William Waller - Election To Parliament and Early Military Career

Election To Parliament and Early Military Career

In 1640 Waller was elected Member of Parliament for Andover in the Short Parliament. He was elected MP for Andover for the Long Parliament on 3 May 1642.

As a strict Presbyterian by religion, and a member of the opposition in politics, he became a prominent supporter of the cause of Parliament when the Civil War broke out in 1642. He immediately received an appointment as a colonel, and successfully concluded the Siege of Portsmouth in September 1642; later in the year he commanded the forces that captured Farnham, Winchester and other key locations in the south-west of England. At the beginning of 1643 Waller was promoted to major-general and placed in charge of operations in the region of Gloucester and Bristol. He concluded his first campaign in this theatre with a victory at Highnam and the capture of Hereford.

He was then called upon to oppose the advance of Sir Ralph Hopton and the Royalist western army, and though more or less defeated in the hard-fought battle of Lansdowne (near Bath) he was able to encircle Hopton in Devizes. However, Hopton and a relieving force from Oxford inflicted a crushing defeat upon Waller's army at the Battle of Roundway Down (13 July 1643). Hopton was Waller's intimate personal friend, and some correspondence passed between the opposing generals, a quotation from which (Gardiner, Civil War, i. 168) is given as illustrative of "the temper in which the nobler spirits on either side had entered on the war". Waller wrote:

That great God who is the searcher of my heart knows with what a sad sense I go upon this service, and with what a perfect hatred I detest this war without an enemy; but I look upon it as sent from God . . . God in his good time send us the blessing of peace and in the meantime assist us to receive it! We are both upon the stage and must act such parts as are assigned us in this tragedy, let us do it in a way of honour and without personal animosities.

The destruction of his army at Roundway scarcely affected Waller's military reputation, many reproaching Essex, the commander-in-chief, for allowing the Oxford royalists to turn against Waller. The Londoners, who had called him "William the Conqueror", recognized his skill and energy so far as willingly to raise a new army for him in London and the south-eastern counties. But from this point Waller's career is one of gradual disillusionment. His new forces were distinctively local, and, like other local troops on both sides, resented long marches and hard work far from their own counties. Only at moments of imminent danger could they be trusted to do their duty. At ordinary times, such as at the first siege of Basing House, they mutinied in face of the enemy, deserted and even marched home in formed bodies under their own officers, and their gallantry at critical moments, such as the surprise of Alton and the skirmish at the Church of St Lawrence in December 1643 and the recapture of Arundel in January 1644, only partially redeemed their general bad conduct.

Waller himself, a general of the highest skill — "the best shifter and chooser of ground" on either side - was, like Turenne, at his best at the head of a small and highly-disciplined regular army. Only a Condé or a Cromwell could have enforced discipline and soldierly spirit in such men, ill-clad and unpaid as they were, and the only military quality lacking to Waller was precisely this supreme personal magnetism.

In these circumstances affairs went from bad to worse. Though successful in stopping Hopton's second advance at Cheriton in March 1644, he was defeated by Charles I in the war of manoeuvre which ended with the action of Cropredy Bridge (June 1644), and at the Second Battle of Newbury in October his tactical success at the village of Speen led to nothing. His last expeditions were made into the west for the relief of Taunton, and in these he had Cromwell as his lieutenant-general.