The Civil War: the victory of Parliament

Representation by an unknown artist of the
parliamentary victory at Naseby, 14 June 1645
Public domain

1643: was anyone winning?

By the end of 1643 it looked as if the war was being fought to a stalemate, with neither side delivering a knock-out blow. If anything, the psychological advantage lay with the king: Parliament had to win, he had only to fight for a draw. Parliamentary leaders like the earls of Essex and Manchester, the commander of the Eastern Association, believed that in the end there would have to be a negotiated settlement with the king.

However, in retrospect, it can be seen that three factors favoured Parliament:

1. Pym’s excise tax was unpopular but successful.
2. The Scots alliance had added 20,000 soldiers to the parliamentary forces.
3. The Eastern Association under the earl of Manchester was proving an efficient military force.

The Eastern Association

The most effective of the parliamentary armies was the Eastern Association under Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester.  In January 1644 Manchester he his cavalry commander, Oliver Cromwell, pushed through Parliament a financial ordinance increasing by 50 per cent the monthly assessments levied on the individual counties of the Eastern Association and putting the money in the hands of a committee at Cambridge under Manchester’s control. In February Cromwell was appointed Lieutenant-General of the Association.


With a much more secure financial basis, Manchester began to choose his officers for their ability and military experience rather than their social standing, creating for the first time a truly professional army, now totalling 14,000 men. However, the earl of Essex became incensed at what he saw as the build-up of a private army that undermined his own authority as the leader of the parliamentary army.

Marston Moor

On 19 January 1644 a Scots army marched into England and in May a combined Scots-English army began the siege of York. The king then ordered Rupert to march on York to relieve the city.

On 2 July the combined armies of the Scots, Sir Thomas Fairfax;s Fairfax’s Yorkshire troops, and the Eastern Association of Manchester and Cromwell confronted Rupert at Marston Moor, and were completely victorious. Royalist dead were estimated at over 4,000. They included Prince Rupert's hunting poodle, Boy. Cromwell said, 'God made them as stubble to our swords'. On 20 July York surrendered. In October the Scots took Newcastle and sacked the city. The king had lost the north.

Still stalemate?

However, the war was by no means over. The royalists were still strong in the south-west and in Wales, and they were raising money by ways very similar to parliament's. At the end of August Essex's army was defeated at Lostwithiel, leaving his military reputation in tatters. On 27 October Manchester and Waller defeated the king at the second battle of Newbury but failed to follow it up. The king retreated to Oxford with an army of 15,000 and the campaigning season for that year came to an end. If anything the advantage still lay with the king, who seemed to have the greater will to win. At crucial moments in the war, Essex and Manchester had shown a worrying failure of nerve.

Manchester and Cromwell divide

In October 1644 in the post mortem after Parliament’s failure to follow up its victory Newbury, Manchester said, 

‘If we beat the king ninety-nine times, he will be king still and his posterity, and we subjects still; but if he beat us but once we should be hanged and our posterity be undone.’ 

Cromwell replied, 

‘My lord, if this be so, why did we take up arms at first? This is against fighting hereafter. If so, let us make peace, be it never so base’.

This signalled an open quarrel between Cromwell and Manchester over military strategy. Was Parliament to press for negotiations with the king or go all out for a decisive victory?

The creation of the New Model Army

In 1645 the parliamentary victory came remarkably quickly due in large part to the creation of the New Model Army. 

The origins of the New Model Army went back to the Commons debates in November and December 1644 when Cromwell launched a daring attack on his superior, Manchester. On 9 December he told the House 

‘If the army be not put into another method, and the war more vigorously prosecuted, the people can bear the war no longer, and will enforce you to a dishonourable peace'. 

The New Model Army Ordinance of 17 February 1645 merged some of the existing armies into an army of ten cavalry regiments of 600 men each, 12 infantry regiments of 1,200 men and one regiment of 1,000 dragoons (infantrymen on horseback). This army would have undisputed first call on Parliament’s resources.  The over-riding criterion was military efficiency not political or religious complexion. Sir Thomas Fairfax, one of the few senior commanders who was neither a peer nor a member of parliament, was appointed commander-in-chief.  

Sir Thomas Fairfax
by Robert Walker
Public domain

On 3 April Parliament passed the Self-Denying Ordinance, which made it illegal for any member of the Commons or Lords to hold an army command. The principal motive was to expel Essex and Manchester from the army, and they had already resigned their commands on the preceding day. Cromwell, who was MP for Cambridge, should have resigned and offered to do so - but he was allowed to stay on and in the summer he was appointed Lieutenant-General.

The significance of the New Model Army

Samuel Cooper's portrait of
Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)
Public domain

It is possible to exaggerate the importance of the New Model Army; it was made up of men from the existing parliamentary armies, and it contained a proportion of unwilling conscripts. Even at full strength it accounted for less than half the men under arms in England. However, it offered regular pay, supported by fixed taxes on the counties. It was the first English army to wear uniform: red coats faced with blue (Fairfax’s colour) and grey breeches.  It contained a larger proportion of ideologically committed soldiers and officers than any other army that had taken the field.  It was also led by commanders with a good sense of strategy - they never engaged with the enemy unless their own forces were much greater in number. 

Although it was led by 'gentlemen', it was more meritocratic than any previous army. In September 1643 Cromwell had said  

'I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else.'

This was dangerously egalitarian language

Naseby

On 14 June 1645 the New Model Army won its famous victory at Naseby, near Market Harborough, a battle that has been described as the most important on English soil since Hastings. Less than three hours after it began the king was in flight, his infantry was scattered, his guns destroyed, and his treasure and baggage-train taken. 1,000 royalists were killed (and the victory was disfigured by a massacre of between 100 and 400 camp followers), but the New Model Army lost no more than 200. It had become a confident, disciplined fighting force. 

The end of the war

Naseby was followed up by further parliamentary victories in both England and Scotland. In September the Royalists faced a double disaster; Rupert surrendered Bristol and the King's ally in Scotland, the Marquis of Montrose, was defeated at Philiphaugh on the Scottish borders.

In the early hours of 27 April, Charles slipped out of Oxford disguised as a groom. On 5 May 1646 Charles gave himself up to the astonished Scots at Southwell near Newark. There was method in this extraordinary decision, as he had great hopes of being able to play on Parliament’s divisions. 

On 24 June Oxford surrendered and the first Civil War was over.  

Conclusion

On 23 March, 1646, Sir Jacob Astley and his force of 3,000 men had been defeated at Stow-on-the-Wold. He told his captors, 

‘You have done your work, boys, you may now go play if you will not fall out among yourselves.’  

His words were prophetic. Had the English fought simply to give victory to the Scots? And now that the war was over, would it be possible to reach a settlement with the king? And what was to be done with the Army?