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By Root 1210 0

whether divine purposes for the detail of political life could be accurately interpreted in this way. Cromwell himself, however, was conciliatory, acknowledging that God might want these things but professing uncertainty that the army was His instrument in this matter. He was more comfortable with the argument that they owed their life to Parliament so either it was a parliament and they should obey it or it was not a parliament, in which case the army had no legitimate existence either. A long and unhelpful wrangle developed which did not clarify what proposals to back, but it was agreed to continue to meet each day until all proposals had been considered.

In the face of these divisions Cromwell and Fairfax seem to have been concerned above all to preserve army unity. In this they were ultimately successful. There were five more meetings of the General Council before 8 November, in which there was an increasingly obvious hostility to Charles and to monarchy. There were signs of similar impatience, at least with the man Charles Stuart, in Parliament and on 6 November it was declared that he should assent to measures propounded by Parliament: in other words he should accept the settlement offered, not seek to negotiate.26 But there were also signs of hostility to the officers, including a threat of impeachment against Cromwell, which Rainborough and Marten claimed would be supported by 20,000 citizens. There were increasing concerns too that Charles was close to an agreement with Scottish commissioners and that he intended to bolt from Hampton Court (which he did indeed do, on 11 November). Control of the General Council debates was increasingly tenuous, although on 8 November a letter was sent to the Speaker that the army had no intention of vetoing further approaches to Charles.

Control was ultimately asserted by the officers in a more straightforward way. Early in the debates Rainborough had called for a general rendezvous at which the position of the army could be cleared before all the soldiers. In the event the army was assembled in three separate rendezvous where Fairfax asserted his own authority, and successfully promoted a new declaration. At Ware on 15 November, the first of the rendezvous, the opposition seemed less impressive than the desire for unity. Some regiments attended without orders to do so, and some were wearing the Agreement in their hats: radicals hoped to get the Agreement adopted by acclamation in place of a new Remonstrance being promoted by Fairfax. At one point armed confrontation threatened, and in the end nine ringleaders were court-martialled. Three were sentenced to death and drew lots for their lives. This assertion of army discipline seems to have worked – there were no difficulties at the subsequent rendezvous at Ruislip Heath and Kingston.27

Not only was army discipline restored, but a new platform was adopted and the attempt by outside forces to manipulate army counsels was denounced. The Remonstrance denounced the role of the new agents, ‘who… have… taken upon them to act as a divided Party from the… Council and Army’. Their claims about the betrayals of the officers were scandalous, and so were their methods. The problems in the army arose from ‘divers private persons that are not of the Army, [who] have endeavoured, by various falsehoods and scandals, raised and divulged in print, and otherwise, against the General, the General Officers and Council, to possess the Army and the Kingdom with jealousies of them’. Wildman, the civilian who had spoken more than most at Putney, and who had briefed against the officers in the press, was obviously one such. The demands returned to more moderate realms: redress of the army’s professional grievances over pay, impressment, freedom for apprentices who had served in the war, and indemnity. Appended to these was a call for a date to be named for an end to the present parliament, for free and equal elections to the next one, to render the ‘House of Commons (as near as may be) an equal representative of the people that are to elect’.28 There was