The Great British Revolution 1639-51

 

1st Bishop’s War 1639
2nd Bishop’s War 1640
The Great Irish Rebellion 1641-49
The 1st or Great Civil War 1642-46
The 2nd Civil War 1648-49
Irish Invasion 1649-51
The 3rd Civil War 1650-51

The English Civil War was neither English, civil, nor a war,  but it managed to kill more Britons than in either WWI or WWII.  Encompassing England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales on equal footing, it is best envisaged as a revolution akin to the French and Russian Revolutions, and followed an uncannily similar path to these two subsequent risings.  It commenced with an educated merchant class revolt against a despotic monarch and moribund ruling class, followed by a series of civil wars, foreign intervention, the victorious revolutionaries' attempts at government descending into chaos, the economic collapse of the country, the liberal/socialist politicization within the broken revolutionary ranks and a powerful military backed dictator seizing power.  Seven separate civil conflicts span the period, which, eventually, was to give birth to the British Commonwealth.

The Players and Politics of the Day

"Charles I from Three Angles"

Charles Stuart, the often portrayed conceited and inept king of Britain, was unfortunate to rule at such a divided time. In many ways,  he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Charles had the difficult task of keeping the peace in times of increasing extremism. If he gave concessions to Catholics, he was accused of popery by the Protestants. However, if he bowed down to Protestant pressure, it caused unrest among the Catholics, and,  if he came up with a compromise solution,  he was condemned by both sides.

Charles, however, did have Catholic sympathies. His family had become Protestants themselves out of pragmatism, not belief. His wife was a Catholic and his closest ties were with powerful English Catholic families. 

England and Wales were religiously diverse countries and the largest single denomination was Calvinism. Presbyterianism was also popular with a quite large and powerful Catholic population existing, especially in the north west. In practice,  the English Government, in a climate of increasing Puritanism, at least tried to practice religious tolerance.

Scotland was a Presbyterian country.  It had an extremely militant Protestant sect with an intense fear and hatred of Catholicism, but it had a small Catholic minority living in the western highlands. Presbyterians also disliked Calvinism.

Ireland had been separately invaded by England and Scotland, with many Scottish Presbyterian settlers in the north who despised the Irish and English in the south. Many of the English settlers were Catholics fleeing Puritanism and integrated quickly in the population.  They were called the ‘old‘ English.

The countries unified when England made the king of Scotland, the king of England as well.  A difference, however, existed in the form of monarchy in the two countries. In Scotland, the king was a European-style absolute monarch enjoying unchecked power. In England, the monarch's power was checked by Parliament. Charles was also a Stuart, so he disliked the English style of monarchy intensely and sought to rule England as absolute monarch, the way he did Scotland.

Parliament could not form without order of the king, so it was unable to rule without him. The king's laws had to be passed in Parliament, so that, without Parliament,  the king couldn’t rule. Parliament refused to cooperate to pass his laws giving Charles the absolute power he desired, and, instead, wanted to pass laws reducing his power.  To stop them, Charles refused to call Parliament, and a long stalemate occurred, leaving England without an effective government for many years.

The stalemate was finally broken and Charles attempted to check the fervent Presbyterianism of Scotland. In 1639, Charles, through the head of the church of Scotland, sent a revised bible to Scotland and the British revolution began……


1st Bishop’s War 1639

Outraged at the attempts of a Catholic sympathizer king to try and control the Scottish Kirk, a powerful Scottish assembly formed, signing a Covenant to defend Scottish religion and abolishing the king’s appointed Kirk authorities altogether. Charles feared the loss of his absolute monarchy in Scotland and decided to crush the new Scottish assembly quickly. But he faced a problem.  He needed to raise an English army, but, to effectively do so, he would need the approval of Parliament, which he did not wish to call.  Instead, he was forced to form a makeshift force of local militia, mostly from his supporters in northwestern Catholic areas.

The Royalist army marched north, but the green troops were soundly defeated by the Scots Covenant forces. Charles was forced to sign the humiliating Pacification of Berwick not only giving in to all Scottish demands, but agreeing to share power in Scotland with the Covenant Assembly .


2nd Bishop’s War 1640

Reeling from his defeat of the year before and his loss of absolute monarchy in Scotland, Charles wanted to destroy the Covenant, but lacked the military capacity to do so.  In 1640, he finally relented and recalled the English Parliament to try and get them to raise funds and the army. However, the Parliament proved a disaster, with many English Parliamentarians showing open support for the Covenanters, and Charles disbanded the Parliament no better off. Charles looked elsewhere for troops for his war. Once again, raising his loyal support in England mostly from the catholic northwest, this time he bolstered them with mercenaries from Ireland. This move incensed English Puritans, as inviting Irish Catholic troops onto English soil to attack their Scottish Protestant brothers was little short of dealing with the devil.

The Covenanters, however, reacted quickly to the move and, almost to the cheers of English Parliamentarians, launched a pre-emptive invasion of England, destroying the Royalist/Irish army. Charles then had the even more humiliating Treaty of Ripon imposed upon him, where he not only assented to let the Scottish army occupy the north of England, but was forced to pay for it’s occupation too. The final insult was that the Covenanters would only negotiate terms for withdrawal with the English Parliament, and not with the king.


The Great Irish Rebellion 1641-49

The impotency of the crown in the Scottish affair had not gone unnoticed in Ireland. The disputes England and Scotland presented the Irish and Anglo-Irish ’old English’ settlers with was an opportunity to throw off the yoke of their Protestant oppressors.  In 1641, Irish rebels threw down the gauntlet and started a revolution, cannily done in the King’s name. The rebels failed to take Dublin in 1641, but instigated a major revolt against the hated Presbyterian settlers in Ulster. Within a year, they controlled half of Ireland.

In England, Charles was forced to call Parliament again.  This time Parliament agreed that an army needed sending, but could not agree on who should control it. In 1642, Parliament this time took it upon itself to raise a force by it’s own means and secured a Covenant army to invade Ireland, however, the Scots were soundly defeated by the Catholic Confederacy forces.

When war broke out between Parliament and the king in England, it became increasingly clear to many Irish that a Royal victory would be to their advantage and sent substantial troops to England to aid the king.

The importance of Ireland was not lost to Parliament and Covenant who, despite their initial defeats, were to feed more armies into Ireland, gradually resting control from 1645 onwards from the Catholic Confederacy.


The 1st or Great Civil War 1642-46

With the loss of both Ireland and Scotland, the balance of power had now shifted into the hands of Parliament. Parliament now read the riot act to the king. Executing some of his advisors, they took control of foreign policy and demanded control of the army by passing an Ordinance that replaced it‘s commanders with Parliamentarian ones.

England had changed a great deal in the 17th century.  A rich merchant and artisan class had risen and the feudalist nobility was increasingly becoming an impoverished anachronism, kept only in power by tradition and royal favor. Parliament’s militancy was fed by this new trade class, their Puritanism fueled it and a strong belief in radical social reform permeated throughout. The old nobility feared this change and saw the king as a conserving force for the old ways. So just as a Parliamentary faction sprang up to challenge the old order, a Royalist faction also existed to conserve it.

Charles assembled his Royalist supporters to take council. They moved to York and formed a rival Parliament. Over the summer, the two Parliaments each tried to rule the country.  Charles ordered the army to disobey the Ordinance, but it became increasingly clear that the army was taking its orders from the London Parliament. Charles, in response, began to form his own army and on the 23rd of August, he formally declared war.

At the outbreak of war, Parliament controlled London. Charles, from his new capital in Oxford, controlled the midlands. The north and southwest were disputed by rival Royalist and Parliamentarian forces. Parliament had the navy, the armories, and the treasury, but its larger, well supplied armies lacked experienced leadership, and its command structure was constantly interfered with by Parliament. The Royalists, however, despite their lack of resources, possessed all the professional soldiers. The result being that the war stalemated for the first year, with neither side gaining an advantage.

In 1643, it was clear that only outside intervention would tip the war in one's side favor. Charles looked to French, Dutch and Irish aid. Parliament turned to Scotland. Covenant realized that if the Royalists won the war, they would be next, and saw a Parliament victory to be in their best interests.  However, they still stayed shy of joining, seeing an opportunity of influencing English politics in their favor.  Eventually, they were persuaded to join by the promise of ‘reform the English church’ by John Pym, the English Parliamentary leader. To the Scots, this vague statement was interpreted as Presbyterianism and Sealed Knot was formerly signed.  In late 1643, the Scottish army crossed the border into England.

In 1644, a large Royalist army was besieged by a Parliamentary army. Another Parliamentary army and the Scottish army marched to join up with the siege. A second royalist army was quickly dispatched to end the siege, before the three enemy armies could link up.  They arrived too late, and the five (5) armies met. Marston Moor was the decisive battle of the war, where two armies and almost half the available Royalist field-able troops were eliminated, as well as the loss of the whole north of England to Parliament. From then on,  the war became a cleaning up operation for Parliament, which was to drag on until 1646.


The 2nd Civil War 1648-49

After the end of hostilities, the Parliament began to fall into disarray. The death of John Pym from cancer, before the end of the war, had denied Parliament it’s great post war leader. Relations with Scotland also deteriorated as they demanded the imposition of Presbyterianism on England, in line with Pym’s vague deception.

Parliament never planned to depose the king,  but just to turn him into a constitutional monarch. Charles saw the disunity in Parliament, the dissatisfaction of the radical army with the lack of reform and the Scottish situation, and played a double bluff. While seemingly negotiating the terms of his new role of impotent monarchy, he sought invasions of England by France and Holland, promised the Scots the imposition of Presbyterianism if they attacked their former allies, and recruited forces loyal to him in England.

It all came to a head, in 1648, when Charles escaped imprisonment to the Isle of Wight and Royalist forces rose up in support of a Scottish invasion, this time on the Royalist’s side. Simultaneously, the Anglo-Scottish army in Ireland declared for the king. However, the New Model Army responded well, crushed the Scots army quickly, and began the lengthy business of besieging the Royalist towns.

In 1649 the King was tried for inciting a foreign invasion of England and was executed for high treason.



Irish Invasion 1649-51

Charles II

With Charles dead, a whole new set of woes faced the Parliamentarians. Charles I’s son, Charles II, was now unofficially king of England, Ireland and Scotland. During the years of peace, the English army had made good gains in Ireland against the Confederacy, but, during the 2nd Civil War, had lost them again. Worse still,  the Confederacy now controlled the whole country, with the exception of Londonderry and Dublin, where they besieged the English army. News reached Parliament that Charles II planned to go to Ireland to join them.

The New Model Army was now dispatched to Ireland, and, in the most brutal of the conflicts, defeated the Confederacy. 
The 3rd Civil War 1650-51