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By Root 1266 0

too were roughly handled, as they intervened to protect the head of the household. Among goods taken were clothes, including ‘wearing apparel’, that is everyday and necessary clothes, not valuable and luxurious clothes. Ryves’s polemical purpose was plain – this felonious and furious behaviour was entirely at odds with the claimed defence of true religion and liberty. The spoil of houses included the destruction of recently fashionable adornments – windows, panelling, paintings, furnishings; in churches it included windows which commemorated noble benefactions. Such refinements were an expression of social status, which carried with it a right to rule, and to deference. Whatever the propaganda said, in other words, the destruction was wanton, and socially levelling. In the autumn, when the work of the Harley Committee was effectively extended to cover the whole country, Ryves began to publish accounts of parliamentary iconoclasm. These measures were presented as desecration, which did a similar job on parliamentarian claims to godliness. Attacks on funerary monuments in churches made this point particularly clearly.

In which the world may observe that these men are the sworn enemies, not only of pretended superstition but of the ensigns of nobility and gentry, that if their Diana, I mean their parity, may take effect, posterity may forget and not read the distinction of noble from ignoble in these venerable monuments of ancient nobility: there being in these windows something indeed to instruct a herald, nothing to offend the weakest Christian.50

Here Ryves was establishing the historical record in a controversial way, and that controversy went to the heart of social order. Cast in the form of reportage this was a powerful polemic, placing before the public the facts of the case and pointing towards the obvious conclusion. In a sense, therefore, by reporting the facts he was rising above the cacophony of public controversy in a way rather like Edward Husbands. It certainly undercut the claims for the necessity of defensive arms which ran throughout the Exact collection.

For those who gravitated to the royal standard in late 1642, on the other hand, little had happened to make that seem like the wrong decision. There was, of course, no fundamental difficulty for Charles in assuming an executive function. Military affairs were handled by Charles personally, with a council of war, consisting of both military men and civilians, taking the place of his Privy Council. The Earl of Lindsey was initially Lord General of the royalist forces, and following his death at Edgehill his position was taken by Patrick Ruthven, Lord Forth. Rupert commanded the horse, by virtue of a commission direct from the King, something which caused conflict with Lindsey before the battle of Edgehill. Similar tensions about Rupert’s command erupted later in the war, and with Prince Maurice, who was also commissioned directly by the King although not formally superior to other commanders. Sir Jacob Astley was in overall command of the infantry. Relations within the council of war were not always easy, and it is generally said that there was a tension between the relatively hardline royalism of the military men and more moderate counsels in the council of war and the court. The council was not always obeyed, and was not always in regular contact with the men on the ground, but at least there was a clearer executive authority. There might also be a question about the quality of advice and experience of his advisers however. Many senior figures from the 1630s had fled, or were dead or in prison, or fighting against him: Hyde, Ashburnham, Digby and Prince Rupert had not been at all significant in royal counsels three years earlier. The range of opinion available to him was relatively broad, reaching to much ground shared with the parliamentary coalition, but the loss he suffered in the quality of his advice is more difficult to measure.51

Charles also had less need for innovation in his central administration since the bulk of his officeholders had joined