on the other hand, faced more difficulties in stiffening the sinews of its coalition. By November there were two positions emerging in parliamentary ranks as to what would be a sufficient settlement. A number of members, prominent among them Denzil Holles, were horrified by the potential costs of war, as revealed at Edgehill and, in Holles’s case at least, Brentford. Holles had an honourable record as a parliamentary defender of law and religion, and his views were close to Pym’s. He was a much less effective speaker, often referred to as intemperate, but he had also been in at least as much trouble. In 1629 he had helped to hold the Speaker down in his chair to prevent him dissolving Parliament until some final business was rushed through, and had read a paper which denounced Arminianism and unparliamentary customs duties as treasonous. He was arrested, released and finally tried in 1630, living under a whopping bail for the rest of the decade. Given his record it is little surprise that he was prominent in supporting Pym’s programme, including a proper revenue settlement, although he actively worked to save Strafford’s life, presumably because he was his brother-in-law. On two other issues, he tended to caution – in early April 1641 he had spoken about the threat of mechanic preachers and in late 1642 he had direct experience of the trauma of war. Given a military command in the West Country he was present at the parliamentary defeat at Sherborne Castle, where more than half his men were lost. He returned to London, where he recruited his regiment back to strength in time to join Essex at Edgehill, where he was praised for his role. But at Brentford his regiment was surprised. Holles was not there, but one third of his men were killed, and the others captured. According to D’Ewes, writing in late November, he ‘was much cooled in his fierceness by the great slaughter made in his regiment at Brentford’.35 In order to achieve a settlement Holles was willing to see concessions to Charles on the control of civil government, so long as religion was made safe. Throughout the spring of 1643, and the rest of the 1640s, he was a supporter of settlement whenever a formal peace seemed to be possible.
A harder line was taken by others, prominent among them Pym, who thought no settlement was safe without constraints on the King’s freedom to choose officers of state. In his view the King was in the hands of military hardliners, and no peace could succeed while their counsels prevailed.36 Henrietta Maria’s apparent success in raising money for Charles provided the context for the first Assessment Ordinance on 29 November, which imposed a tax by the authority of an ordinance. It was the first of many and, in fact, the form of the tax became the basis for direct taxation for the following 140 years.37 It was also far heavier than ship money and arguably even less legally justifiable, resting as it did on an ordinance. Three days earlier, the Commons had heard a suggestion that a strict league should be entered into with the Dutch republic, an initiative which presumably grew out of the same apprehension.38 On 15 December the counties of Leicester, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Northampton, Buckingham and Bedford were combined in a single Midland Association – an attempt to bolster the war effort by giving it a basis larger than a single county. On 20 December the Eastern Association was formed and, on 31 December, Warwickshire and Staffordshire were associated under the command of Lord Brooke.39 These measures, necessary to secure a stronger bargaining position, were in themselves problematic, both locally and nationally. Pushing ahead with the war effort created new pressures for peace, and reinforced many of the existing ones.
London was also divided between those keen to prosecute the war and those keen to secure an early peace. Although a deputation from the City had approached Parliament on 13 November petitioning against any accommodation40 and made a loan, there was by now a powerful peace movement in London which produced