User:MoreThings/jhsources

The Great rebellion 1642-1660. Ivan Routes
56 … in the meantime the king would make offer a bid for the armed forces and the  fortified places of the realm. So he tried to get Hull, where the arms for the northern campaign were stored, and Portsmouth. Their strategic value was equally obvious to Pym. The King's gambits where thwarted, but provoked a majority in the Commons into recommending parliamentary nomination and control  of the Lords-Lieutenant, in effect, the whole militia. The Lords demurred. Already the drift apart had begun again. To step away from Pym must surely mean to slide towards the King. Charles took heart.

73 (Start of chapter "The First Year")

When Charles raised his standard at Nottingham  he was aware  that he could not at once mount an all-out assault on London. His forces were tiny. Between them and the capital there was to be expected a considerable army under Essex, well equipped from the stores raised for the Scottish war and  based on Hull. (Here lies the significance of the royal attempts to seize Hull earlier in the year. It was, in addition, a fortress of strategical  possibilities; it could be a centre for the  reception of aid from the continent, especially from the United Providences  where Charles' agents had been busy all through the summer.)

76 "(Many men did change sides, even in the midst of battle. An analysis of their motives might  shed a good deal of light on the issues at stake in the civil war.)"

75-77 [Talking of Kings three-pronged attack to take London.] "[defeat at] Newbury meant the end, for 1643 at any rate, of  the three-pronged lunge at the capital. Charles might retake reading, but he  was held up once again by the dead weight of Essex's forces. In the north Newcastle had won  at Adwalton Moor (30 June), but a plot by the Hothams to give him Hull was  scotched by the Citizens. Fairfax became governor of this vital garrison  and began to raise new and mobile troops. Successes, nothing much in  themselves but piercing the gloom,  were  brought  off by Oliver Cromwell, by now  a deeply experienced commander, whose energy and enterprise were catching. Newcastle invested Hull at the  beginning of August and found himself bogged down. It was his opponents who  were on the move. The Earl of Manchester took King's Lynn and moved north to  raise the siege. Near Boston he was joined by Fairfax and Cromwell and at  Winceby (11 October)" their joint forces overran a royalist force and  pushed on to take Gainsborough and Lincoln. Newcastle had no option but to turn away from Hull.

God's Fury, England's Fire: A new history of the English Civil Wars Michael Braddick
38 "On 9 September 1638 Charles withdrew the Prayer Book and affirmed the Negative  Confession of 1581. [passage about what could have been done better] It seems  clear though that Charles had already decided on English military  intervention. On the 21 September, when further conciliatory measures were unveiled at a meeting of the Scottish  Privy Council, Charles mentioned in a letter to Hamilton that cannon were being sent north to Hull.  (ref: Stevenson, Scottish Revolution 104-109 "

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182 [1642]

… As a consequence the emerging royalist and parliamentarian…. [i.e. the attempt by the king, and rebuff by parliament to gain control of Hull came very early on in the evolution of the conflict]

In the immediate aftermath of the attempt on the Five Members the political temperature was  very high. The arsenal assembled for the Scottish wars was in Hull and the King made a preliminary attempt to take control of it by issuing the Earl of Newcastle with a commission as governor of the town. Parliament hastily empowered  the Sir John Hotham to secure  the arsenal in the name of King and Parliament, and a hasty journey up the Great Norht Road thwarted the royal plan.

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190 [1642] Disappointed by the rather lukewarm  reception in York, Charles decided on two inflammatory courses of action - to  go to Ireland personally to settle the political conflict there, and to wrest  control of the arsenal in Hull from Sir John Hotham. Both suggestions were provocative in a situation where the King was thought to be in the hands of an  armed papistical conspiracy, and was known previously to have considered  bringing  Irish forces to England in  order to exert a bit of pressure on his behalf.

The journey to Hull did not materialise, but the attempt on Hull did, and it resulted in one of the most  famous confrontations of the decade. The King's second son, the Duke of York, and Charles's brother-in-law, the Elector Palatine, had visited Hull on 22  April and been well entertained, but when the King made the journey there in  person the following day the reception was much cooler. Four miles … Need to photocopy or scan the rest.

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… for Warwick, acting under Parliament's orders, had sent warships to lie in the Humber  before the King's confrontation with Hotham. Their presence there had strengthened Hotham's position, of course, and in May the fleet brought the  arms to London. Having ignored direct orders from the King the commanders of the fleet were thanked for their fidelity by the House of Lords.

References: Samuel R Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil war 10 vols, (London 1884),  X, pp. 191-35

Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637-164l pp 503-4

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220 "In Yorkshire an neutrality pact was the product of deep divisions rather than  local unity . Early in October prominent Yorkshire gentlemen concluded a  treaty of neutrality. Ferdinando, Lord Halifax, who had raised forced on  behalf of Parliament, and the Earl of Cumberland, the king's commander in  Yorkshire, were both signatories. … The desire to exclude war from Yorkshire  was thought by some to be improper. Fairfax had insisted that it be approved  by Parliament and Sir John Hotham, an old rival of Fairfax, denounced it in  print as an affront to the judgement of Parliament. His son went further,  taking armed men to the walls of royalist-held York, and capturing the  Archbishop's seat at Cawood Castle on 4 October. The following spring both  Hothams deserted the parliamentary cause, and their attitude to this  neutrality deal may have reflected hostility to Fairfax as much as it did to  parliamentary authority. It also reflected how exposed the Hothams would have been by a neutrality pact - they had ventured far more than the Fairfax family  at this point, not least in refusing the King entry to Hull"

ref Fletcher, Outbreak, pp 385-7

Morill, Revolt in the Provinces, 2nd edn pp 56

Andrew Hopper, Black Tom: Sir Thomas Fairfax and the English Revolutions (Manchester 2007), pp 12-20, 26-8

Whatever the local politics of neutrality in Yorkshire, it did not work. Parliament condemned the treaty, and a military contest for control of the county ensued. The Earl of Newcastle, a regional magnate of considerable influence, was able to bring men  south, while the Fairfaxes were able to draw on considerable support in the  clothing towns of the West Riding. Hull, perhaps the best fortified town in England, was securely in parliamentary hands. The East Riding was in the control of the Hothams, on behalf of Parliament, but their relationship with  the Fairfaxes ws not easy. ref Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp  99-100

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251 In the north, Newcastle advances successfully in December, taking York on 1 December [1642],  engaging Fairfax at Tadcaster on 6 December and forcing his reatret to Selby  the following day. By establishing his position at Pontefract, Newcastle cut communications between what had emerged as important parliamentary bases in  the West Riding clot towns and the strategically crucial port of Hull.

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288 In the meantime, Newcastle had won a significant   victory at Adwalton Moor on 30 June [1643]  leading to an undignified retreat by  the  parliamentarians to Hull. They were only able to do that because the townspeople had prevented Sir John Hotham surrendering the town to  the royalists. As the summer progressed, therefore, it was most certainly the royalists rather than the parliamentarians who had the most to  cheer. Although complete disaster had been averted following Adwalton Moor, when the surrender of Hull was presented, the picture in the north was bleak  indeed for the parliamentarians. The Fairfaxes had been driven out of the West Riding after that defeat, and were  cut off from other parliamentary forces. As a result, all of the north was in Newcastle's control, with the exception of Hull. 

Young and Holmes The English Civil War  p111-13  [After Adwalton Moor …Lord  Fairfax tried to secure Leeds but 700 Royalist captives broke out of the  prison and seized the magazine with 1.500 arms and 12 cannon, holding the town  until Newcastle relived them. Lord  Fairfa, his army now reduced to three or four troops, beat a hasty  retreat to Selby. Hotham had chosen this moment to declare for the King, but when things seemed most desparate the citizens of Hull secured him, and the  defeated Roundhead commanders made their way there.,  a hazardous journey of sixty miles through a  host of enemies. To Sir Thomas thins must have seemed black indeed. His wife had been captured in the flight from Bradford and he himself was wounded. But things might have beem worse, Fairfax's wound healed well, and the courtly  Early of Newcastle, who disdained to make war on women, sent Lady Fairfax to  Hull in his own coach. Secure behind the walls of Hull, the Fairfaxes began to raise new forces and soon mustered about 2,500 Foot and 700 Horse, but the  initiative in Yorkshire lay firmly with the victorious Newcastle.

289 Another description of Cromwell heading north to support hull ( as elsewhere on this  page) but this seems to say that he pulled back, whereas the other mention  says that Newcastle was forced to  pull  back.

289 So compelling were the royalist advances of these months that this may have been another  moment when they might have won the war. … Parliamentary forces were everywhere under pressure and resource to renew them not yet available, and  political will among the leadership in   London was clearly measured.

As it turned out, however, the royalists did  not press home this advantage. The Yorkshire levies refused to move south and Newcastle was forced to besiege Hull…

320 [1643] Further good news for Parliament followed in September and October, as royalist forces  regrouped. Following a parliamentary victory at Gainsbourough [under Cromwell], the parliamentary troops had withdrawn from the town. But in the autumn they rallied again and, drawing troops from around the region, won  another engagement at Winceby (11 Oct). Hull remained in parliamentary hands, an important limitation on royalist domination of the north, and the position  of Hull was improved when the Earl of Manchester lifted a siege of  Lynn (16 September. This freed troops for action elsewhere and on 12  October the siege of Hull was also lifted.

300 The realities of war, and the lack of clarity in war aims, caused divisions on both sides,  but on the parliamentary side the overall military situation encouraged  defeatism among the less committed. The litany of military reverses which continued more or less without interruption through the summer of 1643, was  accompanied by a series of  treasons and  betrayals. Essentially personal decisions by Hotham and his son and by Cholmley, had a decisive military impact, delivering secure control of the  north to the royalist forces under Newcastle. [ in ref: "Hopper suggest that, had these defections been coordinated, it might have changed the course of the entire  war: Hopper, Andrew, ""Fitted for Desperation": Honour and  Treachery in Parliament's Yorkshire Command 1642-1643", History, 86,  2001, 138-154

Honour was an elusive quality, difficult in  these  circumstances to define. … It is not clear that the behaviour of Hotham and Cholmley was in any simple way less principled than that of Boynton: they  might have argued, in fact, that their changing allegiances arose from a  surfeit of principle. Cholmley was certainly insistent that his position was principled and Boynton's son clearly felt by 1648 that the cause had shifted  and he no longer wanted to support it. Given the costs of the war, and the shifting basis of the two coalitions, it is certainly possible to see a  refusal to carry on fighting as an honourable position. Sir John Hotham had after all accepted a commission to take control of Hull in the face of armed popish conspiracy  against Parliament; not for the cause that was now taking shape.

301 [Still on honour] "Amidst these ambiguities it is plain that some men had a clear  view about honourable conduct. Following defeat at Adwalton Moor, Sir Thomas  Fairfax had stayed in Bradford until all was lost, fighting his way out and  levaing behinde his wife and many followers.   En  route to Hull he had  abandoned his small daughter, who could not bear the hard ride to Hull,  presumably thinking she would die. His daughter joined him a day after his  arrival in Hull, revived after a night's sleep, and his wife was 'sent to him  with all courtesy by the stately Newcastle, who was too gallant a cavalier to  make war on ladies'"


 * 1) Certaine  letters sent from Sir J. H., young Hotham, the Major of Hull, and others.  Intercepted, and brought to court to his Majestie, April 16 by John Hotham  (Unknown Binding - 1643)
 * 2) The  declaration of Captain Hotham sent to the parliament wherein hee sheweth the  reasons of his marching into the county of York, etc by John Hotham  (Unknown Binding - 1642)
 * 3) A  declaration of Sir J. H.'s proceedings at Hull. ... As also a relation how the  county of Lincolne hath sent in to their reliefe fifteen carts loaden with  victuall, etc by John Hotham (Unknown Binding - 1642)
 * 4) A  happy discovery of the strange and fearefull Plots layde by our Cavaliers for  invading of Hul, and surprizing Sr. J. H by John Hotham (Unknown Binding -  1642)
 * 5) His  Majesties second Message 30 April, 1642 to the Parliament concerning Sir John  Hothams Refusall to give His Majestie entrance into His Town of Hull. B.L  by John Hotham (Unknown Binding - 1642)
 * 6) House  of Lords Manuscripts. Volume I etc.. New Series. The Manuscripts of the House  of Lords, 1693-1695 etc.. Edited by C. L. Anstruther and H. P. St. John and  others by Cecil Lloyd Anstruther, Colin Keppell Davidson, Cuthbert Morley  Headlam, and John Beaumont Hotham (Unknown Binding - 1900)
 * 7) Improvements  In Incandescent Carburretted Air Or Gas Lighting, & Apparatus Therefor  Connected Therewith by Hancock David & Alfred Of 50 West Ham Lane John Bell Craig Of 3 Hotham St Stratford (Paperback - 1896)
 * 8) Joyfull  Newes from Hull; or Sir J. Hothams overthrow given to the Cavaliers. ...  Likewise a most remarkable passage, shewing Gods Judgment on divers Cavaliers  of Newcastle by John Hotham (Unknown Binding - 1642)
 * 9) More  Joyfull Newes from Hull ... set in a letter from Sir Iohn Hotham and read in  the House of Commons ... With the answer of the House of Commons, etc by  John Hotham (Unknown Binding - 1642)
 * 10) A  most true relation of the great and bloody battell fought by Capt. Hotham ...  Decemb. 3 1642 against the Earl of Newcastle, etc by John Hotham and  William Cavendish (Unknown Binding - 1642)
 * 11) Reasons  why Sir J. H., trusted by the Parliament, cannot in honour agree to a treaty  of Pacification, made by some Gentlemen of Yorkshire, at Rothwell, Sept. 29,  1642 by John Hotham (Unknown Binding - 1642)
 * 12) A  Sermon Preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge by Henry John  Hotham (Unknown Binding - 1865)
 * 13) Sir  J. Hotham's Resolution presented to the Kings most excellent majesty at  Beverley in ... Yorkshire, ... July 12, 1642. ... Whereunto is annexed joyfull  Newes from Newcastle, etc by John Hotham (Unknown Binding - 1642)
 * 14) A  Soveraign Antidote to Prevent, Appease, and Determine our unnaturall and  destructive Civill Warres and dissentions. Wherein divers serious  considerations tending to this purpose are propounded both to the King and  Subjects; the Parliaments and Sir Iohn Hothams proceedings at Hull and in the  Militia justified, etc by John Hotham, William Prynne, and Charles I  (Unknown Binding - 1642)
 * 15) Terrible  Newes from Hull, concerning a great conspiracy, which was intended against Sir  J. Hotham. ... Also the Kings majesties Command to the Earle of Warwicke, and  the Earl of Warwick's answer, etc by John Hotham and Charles I (Unknown  Binding - 1642)
 * 16) The  true effigies of Sr. J. H. ..., Governour of Hull by John Hotham (Unknown  Binding - 1642)
 * 17) A  True Relation of a great discovery intended against Hull, sent in a letter ...  to both Houses of Parliament. With a true copy of a letter sent from Master  Beckwith, etc by John Hotham (Unknown Binding - 1642)

The English Civil Wars. Bob Caruthers.
28 Militarily the Bishops' wars had been a shambles but worse still for Charles was the financial cost of waging war.

For eleven years he had been governing the country without recourse to Parliament and whenever possible sought to rule the country without one. In order to raise the money to govern the without the backing of Parliament he had twisted and manipulated the laws governing taxation and took full advantage of the sovereign's right to grant monopolies.

In so doing, he had created huge unrest among the merchant classes. They objected to royal monopolies being granted on, among other things, the manufacture of soap and salt. The reintroduction and extension of dormant taxes like ship money further fanned the flames of revolt, although the revenues they raised were insufficient to keep the King's coffers in order, far less finance a war. Since 1639 little has changed in that respect. The prospect of waging war, even then, the single biggest burden which could be placed upon the exchequer of any nation.

Forced to call a Parliament so that I could vote him the funds to finance his Scottish wars, Charles found that he had unleashed a pent-up force which would not easily be contained.

[Short Parliament refuses funds until it's own demands are met. Long Parliament is even more hostile in its demands]

...

Parliament presented King Charles with a list of grievances which were known as the Grand Remonstrance and further challenged the authority of royal control by claiming that parliament, not the King, should have the right to raise and control the army. …

29 In 1641 Ireland exploded into rebellion, and the question of who controlled the army was more pressing than ever. To an already volatile situation there was now added the need to equip an army to suppress the Irish rebellion. Clearly both sides had on eye on this force in the event that civil war might come to England as well. The control of the armed forces had become a vital issue.

[Pym uses Ireland etc to bring into question Charles' right and personal suitability to govern. He impeaches Strafford who is tried and executed]

For Charles, this was the last straw; always hostile towards his Parliaments, he gradually lost patience and decided to act with force if necessary.

The two factions finally came to an all-out declaration of war after a failed attempt by Charles to seize leaders of the party acting in opposition to him [the Five Members] ""May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me" … He had attempted to overrule the rights and privileges of Parliament by a coup d'etat. The London mob took to the streets in support of Parliament and there was no turning back.

[unrest, increasing conflict in the streets, first shots fired. Charles flees to York] From there he attempted to seize arms and ammunition stored at Hull but was refused entry by the governor, Sir John Hotham on St George's day 1642