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war effort against the Covenanters. The political role of the aristocracy is a neglected theme in civil war studies, but it has been plausibly suggested that a group of radical peers had ridden this crisis intent on engineering exactly this outcome – an opportunity actually to reduce the King to the position of a Doge of Venice.81 It is certainly clear that Charles’s policies divided the ruling class, and debates resonated outside it. There were imitators of the twelve peers” petition in York and Hereford, although those petitions were not delivered for fear that they would prove fractious, and in London, where the inhibitions were fewer.82

Once a parliament had been called the City of London advanced £200,000. Delegates from the Great Council, those most sympathetic to settlement with the Covenanters, were sent to negotiate the Treaty of Ripon. Under its terms the Covenanters were to stay in the six northern counties of England and to be paid £850 per day. A full settlement was to await, and be ratified in, an English parliament. In effect, what had been agreed was a ceasefire, pending a treaty in London, and the terms of the ceasefire clearly suited the Covenanters and their English friends – the costs of the army were placed on the English taxpayer, which gave a guarantee that the next parliament could not be a short one. Ripon not only ended the attempt to crush the Covenant, therefore, but also cemented the connection between the fate of reformation in Scotland and the redress of grievances in England. For those in England who were primarily interested in religious grievances, Ripon also established the connection between the position of the English parliament and the future of reformed religion. Influential men, like Pym, took full advantage of this association between the defence of Parliament’s constitutional position and the promotion of reformation.83

During this crisis the Earl of Lindsey had been presented with a severed toe by a woman from Boston, Lincolnshire. The toe had previously belonged to her husband but he had cut it off so that he would not have to fight. It is difficult to be sure that this was an ideological statement.84 There was nothing particularly new about English military failure or lack of political support: even during the Armada year there were signs of reluctance to support the war effort.85 But the Bishops” Wars proved particularly damaging to Charles’s English regime. Prerogative rule, particularly the use of prerogative powers to secure military resources, had caused significant resentments during the 1630s. Using those same powers to cow the godly Scots was little more popular, and by the late summer of 1640 it had failed.

It was John Knox, father of the Scottish Reformation, who had asked Heinrich Bullinger in 1554 ‘Whether obedience is to be rendered to a magistrate who enforces idolatry and condemns true religion’. Bullinger had flannelled in response and not surprisingly, for this was the most loaded political question in Reformation Europe.86 It was close to being posed by some of Charles’s Scottish subjects in 1640. Generally recognized obligations to obey both God and the King were coming into conflict in the Prayer Book crisis, as obedience to the King’s commands seemed to offend against godliness.

Alexander Henderson, leading light in the Covenanting movement, dealt with these questions in his tract ‘Instructions for Defensive Arms’, which is a little puzzling to modern readers in its silences and hesitations. The key question was not whether to honour the King, or to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s, but ‘whether honour should be given to evil and wicked superiors in an evil thing?’ In the normal course of events evil and wicked superiors should be honoured, since they might have been sent as a punishment, but not, Henderson argued, when they commanded evil things. In that case, he said, they could be resisted, even by private citizens, although it would be better if this was done by inferior magistrates. A chief magistrate commanding evil things had stepped out of