but infantrymen only eightpence.
'Half pay hardly counts when pay never turns up.'
'Oh we shall fix that! Bring your seditious pamphlets,' instructed Lambert gleefully. 'Okey's a prim conservative, and your boys are dullards. We are known as the army's most devoted regiment for prayer, and our colonel is hot for freedom.'
'Praying?'
'And killing.'
Gideon remembered what he had heard about the bitter fighting for Prior's Hill Fort at Bristol, where Rainborough's men eventually slew all the defenders; he found it hard to reconcile his companionable, easygoing brother with such bloody slaughter.
'Well, if six out of ten of your officers have given themselves a home pass, that should ease a discreet transfer behind their backs.'
'They will return to us from soft beds and wifely succour, laden with puddings and bottled beer, and there you will be grinning in your short coat… Can't you get a coat that covers your buttocks, by the way? All will be well. You are not deserting the colours,' Lambert reassured his tall brother. 'Bring your snaphance.'
'It's a dragoon issue.'
'Just bring it!'
Arrears were still a problem. As 1646 progressed, the King remained evasive about a settlement, while Parliament viewed the army as redundant. Volunteers were wanted now to reconquer Ireland, but otherwise attempts were made to disband various regiments — if possible without paying them. It was a mean-spirited betrayal of the men who had risked their lives and livelihoods. It was also foolish.
When Parliament pressed for disbandment, the men realised they would lose all rights, and probably the pay they were owed. Those who had ended up far from home needed their money just to fund the return journey. The infantry were due eighteen weeks' pay, the cavalry forty-six. Faced with a debt of over three hundred thousand pounds, Parliament decreed that paying up for only six weeks would be sufficient discharge. Both officers and men stiffened their resistance.
The soldiers began to consider how far they would go in support of their grievances. Many started to think about the wider context — were they merely instruments of Parliament or men who had fought in their own right for issues of personal belief? If so, what sort of world had they fought for? Everyone in the army was also watching the issue of the kingdom's political settlement. There were concerns about indemnity for actions they might have taken in the war, which could in retrospect be called criminal. They wanted pensions for men who had been too badly wounded to work again and for the widows and orphans of those who had been killed. Some of the soldiers were beginning to demand far more than had ever been subjects' rights in the past. Contact began between the soldiers and the London radicals, the Levellers.
The King's personal fate had to be decided, together with how the state would be governed. Until now, most people had assumed the monarchy would survive. But the very questions that had caused a revolt remained undecided: how much authority was the King to have, and how far should the Houses of Parliament be allowed to restrict his actions, his choice of state servants, or his religious and monetary policies? An unforeseen complication was that the New Model Army required a voice — this threatening force of men who were bonded by two years of service together in the field and validated by the Lord's giving them victory.
The King's position in the debate was about to change. For six months Charles regarded his custody among the Scots as a temporary inconvenience; he continually tried to wriggle free by playing off his enemies against each other. Lambert and Gideon Jukes were scathing: 'In any fight, the loser has to capitulate. The man is like a foolish barrow-boy, who will not admit he has been knocked down.'
'And well kicked!'
The Scots always viewed the King as a negotiable hostage. With all the flaws in his personality, Charles failed to see this; he carried on as arrogant, shifty and unreliable as ever. He made offers to everyone: the Scots; Parliament as a body; the high Presbyterians who dominated Parliament; the City of London; the army. Lambert told Gideon divisive attempts had begun even before Charles fled from Oxford in 1646. 'During the blockade, he sent an approach to Rainborough personally, asking for a safe conduct so he could go to London and negotiate with Parliament. He claimed that in return for a guarantee that he would remain King, Woodstock and other garrisons would surrender.' It had failed to impress Rainborough, who notified Parliament.
While all the issues remained in flux, Rainborough — now possessing not one but two Jukes brothers in his regiment — was sent to the siege of Worcester. They captured the town, and he was made its governor, on the strength of the gracious way he obtained the surrender and Fairfax's praise that he was ' very faithful, valiant and successful in many undertakings'. As Rainborough became a man of note, he was recruited as the member of Parliament for Droitwich, replacing Endymion Porter, a favourite courtier of the King's. Rainborough went up to Westminster, where he pleaded the soldiers' grievances. Word filtered back to the regiment that as he watched the political negotiations, he was unconvinced that the war was truly ended.
The Scots, too, became convinced that the King was too slippery. They reckoned Charles had no intention of keeping promises that he would install Presbyterianism in England — even though hopeful Presbyterians in the English Parliament still wanted to believe he would. In January 1647, the Covenanters cut their losses. They claimed that their military costs in supporting Parliament were two million pounds, but offered to settle for five hundred thousand. This was haggled down to four hundred thousand, with the King to be handed over to Parliament as if he were a receipt for the first instalment. Commissioners brought the first one hundred thousand pounds to Newcastle and the Scots passed King Charles to them.
He was conducted south to Holdenby House in Northamptonshire. His public reception convinced him all his royal authority remained. The gentry flocked to escort the procession; crowds lined the way; church bells were rung.
Charles arrived at Holdenby House in mid-February. A week later army officers refused to volunteer for Ireland without assurances; they presented Parliament with a respectful document called the Moderate Petition. Parliament declared it seditious. The MP Denzil Holies, who had once been a leading radical, one of the Five Members King Charles had tried to arrest, had turned into an intemperate loather of the New Model. He would sneer in his memoirs: 'most of the colonels were tradesmen, brewers, tailors, goldsmiths, shoemakers and the like — a notable dunghill'. Now, in an astonishing tirade, he savaged the soldiers as violent mercenaries, enemies of the kingdom, only concerned about their arrears of pay:
The meanest of men, the basest and vilest of the nation, the lowest of the people have got the power in their hands; trampled upon the crown; baffled and misused the parliament; violated the laws, broke in sunder all bonds and ties of religion, conscience, duty, loyalty, faith, common honesty, and good manners.
This eyebrow-raising vindictiveness came to be known wryly as 'The Declaration of Dislike'. More followed. Parliament summoned Commissary-General Ireton (now Cromwell's son-in-law), and three colonels (one of them John Lilburne's brother) to answer charges that signatures for the officers' petition had been obtained by force. Tempers ran so high that Ireton and Holies had to be ordered not to fight a duel.
There were desperate divisions in English politics and religion. The Presbyterian majority in Parliament were determined to impose their will. They had taken over the London Trained Bands, replacing the Independent leadership with rigid Presbyterians. They were intent on disbanding the New Model and were thought to be planning to move its artillery away to the Tower of London. Worst, it was suspected that Presbyterians were entering into secret negotiations with the King.
In response, the New Model Army organised. The way it happened was extraordinary. No army had ever before discussed its aspirations and rights in the way that was about to happen.
Chapter Forty-One — The Agitators: 1647
Determination to achieve a good political solution ran through the ranks. Of their leaders, Fairfax yearned for the status quo, on just terms, but Cromwell was an unknown quantity, perhaps not yet certain himself what he sought. Others quickly decided. Radical soldiers and officers allied with radical civilians. Interesting links were forged, and not particularly in secret.
