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FINANCE, LOCALISM, AND MILITARY REPRESENTATION IN THE ARMY OF THE EARL OF ESSEX (JUNE–DECEMBER 1642)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2009

AARON GRAHAM
AARON GRAHAM*
Affiliation:
New College, Oxford
*
New College, Oxford, OX1 3BN[email protected]
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Abstract

Work on the ‘county community’ during the English Civil War, and tensions between centre and periphery, has focused exclusively upon forms of political and cultural representation. However, this article argues that local communities also sought to achieve agency within the wider war effort by lobbying for military representation. In return for financial contributions, supporters wanted an ‘interest’ in the units they raised, mainly through control over the nomination of officers. The history of the army of the earl of Essex between June and December 1642 indicates the financial consequences of neglecting such military representation. Its structure dissolved particularist interests, orientating the army towards the pursuit of a national strategy, but this gave local supporters no confidence that their concerns were being represented. The result was an assertion of localism, a decline in donations, and a financial crisis within the army.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 2009 , pp. 879 - 898
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful for the advice and assistance of Clive Holmes, who supervised the M.St. dissertation upon which this article is based.

References

1 Bodleian Library, Tanner MSS 62 (Lenthall papers), fo. 224.

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15 I have outlined this interpretation in Aaron Graham, ‘“Unfulfilled promise”: the army of the earl of Essex, June–November 1642’ (M.St. thesis, Oxford, 2008), pp. 4–8.

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32 Peter Edwards, Dealing in death: the arms trade and the British civil wars, 1638–1652 (Stroud, 2000), pp. 131–7; The National Archives (TNA), State Papers (SP) 28/1a, fo. 177.

33 TNA, SP28/1a, fos. 29, 204–7, 240; TNA, SP28/2a, fo. 235.

34 TNA, SP28/261, fo. 11.

35 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (CSPD) 1641–3, pp. 362–3.

36 TNA, SP28/1a, fos. 60, 136, 139, 222.

37 TNA, SP28/127, fos. 26, 30.

38 TNA, SP28/1a, fos. 166, 202; TNA, SP28/2a, fo. 55; TNA, SP28/261, fo. 100; TNA, SP28/266, pt Iii, fo. 133. The troopers were mounted on the twenty horses that Essex had donated in June: LJ, v, p. 123.

39 CJ, ii, p. 629; LJ, v, p. 141; Young and Snow, eds., Private journals, iii, p. 193.

40 LJ, v, p. 371.

41 Tenth report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1885), pt iv, pp. 146–7.

42 LJ, v, p. 371.

43 Godfrey Davies identifies Biddeman as Henry Billingsley, a reformado and professional officer: Davies, ‘Parliamentary army’, p. 51. For Quarles's military service in Cadiz and Ireland see TNA, SP16/522, fo. 19, and TNA, SP16/62, fo. 10i [2]. For his links to Essex, see Vernon F. Snow, Essex the Rebel: the life of Robert Devereux, the third earl of Essex, 1591–1646 (Lincoln, NE, 1970), p. 150.

44 John Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (2 pts in 10 vols., Cambridge, 1922), ii, p. 936, iii, p. 412.

45 TNA, PROB 11/193 (will of James Quarles), fo. 97.

46 See above n. 27.

47 Tai Liu, ‘Burges, Cornelius (d. 1665)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) (www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3967, accessed 23 Apr. 2008). The MP was Sir Edward Lyttleton: see Young and Snow, eds., Private journals, iii, p. 150.

48 TNA, SP28/1a, fos. 78, 84.

49 LJ, v, pp. 306–7; TNA, SP28/2a, fo. 127. For Berry, see Joseph Foster, The register of admissions to Gray's Inn, 1521–1889 (London, 1889), p. 148.

50 The list of the army raised under the command of his Excellency, Robert earle of Essex (1642).

51 For a detailed study of the limitations of prosopography, see K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, ed., Prosopography approaches and applications: a handbook (Oxford, 2007), pp. 139–81.

52 Hughes, Politics, society and civil war, pp. 150–6.

53 Firth, ‘Ironsides’, pp. 34–5.

54 W. H. Cooke, Students admitted to the Inner Temple, 1547–1660 (London, 1877), p. 208; W. Paley Baildon, The records of the honorable Society of Lincoln's Inn (London, 1896), p. 226. The villages are six miles apart.

55 Bedfordshire County Record Office, Parish register of Dean, 1566–1812 (Bedford, 1988), p. 8; Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, ii, p. 323.

56 C. H. Firth and Sean Kelsey, ‘Wagstaffe, Sir Joseph (bap. 1611?, d. 1666/7)’, DNB (www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28399, accessed 1 May 2008); Joan Dils, ‘Goodwin, Arthur (d. 1643)’, DNB (www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10987, accessed 15 May 2008); for Stiles and Barriff see Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: the members of the University of Oxford, 1500–1714 (4 vols., Oxford, London, 1891), iv, p. 1441; and Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, i, p. 140.

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58 Edmund Ludlow, Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, ed. C. H. Firth (Oxford, 1894), p. 39.

59 Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, i, p. 125, iv, p. 5.

60 Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, i, p. 41, ii, p. 495.

61 George Alfred Raikes, ed., The ancient vellum book of the Honourable Artillery Company (London, 1890), pp. 38, 46.

62 This study excludes the fifth regiment under Lord Kerry, which was sent to Ireland in October 1642: Firth and Rait, eds., Acts and ordinances, i, p. 32.

63 LV, iv, p. 615.

64 Robinson, ‘Horse supply’, p. 124; Firth and Rait, eds., Acts and ordinances, i, pp. 12–13; LJ, v, pp. 177, 181.

65 A list of the field-officers chosen and appointed for the Irish expedition (1642); CSPD 1627, p. 496, CSPD 1631, p. 557, CSPD 1641–3, p. 342.

66 CJ, ii, p. 698; Young and Snow, eds., Private journals, iii, p. 301.

67 LJ, v, p. 381; CJ, ii, p. 727.

68 TNA, SP28/1a, fos. 1, 5, 129, 254.

69 TNA, SP28/1a, fos. 212, 217–18, 233–6; TNA, SP28/2a, fo. 94.

70 A list of the names of such persons who are thought fit for their accomodation, and the furtherance of the service in Ireland, to be entertained as reformadoes (1642). See also CJ, ii, pp. 592, 604, 630.

71 CSPD 1641–3, p. 373.

72 TNA, PROB 11/193, fo. 97.

73 Mark Stoyle, Soldiers and strangers: an ethnic history of the English Civil War (London, 2005), pp. 102–7.

74 John Aubrey, Aubrey's Brief lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (Ann Arbor, 1957), pp. 105–6.

75 CSPD 1640, pp. 92–3.

76 Quoted in Arthur F. Marotti, Manuscript, print, and the English Renaissance lyric (London, 1995), p. 81; Taylor, G., ‘Some manuscripts of Shakespeare's sonnets’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 68 (1985), pp. 220–3Google Scholar; Alan R. Young, with the assistance of Beert Verstraete, Emblematic flag devices of the English civil wars, 1642–1660 (London, 1995), p. 22.

77 Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, ii, p. 249.

78 Lord Brooke, A worthy speech made by the Right Honourable the Lord Brooke (1643), p. 7.

79 Robert Kirle, A coppy of a letter writ from Serjeant Major Kirle (1643), p. 1.

80 Anne Laurence, Parliamentary army chaplains, 1642–1651 (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 24–6, 30–1.

81 CSPD 1641–3, pp. 372–3, 380, 382, 391.

82 TNA, SP16/493, fo. 1.

83 Ludlow, Memoirs, pp. 38–9; Edmund Massie, A short declaration by Colonel Edward Massie (1649), p. 1; Kirle, Coppy of a letter, pp. 1–2; Edwin Sandys, The declaration of Col. Edwyn Sandys (1642), p. 5.

84 Firth, ‘Ironsides’, p. 19.

85 TNA, SP18/94, fo. 166; Sandys, Declaration, p. 5.

86 LJ, v, pp. 173–4, 442.

87 CJ, ii, p. 778; LJ, v, p. 369.

88 J. H. Hexter, The reign of King Pym (Cambridge, MA, 1961), pp. 92–3, 108–48.

89 Firth and Rait, eds., Acts and ordinances, i, pp. 14–16; CJ, ii, pp. 672, 696, 699.

90 Young and Snow, eds., Private journals, ii, p. 275; Calendar of State Papers, Venetian 1642–3, p. 113.

91 Adamson, ‘Baronial context’, pp. 107–9.

92 Earl of Essex, A worthy speech spoken by his excellence the earle of Essex (1642).

93 Clarendon, History of the rebellion, ii, p. 363.

94 Young, Emblematic flag devices, pp. 262–3; TNA, SP28/2b, fo. 353; Pudsey witnessed Essex's will and accompanied his hearse at his funeral: see Snow, Essex the Rebel, pp. 312, 490.

95 TNA, SP28/1a, fos. 18–19.

96 Young and Snow, eds., Private journals, iii, p. 299; TNA, SP28/1a, fo. 271.

97 TNA, SP28/262, fo. 279.

98 Robinson, ‘Horse supply’, p. 125.

99 Young and Snow, eds., Private journals, iii, p. 351; CJ, ii, pp. 763–7.

100 CSPD 1641–3, p. 395.

101 Young and Snow, eds., Private journals, iii, p. 341.

102 CSPD 1641–3, pp. 372–3, 384.

103 TNA, SP28/2b, fos. 213–15.

104 CSPD 1641–3, pp. 385–8.

105 TNA, SP28/2b, fos. 514, 516, 518.

106 TNA, SP28/2a, fo. 241.

107 Young and Snow, eds., Private journals, iii, pp. 360–1; earl of Essex, The earl of Essex his letter to the high court of parliament, Sep. 17 (1642), and earl of Essex, A letter sent from his excellency, Robert earle of Essex, &c. to the lord maior of London. (1642).

108 Davies, ‘Parliamentary army’, p. 54.

109 Firth and Rait, eds., Acts and ordinances, i, p. 38.

110 LJ, v, p. 442.

111 Firth and Rait, eds., Acts and ordinances, i, pp. 24–5.

112 See, for example, CJ, ii, pp. 661, 681, 685.

113 London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CC/01/01/041 (‘Journal of the Common Council, 1640–1649’), fo. 36.

114 Firth and Rait, eds., Acts and ordinances, i, pp. 38–41.

115 Ibid., i, pp. 41–2.

116 James Scott Wheeler, The making of a world power: war and the military revolution in seventeenth-century England (Stroud, 1999), pp. 148–96.

117 Holmes, Eastern Association, pp. 62–182.

118 Ibid., pp. 69–84.

119 Ibid., p. 70.

120 LJ, v, p. 442.

121 Snow, Essex the Rebel, p. 349.

122 John Morrill, ‘Devereux, Robert, third earl of Essex (1591–1646)’, DNB (www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7566, accessed 2 May 2008).