Charles I of England - English Civil War

English Civil War

The English Civil War had not yet started, but both sides began to arm as the summer of 1642 progressed. Following futile negotiations, Charles raised the royal standard in Nottingham on 22 August 1642. He then set up his court at Oxford, when his government controlled roughly the Midlands, Wales, the West Country and north of England. Parliament remained in control of London and the south-east as well as East Anglia. Charles raised an army using the archaic method of the Commission of Array.

The First Civil War started on 26 October 1642 with the inconclusive Battle of Edgehill and continued indecisively through 1643 and 1644, until the Battle of Naseby tipped the military balance decisively in favour of Parliament. There followed a great number of defeats for the Royalists, and then the Siege of Oxford, from which Charles escaped in April 1646. He put himself into the hands of the Scottish Presbyterian army at Newark, and was taken to nearby Southwell while his "hosts" decided what to do with him. The Presbyterians finally arrived at an agreement with Parliament and delivered Charles to them in 1647.

He was imprisoned at Holdenby House in Northamptonshire, until cornet George Joyce took him by force to Newmarket in the name of the New Model Army. At this time mutual suspicion had developed between the New Model Army and Parliament, and Charles was eager to exploit it. He was then transferred first to Oatlands and then Hampton Court, where more involved but fruitless negotiations took place. He was persuaded that it would be in his best interests to escape – perhaps abroad, to France, or to the custody of Colonel Robert Hammond, Parliamentary Governor of the Isle of Wight. He decided on the last course, believing Hammond to be sympathetic, and fled on 11 November. Hammond, however, was opposed to Charles, whom he confined in Carisbrooke Castle.

From Carisbrooke, Charles continued to try to bargain with the various parties. In direct contrast to his previous conflict with the Scottish Kirk, Charles on 26 December 1647 signed a secret treaty with the Scots. Under the agreement, called the "Engagement", the Scots undertook to invade England on Charles's behalf and restore him to the throne on condition of the establishment of Presbyterianism for three years.

The Royalists rose in July 1648, igniting the Second Civil War, and as agreed with Charles, the Scots invaded England. Most of the uprisings in England were put down by forces loyal to the Rump Parliament (or Cromwell) after little more than skirmishes, but uprisings in Kent, Essex, and Cumberland, the rebellion in Wales, and the Scottish invasion involved the fighting of pitched battles and prolonged sieges. But with the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Preston, the Royalists lost any chance of winning the war.

It was not the initial intent of this Long Parliament to abjure the King's person. A biography of Sir Henry Vane, a "prominent member of all the commissions, which were appointed to treat with the King," describes his attitude: "During the negotiations with the King, he manifested a fixed resolution to do all that could be done to make the best of the opportunity the country then enjoyed, of securing to itself the blessings of liberty." Eventually King Charles I's terms of reforming the government as proposed by the Long Parliament were accepted by the House at a vote of 129 to 83 on 1 December 1648. This allowed for the King's restoration and the end of the stalemate between Parliament and the King, although Oliver Cromwell and Sir Henry Vane the Younger both opposed this measure. This should have ended the Civil War and restored the King with very limited powers. Instead Colonel Thomas Pride arrested 41 of the members of Parliament who had voted in favour of the restoration of the King, and excluded others. Others stayed away voluntarily. The remainder of the Long Parliament was called the Rump Parliament. Sr. Henry Vane temporarily removed himself from public service as a member of Parliament and Secretary of the Navy, and rendered himself an outspoken critic of both the King and eventually the Commonwealth, though providing for later generations a model for republican and constitutional reform which was remembered and followed as a model at the time of the American Revolution.