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By Root 1114 0

yield to the Covenanters, and another argued that God’s will might be that England’s pride should have a fall. In Newcastle a man was reported to have argued that the Covenanters ‘did nothing but in defence of their own right and maintenance of the Gospel, and did but defend themselves against those that would have brought in popery and idolatry among them’. He declared himself unwilling to fight, ‘for unless his conscience moved him to it, he would not fight for any prince in Christendom’. Perhaps even more significantly, he was provoked by someone saying ‘beshrew the Scots that stand out against the King, for they are likely to put us to a great deal of charge, and it is likely we shall all go and fight against them’: hardly the most positive statement of support for the King’s position.2 Lurking behind all this must have been some sense that this was the wrong war – Charles had been at pains to stay out of the European wars but was now raising troops against his own, Protestant, subjects. Since many others were keen to have a parliament to discuss secular and religious grievances, it was not only opponents of Laudianism and militia reform that were qualified in their support for the King.

The demands of the wars had an impact on an informed and engaged political society in which a degree of consensus and co-operation was essential to successful government. There was no such consensus behind the policy of armed intervention against Scottish Calvinists: opinion was instead divided. Laudianism and militia reform clearly had supporters in England or they would have made no headway. Neither were opponents of these policies necessarily advocates of the Covenanters” religious views, or political tactics; nor were they necessarily equally offended by all these policies. Still less were they in favour of the dissolution of royal government. Reluctance to support the war effort might proceed from a positive sympathy for the Covenanters” cause, an unwillingness to support the use of the prerogative or armed Catholics against the cause, or a sense that this crisis might be useful as leverage in securing redress of English grievances. There was a difference, in other words, between being pro-Covenanter and being not anti-Covenanter, and different arguments might support either of these positions. For Charles the issue was plain – this was a rebellion. For others the issue was more complicated and this undoubtedly added to the normal problems of mobilizing for war in early Stuart England. English opinion was far more ambivalent and divided than opinion in Scotland, but a King seeking to raise an army by prerogative power would clearly have hoped for less ambivalence and more commitment.

These complex responses help to explain why building the necessary consensus around military mobilization proved so very difficult. Among those in trouble in Exeter were the mayor and two aldermen.3 At the King’s rendezvous in York in late April 1639 two peers refused the military oath. They were Viscount Say and Sele, member of the Providence Island Company and supporter of Hampden’s case, and Lord Brooke, another member of the company and a man of godly piety.4 Others clearly thought it inadvisable to proceed without the support of a parliament: extraordinarily this was the first time since 1323 that England had gone to war without the summoning of a parliament.5 Winning this one would be uphill work.

Divisions in England came into the open, and came to matter, because Charles had to rely exclusively on English forces to crush the rebellion of his Scottish subjects. This had not been his original intention. In Scotland his hopes rested on George Gordon, Marquess of Huntly, who had offered protection to the Aberdeen Doctors, an eminent minority who had supported the royal position against the Covenanters. During Hamilton’s mission Charles had encouraged Huntly’s efforts to resist the promotion of the Covenant in the north-east and he now hoped that Hamilton could join Huntly, who was raising forces in Aberdeenshire.6 In Ireland Charles hoped for