In this preliminary trial of strength, no man was more active for the Parliament than Cromwell. On June 5th, he subscribed five hundred pounds to the fund for raising an army. Next month, after sending to his constituents at Cambridge a hundred pounds’ worth of arms at his own expense, he obtained a vote empowering them to train and exercise volunteer companies. The King sent to the university for its money and its plate, but Cromwell, aided by his brothers-in-law, Valentine Walton and John Desborough, raised men and beset the north road to intercept them. Early in August, he marched to Cambridge, seized the county magazine, and secured most of the plate, worth, it is said, twenty thousand pounds, for the Parliament’s service. At the same time he prevented the attempt to execute the commission of array in the county, and sent the heads of three of the colleges, Jesus, Queen’s, and St. John’s, prisoners to London. The House of Commons passed a vote for his indemnity, but the promptitude with which he assumed responsibility and anticipated their orders by his acts was extremely characteristic. There were many gentlemen of greater rank in Cambridge and Huntingdonshire willing to fight for the Parliament, but from the very first Cromwell’s energy and readiness to act made him a leader. At the end of August, Cromwell returned to London, and shortly afterwards joined with a troop of sixty horse the army which Parliament was gathering under the Earl of Essex.
From the moment that preparations for war began, the Parliament had two great advantages over the King, which it retained as long as the war lasted. In July, the fleet in the Downs accepted the Earl of Warwick as its admiral and declared for the Parliament. The possession of the navy meant the command of the sea and the interception of the King’s communications with the continent. He looked to Holland and France for arms and ammunition, but the parliamentary cruisers constantly captured his ships and stopped his supplies. All the chief ports were in the power of the Parliament; Charles held Newcastle and Chester, but the recapture of Portsmouth was one of the first results of the defection of the navy. Thanks to its ships, in 1643 and 1644 the Parliament was able to preserve Hull when the rest of Yorkshire was subdued, and to keep Lyme and Plymouth when the King’s forces were triumphant in the west. Thanks to its ships, the King’s plans for procuring French or Danish or Walloon mercenaries to restore his falling cause were made impossible to carry out, even if he could raise money to hire them.
The second advantage of the Parliament was that it had far more money at its disposal than the King. It was strongest in the richest parts of the country. With London and the trading classes in general devoted to it, it had no difficulty in raising loans. The possession of London and most of the seaports secured it the customs, which formed the largest and the most expansive part of the revenue of the State. As the war continued, voluntary loans developed into forced loans, customs were supplemented by the imposition of an excise, monthly assessments were levied on all counties under the Parliament’s rule, and the sequestration of the lands of Royalists provided a new source of income. Yet, great though the resources of the Parliament were, its financial system was so imperfect that after the first few months the pay of the soldiers was constantly in arrears.
On the other hand, Charles had scarcely any regular sources of income, and very little money to equip or support an army. To provide arms and ammunition for his men he was driven to pawn the Crown jewels and to mortgage the Crown lands. Loans from corporations or men of means, the sales of peerages or other titular dignities, customs duties in the few ports under his control, and contributions levied in the districts within range of his garrisons made up his scanty budget. Throughout, the King’s chief resource was the devotion of his followers. Loyal merchants in London secretly forwarded him their offerings. The University of Oxford sent him ten thousand pounds, and its colleges gave up their plate to be coined for his cause. Rich noblemen contributed regiments or troops, and poor gentlemen served at their own expense. The Marquis of Newcastle raised some thousands of men on his own estates; the Earl of Worcester and his son, Lord Herbert, furnished the King with £120,000 between March and July, 1642. Thanks to the zeal of his followers, and above all to the territorial influence of the great landowners, Charles was able ere long to oppose Parliament with forces equal to its own. At the end of August the King had with him at Nottingham only a few hundred half-armed foot. His artillery and several regiments of infantry were left behind at York, and his cavalry under Prince Rupert in the Midlands. The general of his little army told the King that he could not secure him against being taken in his bed, if the enemy made a brisk attack. The parliamentary forces assembling at Northampton amounted early in September to fourteen thousand men, and Essex had in all about twenty thousand men under his command. This was “an army which,” as the historian of the Long Parliament said, “was too great to find resistance at that time from any forces afoot in England.”
ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX.
(From Devereux’s “Lives of the Devereux.”)
But instead of hastening to crush the King while he was weak, Essex gave him time to grow strong. From Nottingham, Charles moved to Shrewsbury, increasing his forces as he went, and equipping them with weapons taken from the train-bands, or from the armouries of loyal noblemen. Essex moved to Worcester and established himself there, making no effort to find the King and fight him, and reducing his forces by leaving garrisons in different towns. Now that he had an army, Charles boldly took the offensive and marched to London, hoping to end the war at a blow. Essex hurried eastwards to defend the capital, and at Edgehill, on October 23rd, Charles was obliged to turn and give battle to his pursuer.
The two armies were now not unequally matched. Each numbered about fourteen thousand men, but the Parliamentarians were far better armed than the Royalists. Clarendon thus describes the equipment of the King’s army:
“The foot, all but 300 or 400 who marched without any weapons but cudgels, were armed with muskets, and bags for their powder, and pikes, but in the whole body there was not one pikeman who had a corselet and very few musketeers who had swords. Amongst the horse, the officers had their full desire if they were able to procure old backs and breasts and pots (i. e., helmets), with pistols or carbines for their two or three front ranks and swords for the rest; themselves and some soldiers by their example having gotten besides their pistols and swords a short poleaxe.”
The regiments who followed Essex, thanks to the Parliament’s control of money and its possession of the magazines of Hull and the Tower, were armed with more uniformity and more completeness. His musketeers had their swords, his pikemen, who constituted a third of each foot regiment, had their corselets, and his horsemen pistols and defensive armour. In both armies, the officers consisted mostly of gentlemen who had neither military training nor experience of war, mixed with a certain number of soldiers of fortune who had served in the armies of France, or Holland, or Sweden. In foot regiments, the major or lieutenant-colonel was usually an old soldier; in troops of horse, the lieutenant. “The most part of our horse were raised thus,” says a royalist playwright: “The honest country gentleman raises the troop at his own charge, then he gets a low-country lieutenant to fight his troop for him, then sends for his son from school to be cornet.”