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By Root 1480 0

circumstances rumour and news about particular triumphs or failures had a great impact on morale. Waller’s campaign was a huge boost to parliamentarian spirits, for example, although its effect on the outcome of the war is difficult to chart; so too individual setbacks such as the surrender of Scarborough or the death of Lord Brooke. For this reason it was important to try to impose a meaning on events. The death of Brooke, for example, was reported by royalists as a divine judgement on a rebel: an amazing shot that clearly reflected the divine hand. It was reported in the parliamentary paper Mercurius Britannicus, on the other hand, as evidence that the cathedral was a ‘Monster’ with ‘bloody Anthems’ and ‘murdering Organ-Pipes’.10 It was not only the meaning of the news that was disputed, however, but also its accuracy – the royalist press reported with some glee that ‘Sir Jacob Astley, lately slain at Gloucester, desires to know was he slain with a musket or a cannon bullet’.11 These minor paper skirmishes were probably as significant to morale at any particular point as the realities of the broader strategic position. Nonetheless it is hard to make a case that Parliament’s military or political position had been improving between January and April.

In late March, as the Oxford treaty failed and Parliament’s military campaigns failed to thrive, there are clear signs of a desire to stiffen the sinews of the parliamentary war effort. However, this administrative problem was inextricably entwined with a desire to define the cause, while at the same time seeming to some people to transform it. Behind the noise of the day-to-day news it was possible to perceive larger trends and deeper problems – the reluctance of armies to move, the difficulties of securing an effective strategic control of particular commanders, the problems of co-ordinating effort, and of supplying the armies. At various points, both sides had experienced these handicaps, but they seemed more urgent for the parliamentarians by the spring of 1643.

One important innovation was the formation of regional armies. In 1642 troops had been mobilized through county institutions, and by custom, tradition and sentiment they identified their role with the defence of that county. Throughout the war troops proved reluctant to cross county boundaries, although this was not a universal phenomenon. The London Trained Bands were willing to march out of London to support the larger cause, and parliamentary armies at Turnham Green and Sherborne included levies from outside the county. Nonetheless, it was recognized as a problem very early on, and Hopton, for example, had raised volunteers willing to travel once he had secured control of the Cornish Trained Bands. The royalists depended more on regiments raised by particular men acting under a direct commission, and these tended to be more mobile, but on the parliamentary side part of the answer was seen to lie in the association of contiguous counties into regional bodies.12

Early parliamentary measures of defence had suggested that counties might call on neighbours for assistance in the case of a royalist attack and in October 1642 that had become a formal prescription, extended to the eastern, midland and western counties in ordinances passed between mid- December and early January.13 The measures taken in October had been associated with a move to create a political bond too, when Pym ‘with very great vehemence’ promoted a ‘covenant or association that all might enter into’ to help link ‘ourselves together in a more firm bond and union’. Parliament agreed to publish its intention to draw up a Covenant with God to defend ‘his truth… with the hazard of our lives against the King’s army’. In East Anglia, however, there was more support for the military reform than for the proposed oath or covenant. Even so, attempts in the late autumn to co-ordinate efforts in the various associated counties had limited effect and it was not until 11 January that it was agreed to put the ordinance for the Eastern Association into effect.