The rising in Ireland
Parliament's anxieties grew with the outbreak of a violent rising in Ireland (October 1641). Phelim O'Neill, Rory O'More and other Irish leaders wanted a war of liberation. They wanted Ulster freed from English settlers, Catholics freed from oppression, and Ireland freed from English rule. The rebels, who had not forgotten the memory of persecutions, pursuit and harsh seizures of land, fought with such fury that the struggle became merciless. The English living in Ireland, who wished to defend their lives and what they counted as their lawful property, paid back in kind, and each victory brought fresh bloodshed on one side or the other. (The source describes these events in language that stereotypes the Irish; the wording is softened here.)
The English Parliament wrongly supposed that Charles had stirred up the rising in order to restore the Catholic religion in Ireland and later in England. It therefore refused his request for money to rescue the English in the Pale, and the Irish rising went on through the whole English revolution. When Charles raised two of the bishops who had been condemned and excluded to a higher office, the revolution grew fiercer.
The Grand Remonstrance
Angry members of the Commons proposed that a 'Grand Remonstrance' be written to set out the quarrel between Parliament and king, and that Charles be asked to give Parliament the power to veto his appointments to important offices. Many conservative people felt that this would transfer executive power to Parliament and make the king a helpless figure. Party quarrels grew sharper and debates hotter, and members laid hands on their swords to stress their points. Cromwell said later that if the bill had not passed he would have sailed for America. It passed by a majority of only eleven or twelve votes (the source says twelve) and was sent to the king on 1 December 1641.
The Remonstrance first declared the members' loyalty to the crown, and then set out in detail the insults the king had offered to Parliament and the miseries he had brought on the country. It also listed the abuses Parliament had already cured. It accused 'the papists, the bishops and some corrupt clergy,' as well as self-seeking counselors and courtiers, of plotting to make England Catholic. It pointed to the repeated violations of the Petition of Right and the arbitrary dissolution of elected Parliaments, and asked the king to call an assembly of clergy to restore the Anglican service to the form it had had before Laud. Parliament then proposed that Charles dismiss from his council all opponents of its policies and choose counselors, ambassadors and ministers whom Parliament could trust, and warned that otherwise it could not supply the king's needs or help the Protestants of other European countries as he wished.
Charles was slow to answer this ultimatum. On 15 December Parliament, paying no attention to him, ordered the Remonstrance to be published. Then the king replied. In his answer he agreed to call an assembly of clergy to prevent any 'popery', but refused to deprive the bishops of their votes in Parliament. He insisted besides that he had the right to appoint whom he chose to the privy council or to public posts, and again asked for money. Parliament in return passed the Militia Bill, in order to command the army.
The five members
Charles, usually an irresolute man, now made a daring move that Parliament took as a declaration of war. On 3 January 1642 his Attorney General, in the House of Lords and in the king's name, accused five members of the Commons of treason: Pym, Hampden, Holles, Haselrig and Strode. He said that they had tried to turn the army from its obedience to the king and had encouraged a 'foreign nation' (Scotland) to invade England and make war on the king. Next day Charles set out at the head of three hundred soldiers, left them at the entrance, and went into the House of Commons himself to arrest the five. But they had hidden in the houses of friends. Seeing this, Charles said in despair, 'I see all the birds have flown.' As he went out the members protested loudly, for the king's armed intrusion was wholly unlawful. Fearing that all of them might be arrested, they went under the protection of the Londoners to the Guildhall of the City, and when Charles went to Hampton Court, the members of the Commons, with the five accused, returned in triumph to Westminster.
Queen Henrietta slipped away secretly to France with the crown jewels, to 'buy' help for the king. Charles went north with the Great Seal and tried to enter Hull and raise troops, but the city refused him, and he had to go to York. Parliament ordered all armed forces to obey Parliament alone (5 March 1642). Thirty-five peers and sixty-five members of the Commons withdrew from Parliament and joined Charles at York. Edward Hyde now became the king's chief adviser.
The Nineteen Propositions and the war
On 2 June Parliament gave Charles nineteen proposals and said that he must accept them to establish peace. He was to hand over control of the army and all fortified places to Parliament, and give Parliament the right to revise the church's worship and administration, to appoint and dismiss all the king's ministers and his children's tutors, and to bar anyone newly made a noble from sitting in the House of Lords. It was as though Parliament were rehearsing for the great French revolution, since it set up a body called a 'Committee of Safety' (the source's name) to raise an army. Cromwell and others went to their home towns to gather volunteers. In a declaration to the nation, Parliament did not ascribe its stand to love of parliamentary independence but to the imminent danger of a Catholic rising in England, and warned that a royal victory would mean a massacre of Protestants (the source's wording, which is a propaganda claim, is left in outline). On 17 August Parliament's men seized the military stores at Hull. On 27 August 1642 Charles raised his standard at Nottingham and the civil war began.
The first civil war and Edgehill
The people of England were now divided as they had never been before. London, the manufacturing towns, the ports and generally the south and east, most of the middle class, part of the class just below the gentry and nearly all the Puritans, supported Parliament. Oxford and Cambridge, the west and north, most of the aristocrats and farmers, nearly all adherents of the Anglican church and supporters of bishops and Catholics, backed the king.
There was division in the Commons too. About three hundred members favored the rebels and about one hundred seventy-five the king. In the Lords, thirty of one hundred ten favored Parliament at the start. But Charles was hard up for money, and London held half the nation's wealth and used it to strengthen the revolution. The king could borrow from no source, the navy was against him and stopped foreign help from arriving, so Charles had to accept gifts from the great landowners, who saw their interests tied to his victory. In the old families some of the feelings of chivalry survived. Some were wholly loyal to the king, fought for him like true men and gave their lives. The Cavaliers, with their long hair and gaily harnessed horses, made a gallant show, and all the poets except Milton were on their side. But the money was in Parliament's hands.
The two sides first met in battle at Edgehill (23 October 1642). Each army had about fourteen thousand men. The Royalists were under Prince Rupert, the twenty-two-year-old son of Charles's sister Elizabeth of Bohemia (he was really twenty-three, according to the usual dates), and the Roundheads obeyed Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex. The outcome was inconclusive. Essex drew off his forces, and the king went to Oxford and made it his headquarters.
Wallington, a fervent Puritan and a shrewd man in worldly matters, took the battle for a great victory for Parliament and for God. We see the great mercy of God in this, he said: as I have heard, in all 5,517 were killed (the book's figure), but the proportion of the enemy's dead to ours was ten to one (the book's figure). Consider the wonderful works of God, he went on, for those of us who were slain were mostly men who fled, while those who stood bravely stayed clear of danger. He could not say how God's hand used our cannon and shot to destroy the enemy: some shot fell short before our soldiers, some skidded along the ground, some flew over their heads and some fell to one side, and those who stood their ground against the shot were seldom hurt. In his eyes it was the work of the Lord, and it looked to him like a miracle.