Cavaliers and Roundheads. Christopher Hibbert

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      Still there was silence. He turned to the Speaker, and repeated the question. The Speaker fell upon one knee before him and said, ‘Sire, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me.’

      ‘’Tis no matter. I think my eyes are good as another’s.’

      The King looked along the benches; and at length was forced to admit his attempted coup, on which his whole future depended, had failed. ‘Well!’ he said with an air of reproach, ‘since I see all my birds have flown, I do expect that you will send them unto me as soon as they return hither.’

      Having gone so far he was determined not to retreat, as convinced that these five men were at the heart of a conspiracy to undermine his authority as they and their supporters were convinced that the King had now shown himself in his true colours as a tyrant. Issuing a proclamation ordering the City to surrender the five Members who had sought sanctuary within its walls, he marched to the Guildhall himself to demand at a meeting of the Common Council that they should be handed over to him. His words were greeted with shouts of ‘Privileges of Parliament! Privileges of Parliament!’ to which he responded, ‘No privileges can protect a traitor from legal trial!’

      He returned to Whitehall, his coach surrounded by people shaking their fists at him as they shouted abuse through the windows, and by others no less loudly crying out, ‘God bless the King!’ and cursing ‘that rogue’ Pym. One of these averred that he ‘would go twenty miles to see Mr Pym hanged and would then cut off a piece of Mr Pym’s flesh to wear about him in remembrance of him’.

      London was now in uproar. Shops had closed their doors; people had come out into the streets in their thousands; women collected stones to throw at soldiers who might be sent into the City to drag out the five Members variously reported to be in hiding in Coleman Street, Cornhill or Red Lion Court; stools and tables were thrown into the roadway to hinder approaching horsemen; Royalists, who a few days before had been chasing citizens about Westminster with their swords, now prudently chose to stay indoors. Rumours flew from mouth to mouth: the King’s supporters were going to launch an attack on the City and planned to hang Mr Pym outside the Royal Exchange. Barricades were erected, chains pulled across the streets, cannon dragged towards crossroads, cauldrons taken to the top of buildings so that boiling water could be poured down upon the heads of advancing troops. The Inns of Court regiments declared their support of the House of Commons, as the government of the City had already done. Volunteers poured into the City to offer their services in its defence, apprentices from the brickfields at Bethnal Green and Spitalfields, iron workers from Southwark, watermen from Bermondsey and Shoreditch, silk workers from Spitalfields. The houses of Roman Catholics were attacked.

      In the dead of night [6 January 1642] there was great bouncing at every man’s door to be up in their arms presently and to stand on their guard [wrote Nehemiah Wallington, a Puritan turner, in his diary], for we heard (as we lay in our beds) a great cry in the streets that there were horse and foot coming against the City. So the gates were shut and the cullises let down, and the chains put across the corners of our streets, and every man ready on his arms. And women and children did then arise, and fear and trembling entered on all.

      The Lord Mayor was called upon to summon the Trained Bands, those companies of armed citizens originally raised to maintain order in the City and to suppress riotous behaviour. But the Lord Mayor at this time was Richard Gurney, a former silkman’s apprentice who had been left a fortune by his master and had subsequently married a very rich wife; and, as a zealous Royalist, Gurney refused to issue the summons. The Trained Bands mustered anyway, by whose orders no one was sure; and soon six thousand citizens were standing ready to withstand any troops the King might bring against them.

      The officers of the Trained Bands were mostly members of the Fraternity or Guild of Artillery of Longbows, Crossbows and Handguns. Later to be known as the Honourable Artillery Company, this was an ancient regiment of gentlemen much interested in military affairs, several of whom left London from time to time to gain experience of warfare in foreign countries. Their men, musketeers and pikemen, were citizens elected for such duty by the aldermen of their wards and called upon to provide themselves with the necessary equipment. In addition to his immensely long pike, the citizen choosing to become a pikeman had to appear on parade with a breastplate and backplate, a gorget to protect his throat, tasses to guard the thighs, and a helmet. The musketeer also had to have a helmet as well as a musket, musket rest, powder flask and ‘bande-leers with twelve charges, a prymer, a pryming wire, a bullet bag and a belt two inches in breadth’. The cost to a musketeer was reckoned to be £1 3s. 4d., to a pikeman £1 2s. od. In addition both had to arm themselves with swords. Pikemen considered themselves superior to musketeers not only because their weapons had a more ancient and respectable lineage, but also because anyone could fire a musket, whereas it took considerable strength and a decent height to handle a pike effectively.

      The amount of training the men undertook depended largely upon the energy of their officers. Some colonels called their men out infrequently between general musters, a few scarcely ever, so that it came to be said of their bands, as it was of some Trained Bands in the counties, that the instruction they most commonly received was training to drink. Other officers, such as Captain Henry Saunders of Cripplegate, demanded that their men parade at six o’clock in the morning for an hour in the summer months, insisting that this unwelcome discipline was ‘no hindrance to the men’s more necessary callings, but rather calls them earlier to their business affairs’. At least Captain Saunders did not require the men to practise shooting at that time in the morning, ‘neither to beat drumme nor display Ensigne but onely exercise their Postures, Motions and formes of Battell’ so that those still abed near their training ground were not unduly disturbed.

      Traditionally, the London Trained Bands could be summoned for service only upon the orders of the Lord Mayor. But after Richard Gurney’s refusal to call them out that January night, the House of Commons declared that the authority for their summons would no longer rest with the Lord Mayor alone but in future must reside with a committee comprising members of the Court of Common Council and of the Court of Aldermen as well as the Mayor himself. At the same time a Committee of Safety was formed, consisting of six Aldermen and six members of the Court of Common Council, to supervise London’s warlike preparations; and, more significantly yet, Philip Skippon was appointed commander of all London’s Trained Bands at a salary of £300 a year.

      Philip Skippon had been a soldier all his adult life since leaving home in Norfolk. He had fought on the Continent, been wounded more than once, and had returned to England some years before as a captain in the Dutch service. A good and brave man of devout and simple religious faith, which was later to find expression in three books of devotion addressed to his fellow-soldiers, he was respected by men and officers alike. His strong Puritan views were well known, his courage as undoubted as his administrative abilities. In conjunction with a newly formed Committee for London Militia, he reorganized the Trained Bands into six regiments known by the colours of their ensigns – Red, White, Blue, Yellow, Green and Orange – the regiments having six or seven companies with two hundred men in each company. The nominal colonels of the regiments were influential citizens, mostly leading Parliamentary Puritans, appointed for political, family or business reasons rather than for their military capacity, but the lieutenant-colonels and junior officers had experience if not of warfare at least of training and drilling with such units as the Guild of Artillery. Care was taken to ensure that the companies comprised men drawn from the same wards of the city, so that Portsoken men served with Portsoken men, for instance, and Farringdon with Farringdon. The friendly rivalry of the Trained Bands, whose various traditions dated from the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was thus preserved. In the hands of Philip Skippon they were a formidable force.

      On 10 January, the day upon which Skippon’s command of the Trained Bands was confirmed, the King left Whitehall for Hampton Court, fearing СКАЧАТЬ