No period of English history is more crowded with important events than that of the civil war. The intolerant reign of James I had brought him into conflict, not only with the religious elements in the kingdom, but also with Parliament.
Like James, his son and successor, Charles I, was a stubborn believer in the divine right of the monarch; and as James had shown throughout his reign a flagrant disregard of law, so Charles from the outset betrayed the same disposition. He surrounded himself with advisers who supported his favorite views. In the first fifteen months of his reign he summoned two parliaments only to dissolve them in anger. Next he raised money by forced loans and other expedients which were odious to many of his subjects.
For the first time England was now divided between two great parties. Matters proceeded with constantly increasing friction, and at last the struggle developed into civil war. Macaulay's summary of it, and Knight's picture of its culmination in that most melancholy tragedy, the execution of the King, cover the subject in its essential aspects, without unnecessary dealing with minor details.
LORD MACAULAY
In August, 1642, the sword was at length drawn; and soon, in almost every shire of the kingdom, two hostile factions appeared in arms against each other. It is not easy to say which of the contending parties was at first the more formidable. The Houses commanded London and the counties round London, the fleet, the navigation of the Thames, and most of the large towns and seaports. They had at their disposal almost all the military stores of the kingdom, and were able to raise duties, both on goods imported from foreign countries and on some important products of domestic industry.
King Charles was ill provided with artillery and ammunition. The taxes which he laid on the rural districts occupied by his troops produced, it is probable, a sum far less than that which the Parliament drew from the city of London alone. He relied, indeed, chiefly, for pecuniary aid on the munificence of his opulent adherents. Many of these mortgaged their land, pawned their jewels, and broke up their silver chargers and christening-bowls in order to assist him. But experience has fully proved that the voluntary liberality of individuals, even in times of the greatest excitement, is a poor financial resource when compared with severe and methodical taxation, which presses on the willing and unwilling alike.
Charles, however, had one advantage, which, if he had used it well, would have more than compensated for the want of stores and money, and which, notwithstanding his mismanagement, gave him, during some months, a superiority in the war. His troops at first fought much better than those of the Parliament. Both armies, it is true, were almost entirely composed of men who had never seen a field of battle. Nevertheless, the difference was great. The Parliamentary ranks were filled with hirelings whom want and idleness had induced to enlist. Hampden's regiment was regarded as one of the best; and even Hampden's regiment was described by Cromwell as a mere rabble of tapsters and serving-men out of place.
The royal army, on the other hand, consisted in great part of gentlemen, high-spirited, ardent, accustomed to consider dishonor as more terrible than death, accustomed to fencing, to the use of fire-arms, to bold riding, and to manly and perilous sport, which has been well called the image of war. Such gentlemen, mounted on their favorite horses, and commanding little bands composed of their younger brothers, grooms, gamekeepers, and huntsmen, were, from the very first day on which they took the field, qualified to play their part with credit in a skirmish. The steadiness, the prompt obedience, the mechanical precision of movement, which are characteristic of the regular soldier, these gallant volunteers never attained. But they were at first opposed to enemies as undisciplined as themselves, and far less active, athletic, and daring. For a time, therefore, the Cavaliers were successful in almost every encounter.
The Houses had also been unfortunate in the choice of a general. The rank and wealth of the Earl of Essex made him one of the most important members of the Parliamentary party. He had borne arms on the Continent with credit, and, when the war began, had as high a military reputation as any man in the country. But it soon appeared that he was unfit for the post of commander-in-chief. He had little energy and no originality. The methodical tactics which he had learned in the war of the Palatinate did not save him from the disgrace of being surprised and baffled by such a captain as Rupert, who could claim no higher fame than that of an enterprising partisan.
Nor were the officers who held the chief commissions under Essex qualified to supply what was wanting in him. For this, indeed, the Houses are scarcely to be blamed. In a country which had not, within the memory of the oldest person living, made war on a great scale by land, generals of tried skill and valor were not to be found. It was necessary, therefore, in the first instance, to trust untried men; and the preference was naturally given to men distinguished either by their station or by the abilities which they had displayed in Parliament.