New Model Army - Foundation

Foundation

The New Model Army was formed as a result of dissatisfaction among Parliamentarians with the conduct of the Civil War in 1644. Although the Parliamentarians had a clear advantage in financial resources and manpower over the Royalists, most of their forces were raised by local associations of counties, and could rarely be used far from their homes. As early as 2 July of that year, Sir William Waller discovered that his London-based units were refusing to campaign further afield, and wrote, "An army compounded of these men will never go through with your service, and till you have an army merely your own that you may command, it is in a manner impossible to do anything of importance."

There was also increasing dissension among Parliament's generals in the field. Parliament suspected that many of its senior officers, who were mainly Presbyterians, were inclined to favour peace with King Charles, and were conducting operations half-heartedly as a result. The Earl of Manchester was one of the prominent members favouring peace, but his Lieutenant General, Oliver Cromwell, strongly advocated fighting the war to the finish. Manchester and Cromwell clashed publicly over this issue several times. Parliament's senior commander, the Earl of Essex, was also suspected of lack of determination and was on poor terms with his subordinates. The tensions among the Parliamentarian generals became a bitter public argument after the Second Battle of Newbury. Some of them believed that King Charles's army had escaped encirclement after the battle through inaction on the part of some commanders.

On 19 November 1644, the Parliamentarian Eastern Association of counties announced that they could no longer meet the cost of maintaining their forces, which at the time provided about half the field force available to Parliament. In response, Parliament directed the Committee of Both Kingdoms, the cabinet-like body that oversaw the conduct of the War (and which included several experienced officers), to review the state of all Parliament's forces. On 19 December, the House of Commons passed the Self-denying Ordinance, which prevented members of the Houses of Lords and Commons from holding any military office. Originally a separate matter from the establishment of the New Model Army, it soon became intimately linked with it. Once the Self-denying Ordinance became Law, the Earls of Manchester and Essex, and other Presbyterian members of Parliament and peers, were removed from command in the field.

On 6 January 1645, the Committee of Both Kingdoms established the New Model Army, appointing Sir Thomas Fairfax as its Captain-General and Sir Philip Skippon as Sergeant-Major General of the Foot. The Self-denying Ordinance took time to pass the House of Lords, but came into force on 3 April 1645, about the same time as the New Model Army first took the field. Although Oliver Cromwell (who was the Member of Parliament for Cambridge) handed over his command of the Army's cavalry when the Ordinance was enacted, Fairfax requested his services when another officer (Colonel Bartholomew Vermuyden) wished to emigrate. Cromwell was commissioned Colonel of Vermuyden's former regiment of horse, and was appointed Lieutenant General of the Horse in June. Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton (the New Model Army's Commissary General, or second in command of the cavalry) were two of the only four exceptions to the Self-denying Ordinance, the other two being local commanders in Cheshire and North Wales. They were allowed to serve under a series of three-month temporary commissions that were continually extended.

Parliament decreed the consolidation of most of their forces outside the New Model Army into two other locally recruited armies, those of the Northern Association under Sydenham Poyntz and the Western Association under Edward Massey. They were intended to reduce the remaining Royalist garrisons in their areas and prevent Royalist incursions. Some of their regiments were reorganised and incorporated into the New Model Army during and after the Second English Civil War.