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was no longer acting as a consensual body, but was increasingly partisan. Members were actively courting public opinion and were certainly not trying particularly hard to put an end to street politics. Executive powers were being claimed too: in the fevered last weeks of December, Parliament had called out military forces on its own authority, and the Common Council of the City of London had formed a Committee of Safety with similarly questionable powers. Most importantly of all, the King had removed himself from London. In that sense, and many others, parliamentary politics in England had collapsed; the nation’s ills were no longer being addressed by the King-in-Parliament.

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Paper Combats

The Battle for the Provinces

Parliament had failed as a forum in which to express and reconcile political differences and could not hope to enjoy that function again until the King returned, along with those members who now defected.1 A recurring theme of subsequent negotiations was to find terms on which the King could return to London, a necessary preliminary to the resumption of this role. In the spring of 1642, however, parliamentary politics as they were normally understood had broken down, but there was no alternative way forward. As a consequence emerging royalist and parliamentarian parties battled for control of the language of constitutional moderation and of provincial institutions, appealing to wider publics and mobilizing support for their favoured projects and platforms.

In the immediate aftermath of the attempt on the Five Members the political temperature was very high. The arsenal assembled for the Scottish wars was in Hull and the King made a preliminary attempt to take control of it by issuing the Earl of Newcastle with a commission as governor of the town. Parliament hastily empowered Sir John Hotham to secure the arsenal in the name of King and Parliament, and a hasty journey up the Great North Road thwarted the royal plan. On 12 January, Colonel Lunsford assembled some of his Cavaliers at Kingston, where the Surrey arsenal was kept. There they met Lord George Digby, sent over from Hampton Court, and it was assumed that the plan was to arm enough men to secure Portsmouth for the King. When the King moved from the palace at Hampton Court to the castle at Windsor, on 13 January, it was easy to believe the worst, and there were rumours of wagons of arms heading for Windsor in the days afterwards.2 On 15 January men of strong convictions in the Commons, including Oliver Cromwell, called for the creation of a committee to put the kingdom into a posture of defence and on 18 January that committee proposed that the militia should be mobilized by the authority of a parliamentary ordinance – that is, without the King’s assent. This was an issue of unmistakable constitutional significance, and one which forced many allegiances later in the summer. The previous day, prompted by Pym, a Committee of the Whole House requested the dismissal of the King’s entire Privy Council, to be replaced by men appointed with the advice of the Houses. The Attorney General was impeached for agreeing to issue the charges against the Five Members and on 20 January the Commons ordered that a printed letter be sent to the sheriffs in all counties requiring all adult males to swear the Protestation.3

Taken together these were remarkably provocative measures. Parliament would have taken control of the militia and of whom the King should take as advisers, and was at the same time appealing directly to the people as the defenders of the Church of England. The use of ordinances (legislation passed on the authority of Parliament but without royal consent) seemed also to threaten fundamental constitutional principles. It was certainly a ticklish issue. No-one argued that Parliament could legislate alone: statutes required the royal assent. Parliament, however, could be said to be serving as a Great Council to the monarch, akin to the Privy Council. Just as the King could make proclamations in the absence of a parliament, so long as they did not