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the City, had sent a peace petition to the King on 2 January 1643. Charles’s reply to the City, received on 13 January, had given little ground. He was clearly no longer averse to publicity, however, seeking to have his answer read at the City Companies. This was presumably a more or less direct appeal to wavering opinion in London. When Charles’s response to the City’s peace petition was read out at the Guildhall, it was clear to Pym (who was present) and others that the King’s commitment to peace was questionable.61 It was this view that eventually won out in the spring of 1643. An easy peace might simply allow Charles the freedom to renege on all the commitments extracted from him. It was this issue, in March, which seems to have cut the ground from under the feet of the proponents of peace in Parliament.

The failure of the Oxford propositions could only mean that the war would escalate in the coming year. The march of Prince Rupert on Bristol in early March sent a clear message, as did the publication of an intercepted letter from Charles I to Henrietta Maria in which he acknowledged the lack of serious intent behind his participation in negotiations. By the spring, those in both Oxford and London who had been hoping and working for peace were despondent.62 The coming year saw successful efforts at administrative and political escalation on the parliamentary side.

In the meantime the influence of ‘peace party’ arguments in the Commons had persisted throughout the Oxford treaty negotiations. By the spring of 1643 this produced little by way of realistic hopes for settlement and drove some writers to think out loud about what to do if Parliament let them down in their fight against tyranny. Secular radicalism, in other words, was in the air, informed by classical and humanist political thought. Motivated by mistrust of the King and fear for the future of the true religion their intention was to break an impasse in constitutional thinking.63 Politics were being transformed by war: the reasons for fighting in the autumn of 1642 might no longer seem sufficient in the spring of 1643; the cause being defended might also seem to have been changed. Escalation of the military conflict seems to have posed new difficulties in deciding political allegiances. War was fought in the light of, and as a means to affect, these political choices.

9

Military Escalation, Loyalty and Honour

The English War Efforts in 1643

On a ‘calm, clear and fair’ day a little over two weeks after the failure of the Oxford treaty a gang of workmen set about the demolition of Cheapside Cross in the commercial heart of London. Over the next three days, as they went about their work, they were watched by a large crowd, whose response was divided: ‘the majority blessing the deed but others, although of the same religion, detesting and deploring it’. A troop of horse and a troop of foot were on hand in case of trouble.1

The destruction of Cheapside Cross, May 1643

This was the final act of a long drama. The cross, standing twelve yards high, was richly decorated with images of the saints and the Virgin Mary, and was surmounted with a crucifix. It was a focal point for commercial life and both civic and royal pageantry. Under the Tudors and Stuarts it had been refurbished a number of times, but periodically since the Reformation it had also been attacked, verbally and sometimes physically. Attempts to deface it in 1581 and 1595 had forced the authorities to the expense of repairs, and in 1601, when refurbishment was being considered, George Abbot had been asked for his religious opinion of the cross. The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford and future archbishop had supported the case for repairing it, but had suggested changes to the imagery. In particular he had suggested that the crucifix should be replaced with a pyramid in the hope that people would stop calling it ‘the Cross in the Cheap’. While acknowledging the case for iconoclasm, he had been committed to lawful reform – only the magistrate was empowered ‘to redress such enormities’. His advice on