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By Root 1340 0

in part by virtue of sound management of the assizes.6 Starting two days before the first Commissions of Array, surely not coincidentally, a series of changes were made in the Commissions of the Peace around the country. Between 10 June and 7 August 177 men were purged from fourteen county benches, and 154 added. These changes were quite clearly politically motivated – all of the Deputy Lieutenants named in the Militia Ordinance for Northamptonshire were dismissed from their office as JP, for example, and the bench in Monmouthshire was packed with dependants of the Earl of Worcester, who was very reliable from Charles’s point of view. Parliament took this seriously enough to appoint a commission to investigate on 23 August, but the King had achieved another coup which rather limited its effectiveness. In mid-May the Lord Keeper had sent the Great Seal to York and followed himself a few days later, giving the King control of the issue of Commissions of the Peace. The practical effect of these moves is hard to gauge: it caused complaint from a Grand Jury of Hampshire, and from other local officers, and there are few correlations between purged counties and those which successfully implemented Commissions of Array.7 Perhaps the interference was counter-productive: it was certainly a manifestation of the same process that was causing disquiet across the country.

On 4 August the King sent an open letter to the assize judges, setting out four key elements of his position and calling on Grand Juries to petition in response, so long as it was ‘in a humble and fitting way’. Charles proclaimed a commitment to the defence of Protestantism from the threats of both popery and sectarianism; a determination to govern by law and not arbitrarily; to uphold the privileges of Parliament and the honour of the crown.8 The Grand Jury in Worcester seems to have obliged, more or less parroting the letter. They declared a commitment:

to defend and maintain the true protestant religion, by law established, against popish recusants, Anabaptists, and all other separatists. And that the laws of the land shall be the rule of his Majesty’s government, whereby the Subject’s liberty and property is defended: And that his Majesty will preserve the freedom, and just privilege of parliament.9

The gap between this language and that of the proto-Parliamentarians was not very great. For example, earlier in the summer the knights, gentry and freeholders of Lincolnshire had declared themselves willing:

to spend our lives and estates, in defence of his Majesty’s person, the true Protestant religion, the peace of the realm, the maintenance of the rights and privileges of Parliament, the law of the land, and the lawful liberty of the subject according to our late Protestation against all such as shall attempt to separate his Majesty from his great and faithful counsel of parliament.

Many would presumably have signed up for both, or all, positions, but were increasingly unable to. However, one key issue in distinguishing the positions was trust of the King: in Worcester they declared that ‘we do not any way distrust His Majesty’s constancy in these resolutions’. While it was difficult to say that you did not trust the King, it was possible to say, as they had in Lincoln, that they were concerned about ‘the malicious practice of a malignant party, labouring to breed jealousies between the King and his People’. Once again, significantly, these local resolutions were published and became part of the national public debate.10

Declarations and resolutions of local bodies broadcast to a national audience

Grand Juries, Commissions of the Peace and the assizes, like the militias, were being drawn into partisan political conflicts. Declarations in court about political propriety might do much to advance or hinder the battle for local forces. Parliament responded to the King’s assize letter by asking the judges to read the Commons order declaring the Commission of Array to be illegal. Most contemporary observers felt that Parliament had come off worse in this particular