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By Root 1406 0

by way of consolation the appointment of Sir George Carteret, a man trusted by him, as vice-admiral. The military effects of this were soon to be felt, for Warwick, acting under Parliament’s orders, had sent warships to lie in the Humber before the King’s confrontation with Hotham. Their presence there had strengthened Hotham’s position, of course, and in May the fleet brought the arms to London. Having ignored direct orders from the King the commanders of the fleet were thanked for their fidelity by the House of Lords. The military benefits of parliamentary command of the navy were significant in the coming years.25

In the aftermath of these events the constitutional struggle and attendant pamphlet war reached new heights. In this round of argument the intention seems even more clearly to have been to appeal for support rather than to achieve reconciliation.26 On 5 May, Parliament ordered that the Militia Ordinance be put into execution, provoking an immediate printed answer from the King and, on 27 May, a formal proclamation against the ordinance and those who obeyed it. On 6 May a parliamentary declaration had put the Great Council argument particularly pungently:

The High Court of Parliament is not only a court of judicature, enabled by the laws to adjudge and determine the rights and liberties of the kingdom, against such patents and grants of His Majesty as are prejudicial thereunto… but is likewise a council, to provide for the necessities, prevent the imminent dangers, and preserve the public peace and safety of the kingdom, and to declare the King’s pleasure in those things as are requisite thereunto; and what they do herein hath the stamp of the royal authority, although His Majesty, seduced by evil counsel, do in his own person oppose or interrupt the same; for the King’s supreme and royal pleasure is exercised and declared by this High Court of law and council, after a more eminent and obligatory manner than it can be by personal act or resolution of his own.27

Invited by people within the royal camp to state its terms for settlement, Parliament produced the Nineteen Propositions on 1 June. Here the claims of Parliament to an executive role were unmistakable and prompted a further round of escalation in the constitutional argument. Accepted as a whole they would have made Parliament the sovereign power. Parliament would have had the power to approve who the King chose as councillors, officials and judges. Following the implementation of the Militia Ordinance, the disbandment of the King’s personal forces, and the placing of fortresses in the hands of men approved by Parliament, parliamentary control of military resources would have been complete. Parliament demanded that the church be reformed and governed according to Parliament’s wishes and that no peers created subsequently would have been allowed to sit without the consent of both Houses. It also sought to dictate the King’s foreign policy. These were demands which would have permanently shifted the constitutional position of Parliament. There were also other demands relating to the education of the King’s children and the arrangement of their marriages, the enforcement of the recusancy laws, and the punishment of delinquents.28 Distrust of this particular king had led Parliament into proposing a constitutional revolution; this radicalism and the public insult to the King could hardly be plainer.

The King’s Answer to the XIX Propositions stated the royalist position in terms of established and respectable political theory. It was drafted by Falkland and Colepeper, who took their stand on the law. Parliament’s propositions, they said, were an attempt to remove a ‘troublesome rub’ from their path – that is, the law of the land, which was the birthright of every Englishman. To accept the propositions would have overthrown not just personal monarchy but also a mixed monarchy, in which the authority of the crown and Parliament were combined. Authority lay with the King-in-Parliament – the King was a part of Parliament, and could not simply be dictated to by