A New blog article by Christopher Thompson
S.R.Gardiner’s History of the Great Civil War is one of
the great achievements of late-nineteenth century historiography. It provided
more than just a narrative account of the events of the 1640s in the British
Isles but also a graphic illustration of what the late Christopher Hill called
the “assumptions … of a liberal-minded middle-class Victorian Englishman.”
Much of the framework provided by these assumptions
lasted well beyond the rise of Marxist influence in the period after 1930 and
into the latter part of the twentieth century. Gardiner was certainly
responsible for the concept that, on the Long Parliament’s side in the early
stages of the English Civil War, it was possible to identify ‘peace’ and ‘war’
parties amongst partisans in the two Houses of Parliament and in the City of
London. This idea was subsequently developed by J.H.Hexter in his work, The
Reign of King Pym, published in 1941 although he elaborated on Gardiner’s
scheme by postulating the existence of a ‘middle group’ led by Pym in the House
of Commons operating between the ‘peace’ and ‘war’ parties.
Gardiner traced the origins of the ‘peace party’ to the
period after the first, indecisive battle of the Civil War at Edgehill in
October, 1642 and the subsequent advance of the King’s forces towards London.
He thought that in the City of London and in Parliament, especially in the
House of Lords, such a party was quickly formed.
Its most
respectable member in the upper chamber was “the kindly Earl of Northumberland,
always anxious for a quiet life and always distrustful of enthusiasts.” He was
supported by the former courtier, Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, and by the 4th
Earl of Pembroke, who steered a course between appeasing the King when he seemed
strongest and opposing him when Parliament seemed most likely to be victorious.
When the House of Lords proposed opening negotiations for
peace with King Charles at the end of October, a peace party formed in the
House of Commons and in the City of London numbering in its ranks lawyers like
Maynard and Whitelocke and figures like D’Ewes and Edmund Waller. Gardiner
considered that they “all shared in the common weakness of desiring compromise,
without rising to the height from which an honourable compromise alone was
possible.
They longed for peace, but there was no intellectual
basis of peace in their minds.” As subsequent discussions in the House of
Commons in November on whether to negotiate over proposals for peace showed,
the peace party could by then count on the support of Denzil Holles, one of the
five Members Charles had attempted to arrest in January, 1642. Gardiner thought
that, between Holles and Pym, the difference was one of perception rather than
principle. “Both [the peace and war] parties preferred peace to war, but
neither party was ready to make those concessions which alone could make peace
possible. … Now members who were agreed on ecclesiastical subjects differed
politically.
Pym would have no
peace which did not bring with it Charles’s complete submission to the
directing power of Parliament and to a Puritan church. Holles and his friends
would have made concessions to Charles’s claim to rule the State, but they
expected him to abandon his own ideal of church government.
As there was not the slightest chance that he would ever
do anything of the kind, they did but beat the air.” Holles, in particular,
“was ready to ask the King to accept, in church matters, the conclusions to
which Parliament should come, upon the advice of the assembly of divines, and
to allow the punishment of such persons as had been impeached before the
outbreak of the troubles.” Gardiner concluded that, if “these were the demands
of the Peace-party, they had no more reasonable hope of winning Charles’s
assent than the proposals of their opponents.”
It was in the House of Lords where the peace party was
predominant that detailed proposals were drawn up and sent down to the House of
Commons on 20th December, 1642.
Gardiner noted that the King was, under this
scheme, to commit himself to passing such bills – presumably on church matters
– as Parliament should approve after consultation with the assembly of divines;
to allow Lord Digby and all others impeached before 1st January, 1642 to stand
their trials in Parliament; to exclude the Earls of Bristol and Hertford and
four others from office and the royal Court; to secure and vindicate the
privileges of Parliament; to assent to Bills for the payment of the
Parliament’s debts; to agree that all acts of the Privy Council should be
signed by those who advised them and to a new Militia Bill as well as
reinstating the Earl of Northumberland as Lord High Admiral. “They asked for
ministerial responsibility and for a Puritan settlement of the Church – for all
those concessions, in short, to which both Charles and his partisans were most
bitterly hostile.”
The peace party “had the good wishes of the vast majority
of the nation, yet, for all that, it was from the first predestined to failure.
There was not the smallest reason to suppose either that the terms which the
Houses now offered would ever be accepted by the King, or that they would
themselves be ready to accept any terms which the King was likely to propose.”
Pym and the war party knew that: they appreciated that Charles could not be
trusted and that a Puritan England could only be created by the sword. As the
negotiations at Oxford in the early months of 1643 proved, they were right.
There are a number of points that arise from Gardiner’s
claims. First of all, there is the matter of the relationship between
supporters of the ‘peace party’ in the House of Lords and those who shared
their views in the House of Commons (as well as in the City of London). How they may have co-operated is left
entirely unexplored. Some co-ordination is implied by Gardiner himself. Secondly, there is the issue of the extent to
which Holles and his allies were prepared to make concessions to the King on
the degree to which he might rule in the State if not in the church. The
propositions presented to Charles in Oxford on 1st February, 1643 envisaged
that there should be an Act of Parliament to settle the militia on land and sea
as well as command of the country’s forts and ports “in such a manner as shall
be agreed on by both Houses.”
Senior judicial positions were to be held by men
nominated in the propositions as long as they behaved well. Future foreign
policy was to be predicated upon an alliance with the United Provinces and
other Protestant princes. Popish recusants were to be repressed by law while
those who had had a hand in promoting the Irish rebellion of October, 1641 were
to be excepted from any general pardon. Those amongst supporters of the Long
Parliament who had lost their offices were to be compensated and restored to
their posts. Certain named individuals who had counselled or supported the King
in this burgeoning conflict were to be either barred from office or the Court
or punished. All this was in addition to the abolition of Episcopal government
in the Church of England and its remodelling as Parliament after advice from an
assembly of divines should determine.
There was precious little sign of Holles or the peace
party allowing latitude to the King in the government of the State as Gardiner
had claimed: on the contrary, his supporters in the State and in the Church
were to be proscribed and punished while the levers of power and ministerial
responsibility were to be exercised by men responsible to Parliament. Gardiner
was certainly right in thinking that such proposals were unacceptable at that
time to Charles and his supporters but how could Gardiner be sure that the
peace party had the support of the vast majority of the nation or, indeed, that
it was predestined to failure. He could not have done so unless he was reading
the events of 1642-1643 backwards and looking to the emergence of a
constitutional monarchy as preordained.
There is another, perhaps more fundamental issue to be
addressed in future analyses. Is the ‘peace party’/’war party’ framework for
Parliamentary politics or its later derivative, the ‘peace party’/’middle
group’/’war party’ structure plausible any longer? If not, what can justifiably
be put in its place? These are questions John Adamson and David Scott may in
all likelihood answer in the near future.
