On the other side, their demand, as it presented itself to the minds of the Parliamentarians, was rather defensive than aggressive in its intention. Without this transference of sovereignty, they held it impossible to transmit to their descendants the self-government they had received from their ancestors.
“The question in dispute between us and the King’s party,” says Ludlow, “was, as I apprehended, whether the King should govern as a god by his will and the nation be governed by force like beasts; or whether the people should be governed by laws made by themselves, and live under a government derived from their own consent.”
Only the sword could decide. On July 4th, Parliament appointed a Committee of Safety; on July 6th, they resolved to raise ten thousand men; on July 9th, they appointed the Earl of Essex their general. The King set up his standard at Nottingham on August 22nd.
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST CAMPAIGN
1642
From the day when King Charles raised his standard at Nottingham, and even before that date, England was divided into two camps, according as men elected to obey the King or the Parliament. The country was about to learn by experience what civil war meant, and to suffer as it had not suffered since the fifteenth century. In the Wars of the Roses, two rival houses had laid claim to the allegiance of the people; now its obedience was demanded by two rival authorities. Moreover, apart from the question which authority ought to be obeyed, the fact that the Parliament itself was divided made a choice difficult and obscured the main issue. The House of Commons was no longer the almost unanimous body which it had been in November, 1640. About 175 members followed the King’s flag, while nearly three hundred remained at Westminster. In the Upper House the preponderance was overwhelmingly on the King’s side. Rather more than thirty peers threw in their lot with the popular party, while about eighty supported the King, and about twenty took no part in the struggle.
Very various, therefore, were the motives which led men to choose one side or the other. To many peers, the fate of the King and the nobility seemed inseparably linked together, and like Newcastle they loved monarchy as the foundation and support of their own greatness. Some, lately ennobled by Charles and his father, had personal obligations to the House of Stuart, which they were ready to repay by any sacrifice. “Had I millions of crowns or scores of sons,” wrote Lord Goring to his wife, “the King and his cause should have them all with better will than to eat if I were starving.... I had all from the King, and he hath all again.” Of the parliamentary peers, a few like Brooke, Saye, and Warwick were ardent Puritans and were moved by religious zeal quite as much as by political motives. In Northumberland, “the proudest man alive,” the independent spirit of the feudal baron seemed to live again. Holland was ambitious and in disfavour at Court; he hoped to be one of the Parliament’s generals. Others thought the Parliament stronger than the King, and were resolved to be on the winning side. “Pembroke and Salisbury,” says Clarendon, “had rather the King and his posterity should be destroyed than that Wilton should be taken from the one and Hatfield from the other.”
Amongst the gentry, there was the same mixture of motives. The bulk of them indeed adhered to the King, but great numbers supported the Parliament, especially in districts where Puritanism was prevalent.
Of the towns, cathedral cities such as York and Chester were usually royalist in feeling. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge were for the King, but the representatives of the towns were in each case Parliamentarians. “London,” which Milton calls “the mansion house of liberty,” and Clarendon, “the sink of the ill-humours of the kingdom,” was the headquarters of Puritanism, and most manufacturing or trading towns were anti-royalist. “Manchester,” says Clarendon, “from the beginning, out of that factious humour which possessed most corporations and the pride of their wealth, opposed the King and declared magisterially for the Parliament.” Birmingham, though little more than a village, “was of as great fame for hearty, wilful, affected disloyalty to the King as any place in England.” The clothing towns of the West Riding of Yorkshire and the manufacturing districts of Somersetshire and Gloucestershire were also hostile to Charles. In the latter counties, according to Clarendon,