A hard year for Parliament
In the spring of 1643 Parliament found itself in trouble. Queen Henrietta came back to England with arms and munitions smuggled in secretly, and joined Charles at Oxford. The Earl of Essex dawdled so long that his army melted away through sickness and desertion. Hampden was wounded at Chalgrove Field. Parliamentary forces were beaten at Adwalton Moor (30 June 1643) and again at Roundway Down, and Bristol fell to the king.
(The source dates the Roundway Down defeat to 13 January, which cannot be right for that battle; it is left unstated here. The source also says only that Hampden was wounded.)
At this critical moment Parliament turned to Scotland. On 22 September it signed a treaty with the Scottish commissioners, the Solemn League and Covenant. The Scots would send an army to help, and in return would receive, according to the book, 30,000 pounds a month, on condition that Parliament set up the Presbyterian form of Protestant worship in England and Ireland: church government by elders and assemblies, free of bishops. In the same month Charles made peace with the Irish rebels and brought some of their troops over to fight his enemies in England. English Catholics were glad, but more and more Protestants turned against the king. In January 1644 the Irish troops were beaten at Nantwich, and the Scottish army marched into England. The war now involved three nations and four faiths.
The Westminster Assembly
On 1 July 1643 an assembly met at Westminster, made up, according to the book, of 121 English clergymen, three laymen (almost certainly a slip for thirty) and later eight Scottish commissioners. Its task was to give England a Presbyterian church. Because Parliament kept interfering, its sessions dragged on for six years. A few members who favored bishops withdrew, and a small group of Independents asked that every congregation be free of the control of elders and bishops. But the majority, in line with Parliament's wishes, wanted England, Ireland and Scotland governed in church matters by assemblies of elders and by regional and general synods.
Parliament abolished the rule of bishops in 1643 and accepted Presbyterian forms of worship in 1646, but kept for itself a veto over church decisions. In 1647 the Assembly issued its Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, which, following Calvin's teaching, stressed predestination, election and the rejection of the unsaved. After the Stuarts returned and the Anglican church was restored, its decisions were repealed, but the Confession and the catechisms lived on in the Presbyterian churches of the English-speaking world.
Intolerance, and Cromwell's exception
The Assembly and Parliament agreed to reject the small sects' plea for religious freedom. The people of London, now acting as one body, asked Parliament to stamp out every heresy. In 1648 the Commons passed ordinances that condemned those who opposed infant baptism to life imprisonment, and those who denied the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the divine origin of the Bible or the immortality of the soul to death. Between 1642 and 1650 several Jesuits were put to death, and on 10 January 1645 Archbishop Laud, aged seventy-two according to the book (he was in fact seventy-one), was taken from prison to his death. Members of Parliament felt that they had to fight to the end and that the time for moderation had gone.
Cromwell, however, wanted some measure of toleration. In 1643 he formed a regiment at Cambridge that was nicknamed the Ironsides, a name Prince Rupert is said to have given to Cromwell himself. Cromwell enlisted men from every sect except Catholics and supporters of bishops, men who, as he put it, feared God and kept a conscience in what they did. When a Presbyterian officer tried to dismiss an Anabaptist lieutenant colonel, Cromwell protested: 'Sir, the State in choosing men to serve it takes no notice of their opinions; if they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies.' He also asked Parliament to find a way for people with tender consciences, who could not obey church law in every point, not to be persecuted. Parliament refused, but in his regiments and later in his own rule Cromwell followed a policy of some toleration.
The making of a general
Cromwell's growth into a commander was one of the wonders of the war. He shared the credit for the victory at Winceby (11 October 1643) with Lord Fairfax. At Marston Moor, the source says Fairfax was defeated but Cromwell's officers won; the other parliamentary leaders, the Earls of Essex and Manchester, either lost or failed to follow up their victories. To rid himself of these titled generals, Cromwell proposed a Self-Denying Ordinance under which all members of Parliament would give up their commands. It was rejected at first, then brought back and passed. Essex and Manchester withdrew, Sir Thomas Fairfax was raised to commander in chief, and he named Cromwell lieutenant general in charge of the cavalry.
Parliament ordered a new army of 22,000 men, and Cromwell undertook to train it. He had no military experience before the war, but force of character, steadiness of purpose and skill at using men's religious and political feelings let him bring his regiments to an unmatched discipline and loyalty. Puritanism in his camp resembled the Spartan way, with the aim of making invincible soldiers. In the Puritan camp nothing was heard but sermons and prayers. Puritan soldiers did not steal or molest women; they did attack churches to destroy religious images and to drive out 'bishop's men' and 'papist' priests. Facing the enemy they shouted for joy or anger, and they were never beaten.
Naseby and the king's collapse
At Naseby (14 June 1645) the Royalists forced Fairfax's infantry to flee, but Cromwell with his new cavalry turned that defeat into such a complete victory that the king lost all his infantry, his artillery, half his horse and even his private letters. The letters were published to show that he planned to bring more troops from Ireland and to break the anti-Catholic laws.
From then on Charles's position grew worse quickly. His brave commander in Scotland, the Marquis of Montrose, after many victories was finally beaten and fled to the Continent. On 30 July 1645 Parliament's forces took Bath, and Rupert surrendered Bristol to Fairfax (the source says 23 August). The king appealed for help in vain from every side, and his despairing soldiers went over to the enemy. By dishonorable separate negotiations Charles tried to divide his enemies, to split the Independents from Parliament and Parliament from the Scots, but he did not succeed. He had sent his pregnant wife through enemy territory to find a ship for France, and now he ordered Prince Charles to escape from England by any means. He himself fled north in disguise with two attendants and gave himself up to the Scots on 5 May 1646. The first civil war was really over.
The radicals appear
Charles expected the Scots to treat him still as their king; they preferred to treat him as their prisoner. They offered to help him regain his throne if he accepted the Covenant and the Presbyterian form of Protestantism and made it compulsory across England. He refused. Parliament sent its commissioners to the Scots at Newcastle and said it would accept Charles as king if he took the Covenant, sent the chief Royalists into exile, let Parliament control all the armed forces and chose the senior officials. He refused those terms too. Parliament then agreed to pay the Scots 400,000 pounds in back pay and expenses (according to the book) if they went home and handed the king over to Parliament's officers. The Scottish Parliament agreed, taking the sum not as the price of a king but as the real cost of the war. Charles, however, felt that he had been exchanged for gold. He was then sent as Parliament's prisoner to Holmby House in Northamptonshire (January 1647).
The English army, camped at Saffron Walden, about sixty-four kilometers from London, reminded the nation of its victories and asked for rewards to match. Keeping some thirty thousand men (the book's figure) had forced Parliament to double the taxes of Charles's time, and yet the soldiers' pay was four to ten months in arrears. Besides, the Independent Puritans, beaten in Parliament, were gaining power in the army, and Cromwell, their leader, was accused of ambitions that did not fit with Parliament's independence. Worse, in his regiments there were men who rejected every mark of church and state rank and demanded universal elections and religious freedom. Some were anarchist communists. William Walwyn said everything should be held in common, in which case there would be no need of government, since there would be no thief or criminal. John Lilburne, who grew bolder after each arrest and punishment, was 'the most popular man in England.' Cromwell was also counted among the believers in equality; although he sympathized with them, he disagreed with their ideas, thinking that democracy in that age would end in anarchy.