¹ Aylmer, G. E., ‘Was Oliver Cromwell a member of the army in 1646–7 or not?’, History, LVI (1971), 183–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Aylmer cites contemporary charges to this effect by such disparate commentators as William Prynne (the Presbyterian propagandist and M.P.) and John Wildman (the Leveller). Wildman noted that not even Fairfax had the power to appoint his general officers (without parliamentary approval). The point is germane because late in May 1647 Fairfax sent for Cromwell to rejoin the army. (Bodleian Libr., Tanner MS 58, fo. 123.) But if Cromwell had earlier reverted to civilian status, he was under no obligation to obey the general.

³ Journals of the House of Commons (hereafter C.J.), IV, 138, 169–70, 176–7, 234, 237–9, 416–19; Journals of the House of Lords (hereafter L.J.), VII, 364–5, 421, 433, 532–5, and VIII, 126–7. It is possible that one additional extension of Cromwell's command, for four months, was granted in October 1645. If so, then Cromwell's tenure of office would not have lapsed until November 1646 since previous extensions lasted until then. But in January 1646 the final extension, of six months, was agreed. It is unlikely that this last renewal would have been initiated at a time when a recent four-month extension was only just beginning operation. Yet even if we assume that Cromwell's command did not expire until November rather than July 1646, the main points of my argument are not affected.

⁴ The payments to Cromwell were made under Fairfax's warrant by the Treasurers at War appointed by parliament or their deputy. The Treasurers' records might be subject to audit by the Committee for Taking the Accounts of the Kingdom.

⁵ Aylmer, , ‘Cromwell’, p. 185Google Scholar.

⁶ P.R.O., SP28/41, fo. 377^v (cited by Aylmer). The warrant was dated 26 November 1646, and Cromwell's receipt was signed on 2 December.

⁷ Aylmer, , ‘Cromwell’, p. 186Google Scholar.

⁸ Ibid. pp. 187–8.

⁹ C.J., IV, 416, 426, and V, 44, 57, 126, 162; L.J., vra, 134, 144, 146; Abbott, W. C., The writings and speeches of Oliver Cromwell (Cambridge, Mass., 1937), I, 426Google Scholar; Thurloe state papers, ed. Birch, T. (London, 1742), I, 75Google Scholar.

¹⁰ C.J., IV, 169–70.

¹¹ L.J., VII, 421; C.J., IV, 169–70; Rushworth, John, Historical collections (London, 1721–1722), VI, 39Google Scholar; Sprigge, Joshua, Anglia Rediviva (London, 1647), 28–9Google Scholar.

¹² C.J., IV, 176. The resolution concerning Cromwell's pay as lieutenant-general may explain the fact that Cromwell's commission for that office was back-dated to 2 April 1645. His commissions as colonel and captain, however, were dated 25 June 1645 presumably the day Fairfax actually got around to signing the documents. See item B in the appendix below.

¹³ L.J., VII, 433.

¹⁴ C.J., IV, 177.

¹⁵ Abbott, , Writings and speeches, I, 355–458Google Scholar; Memorials of the Civil War, ed. Bell, Robert (London, 1849), I, 288–357Google Scholar. Both these collections (the latter comprising the third volume of Fairfax family correspondence) unfortunately consist mainly of letters written by Cromwell or Fairfax and do not include much correspondence addressed to them.

¹⁶ Fairfax's father, however, was an M.P. and the general had other relatives and connections sitting at Westminster as well.

¹⁷ L.J., VIII, 401–3, 417–18, 422–3, 425, 427, 433–4, 436, 463; Correspondence of the Scots Commissioners in London, 1644–6, ed. Meikle, H. W. (Roxburghe Club, 1917), p. 199Google Scholar.

¹⁸ In the Commons on 14 July, for example, ‘Cromwell made a long speech in vindication of Sir Thomas Fairfax his Army from an aspersion cast upon it.’ (Brit. Libr., Add. MS 31116, fo. 277V: Whitacre's diary.) It is likely that this aspersion had to do with religious heterodoxy in the army and perhaps with rumours that many Presbyterian officers had been cashiered. (See the sources cited in the previous footnote.)

¹⁹ L.J., VII, 299.

²⁰ Brit. Libr., Egerton MS 1048, fos. 113–14.

²¹ Sprigge, , Anglia Rediviva, pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Abbott, , Writings and speeches, I, 338–9Google Scholar.

²² C.J., V, 158.

²³ L.J., IX, 207; C.J., V, 183.

²⁴ C.J., v, 107–8; Brit. Libr., Add. MS 31116 (Whitacre's diary), fo. 304.

²⁵ L.J., IX, 177, 179, 207, 216–18; C.J., v, 192. Cromwell had also been excluded from major office in the force proposed for Ireland. The leader of that army was to be Philip Skippon, Fairfax's old major-general of foot; and second in command was to be Edward Massey, latterly a reformado with close ties to Holies and other Presbyterian leaders in parliament.

²⁶ Bodleian Libr., Clarendon MS 29, no. 2520; C.J., v, 181; Brit. Libr., Add. MS 10114 (Harington's diary), fo. 24^v; Brit. Libr., Add. MS 31116 (Whitacre's diary), fo. 310; Brit. Libr., Add MS 37344 (Whidocke's Annals), fo. 88; The Clarke papers, ed. Firth, C. H. (Camden Society, 1891), I, 94–9Google Scholar; Bell, (ed.), Memorials, I, 348Google Scholar.

²⁷ Ireton had been one of the M.P.s sent down to headquarters with Cromwell on 30 April. Three weeks later, however, only Cromwell and Colonel Charles Fleetwood came back to report to parliament. But Ireton's subsequent journey to London is evidenced by the fact that he, too, got a warrant for payment of his arrears (only a partial payment of £300 in his case) on 27 May; and the next day he personally signed a receipt for this money. (P.R.O., SP28/49, fo. 501; SP28/3O3, fo. 769.) Cromwell may also have received news about the army on the 27th from an anonymous informant – perhaps John Rushworth, Fairfax's secretary. (Clarke papers, 1, 101–2.)

²⁸ The plan of Holies and other leading Presbyterians (of both the religious and political sorts) was that King Charles should be taken away from Holdenby, which was vulnerable, either to Scotland or to some place near London but away from the New Model. Then the Presbyterian army of the Scots were to join with the large, Presbyterian-dominated militia of London to quell the mutinous New Model. See Gardiner, S. R., History of the Great Civil War (London, 1891), III, 51–102Google Scholar; and Pearl, Valerie, ‘London's Counter-Revolution’, in Aylmer, G. E. (ed.), The Interregnum: the quest for settlement, 1646–1660 (London, 1972), pp. 44–46Google Scholar.

²⁹ Gardiner, , History, III, 76–94Google Scholar; Brailsford, H. N., The Levellers and the English Revolution (London, 1961), pp. 192–204Google Scholar. I am not convinced by John MacCormack's attempt to date Cromwell's decision to support the army's revolt ‘sometime between May 6 and May 15’: MacCormack, J. R., Revolutionary politics in the Long Parliament (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), pp. 186–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ The army committee's warrant, item A in the appendix, refers to ‘an order of the House of Commons of the xvith of January last past’. This order apparently concerned taking the accounts of officers and soldiers with a view to determining and paying their arrears. (C.J., v, 54, 61, 68–9, 78, 85.) Such business presumably was entrusted to the army committee, which already supervised both the collection of monthly assessments ordained for the New Model's support and disbursements from the central treasury in London into the field for pay of the army. Quite clearly the committee was vested with the handling of arrears by an ordinance of 28 May 1647 – although the New Model's revolt rendered this ordinance ineffective for the time being. (Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S. (eds.), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, I, 940–8.)Google Scholar

³¹ For example, the Commons voted £2000 for Colonel Sir Hardress Waller on 4 January 1647. (C.J., v, 41.)

³² Aylmer, , ‘Cromwell’, 187Google Scholar.

³³ Aylmer (ibid., 186) errs in designating Luke Hodges, M.P. for Bristol, as a signer of the earlier warrant. The signature, on both the earlier and later warrants, is clearly that of Thomas Hodges. There were, however, two M.P.s of this name. It is the M.P. for Cricklade who sat on the army committee, since the other Thomas Hodges (recruiter M.P. for IIchester) was not a member of the Commons when the army committee was appointed on 31 March 1645. For the Cricklade M.P.'s membership in Rump, see: Underdown, David, Pride's purge: politics in the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1971), pp. 376, 394Google Scholar; and Worden, Blair, The Rump Parliament, 1648–1653 (Cambridge, 1973), p. 390Google Scholar.

³⁴ Holles, Denzil, Memoirs, in Maseres, Francis Baron (ed.), Select tracts relating to the Civil Wars in England (London, 1815), I, 242, 267, 270Google Scholar. I take Holles's critical reference to ‘Mr Hodges of Gloucestershire’ to meanthe M.P. for Cricklade, since Gloucestershire was the location of Shipton Moyne, the principal estate of that Hodges. Keeler, M. F., The Long Parliament (Philadelphia, 1954), p. 217Google Scholar.

³⁵ The political alignments of Evelyn, Hesilrige, and Vane the Younger maybe traced in their mentions as tellers for divisions in the Journals of the House of Commons for 1646 and 1647. The parliamentary diaries cited in note 26 above also shed light on these three.

³⁶ The account, item B in the appendix, was signed by John Blackwell, a Deputy Treasurer at War who conveniently was also a captain in Cromwell's own regiment of horse. Information on Blackwell's position and work may be gleaned from many of the warrantsamongst the Commonwealth Exchequer papers for November 1646 through December 1647: P.R.O., SP28/41–49, passim.

³⁷ Firth, and Rait, (eds.), A.O.I., I, 656, 818, 1015Google Scholar; L.J., VIII, 560 and IX, 344.

³⁸ On Adams see: Pearl, , ‘London's Counter-Revolution’, p. 55Google Scholar; and Pearl, Valerie, London and the outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1961), p. 293Google Scholar. For the careers of Andrews, Chamberlain, Dethicke, Warner, and Wollston see: ibid. pp. 253 n., 259 n., 309–11, 325–31. On Allen see: Underdown, , Pride's purge, pp. 214 n., 234, 242 n., 325–6Google Scholar; Brunton, D. and Pennington, D. H., Members of the Long Parliament (London, 1954), pp. 59–60Google Scholar; and the many indexed references in Worden's book on the Rump (cited in note 33 above). Information on Witham is not ready to hand.

³⁹ Defences of Adams and other City Presbyterians or neo-Royalists can be found in the following Thomason Tracts in the British Library: Vox Civitatis… (28 September 1647, E. 409. 10); A declaration of Sir John Gaire, Lord Mayor, Alderman Langham, Alderman Adams, Alderman Bunce, Sheriff Cullum… (30 September 1647, E. 409. 15); and A paire of spectacles for the citie(4 December 1647, E. 419. 9).

⁴⁰ On the general problem of arrears the following articles, although needing cautious use in places, have much to say: Morrill, J. S., ‘Mutiny and discontent in English provincial armies, 1645–1647’, Past and Present, LVI (1972), 49–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morrill, J. S., ‘The Army revolt of 1647’, in Duke, A. C. and Tamse, C. A. (eds.), Britain and the Netherlands, VI: War and society (The Hague, 1977), pp. 54–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gentles, Ian, ‘The arrears of pay of the parliamentary army at the end ofthe First Civil War’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 05 1975, 52–63Google Scholar; and Gentles, Ian, ‘Arrears of pay and ideology in the army revolt of 1647’, in Bond, Brian and Roy, Ian (eds.), War and society: a yearbook of military history (London, 1976), pp. 44–66Google Scholar.

⁴¹ For examples, see: Holles, , Memoirs, p. 268Google Scholar; and Gardiner, , History, III, 40n.–41n.(quoting John Lilburne)Google Scholar.

⁴² Firth, and Rait, (eds.), A.O.I., I, 619Google Scholar.

⁴³ Clarke papers, I, 87–8; Steig, Margaret F. (ed.), The diary of John Harrington, M.P., 1646–53 (Somerset Record Society, 1977), p. 55Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ C.J., v, 183–4; L.J., IX, 216, 218.

⁴⁵ I hope to substantiate this statement at length on another occasion when, however, my focus will be on Fairfax's role during and after the army's revolt.