Cromohs Virtual Seminars

‘Pym’s junto’ in the ante-bellum Long Parliament: radical or not?[1]

Jared van Duinen
University of New South Wales

J. Van Duinen , "‘Pym’s junto’ in the ante-bellum Long Parliament: radical or not?", in M. Caricchio, G. Tarantino, eds., Cromohs Virtual Seminars. Recent historiographical trends of the British Studies (17th-18th Centuries), 2006-2007: 1-5
<http://www.fupress.net/public/journals/49/Seminar/duinen_pym.html>

"Mr. Pym and others will not yield. but I believe Mr. Pym will find few
(besides those of his Junto) of that opinion."
Edward Nicholas to Mr Thomas Webb, 12 October 1641.[2]

1. When historians discuss the Long Parliament they frequently refer to a hazy and often ill-defined collection of individuals invariably centred around the figure of John Pym.  This assemblage is variously referred to as 'Pym's group', 'Pym and his allies', or 'Pym and his supporters'.  Probably the most common appellation has become 'Pym's junto', or more often simply the 'junto'.[3]  Over the years this junto has assumed a variety of historiographical guises and its role within the Long Parliament has been the subject of some debate.  This paper will first briefly sketch this historiography and then go on to discuss the radicalism of the junto in the first twelve months of the Long Parliament.   

Certain contemporaries clearly seemed to be under the impression that a group of some description existed as evidenced by the above quote from Edward Nicholas.  Nicholas also referred to this nebulous group as the 'factious party' and was convinced that members of this party were meeting during the parliamentary recess of September/October 1641: 'I hear there are diverse meetings at Chelsea at the Lord Mandeville's house & elsewhere by Pym and others to consult what is best to be done at their next meeting in Parliament'.[4]  The royalist author, Robert Chestlin, also singled out 'half a dozen popular discontented persons...[who] swayed all the Parliaments [of king Charles]'.[5]  Similarly, Sir Philip Warwick, when describing the opening few months of the Long Parliament, wrote of a 'Faction...[who were] daily attended by the factious clergy, whom they freely admit into their Juncto-Councils'.[6]

Many later historians have followed these contemporary writers in describing a similar group.  More than a hundred years ago, S.R. Gardiner identified a 'knot of men who constituted the inspiring force of the Parliamentary Opposition'.  These men could often be found positioned in the vanguard of parliament's struggle against Charles's authoritarian rule.[7]  A later work, which borrowed to some extent from Gardiner's view, was J.H. Hexter's account of the early years of the Long Parliament, The Reign of King Pym.  Hexter also referred to a group around Pym but complicated Gardiner's account by claiming that Pym was in fact the leader of a 'middle group'.  This group skilfully steered a path between the opposing war and peace parties and very often had the deciding say in negotiations with the king.[8] 

The rise of revisionism saw the junto undergo further changes.  It acquired, firstly, a less oppositionist character; secondly, Lords members; and thirdly, an affiliation with, and sometimes a reliance upon, the Scots.  In 1984, Sheila Lambert published an article which questioned the pre-eminent role assigned to Pym as master manipulator of a Parliamentary opposition.  She instead argued that 'it was the role of the peers, not the Commons, that was crucial' and that Pym was for the most part acting in a subordinate supportive role to his 'patrons' in the Lords.[9]  This questioning of the 'King Pym' myth was certainly influential if only for the salient reminder of the bicameral nature of early Stuart parliamentary politics.[10]

Pym's junto was frequently at the centre of two other major works of this time:  Anthony Fletcher's The Outbreak of the English Civil War and Conrad Russell's The Fall of the British Monarchies.  Although both Fletcher and Russell were analysing very similar events there were quite fundamental differences between the two works which often reflected changes that had taken place in early Stuart historiography.  In the ten years which separated the appearance of the two monographs, two significant historiographical developments had occurred: a greater appreciation for the role of the peers in politics (as seen in Lambert's work) as well as a new emphasis on the British context of the civil war.  In particular, the British context is emphasised in Russell's work with the Scots often exerting a decisive influence on the English political scene and indeed upon the junto itself.  Pym is described as ever-reliant upon his Scottish allies and even after the withdrawal of the Scots in September 1641 Russell maintains that the strategy of Pym and the junto was predicated upon engineering their return.[11]  This stress that Russell placed upon the presence and influence of the Scots has proven to be one of his more contentious assertions.  Jason Peacey, for example, has more recently suggested a corrective by saying that 'there are grounds for arguing, as even some revisionists have done, that Russell underemphasised the support for reform in England, and that it is crucial to assess the agenda of Pym and Saye, as well as their ability to create a party'.[12] 

Despite these interpretative differences, on the whole most scholars tend to agree that there was a group of individuals closely associated with Pym in the first couple of years of the Long Parliament.  Whether one calls them a junto or employs some other appellation is mostly a question of nomenclature, although 'junto' does seem to have become the most accepted label.[13]  But when it comes to the membership of this junto things start to get a little hazier.  Contemporary sources, although often quite ready to refer to a junto or faction, can often be frustratingly vague concerning precise membership.  Nicholas's quote at the start of this chapter is one example of this imprecision.[14]  Likewise, secondary authors can be just as vague.[15]  Nevertheless certain names tend to crop up with more regularity than others.  From these various accounts, as well as from my own examination of the sources for the first months of the Long Parliament, I have identified whom I consider to be likely junto men.  My list consists of, in the House of Lords, the earls of Bedford, Essex, and Warwick, and the lords Saye, Mandeville, and Brooke, and in the Commons, Pym, John Hampden, Oliver St John, Nathaniel Fiennes, Sir Arthur Haselrig, and Sir Walter Earle.[16]  This is not to say that these men were members of a rigid and impermeable parliamentary bloc.  There were a number of other allies who could be found supporting the junto depending upon the issue at stake but the aforementioned individuals formed, what I consider to be, an identifiable bicameral nucleus.

So what was their agenda and exactly how radical was it?  The answer to this question of course depends upon one's definition of 'radical'.  As Glenn Burgess has illustrated, 'radicalism' is a concept which has often provoked much scholarly debate.[17]  He has also claimed that it is the one thing which makes the English Revolution truly a revolution.[18]  In an effort to explicate radicalism apropos the English Revolution, Burgess has posited three different yet overlapping frameworks: constitutional and legal argument, republicanism, and religious radicalism.[19]  For the purposes of this paper, I will be examining radicalism as it pertained to a very specific context - the politico-religious role played by the junto in the first twelve months of the Long Parliament.  As such I will be exploring an overtly (and deliberately) situational radicalism of the sort propounded by Burgess; for what constituted 'radical' in 1640-41 was not necessarily the same thing five or ten years earlier or later.  I will investigate the junto's radicalism (or lack thereof) first in terms of their political stance and then in terms of their religious beliefs.

2. November 1640 - May 1641: political initiatives? 

In the first six months of the Long Parliament, the junto were largely concerned with two interlinked issues: the threat represented by Strafford and a strategy known as the 'bridge appointments scheme'.  Many Englishmen agreed that Strafford's reign in Ireland represented the worst kind of authoritarian, arbitrary government.  What was more alarming was the possibility, outlined by Pym in his opening speech to the Long Parliament, that the 'moulding [of] the Irish government into an illegal course, [was done] with the intent to do [the same] here'.[20]  But in particular for the junto, Strafford represented an additional risk because it was rumoured that he had proof of their collusion with the Scots in the months preceding the Long Parliament.[21]  This made him very dangerous indeed and this is probably why the junto were in the vanguard of proceedings against him.  As Mandeville put it in his memoirs, 'the Earl of Strafford intended to prefer an accusation of High Treason against diverse members of both the Houses of Parliament, whether this information was real or feigned is uncertain, yet it wrought the effect designed to hasten their intended impeachment of High Treason against him.'[22]  Pym first raised the issue of Strafford in the Commons on 11 November.  A select Commons committee, composed of Pym, Hampden, St John, Strode, Clotworthy, Sir Walter Earle, Harbottle Grimstone, and Lord Digby, was appointed forthwith to prepare the charges against Strafford.[23]  On 18 November, again at Pym's instigation, it was decided that this committee should be enlarged to include Lords members.  The members who made up the Lords side of this committee were Bedford, Essex, Saye, Mandeville, Brooke, Wharton, Hertford, Savile, the earl of Bath, and Warwick's son-in-law, Lord Robartes.  This joint committee then took charge of the proceedings against Strafford and had the novel feature of being 'enjoined by the House to Secrecy', but apparently this was 'not to be a Precedent for the Future.'[24]  As can be seen, the junto were well represented on both arms of this committee.

The proceedings against Strafford then appeared to slip into a perplexing hiatus.  Obviously it took time to gather evidence and witnesses but it also seems that the junto were occupied with other plans at this time to which the fate of Strafford was not irrelevant.  In late December, the earl of Northumberland wrote to the earl of Leicester that 'Hertford, as well as Bedford is nominated to the Treasurer's Staff; the first of these hath hopes given him from the Court, the other is wished unto that office by the ruling party in this parliament; but for certain, neither of them have yet any assurance at all; though, in my opinion, Bedford is the likeliest man to get that place.'[25]  In January 1641, speculation abounded and this time other members of the junto were named.  Sir John Temple reported what he believed to be the full array of promotions:

I understand the King is brought into a dislike of those counsels that he hath formerly followed, and therefore resolves to steer another course.My Lord of Bedford shall now presently be Lord Treasurer...Mr. Pym shall certainly be Chancellor of the Exchequer, and my Lord Saye Master of the Wards.and Mr. St John shall be Recorder.[26]

Clarendon later embellished this list to include Mandeville as Lord Privy Seal and Holles as Secretary of State.[27]  These rumours were describing what became known as the 'bridge appointments scheme' - a very traditional and moderate plan which involved altering the course of royal policy by changing those who occupied the key offices of state. 

On 29 January, in what was probably seen by many to be the first of these new promotions, Bedford 'prevailed with the king.to make Oliver St John his solicitor general.'[28]  Then on 19 February the king seemed to give his strongest indication yet of a change of counsel when he created seven new privy councillors - these were Bedford, Essex, Saye, Mandeville, Hertford, Savile, and Bristol (and Warwick was added in April).[29]  Charles most probably saw these appointments as quite a significant concession on his part and no doubt expected some sort of reciprocal exhibition of support in return.  As circumstances would have it, a chance for his new councillors to prove their mettle arrived almost immediately with the publication on 24 February of a vitriolic paper emanating from the Scots' camp.  This paper was an unambiguous call for the execution of Strafford and the abolition of episcopacy.  Ironically, it is possible that it was precisely these new privy council promotions which had led certain elements within the Scottish camp to publish this paper.  As the Scottish Covenanting minister, Robert Baillie, claimed, '[these] new Councillors were found to plead publicly for some delay to Strafford's process, and to look upon the Scottish affairs not altogether so pleasantly as they wont.'  As such, it is possible that the Scots paper was actually intended as a means of testing the loyalty of 'our old friends, the new Councillors'.[30]

All the same, the Scots paper placed the junto between a rock and a hard place and they found they had to defend themselves against some very awkward questioning in the Commons.  When the paper was debated on 27 February, Hampden, Earle, and Strode cautiously defended.  Hampden attempted to throw cold water on it by casting doubt upon its provenance: 'we know not from whom it comes or who will avow it.'  Other junto members, such as Pym, St John, Fiennes, and Holles, kept a judicious silence.[31]  It is very likely that Charles found this lack of support from those in the Commons so closely connected to his newly favoured councillors extremely offensive and this episode most probably put a sizeable dent in any real prospect of other bridge appointments coming to fruition.

The Scots paper made reference to what was the crucial sticking-point for the bridge appointments scheme: the fate of Strafford.  When Baillie suggested that the new Councillors sought a delay to Strafford's process he may simply have been reporting what he had heard but this also described what the king expected.  Charles most probably knew that the proceedings against Strafford originated with the junto men and, as such, it is also very probable that he promoted the new privy councillors on the proviso that they would in turn use their influence to stay the execution of Strafford.  Indeed, two years later one can sense a certain note of betrayal in a royal declaration in which Charles avowed that the junto lords knew 'what overtures [had] been made by them and with what importunity, for offices and preferments, what great services should be done for us and what other undertakings were [expected] (even to have saved the life of the Earl of Strafford) if we would confer such offices upon them.'[32] 

It appears in fact that in these first few months of 1641 the junto may have been playing a dangerous double gambit.  It is possible that they were offering promises to Charles of at least saving Strafford's life while at the same time attempting to keep their Scottish allies appeased.  This would help explain the hiatus in the proceedings against Strafford.  But sparing Strafford's life was never something the Scots could countenance.  Baillie declared that 'the great remora to all matters is the head of Strafford' and the Scots paper clearly shows their impatience on this issue.[33]  Thus, the fracas exposed the inherent contradictions within the junto position but it also questions Russell's depiction of the junto's ineluctable dependence upon the Scots.[34]  By endeavouring to seek accommodation with Charles through the bridge appointments scheme, while at the same time attempting to appease their Scottish allies, the junto were in fact pursuing two mutually incompatible aims.  One had to go and the junto would eventually decide that the threat posed by Strafford outweighed any potential collateral that could be gained from keeping him alive. 

This is not to say that the junto were uninterested in the number of other important constitutional initiatives which were occupying parliament at this time, such as the act for triennial parliaments and the legislation against high commission and ship money (St John obviously had a vested interest in the ship money issue although Hampden was unusually quiet on the subject).[35]  They often exhibited support for these legislative incursions on the prerogative but since many of these reforms enjoyed relatively widespread parliamentary backing it is often difficult to distinguish a junto 'line'.  Thus it is that I have focused on the two conjoined yet ultimately conflicting issues discussed above as they appear to have been of signal concern for the junto and were particularly associated with junto members.  The death of Bedford on 9 May - who, it seems, had always been the fulcrum upon which the bridge appointments scheme balanced - and then the execution of Strafford the next day marked both the final demise of these issues and an escalation of the estrangement between the king and the junto.[36]

But the failure of the bridge appointments scheme should not detract from the fact that it represented a traditional and very un-radical attempt at reaching accommodation with the king by changing his counsel.  It must be assumed that while the junto were pursuing this plan they genuinely believed that a change of counsel could take place through which the grievances of the last fifteen years could be successfully redressed.  It was only with the subsequent implication of Charles in the army plots of May/June 1641 followed by the shadowy 'Incident' in Scotland that the junto began to realise that not only his evil counsellors but perhaps Charles himself could not be trusted. 

3. November 1640 - May 1641: religious initiatives?

The most divisive religious question which dominated the first months of the Long Parliament was that of episcopal government.  Except for a small minority, it is often notoriously difficult to pinpoint precisely where MPs stood on the issue of episcopal reform.  The junto is no different.  Like most of their fellow MPs they undoubtedly felt that episcopacy needed to be purged of, to quote Pym, 'the haughty power and ambitious pride of the Bishops and Prelates' which had been a product of the Laudian ascendancy.[37]  But just how much reform was required?  Was it sufficient to return to the ecclesiastical organisation of the Elizabethan or Jacobean church - in which bishops had played a central role - or had the episcopacy become so corrupted that it needed to be abolished 'root and branch'?

An explication of the junto's stance regarding such questions is complicated by two chief factors.  First is the ambiguity (intentional or not) which typified many anti-episcopal statements.  Take, for instance, the following statement by Pym: 'For my own part I attest...that neither envy, or any private grudge to all, or any of the Bishops, hath made me adverse to their function; but merely my zeal to Religion and God's cause, which I perceived to be trampled under foot, by the too extended authority of the Prelates.'[38]  Is this statement abolitionist or reformist?  In saying that he was 'adverse to their function' was he endorsing the complete abolition of bishops or merely a reformation and reduction of their function to as it was in the primitive church?  The second complicating factor is the obvious problem associated with attempting to describe or identify the position of a group.  A group is of course composed of individuals possessing their own individual sets of beliefs.  It inevitably follows that there are going to be differences of opinion within the group which will make the formulation of binding conclusions about that group difficult.  It is possible that intra-junto differences of opinion regarding church reform ranged from the 'scholarly ecumenism' of Bedford (who seemed to find no contradiction between visiting and dining with Laud and his role as Pym's patron),[39] through the 'moderate Episcopal conformism' of Essex,[40] to possible quasi-presbyterians in Fiennes and Hampden.  In this way, the issue of episcopal reform also highlights one very important feature of the junto: it was never a monolithic entity.  But although these variations render generalisations about the junto as a whole complex, I still feel that it is possible to delineate a broad religious paradigm with which most members of the junto would have been satisfied.

The first time that a clear junto position on episcopal reform can be identified is in regards to the ministers' remonstrance which was presented to the Commons on 23 January 1641.[41]  Indeed, the ministers' remonstrance seems to have been something of a junto-sponsored initiative.  It was debated in parliament on 1 and 2 February where it received the vocal support of Hampden, St John, Pym and Holles.  Testimony was also presented by the puritan divines John White of Dorchester, Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Cornelius Burges, and Calybute Downing.[42]  Marshall, Calamy, and Downing, either at that time or at some recent point in their careers, were all patronised by Warwick and Calamy was to preach Warwick's funeral sermon in 1658.[43]  Burges, a minister who was supported and patronised by Bedford, drafted the document.[44]  Burges also referred to meetings which occurred between him, Marshall, Calamy and various members of the junto - namely Warwick, Saye, Brooke, Pym, and Hampden.  These meetings apparently took place in the early months of the Long Parliament, 'twice every week, at some of their lodgings' and it seems highly likely that the minister's remonstrance was in fact a product of these early planning-meetings.  Burges then makes the telling point that of those that attended these meetings, 'not one was for total abolishing of all, or any, but usurped episcopacy.'[45]  Even Clarendon states that Pym was 'not of those furious resolutions against the church as other leading men were' and that he was 'pleased with the government itself of the church.'[46]  It is thus important to note that the ministers' remonstrance was not actually a full-blooded root and branch petition but rather a more moderate call for reformation of the episcopacy.[47]

A bill which exemplified these moderate principles and which was a direct product of the ministers' remonstrance was the bill for exclusion of the bishops from their secular employments. This bill had emerged directly from discussions in the Commons on 10 March surrounding the first head of the ministers' remonstrance concerning the secular employments of bishops.[48]  It enjoyed solid junto support during its committee stages in April and was first sent up to the Lords on 1 May where it received the vocal backing of Saye and Essex.  Saye put it thus:

The question that will lie before your Lordships in passing of this bill is not whether Episcopacy.shall be taken away root and branch, but whether those exuberant and superfluous branches, which draw away the sap from the tree.shall be cut off.The question will be no more but this, whether Bishops shall be reduced to what they were in their first advancement over the Presbyters.[49]

As can be seen, Saye went to great pains to explicitly distance this bill from the London root and branch petition.  The relationship of the junto with the more radical root and branch campaign was always, at best, ambivalent.  On the other hand, the campaign to exclude bishops from their secular employments, and in particular the House of Lords, was of perennial concern to the junto.

In early 1641, members of the junto were associated with a genuine attempt to establish a workable religious settlement.  On 1 March, at the express instigation of Saye, a Lords committee on religion was established which was chaired by John Williams, bishop of Lincoln.[50]  Williams was one of those few bishops who had actively resisted the Arminian innovations of the 1630s and he had been imprisoned in 1637 for his troubles.[51]  He was on friendly terms with Bedford and in the first few days of the Long Parliament, Pym's step-brother and close friend, Francis Rous, had petitioned parliament for Williams's release from prison.[52]  Williams's close association with Saye in early 1641 was exemplified on 6 March when he supported Saye against Laud's accusation that he 'was the greatest Separatist in England'.  Williams declared that 'His Grace would not have called the Lord Saye, Separatist, had he known him so well as he.  For the Lord Saye hath joined with him in his chapel in all the Prayers and Service of the Church'.  Therefore, he concluded, 'the word Separatist was ill put upon Lord Saye'.[53] 

The Williams committee for religion was composed of a broad cross-section of the Lords and included all the junto lords-members.  It also appointed a subcommittee comprised of learned divines to basically operate as an advisory panel.[54]  The representatives to this subcommittee were from across the spectrum of ecclesiastical opinion and included the junto clerical allies Burges, Marshall, and Calamy.  They were joined by Thomas Young who collaborated with Marshall and Calamy on the Smectymnuan tracts of early 1641 and who had probably attended some of the planning-meetings described above.[55]  One of the most significant members of this subcommittee was James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh.  In late 1640 and early 1641, Ussher was maintaining very close links to the junto and their clerical allies.  He stayed at Warwick's house in London, where he allegedly also met with Pym, and owed his lectureship at Covent Garden to Bedford.  It was around this time that he wrote his The Reduction of Episcopacy Unto the Form of Synodical Government which, although not published until after his death in 1656, may have circulated around London in manuscript form.[56]  It has often been thought that Ussher's Reduction plan formed the template for the subcommittee's work although this is far from certain.[57]  But the Reduction plan does bear significant similarities to the only substantial outcome of the committee for religion - the bill for church reform which Williams presented to the Lords on 1 July.[58]  Even though the Williams committee did not achieve the religious settlement it sought, this should not obscure the fact that the junto were active supporters of such a venture.  Indeed, in a speech to parliament on 17 January 1642, St John referred to Williams as a man who was 'well reputed and thought of by most of this Kingdom and.[who] always seemed to be the best affected of any in these times of that function, in places of authority and jurisdiction in the Church'.  He then remarked with a note of regret, 'what good then might this Prelate have done to his Country, so well respected and favoured by most of the Lords, and his vote with them well esteemed, by his endeavours to avert the intentions of the rest of the Bishops'.[59] 

One last piece of evidence which points towards the junto's moderation in matters of church government is provided by the Scots.  Some within the Scottish camp seemed to harbour a distinct suspicion of the junto and their clerical associates' commitment to Scottish-style presbyterianism.  Even in 1640 Robert Baillie was warning that Ussher 'and a great faction with him, will be for a.calked episcopacy.'[60]  Baillie also characterised Burges as 'too much Episcopal' and expressed reservations about Saye and Brooke specifically, observing that 'Saye and Brooke in the Higher House, and these alone, and some leading men in the Lower, were suspected...[would] divide from the Presbyterians, and so weaken the party opposed to bishops.'[61]  Furthermore, a number of Scottish treatises published in early 1641, probably in answer to Ussher's Reduction scheme, decried the half-measures of a reduced episcopacy.  These included Baillie's own The Unlawfulness and Danger of Limited Episcopacy.[62]  Again, this goes to show that the dependence of the junto on the Scots was perhaps not as acute as Russell has depicted.

So it seems that at least over the issue of episcopal reform the junto position was certainly not the most radical to be found in the early months of the Long Parliament.  In fact, as with their political aims, the first few months of 1641 were spent supporting attempts to find a settlement of some kind.  To this end, the junto thus had more affinity for the reformist principles encapsulated in the ministers' remonstrance than the radical claims of root and branch.  As Fletcher has pointed out, the actual root and branch campaign most probably originated from more radical elements within the city of London.[63]   

4. June - November 1641: the radicalisation of the junto 

So it appears that the first six months of the Long Parliament saw the junto pursuing schemes of accommodation in both politics and religion.  Unfortunately a number of very important developments took place in mid-1641 which greatly jeopardised these attempts to find a workable settlement position.  The execution of Strafford and the death of the widely respected, moderate and mediatory figure of Bedford; the escalation of calls (outside the junto) for root and branch abolition; and the implication of Charles in the various army plots all severely affected the chances for accommodation.  It should also be noted that, besides Strafford's execution, the junto arguably had very little influence over any of these developments.  The reaction of the junto to these setbacks was to increasingly resort to the explanatory potential provided by anti-popery.

The period May-September 1641 has been characterised by Russell as the 'slow movement'.  Although the execution of Strafford brought a sense of relief and a general lowering of the political temperature, this period, rather than slow, was actually one of important consolidation for the junto.  The army plots in particular, and Charles's apparent complicity in them, seemed to seriously shake the junto.  In response to the army plot rumours, on 3 May Pym, supported by Strode, Holles, and Henry Martin, called for a Commons committee to 'prepare a Declaration...for the Defence of the Religion established, of the King's Person, and of the liberty of the subject.'  This committee was composed of these four in addition to Hampden, Fiennes, Sir Thomas Barrington, John Glyn, Sir Robert Harley, John Maynard, Sir John Culpepper and Sir Philip Stapleton.[64]  The Protestation which resulted was purported to be a general test to 'show loyalty', as Holles put it, but in actual fact was a very specific test of one's acceptance of the junto's partisan interpretation of a popish plot.  This was made clear by the inclusion of a preamble which expounded upon 'the designs of the Priests and Jesuits, and other adherents to the See of Rome, [which] have of late been more boldly and frequently put in practice'.  This then dovetailed perfectly with the opening statement of the oath itself which was to 'maintain and defend...the true reformed Protestant religion...against all Popery and popish innovations'.[65]  Including the preamble with the oath of loyalty was a brilliant propaganda exercise.  It effectively claimed that belief in the junto's popish plot was a prerequisite for a true and loyal subject or, as it was phrased later, 'a Shiboleth to discover a true Israelite'.  As Clarendon put it, the junto manipulated the army plot to 'advance their own credit and estimation with the people, as if they were the only patriots that intended the preservation of religion, law, and liberty.'[66]  When the Protestation appeared in the Lords the junto peers supported it strongly, to the point where Essex, Saye and Mandeville proposed that those who refused to swear it should not be permitted to vote on the bill of attainder against Strafford.[67] 

On 5 May a joint committee was appointed to investigate the army plot.[68]  The Lords arm of this committee was composed of Essex, Saye, Warwick, Mandeville, Wharton, Paget, Bath, March, and the Lords Howard of Escrick, and Howard of Charlton.  The Commons arm consisted of Pym, Hampden, Fiennes, Clotworthy, Holles, and Strode; Sir Philip Stapleton was added two days later.[69]  As can be seen, the junto was again well represented on both arms.  The members of this committee were required to take a 'protestation of secrecy not to discover or speak of anything of the business committed to their trust'.  No doubt this is why the Commons arm of this committee became known as the 'close' or 'secret' committee.[70]

On 19 May Pym complained that some people were not taking the army plot seriously: 'it is conceived by some that this design is of no importance.'[71]  For Pym and the junto, the army plot was of crucial importance as it represented a material manifestation that the 'papists have had and still have a design upon us'.[72]  The report from the close committee delivered in early June was a carefully orchestrated event and it showcased clearly the junto's interpretation of the army plot.  With Fiennes acting as narrator, it was presented in a series of instalments interspersed with corroborative depositions by other members of the committee/junto.  It cobbled together substantive facts of the case with more vague rumours of the 'great design in hand of the papists at this time'.  This skilful blend of fact and rumour produced a persuasive reading of events that suggested that the army plot was part of a larger and more dangerous popish plot.  There was enough truth in this mix - and enough fear in parliament - for much of it to be believed and many MPs were probably left with a rather convincing impression of a shadowy yet widespread popish conspiracy.[73] 

Further details about this first army plot continued to surface in the following days.[74]  Then on 22 and 23 June, Haselrig, supported by Hampden, Holles and Clotworthy, reported further plotting in Scotland in which it was once again rumoured the king was involved.  In light of these 'new discoveries of secret counsels and meetings of Jesuits and others, and of several plots and designs to disturb the peace of this kingdom', Pym delivered a forceful speech on 23 June in which he outlined what he felt should comprise the future plan of action.  Fletcher has described this speech as the most important Pym made in the first session.[75]  His speech introduced certain 'propositions of very great consequence' which were then referred to the close committee for deliberation and formation into heads.  The following day these heads were presented to the Commons as the Ten Propositions.[76]

It is instructive to note how the Ten Propositions differed from Pym's recommendations in his speech of the day before.[77]  The vein of anti-popery was actually more apparent in the finished Ten Propositions than in Pym's speech.  The fourth and fifth propositions expanded upon Pym's suggestion that the Queen should have persons of trust placed about her, with the fourth proposition adding that these 'competent guards' were to particularly ward against 'all designs of papists and of ill-affected persons'.  The sixth proposition which called for the banning of all papal agents, according to all the parliamentary diarists, had apparently not featured at all in Pym's speech of the day before.  The tenth proposition requested that 'His Majesty be moved that he would be pleased to be very sparing in sending for Papists to Court; and that if any should come without being sent for, that the laws be severely put in execution against them'.  Furthermore, 'that the persons of the most active Papists.may be so restrained as may be most necessary for the safety of the kingdom'.  Again this pointedly anti-popish proposition does not seem to have appeared in Pym's speech.

This transition from Pym's recommendations to the Ten Propositions provides an insight into the nature of the inner dynamics of the junto.  Although it is impossible to gauge in the end precisely what proportion of the Ten Propositions was the product of Pym and what was the results of other members of the close committee, the differences that are evident between Pym's recommendations and the final document seem to suggest that input from other members was not insignificant.  This lends support for the view that Pym was not the omnipotent 'King Pym' that he has sometimes been made out to be and that the junto's initiatives were more often a collaborative exercise.  As such, the Ten Propositions should probably be viewed as an unofficial junto programme of intent for the remainder of the session.  Moreover, both the Ten Propositions and the Protestation also highlight the junto's intensifying anti-popery.  In this way, the army plots were simply grist to the junto's mill: the sense of crisis which they engendered was manipulated by the junto to substantiate their own depiction of a popish plot.

Once the king finally left for Scotland on 10 August there was a general lowering of the political temperature but the junto remained active on the committee which sat during the recess, for which Pym was chairman.  This recess committee was in close communication with another small committee, composed of Hampden, Fiennes, Stapleton, Lord Howard of Escrick, and Sir William Armyn, which was sent to Scotland ostensibly to oversee the denouement of the treaty with the Scots.  It was via 'letters last received out of Scotland from the Committee' that Pym received word of the clandestine affair known as the 'Incident'.[78]  It was never discovered precisely how much Charles personally knew about this plot but once again rumour and innuendo were all that was required.[79]  News of the Incident was used in the same way as the army plots - as further evidence of the existence of a vague yet insidious popish plot.

Presently, however, this shadowy popish plot came out in the open.  In early November, reports began to filter back to England that a rebellion had broken out in Ireland.  These reports brought with them graphic stories of atrocities being committed against protestants.  For the junto here was indisputable proof of the popish plot.  In a speech which he delivered to the Lords on 9 November, Pym gave full vent to his anti-popish rhetoric:

These ill counsels have proceeded from a spirit and inclination to popery and have a dependence in popery and all of them tend unto it.  The religion of the papists is a religion incompatible with any other religion, destructive to all others, and doth not endure anything that opposes it.And you find that, now in Ireland, that those designs that have been upon all three kingdoms do end in a war for the maintenance of popery in Ireland and would do the like here if they were able.[80]

This in turn led to what can arguably be considered as the junto's manifesto: the Grand Remonstrance.  As far back as 10 November 1640, at the suggestion of St John, a select committee of 24 had been appointed to prepare a 'declaration as may be a faithful representation to this House of the state of the Kingdom'.  It is uncertain how much progress had been made on this task when it was referred on 3 August to a smaller junto-stacked committee composed of Pym, Hampden, Fiennes, St John, Earle, Strode, Sir Henry Vane (the younger), and Sir John Culpepper but it is likely that the bulk of what emerged as the Grand Remonstrance was the result of this smaller committee.[81] 

The Grand Remonstrance outlined in full and exhaustive detail the junto's version of what had gone wrong in the past, what had been achieved so far, and what still remained need to be done.  As such, it stood as a powerful piece of propaganda, advertising their particular politico-religious interpretation of the situation in England circa November 1641.  The document itself was divided into three sections.[82]  The first and by far the longest was a historical account dating back to the 1620s of all that had gone awry in church and state.  The second section was devoted to a catalogue of the achievements of the present parliament.  The third and most interesting section consisted of what was yet to be accomplished.  It is noteworthy that many of the secular grievances appeared in the second section while religious reform largely featured in the third. 

The junto's popish conspiracy was a constant thread running through the document but it achieved its fullest expression in the accompanying petition.  In this the past and present distresses of the kingdom were attributed to 'those malignant parties, whose proceedings evidently appear to be mainly for the advantage and increase of Popery, [and] is composed, set up, and acted by the subtle practice of the Jesuits and other engineers and factors of Rome'.  It was these malignant parties who had 'prevailed as to corrupt diverse of your Bishops and others in prime places of the Church, and also to bring diverse of these instruments to be of your Privy Council, and other employments of trust and nearness about your Majesty'.[83]  An important pamphlet that had been written by Brooke during the recess but was not published until now equated episcopacy 'as it now stands established in this Kingdom' with popery.  The timing of this publication suggests that it was designed to augment the Grand Remonstrance.[84]

The ensuing parliamentary debates over the Remonstrance were unprecedented in their hostility and divisiveness.[85]  It is difficult to determine whether this was due directly to the streak of anti-popery in the document itself or simply a reaction against the junto's hegemony at the time.  The recess had witnessed both an emergence of the junto as a coherent group and a concomitant resentment of this emergence amongst a number of fellow MPs.[86]  In the light of this, the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion on 1 November came as a veritable boon for the junto.  In the hands of the junto, the Irish Rebellion provided concrete evidence of the danger of the popish conspiracy and as such it afforded them the opportunity to employ their anti-popish rhetoric to its full potential.  Hence, it is quite likely that it was only the occurrence of the Irish Rebellion that enabled the Grand Remonstrance to be passed at all.  Peter Lake has shown that for many Englishmen 'anti-popery was crisis-related' and indeed it was the crisis occasioned by the various interrelated setbacks of mid-1641 which had initially triggered the junto's anti-popery.  Furthermore, Lake continues, in such moments of crisis 'the most committed Protestants were offered an opportunity to lead bodies of opinion far broader than those normally deemed Puritan' and this seems to me to describe what was happening with the Grand Remonstrance debates of late-1641.[87]  But it also seems entirely plausible that while the aggressively anti-popish propagandising of the junto may have gained them some converts, by the same token, its extremism may have alienated a similar body of moderates and in fact gone a large way towards engendering the creation of a proto-royalist party within parliament.  Thus, in the debates of the Grand Remonstrance we can see the beginnings of the rival demonologies which would find copious expression in the 'paper war' of early 1642 and eventually divide the nation.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, it would appear that the junto were not perhaps the radical oppositionists that they have sometimes been portrayed.  Or rather, that their radicalism only developed in response to certain specific circumstances and contexts.  For the first six months of the Long Parliament the junto actively pursued schemes of accommodation in both the political and religious spheres.  It could of course be argued that these attempts at accommodation were disingenuous and that the junto always had more radical objectives in mind.  But apart from the fact that this involves projecting motives for later actions onto earlier circumstances, I believe that these various plans of achieving some sort of workable settlement with the king should be given credit.  It was only when these plans were dashed by the interrelated setbacks of mid-1641 that the junto were forced to consider an alternative framework for action.  They found this in the explanatory potential provided by the paradigm of popish conspiracy.  In this regard, their anti-popery operated as, in the words of Lake, not 'merely a prejudice, but rather as a species of "ideology"'.[88]  But this prism of anti-popery through which the junto then increasingly viewed the world had the concurrent effect of alienating many of their fellow parliamentarians.  The Grand Remonstrance - that aggressive manifesto of junto ideology - produced the most fiercely divided debates the Long Parliament had hitherto witnessed.  In this way, this unresolved dialectic of crisis-related anti-popery was, to some extent, a self-perpetuating cycle.  The Grand Remonstrance was a response to, and probably could not have existed without, the series of crises occasioned by the various army plots and, in particular, the Irish Rebellion.  But the radicalism of the Grand Remonstrance itself sharply divided MPs and thereby brought about a further crisis-point within parliament.  No doubt the junto would have simply interpreted this crisis as additional evidence of the pervasiveness of the popish conspiracy.  Future crises, such as that which resulted from Charles's attempt to impeach the Five Members in January 1642 (junto members all), would have only served to ossify their prejudice.[89]  

In this way, the radicalism of the junto - as represented by their anti-popery - corresponds more to the functional definition provided in Burgess's article.[90]  It was a highly situational thing: the confluence of both an internal world-view and external events.  As Burgess states, 'occurrences of radicalism can only be understood as the products of particular circumstances - in short as the intersection of a history of ideas and a history of events, such that the holders [the junto] of certain ideas [anti-popery] will under pressure of certain events [army plots and Irish Rebellion] take them in directions we may label radical [the Grand Remonstrance]'.  This process contributed both to the radicalisation of the junto and to the radicalisation of conflict that shattered the unity of the 'political nation' at the beginning of the 1640s.[91]  The example of the junto also shows that someone (or a group of people) may be moderate in one context but quite radical in a different set of circumstances.  Furthermore, the junto's specific radicalisation of late-1641 can also be related back to Burgess's three separate yet overlapping categories of civil war radicalism: constitutional/legal radicalism, republicanism, and religious radicalism.  Obviously, the junto's radicalism, as I have been discussing it above, fits most easily into the third category.  But the subsequent parliamentarianism of many of the junto members also exemplifies the overlap that often existed between these categories.

Notes

[1] I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, Ariel Hessayon, and Claire Taylor for their instructive comments on this paper.  Unfortunately, prior to the writing of this paper, I was not able to acquire a copy of John Adamson’s extensive new study of the junto in this period.  My forthcoming PhD will contain an appraisal of this important work.

[2] Surrey History Society G52/2/19/22; see also W. Bray (ed.), Diary of John Evelyn, 4 vols. (London: Bickers and Son, 1906), iv, p. 105, although in this source Nicholas’s words are “those of his party” instead of “those of his junto”.

[3] Russell refers to the group by a number of different names in The Fall of the British Monarchies (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), although in the latter half of the book he most commonly employs ‘Pym’s junto’ or simply ‘the junto’.  In his review of Russell’s work, John Morrill also adopts the term ‘junto’: J.S. Morrill, ‘The Causes of Britain’s Civil Wars’, in J.S. Morrill (ed.) The Nature of the English Revolution (London: Longman, 1993), pp. 252-72.

[4] Bray, Evelyn, iv, p. 93.

[5] Robert Chestlin, Persecutio Undecima (1648), p. 53.

[6] Sir Philip Warwick, Memoirs of the Reign of Charles I (London: Printed for Richard Chiswell, 1701), p. 173-74.

[7] S.R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603-1642 10 vols. (New York: AMS Press, 1965 (first London: Longmans, 1883-1884), x, pp. 223-24, 238.  Gardiner probably borrowed the descriptive term “knot of men” from William Montagu: HMC Buccleuch and Queensberry, i, pp. 278-79.

[8] J.H. Hexter, The Reign of King Pym (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941), pp. 183-84.  Hexter’s ‘middle group’ proved remarkably resilient in subsequent historiography, see V. Pearl, ‘Oliver St John and the “Middle Group” in the Long Parliament: August 1643-May 1644’, The English Historical Review 81, 320 (1966), pp. 490-519; C. Thompson, ‘The Origins of the Politics of the Parliamentary Middle Group, 1625-1629’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5^th series, 22 (1971), pp. 71-86; A.N.B. Cotton, ‘John Dillingham, Journalist of the Middle Group’, English Historical Review, 93 (1978), pp. 817-834; W.G. Palmer, ‘Oliver St John and the Middle Group in the Long Parliament, 1643-1645: a Reappraisal’, Albion, 14, 1 (1982), pp. 20-26.  For a cogent critique of Hexter’s portrayal of Pym, see J. Morrill, ‘The Unweariableness of Mr Pym’ in S.D. Amussen & M.A. Kishlansky (eds.), Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to David Underdown (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 19-54.

[9] S. Lambert, ‘The Opening of the Long Parliament’, The Historical Journal 27, 2 (1984), p. 286. Lambert’s article owed a conceptual debt of some order to an earlier article by Paul Christianson in which was argued that ‘the hierarchical nature of Stuart society carried over into the working of Parliament and, therefore, that peers exercised a strong, if not predominant, influence upon affairs’: P. Christianson, ‘The Peers, the People, and Parliamentary Management in the First Six Months of the Long Parliament’, Journal of Modern History 49 (1977), p. 575.

[10] J.S.A. Adamson revisited this idea of a ‘baronial aspect’ to the civil war a few years later with a number of articles.  See J.S.A. Adamson, ‘Parliamentary Management, Men-of-Business, and the House of Lords, 1640-1649’, in Clyve Jones (ed.) A Pillar of the Constitution: the House of Lords in British Politics, 1640-1784 (London: Hambledon, 1989), pp. 21-50; ‘The Baronial Context of the English Civil War’, in R. Cust & A. Hughes (eds.) The English Civil War (London: Arnold, 1997), pp. 83-110.

[11] Russell, The Fall, pp. 519-520, 526, 529.

[12] J. Peacey, ‘The Outbreak of the Civil Wars in the Three Kingdoms’, in B. Coward (ed.), A Companion to Stuart Britain (Blackwell: Oxford, 2003), pp. 290-308, quote from p. 299.  See also the discussion of Russell’s work in A. Fletcher, ‘Power, Myths and Realities’, The Historical Journal 36, 1 (1993), pp. 211-216 and P. Lake, ‘Review Article on Russell’s Works’, The Huntington Library Quarterly 57, 2 (1994), pp. 167-197.

[13] See for example, R. Cust, ‘Charles I and Popularity’, in Cogswell, Cust, and Lake (eds.), Politics, Religion and Popularity in early Stuart Britain: Essays in Honour of Conrad Russell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 251.

[14] Robert Chestlin was at least willing to name some of his ‘half a dozen popular discontented persons’.  These included Saye, Pym, John Hampden, and William Strode, but they were accompanied by, rather unhelpfully, other anonymous ‘Parliament drivers’: Chestlin, Persecutio Undecima, p. 53.  A number of other contemporary sources provide similar lists, see Anon., Pym’s Juncto (Oxford: Printed for Wil. Web., 1643); Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS D.843, fol. 48; HMC Salisbury, xxiv, p. 277; A Perfect Relation, 29 September-11 October 1642 (London: Printed for Francis Coles, 1642), p. 13.

[15] Starting again with Gardiner, his ‘knot of men’ has one peer, Bedford, and five commoners, St John, Strode, Holles, Sir Walter Earle, and Fiennes: Gardiner, History of England, x, p. 223.  Hexter’s ‘middle group’ was a more wide-ranging conglomeration but he also claimed that it was led by a small core consisting of Warwick, Saye, Brooke, Mandeville, Pym, Hampden, and Sir Thomas Barrington.  These ‘managers’ brought their ‘relatives, old associates, and friends with them in force’: Hexter, King Pym, p. 88.  Russell offers a fairly comprehensive list of who he considers to be the pro-Scots at the outset of the parliament which includes in the Lords, Saye, Brooke, Mandeville, Paget, Wharton, and Holland, and in the Commons, Pym, Hampden, Fiennes, St John, Strode, Holles, Earle, and Vane the younger.  This Commons group had the support of a variety of associates including Francis Rous, Sir Miles Fleetwood, Sir John Wray, Perd, Pennington, Sir Simonds D’Ewes, William Purefoy, and, what he terms ‘fair-weather friends’, Sir Edward Dering and Sir Henry Anderson: Russell, The Fall, pp. 165-66 and passim.

[16] I am currently working on an analysis of the junto members and their historical antecedents in my PhD dissertation.  I discuss the issue of membership of the junto at greater length there.

[17] G. Burgess, ‘A Matter of Context: “Radicalism” and the English Revolution’, Cromohs Virtual Seminars: http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/eng/index.html, 9/2/07.

[18] G. Burgess, ‘On Revisionism: An Analysis of Early Stuart Historiography in the 1970s and 1980s’, The Historical Journal 33, 3 (1990), p. 625.

[19] Burgess, ‘A Matter of Context’.

[20] Jansson, Proceedings, i, p. 36.

[21] Whatever Strafford’s allegations were, they were certainly not baseless, see A Donald, ‘New Light on the Anglo-Scottish Contacts of 1640’, Historical Research 62, 148 (1989), pp. 221-229; C.S.R. Russell, ‘The Scottish Party in English Parliaments 1640-2 OR The Myth of the English Revolution’, Historical Research 66 (1993), p. 49; Russell, The Fall, pp. 149-153.

[22] CUL MS Mm.I.47, p. 19; BL Add. MS 15567.

[23] Jansson, Proceedings, i, pp. 94, 101-104.

[24] LJ, iv, p. 103; Jansson, Proceedings, i, pp. 167, 398.

[25] A. Collins, Letters and Memorials of State 2 vols. (London: Printed for T. Osborne, 1746), ii, pp. 664-666.  Northumberland here provides another contemporary reference to a parliamentary grouping of some description and it would have been interesting to see whom he thought composed this ‘ruling party’.

[26] HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi, pp. 367-368; D. Laing, The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1841-1842), i, p. 292.

[27] E. Hyde, earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1843), pp. 85, 101-102.

[28] Ibid., p. 84.

[29] HMC Cowper, ii, p. 280; Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 45-46.

[30] Laing, Baillie, i, pp. 305-306.

[31] M. Jansson (ed.), Proceedings in the Opening Session of the Long Parliament 6 vols. (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2000-), ii, pp. 576-578; M. Jansson, Two Diaries of the Long Parliament (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), pp. 12-13.

[32] ‘His Majesties Declaration of the 12 of August, 1642’ in The Works of that Great Monarch, and Glorious Martyr, King Charles I (Aberdeen: Printed by J. Chalmers for William Coke, 1766), p. 129.

[33] Laing, Baillie, i, p. 309.

[34] Russell, The Fall, pp. 519-520, 526, 529.

[35] St John chaired the committee concerning ship money: Jansson, Proceedings, i, p. 482.

[36] Indeed, when the king met Bedford’s widow two years later he told her that he would not now be troubled with the war if her husband had lived: BL Stowe MS 326, fol. 73v.

[37] John Pym, A Declaration and Vindication of John Pym Esquire (London: Printed for John Atkinson, 1643), p. 4.

[38] Ibid., p. 6; Clarendon also recognised that Pym “professed to be very entire to the doctrine and discipline of the church of England”: Clarendon, History, p. 474.

[39] Ibid., p. 93.

[40] Richard Baxter, Penitent Confession and his Necessary Vindication (London: Printed for Tho. Parkhurst, 1691), p. 30; Similarly, Clarendon described Essex as more ‘displeased with the person of the archbishop, and some other bishops, than indevoted to the function’: Clarendon, History, p. 93.

[41] Jansson, Proceedings, ii, pp. 257, 260.

[42] Ibid., ii, pp. 332-335, 342, 343 & n22, 344, 346.

[43] B. Donagan, ‘The Clerical Patronage of Robert Rich, Second Earl of Warwick, 1619-1642’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 120 (1976), pp. 388-419.  When Calamy moved from the Warwick living of Rochford in 1639 to become the rector at the London parish of St Mary Aldermanbury, Warwick applied for a pew in the church at St Mary Aldermanbury.  Calamy also preached Warwick’s funeral sermon in 1658: Ibid.; Edmund Calamy, The Nonconformist’s Memorial, edited by S. Palmer (London: Printed for W. Harris, 1775), p. 74.

[44] T. Liu, ‘Burges, Cornelius’ ODNB; J. Peacey, ‘Henry Parker and Parliamentary Propaganda in the English Civil Wars’, (unpublished Cambridge University PhD thesis, 1994), p. 22.

[45] N.H. Keeble & G.F. Nuttall (eds.), Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), i, p. 409 (emphasis added).  One should bear in mind, though, that this comment was made in the 1650s.

[46] Clarendon, History, pp. 74, 94.

[47] Although there is no extant copy of the ministers’ remonstrance, the gist of its content can be deduced from notes of the committee which was in charge of considering both it and the London root and branch petition: J. Bruce (ed.), Verney Papers: Notes of Proceedings in the Long Parliament (Camden Society, old series, 31, 1844), pp. 4-14; Fletcher, Outbreak, p. 97; Christianson, ‘The Peers’, p. 587.

[48] Jansson, Proceedings, ii, pp. 694-703; iii, pp. 49-51.

[49] William Fiennes, viscount Saye and Sele, Two Speeches of the Right Honourable William, Lord Viscount Say and Seale (London: Printed for Thomas Underhill, 1641), pp. 1-2. 

[50] Lords Journal, iv, p. 174; BL Harl. MS 6424, fol. 49; W.A. Shaw, A History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth, 1640-1660 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1900), i, pp. 65-74.

[51] B. Quintrell, ‘Williams, John, archbishop of York’, ODNB.

[52] Jansson, Proceedings, i, p. 64; Russell, The Fall, pp. 238-239; see also Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 88, fol. 205 for evidence of communication between Williams and Hampden.

[53] BL Harl. MS 6424, fols. 44-45.

[54] LJ, iv, pp. 177, 180.

[55] T. Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 318.  For a good discussion of the Smectymnuan tracts, see ibid., pp. 319-326.

[56] A. Ford, ‘Ussher, James, archbishop of Armagh’, ODNB; James Ussher, The Reduction of Episcopacy Unto the Form of Synodical Government Received in the Ancient Church (London: Printed by T.N. for G.B. and T.C., 1656), pp. 5, 7.  A manuscript copy can be found in CUL Add. MS 44(6). 

[57] W.M. Abbott, ‘James Ussher and “Ussherian Episcopacy”, 1640-1656: the Primate and his Reduction manuscript’, Albion, 22 (1990), pp. 237-259; cf. J.C. Spalding & M.F. Brass, ‘Reduction of Episcopacy as a Means to Unity in England, 1640-1662’, Church History, 30 (1961), pp. 414-432.

[58] LJ, iv, p. 296; BL Harl. 6424, fol. 79; Copy of the Proceedings of Some Worthy and Learned Divines (1641); S.R. Gardiner (ed.), The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), pp. 167-179.

[59] Oliver St. John, Master St John his speech in parliament on Monday the 17^th of January (London: Printed for R.B., 1641), p. 2.

[60] Laing, Baillie, i, p. 313.

[61] Ibid., pp. 275, 285-286.

[62] Robert Baillie, The Unlawfulness and Danger of Limited Episcopacy (London: Printed for Thomas Underhill, 1641); Alexander Henderson, The Unlawfulness and Danger of Limited Prelacy or Perpetual Presidency in the Church Briefly Discovered (London: s.n., 1641); Anon. [George Gillespie], Certain Reasons Tending to Prove the Unlawfulness and Inexpediency of all Diocesan Episcopacy (even the most Moderate) (Londo: s.n., 1641).

[63] Fletcher, Outbreak, p. 94.

[64] Jansson, Proceedings, iv, pp. 169, 180-181; Bruce, Verney Papers, pp. 66-67.

[65] Jansson, Proceedings, iv, pp. 169-183.  For the texts of the Protestation and preamble, see ibid., pp. 170-171, 173-174.

[66] Clarendon, History, p. 108.

[67] LJ, iv, p. 338; BL Harl. MS 6424, fol. 60.  For an interesting analysis of the appropriation and use of the Protestation in the country at large, see D. Cressy, ‘The Protestation Protested, 1641 and 1642’, The Historical Journal 45, 2 (2002), pp. 251-279; J. Walter, Understanding popular violence in the English revolution: the Colchester plunderers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 292-296.

[68] Jansson, Proceedings, iv, pp. 210-212, 214-219 (quote from p. 210); Bruce, Verney Papers, pp. 71-73.

[69] LJ, iv, p. 235; Jansson, Proceedings, iv, pp. 210, 245.

[70] Jansson, Proceedings, iv, p. 211.  Those on the Lords arm took a similar oath of secrecy: LJ, iv, p. 235.

[71] Jansson, Proceedings, iv, p. 463.

[72] Bruce, Verney Papers, p. 67.

[73] Jansson, Proceedings, v, pp. 26, 30-48, 50-56; The Diurnal Occurrences or Daily Proceedings of both Houses in this Great and Happy Parliament from the third of November, 1640, to the third of November 1641 (London: Printed for William Cooke, 1641), pp. 153-155; Bruce, Verney Papers, pp. 85-91; CSPD 1641-1643, pp. 7-8.

[74] Jansson, Proceedings, v, pp. 62, 67, 112, 115, 183-197, 251, 254-261; Bruce, Verney Papers, pp. 91-99.

[75] Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 42-43.

[76] Jansson, Proceedings, v, pp. 275-287, 293-300; John Pym, The heads of a conference delivered by M. Pym at a committee of both Houses (London, 1641).  For some elucidation of this Scottish plot, see M. Napier, Memoirs of the Marquis of Montrose 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Thomas G. Stevenson, 1856), i, 319-321.

[77] Jansson, Proceedings, v, pp. 293-294, 297-298; For the text of the Ten Propositions, see ibid., pp. 308-310.

[78] Commons Journal, ii, pp. 289-290; Surrey History Centre G52/2/19 (27); W.H. Coates, The Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes: From the First Recess of the Long Parliament to the Withdrawal of King Charles from London (Hamden Conn.: Archon Books, 1970 [c.1942]), pp. 183-187; CSPD 1641-1643, pp. 137-139; A Letter from Mercurius Civicus to Mercurius Rusticus (1643), pp. 10-11.

[79] For more on the Incident see Russell, The Fall, pp. 325-329; Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 130-133.

[80] LJ, iv, pp. 430-432.

[81] Jansson, Proceedings, i, pp. 77, 86, vi, p. 179.

[82] For the text of the document, see Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, pp. 202-232.

[83] Ibid., pp. 203-204.

[84] J.S.A. Adamson, ‘Parliamentary Management, Men-of-Business and the House of Lords, 1640-1649’ in Clyve Jones (ed.), A Pillar of the Constitution: the House of Lords in British Politics, 1640-1784 (London: Hambledon, 1989), p. 26; Robert Greville, Lord Brooke, A Discourse Opening the Nature of that Episcopacy which is exercised in England (London: Printed for R.C. for Samuel Cartwright), pp. 54-55 (my italics).

[85] CJ, ii, p. 322; Coates, D’Ewes, pp. 183-187; Bruce, Verney Papers, pp. 120-125.

[86] Witness the libel, The Protestant’s Protestation, which was circulating widely in London during the recess: Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS D.843, fol. 48; HMC Salisbury, xxiv, p. 277; Diurnal Occurrences, p. 376; CSPD 1641-1643, p. 133.  And more graphically, the plague note which was delivered to Pym in parliament on 25 October: A Damnable treason, by a contagious plaster of a plague-sore wrapt up in a letter, and sent to Mr. Pym (London: Printed for W.B., 1641); A Letter from Mercurius Civicus to Mercurius Rusticus (1643), p. 11.

[87] P. Lake, ‘Anti-popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in R. Cust & A. Hughes (eds.) Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603-1642 (London: Longman, 1989), p. 83. 

[88] P. Lake, ‘Anti-Puritanism: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in K. Fincham and P. Lake (eds.), Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Tyacke (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), p. 81.

[89] Tellingly, Saye would later date the decision to take up arms to this incident: William Fiennes, viscount Saye and Sele [and Nathaniel Fiennes], Vindiciae Veritatis (London: s.n., 1654), p. 33.

[90] Burgess, ‘A matter of context’.

[91] M. Caricchio, ‘Radicalism and the English Revolution’, Cromohs Virtual Seminars: http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/eng/index.html, 9/2/07.  See also the essays in Morrill, Nature, especially chs. 3, 4, 13, and 15.

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