, were allied to the moder-

ate, pro-Ormond party in the Confederation and supported by what was left

of the army of Leinster, which had been routed at Dungan’s Hill. Ranged

against them were the clericalist pro-Rinuccini Confederates, whose main

military support lay in Owen Roe O’Neill’s army of Ulster. So dominated was

the Confederate Supreme Council by the moderate and royalist faction that

O’Neill declared war on it in June 1648 and marched against Kilkenny, the

Confederation’s capital. He failed to take it, but during August he laid waste

much of the surrounding countryside; so while Hamilton’s Scots were march-

ing to defeat at Preston, Inchiquin and most of the king’s other supporters in

Ireland were defending Leinster and Connaught against O’Neill.

Ormond received no reproaches from Charles I for surrendering his

authority to the parliament’s commissioners. Indeed Charles renewed his

commission as Lord Lieutenant and sent him back to Ireland, where he

landed late in September, with instructions to strengthen the bonds between

Inchiquin, the Old English, and the loyal Confederates. Ormond brought

with him arms for 4,000 foot and 1,000 horse, which were very welcome to

Inchiquin, with whom he swiftly reached agreement. He then sought the sup-

port of the ninth and last General Assembly of the Confederation, which had

been summoned to treat with him. Rinuccini’s supporters boycotted it,

declaring it to be unlawfully convened. That made it all the easier for Ormond

to come to terms with it, and the resultant articles of peace were published

just as the king’s trial opened in Westminster. Rinuccini did his best to frus-

trate them; he no longer desired a royalist victory, because he believed that an

English king would never give the catholics equal status in Ireland. Ormond’s

treaty, however, promised that the catholics would retain possession of their

churches and church livings until all matters of religion had been considered

by a free parliament. The government of the Confederation was formally dis-

solved, and the territory acknowledging Ormond’s authority as Lord Lieu-

tenant was placed under the management of twelve ‘commissioners of trust’.

Rinuccini found himself with no useful role in Ireland, for he lost O’Neill’s

support through his attitude to the king’s cause. He sailed for Italy late in

February, never to return.

A striking number of the main participants in the Irish wars changed their

464 The Commonwealth 1649–1653

See above, pp. 366–9, 405.

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allegiance at one time or another, and more often on grounds of principle

than through self-interest. Colonel Michael Jones, commander of the parlia-

ment’s forces based on Dublin and victor of Dungan’s Hill, had left his stud-

ies at Lincoln’s Inn at the outbreak of the ﬁrst Civil War to join the king’s

army in Ireland. His father was the Welsh-born Bishop of Killaloe, his brother

the Bishop of Clogher; but he himself was a strong protestant, with puritan

leanings, and after the Cessation of 1643 he could not stomach the terms that

Ormond agreed with the king, which to Jones seemed to be selling out to the

Irish catholics. Rather than bring his men over to join the royal army in Eng-

land, as the treaty envisaged, he went over to the parliament’s side and took

them with him. He fought with distinction with the parliamentary forces in

Cheshire before being made governor of Dublin and commander in Leinster

in 1647, and he was soon to ﬁght one of the crucial actions of the whole war

in Ireland. The two other chief ofﬁcers on the parliamentary side were Sir

Charles Coote, Lord President of Connaught, whose loyalty at this time was

unswerving, though later he was to play an important part in the restoration

of Charles II, and George Monck, commander of the English and Scottish

forces in Ulster. Monck was a professional soldier who had learnt his trade in

the Dutch service, and it was as a professional that he commanded the foot in

the English army in Ireland in 1642–3, when the main objective was to sup-

press the Irish rebellion. The English Civil War had not started when he was

ﬁrst in action, and he was not under pressure to take sides between king and

parliament until Ormond concluded the Cessation, which was designed to

release his forces to ﬁght for the king in England. Ormond required them all

to swear their allegiance to the king and the Church of England and never to

ﬁght in the parliamentarian army. Monck refused the oath, so Ormond

relieved him of his command and sent him to England as a prisoner—though

with a commendation of his service, and a request to treat him with all pos-

sible civility. In refusing to swear allegiance, Monck’s motive had probably

been to keep his options open rather than to make a positive commitment to

the parliament’s cause. But George Digby, who had recently been appointed

Secretary of State, persuaded the king to send for Monck, and Charles appar-

ently gave him to hope that in time he might command all the forces now

released from Ireland for service in England. Meanwhile he was to raise a

regiment of his own. But before he could do so the regiments from Ireland,

together with Byron’s Cheshire forces, were engaged by Brereton and Fairfax

in the battle of Nantwich. Monck fought as a volunteer in his old regiment,

and in the total defeat of the royalists he was captured. He was brought to the

bar of the Commons, accused of high treason and committed to the Tower of

London during the House’s pleasure. He remained there until Ormond, on

coming to terms with parliament in 1646, secured his release. Viscount Lisle,

Leicester’s son and (brieﬂy) successor as Lord Lieutenant, persuaded him to

The Commonwealth at War 465

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serve again in Ireland, and after a short spell of duty in Munster he was made

major-general of all the English and Scottish forces in Ulster.

Before he assumed this command Monck took the ‘negative oath’ (not to

assist the king) and the Solemn League and Covenant, and thenceforth he

remained unswervingly loyal to his new masters until the Commonwealth

itself was collapsing through its own internal dissensions. His claim to take

over the Scottish forces in Ulster was naturally contested by Colonel Robert

Monro, the commander appointed and recognized by the Scottish govern-

ment. But in the second Civil War Monro sided with Hamilton and the

Engagers and declared for the king, whereupon Monck had him seized in his

bed and shipped him to England as a prisoner. For a time Monro seemed to

have some hold on the Scottish regiments, but after the king’s execution many

Scottish ofﬁcers would no longer serve under parliament’s banners and had

to be cashiered; indeed most of the Scottish forces that had been Monro’s

transferred their allegiance to Inchiquin.

A stranger test of loyalty came in the spring of 1649 when Owen Roe

O’Neill approached Monck with a view to a treaty. O’Neill was in an isol-

ated position, having been declared a traitor by the Confederation’s last Gen-

eral Assembly for his abortive march on Kilkenny, yet remaining the enemy

of Ormond and Inchiquin. His army of Ulster was so short of ammunition

and provisions that it was threatening to disintegrate. He had already tried to

enter into negotiation with Michael Jones, without success, and sent an envoy

to London to propose a deal whereby the Ulster Irish would have their estates

restored and their religious freedom assured, while he himself would be given

a command in Fairfax’s army. He was, however, simultaneously exploring

the possibility of making his peace with Ormond. Monck himself was starved

of money and supplies; he controlled only patches of territory in Ulster, and

he could not defend Drogheda, which fell to Inchiquin late in June. In May

Monck concluded a three months’ cessation of arms with O’Neill, each man

making undertakings which must have been at least in part insincere; Monck

needed to buy time, and his armistice both neutralized his most immediate

enemy and kept him from coming to terms with Ormond. O’Neill eventually

did just that, but only after the cessation expired. Coote, who was besieged in

Londonderry by the Scottish royalists, struck a rather similar deal with

O’Neill, whose help saved the town from falling. Monck was not altogether

happy about what he had done, for he did not inform the English govern-

ment, and he waited two and a half weeks before reporting his action to

Cromwell, now his commander-in-chief. His truce with O’Neill gave him no

defence against Inchiquin, who advanced in strength from Drogheda to Dun-

dalk. There Monck was forced to surrender to him, and most of his men

promptly joined Inchiquin’s army. But the terms allowed him and any other

ofﬁcers to return to England, and at Milford Haven on 4 August he had his

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ﬁrst meeting with Cromwell, who was about to sail with his expeditionary

force to Ireland. Cromwell ordered him to London, to explain his conduct to

the Council of State. Both council and parliament had long known of his ces-

sation, but they kept it secret while it could be of tactical value. Then, when

its term had expired, Monck was reprimanded at the bar of the House for

entering into it, though with a gracious assurance that since he had believed it

necessary to preserve parliament’s interest in Ireland he would not be taxed

with it any further.

One outcome of this episode was to cement a mutual sol-

dierly trust between Monck and Cromwell, in contrast with which Monck’s

well-grounded mistrust towards the Rump would resurface momentously

after Cromwell was dead and buried.

A more unexpected convert to the Commonwealth’s cause, whose import-

ance to it was to grow through the next decade, was Roger Boyle, Lord

Broghill, a son of Strafford’s arch-opponent the Earl of Cork and elder

brother to Robert Boyle, the great chemist. He was twenty when he took up

arms against the Irish rebels in 1641, and he remained an active Irish royalist

in the Ormond mould until the execution of the king. Some months after that

he decided to offer his services to Charles II, and prepared to leave England

for the exiled court. But Cromwell, who got wind of his intentions, sent for

him and warned him that if he persisted in them he would be clapped in the

Tower. Judging correctly that Broghill was a man of high ability and still

moved by a strong desire to see the Irish rebellion crushed, Cromwell offered

him a high command in his expeditionary force. All he asked was Broghill’s

word of honour that he would serve faithfully in the recovery of Ireland, and

he assured him that he would not be called upon to ﬁght any but the Irish.

Broghill asked for time to consider, but Cromwell demanded an immediate

answer. He got it, and made Broghill master of the ordinance in Ireland. It

was an extraordinary chance for Cromwell to take on so slight a personal

acquaintance, but Broghill kept his word, and mutual trust soon ripened into

friendship. A remarkable partnership developed between Cromwell and the

two ex-royalists Monck and Broghill, which was in time to bear even more

fruit in Scotland than in Ireland.

To match the ex-royalists (including Jones) who were ﬁghting for the

Commonwealth, Ormond’s chief lieutenant was the ex-parliamentarian

Inchiquin, who (as we have seen) was much strengthened by the Coven-

anting Scots who had formerly fought as the parliament’s allies under Monro.

Late in May Inchiquin reckoned his total forces at nearly 13,000, though for

want of money to pay them he was ﬁnding it hard to hold them together.

Against him, Michael Jones in Dublin was greatly outnumbered, and he too

The Commonwealth at War 467

The best account of these transactions is in Maurice Ashley, General Monck (1977),

pp. 58–68. Ashley joins S. R. Gardiner in dismissing the story, still credited by some biographers,

that Cromwell knew of Monck’s treaty with O’Neill from the start, if he did not initiate it.

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