Abstract
When the New Model Army marched on London to begin its coup d’état in the first days of December 1648, it seemed as though the trial of Charles I would not be long in coming.1 With Pride’s Purge of 6 and 7 December, the chief obstacle to a trial, the Presbyterian majority in the House of Commons, was removed within a matter of days. The House of Lords, which contained the most vociferous enthusiasts for the Newport Treaty, the most recent attempt to negotiate with the king, seemed set for political extinction. ‘I believe [the army] will level the Lords’ house to the other’, concluded Sir Roger Burgoyne on hearing the army’s agenda for radical change, its Remonstrance of November 1648, read in the House of Commons.2 Once the Lords were out of the way, nothing would stand between the army and its prime objective, ‘justice against the grand delinquent, Charles Stuart’.
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Notes
David Underdown, Pride’s Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, OUP, 1971), p. 168 (for quotation); see also, Gardiner, Civil War, IV, pp. 285–6; cf.
Antonia Fraser, Cromwell: Our Chief of Men (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973), pp. 274–5.
Graham Edwards, The Last Days of Charles I (Stroud, Sutton, 1999), p. 97.
Abbott, Writings, I, p. 718. Denbigh’s visit to the Council of Officers is briefly mentioned in Ian Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1645–53 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1992), p. 298.
William Erbery, The Lord of Hosts: or God Guarding the Camp of the Saints ([24 Dec.] 1648, E477/22), pp. 7–8; A Declaration of the Officers Belonging to the Brigade of Colonel John Lambert ([20 Dec.] 1648, E477/10), pp. 4–5.
Pembroke nominated Bulstrode Whitelocke as his deputy in the place: BL, Add. MS 37344, fol. 236v. For Charles I writing to Pembroke in his capacity as Constable, see Sir Thomas Herbert, Memoirs of the Two Last Years of the Reign of King Charles I (London, 1839), p. 148.
Rushworth, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State (7 vols, London, 1659–1701), Part IV, II, p. 1366 (for Fairfax and Cromwell); Ireton’s presence is mentioned by Nedham: Bodl. MS Clarendon 34, fol. 12v: [Nedham] to [Nicholas], 21 Dec. 1648.
For the mutiny see, Robert Ashton, Counter-Revolution: the Second Civil War and its Origins, 1646–48 (New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 84–5, 438–48.
For the background, see Simon Groenveld, ‘The English Civil War as a Cause of the First Anglo-Dutch War, 1640–1652’, HJ, XXX (1987), p. 566.
For Willem II, see Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford, OUP, 1995), pp. 595–609.
and his ‘The Courts of the House of Orange, c.1580–1795’, in John Adamson, ed., The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture under the Ancien Régime, 1500–1750 (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), p. 130.
Thomas Carte, The Life o fJames Butler, Duke of Ormond (6 vols, Oxford, OUP, 1851).
Patrick Little, ‘The Marquess of Ormond and the English Parliament, 1645–47’, in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon, eds, The Dukes of Ormond, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Boydell, 2000), pp. 83–99.
A Declaration of the Lord Lieutenant General of Ireland ([27 Nov.] 1648, E473/25), p. 4; for the use of the term ‘Independent’ in Ireland, see John Adamson, ‘Strafford’s Ghost: the British Context of Viscount Lisle’s Lieutenancy of Ireland’, in Jane Ohlmeyer, ed., Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–1660 (Cambridge, CUP, 1995), pp. 156–7.
John A. Murphy, ‘The Politics of the Munster Protestants, 1641–49’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, LXXVI (1971), p. 18.
Heads of the Charge against the King, p. 5. The body referred to as the ‘General Council of the Army’ after the second civil war was one and the same as the General Council of Officers, the title by which it was more commonly known; on the nomenclature, see Austin Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen: the General Council of the Army and its Debates, 1647–48 (Oxford, OUP, 1987), p. 324.
M. Perceval-Maxwell, ‘Ireland and Scotland, 1638 to 1648’, in John Morrill, ed., The Scottish National Covenant in its British Context (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1990), pp. 195, 207.
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Adamson, J. (2001). The Frighted Junto: Perceptions of Ireland, and the Last Attempts at Settlement with Charles I. In: Peacey, J. (eds) The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403932815_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403932815_3
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