Abstract
The history of parliament’s policy toward the royalists begins with an attack on certain of the king’s advisers styled delinquents by the party at Westminster. One of the nineteen propositions sent to Charles at York in July 1642 called for censure and punishment of all delinquents.1 Although at first no names were mentioned, later the framers of parliament’s program grew more specific. In the meantime, for all practical purposes, anyone refusing to contribute to parliament or otherwise evincing disinclination toward its measures was treated as a delinquent. Members of parliament who deserted the Houses to join the king were especially incriminated, nine of the peers who went to York being formally impeached, and more than fifty members of the Commons being expelled during the first four months of the war. 2 Arrests were common among those suspected of forwarding the king’s interests. Lord Montague of Boughton and the earls of Berkshire and Bath were among the first to be seized, and by August 1643 the private houses in London utilized as prisons were alarmingly full, and parliament resolved to confine delinquents on board ships in the Thames. 3 Public antagonism toward parliament was cause for arrest, one Elizabeth Humphries being fined forty nobles for saying, “The devil take the parliament.”
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References
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Hardacre, P.H. (1956). The Delinquents, 1643–1649. In: The Royalists during the Puritan Revolution. International Scholars Forum, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4726-4_2
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