CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR.
1642-1651.
Nine years of almost continuous war, broken by only one short interval in 1647-48, followed the raising of the royal standard at Nottingham, on the 22nd of August, 1642. The first half of the contest (1642-46) may be defined as the struggle against the person of Charles, the second as the struggle against the principle of kingly government after Charles himself had fallen.
Principles of the two parties.—The king.
When the war began there was hardly a man on either side who did not believe that he was fighting in behalf of constitutional monarchy. The king and his party disavowed all intention of restoring autocratic government. On the royal standard and the royal coinage Charles bade the motto be placed, "I will defend the laws of England, the liberties of Parliament, and the Protestant religion." He declared that he was in arms to protect the old constitution against the encroachments of a Parliamentary faction who wished to degrade the crown and to destroy the Church.
The Parliamentarians.
The followers of Pym and Hampden, on the other hand, were equally loud in protesting that they were in arms only to protect the ancient liberties of the realm, not to set up a new polity. They professed the greatest respect for the Crown, used the king's name in all their acts and documents, and stated that they were only anxious to come to terms with him on conditions which should give sufficient guarantees for the future welfare of the realm.
Mutual mistrust.
But there was a fatal weakness in the programme, both of the royal and the Parliamentary party. The king's friends could never trust the Parliament's professions, because they believed it to be led by a band of fanatical schismatics. The Parliamentarians could never bring themselves to confide in the ruler against whom there stood the evil record of the years 1629-1640, and the even more discreditable incident of the attempt to seize the five members. When two enemies cannot trust each other's plighted word, they can do nothing but fight out their quarrel to the bitter end.
Local distribution of the parties.
At the moment when Charles marched from Nottingham, and Lord Essex from London, in August, 1642, neither party had yet any correct notion as to its own or its enemy's strength. In every county and borough of England each side had a following; as to which following was the stronger in each case, it was hard to make a guess. One thing only was clear—rural England was, on the whole, likely to cleave to the king; urban England to oppose him. Wherever the towns lay thick, Puritanism was strong; London, the populous Eastern Counties, Kent, the cluster of growing places on the borders of Yorkshire and Lancashire, from Leeds to Liverpool, were all Parliamentarian strongholds. On the other hand, in the West and the North, and among the Welsh hills, the Church was still omnipotent, and Nonconformity was weak. These districts were led by the local peers, and still more by the county gentry, and of both those classes a large majority held to the king.