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will not do so base a thing as to forsake him; and I choose rather to lose my life (which I am sure I shall do) to preserve and defend those things, which are against my conscience to preserve and defend’. He was indeed to die in the first major battle of the war, bearing the King’s standard with great courage. Of his four sons three joined him in the royalist cause. His second son, another Edmund, had fought for the Protestant cause in the Low Countries, and heard the news of the army raised to fight the Scots with ‘sorrow’. But he did not hesitate to join the King’s army and castigated his parliamentarian brother Ralph for his desertion of the King. It was, he said, ‘unhandsomely done’. ‘I am tooth and nail for the king’s cause, and shall endure to the death, whatsoever his fortune be’. ‘[C]onsider that majesty is sacred; God says “touch not mine anointed”… you say you intend not to hurt the king, but can any of you warrant any one shot to say it shall not endanger his very person?’ Ralph stayed firm to the parliamentarian cause until late in 1643, but then retired to France to consult his conscience, suffering expulsion from the Commons and sequestration. Despite these sufferings, however, he did not renounce his parliamentarianism.49

Many of those who faced these choices thought long and hard about them. The godly, following the advice of casuists, prayed, read the Bible (perhaps even opening it at random to see if God guided them to a relevant chapter), discussed and reflected. Lord Paget, a moderate reformer, became a royalist general following such a period of reflection:

It may seem strange that I, who with all zeal and earnestness have prosecuted (ever since the beginning of parliament) the reformation of all disorders in Church and Commonwealth should now (in a time of great distraction) desert the cause. Most true it is that my ends were the common good, and whilst it was prosecuted I was ready to lay down both my life and fortune, but when I found a preparation of arms against the King, under shadow of loyalty, I rather resolved to obey a good conscience than particular ends.50

The dictates of a good conscience drove a wedge between old friends and fellow travellers Sir Ralph Hopton and Sir William Waller. Hopton became a successful royalist general, Waller enjoyed a period of press coverage as ‘William the Conqueror’ in Parliament’s service. On the eve of their encounter on the battlefield at Roundway Down, Waller wrote his much-quoted letter to Hopton:

That great God who is the searcher of my heart knows with what a sad sense I go on upon this service, and with what a perfect hatred I detest this war without an enemy; but I look upon it as sent from God… God… in His good time send us the blessing of peace and in the meantime assist us to receive it! We are both upon the stage, and must act such parts as are assigned us in this tragedy. Let us do it in a way of honour and without personal animosities.51

Lady Sydenham wrote in similarly civil terms to Lady Verney that her son Sir Ralph had ‘chosen the strongest part, but I cannot think the best’. ‘It staggers me’, she wrote, that he could believe that he was fighting for the liberty of the subject when his partisans ‘take all from them that are not of their mind, and… pull down their houses and… imprison them, and leave them to the mercy of the unruly multitude’. Nor could she find it is ‘in God’s law to take up arms against their lawful King to depose him; for sure they have not made his person known to all those that they have employed in this war to spare him and not to kill him’. But still, she trusted his good faith: I ‘am confident he does believe it is the best, and for that he chose it’.52

In these difficult circumstances, with allegiances to the King, friends and family cutting across political priorities, civil war allegiances are difficult to predict on the basis of previous behaviour. Attitudes in the 1630s, or even in 1641, are no clear guide to civil war allegiance, although general patterns do emerge. At the core of royalism were ideas of