This is Stuart England The Civil Wars Episode two point one hundred and five booths
uprising. Last episode, we saw England's political leaders officially run out of ideas
as they revived the Rump Parliament that had been discredited six years earlier. In
fact, there was a strong sense of deja vous back in sixteen fifty three.
The Rump had been mired in an ideological trap of its own creation.
The legitimacy of the regime rested on the supremacy of Parliament as a representative institution,
but as currently constituted, the purged body was an especially representative of England's
people, and the only way to make it so fresh elections would almost assuredly
destroy the existing government. Almost exactly the same scenario played out in the summer
of sixteen fifty nine. John Lambert presented the Rump with a new constitutional model
that could take effect the second they voted to dissolve themselves and hold new elections,
but Arthur Hasselrigan's allies refused. They had no alternative to offer, only
a stubborn resistance to give up their power. But politics often rewards those who
obstruct and delay with no real plan other than to buy time. At the
beginning of August, events outside London and Westminster conspired to unite the divided regime,
albeit briefly. Constitutional disputes were quickly forgotten amid reports of yet another Royalist
insurrection. Though while this was technically a Royalist uprising in the sense that its
success would have led to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, within the realm
of civil war labels, it's probably more accurate to call it a Presbyterian uprising.
Many of the men involved had been parliamentary leaders in the First Civil War,
for instance William Waller and Edward Massey, the Hero of Gloucester. Meanwhile,
the Sealed Knot, the secret society that was supposed to be working towards
the restoration in England, refused to participate and even oppose the operation. Partly,
this reluctance was due to poor morale. Through bitter experience, the men
of the Sealed Knot had learned that success was unlikely. The regime's intelligence apparatus
was simply too powerful, and if another rebellion failed, they would likely be
the ones to pay with their heads. But the top level royalists were also
opposed to the planned insuraction. On principle, men like Waller and Massey were
responsible for the defeat of the king in the First Civil War, how could
they be trusted? And more importantly, what kind of restoration would this be
if it was engineered by Presbyterians. There was also the slightly less principled question
of who the restored King's closest advisors would be. The Royalist aristocracy had little
interest in sharing influence with a bunch of common born ex rebels. On the
one hand, the men of the Sealed Knot didn't think the uprising would succeed,
and on the other they feared it would. With the veteran plotters of
the Sealed Knots standing aside, it fell to a group of former parliamentary army
officers to plan things. Some like Edbart Massey had spent time on the continent
within Royalist excel circles. Others like Waller, remained in England but had been
watched suspiciously by the Commonwealth and Protectorate regimes for years. Through consultation with exiled
Royalists and their own observations of the previous unsuccessful Royalist risings, they developed new
strategies concentrating a rising in one place seemed like too much of a risk.
If the regime's army could focus on a single threat, there was little hope
of success. But coordinating multiple risings all across the country posed a challenge too.
The more complex the communication network, the more likely it was to be
infiltrated by the government. The answer was a decentralized, highly flexible series of
cells all across England. Regional commanders were given wide ranging autonomy to organize local
movements. The Royalist exiles bought into this approach, most especially Charles himself.
In fact, the commissions that he gave to regional leaders to rise up in
his name were remarkably flexible. It was left up to local commanders whether to
even mention the King's name and their rallying cries. They had the option of
merely rising up in the name of the church. The goal was to swamp
the regime with a deluge of rebellions, each custom designed to appeal to a
regional audience. The progress of the movement would depend on how Westminster reacted.
For instance, there was no designated nerve center to the rebellion. There were
hopes that Bristol or East Anglia might provide the most fertile ground for the uprising,
but the army couldn't be everywhere at once. If those regional movements were
suppressed, momentum would grow elsewhere. The germ of the plan developed in the
spring of sixteen fifty nine, as Presbyterians and exiled Royalists quietly exchanged notes across
the English Channel. But for all this strategizing, there was little indication that
the uprisings would enjoy the crucial ingredient needed for success, popular support. That
began to change as Richard Cromwell's protectorate regime crumbled in April events we tracked last
episode. The new regime that emerged, a partnership between the old rump and
the army, had even less legitimacy than the old one. Now is the
time to strike before Hassle, Rigg, Fleetwood, Lambert or someone else consolidated
control over the state. But political instability at the top was nothing new,
and it hadn't paved the way for the success of ending the other uprisings in
the past decade. If there was a difference in sixteen fifty nine, it
came in the form of a near hysterical fear of Quakers that was sweeping across
England. Although a relatively minuscule group, the Quakers had a tremendous national presence.
James Naylor's prominent role in the Second Protectorate Parliament had raised the profile of
the movement. The punishment that the Quaker leader received further polarized the nation.
For some, it was a necessary curb on religious successes, but for others
it was a betrayal of the good Old Cause, the defense of religious freedoms
that had defined the Civil War. The overthrow of the Protectorate two and a
half years later appeared to reverse the Nailor decision. After all, the men
who had destroyed the Cromwellian regime, the rumpers and army officers, did so
in the name of the good Old Cause, using the same language that Naylor's
defenders had for Quakers. This raised the possibility that the new regime would bring
toleration or even usher in a new religious order. They would end the reign
of organized churches. For those who thought the Quakers and their ideas were dangerous,
this was an all arming prospect. For years, Cromwell had talked a
big game. When it came to radical religious renewal, but as a socially
conservative statesman, he kept a tight rein on truly revolutionary change. Now unmoored
from Cromwellian restraint, there was no limit to the damaged radicals could do.
Quakers were a convenient stand in for the larger radical movement, a lightning rod
to focus the collective anxieties of the nation. Of course, the Quakers weren't
shy about drawing attention to themselves. There was even a triumphalist streak to Quaker
rhetoric as they celebrated the fall of the Cromwellian regime that had persecuted them.
George Fox, one of the key founders of the movement, published a new
track, fifty nine Particulars for the Regulating of Things. In effect, it
was an outline of the role the Quakers could play in the new regime.
Their model of decentralized religious belief would replace the old Church of England structure,
which Fox claimed still lived on even in loosely federated congregational churches. But more
alarming than Fox's revolutionary take on church infrastructure were his economic proposals. Quam had
emerged out of the impoverished rural communities of the North, and had always retained
its egalitarian message, not just in terms of religious hierarchies, but in terms
of property and wealth too. Fox called upon the new government to implement a
program or property redistribution to provide for the poor nothing less than the confiscation of
the estates of great men. The problem was the leaders of the new regime,
Arthur Hesselrigg, John Lambert or Charles Fleetwood, were no more radical revolutionaries
than Oliver Cromwell had been. The Good Old Cause had been a usefully vague
rallying cry to depose Richard Cromwell, but it by no means committed these men
to remake England into some kind of Quaker utopia. One of the regime's first
acts was to reassure the English public that they were not intent on religious revolution.
On the twenty first of May, four days before Richard Cromwell formally resigned
as Lord Protector, the rump Parliament clarified the nation's rules on religion. As
in the Protectorate, all those who accepted Christ as their savior and Scripture as
their guide would be free to practice their faith. Furthermore, the state would
continue supporting clergy through the collection of ties, though englishmen and women were free
to attend independent churches if they wished. But if Westminster hoped that this would
calm the situation, they were quickly proven wrong. Quakers and other radicals were
frustrated by the rejection of their program, though likely not surprised, they had
come to expect struggle as the necessary precursor to final salvation. Instead, the
Quakers redoubled their efforts. In June, they presented Westminster with a mass petition,
a large proportion of the signatures coming from the North. It demanded that
the Rump immediately end the collection of tithes and enact a significant reform of the
law to benefit the common people rather than the wealthy elite and their lawyers.
Hesitant to alienate radical opinion, especially since many in the army believed in a
version of the Good Old Cause that resembled that of the Quakers, the Rump
hesitated. Historian Barry Ray argues that this was the worst of both worlds.
Westminster succeeded only in terrifying Presbyterians while merely wedding radical appetites. More radical demands
followed fellow travelers who had been purged from offices in the state or the army
had to be restored. Sensing that the fate of the nation or perhaps the
world, hung in the balance, Quakers and other radicals became avid volunteers in
militias or the army. Pacifism one of the core principles of the later Quaker
movement had yet to be firmly established. Taking up arms in defense of a
radical revolution seemed not only justified but obligatory. Inevitably, Quaker enthusiasms broked a
backlash. Historians referred to this counter movement as Presbyterian, though that is more
a label of convenience than anything else. Here were not so much talking about
a movement for a particular kind of Calvinist church, but a more generalized sense
that radical religion posed a threat to the social order. That, of course,
had always been attention within the parliamentary cause, even while the Civil War
was still raging. But the collapse of Cromwellian restraint, the liberal use of
the Good Old Cause as a rallying cry, and the emergence of the Quakers
as a coherent stand in for the whole host of radical boogeymen created a conservative
Presbyterian volition that was broader than ever before. Men and women who in the
past had grudgingly accepted the radical ideas coming from the Capitol now sensed that a
line was about to be crossed. Where previously Oliver Cromwell and his protectorate regime
had stood as a plausible break on excessive radicalism. The new powers that be
seemed either too weak to defend the social order or all too willing to further
their own interests by partnering with the forces of anarchy. The atmosphere was further
poisoned by unsubstantiated rumors. There were reports that the army in Ireland had been
infiltrated by Quakers and that it had executed a coup in Dublin. Within days,
landings were expected all across the West. It was an odd echo of
the paranois that swept across England after the Irish Rebellion of sixteen forty one,
only this time the invaders coming from Ireland weren't Catholic, but radical Protestants.
Tension continued to build into the summer. In June, a mob broke up
a Quaker meeting on Vine Street in London, assaulting many of those assembled.
In Kent, a man threw a dead cat into a Quaker meeting hall,
then released his hounds, eating a scene of chaos and mayhem. On the
fourteenth of July, in Tiverton, a town in Devon, the alarm was
raised, words spread of a Quaker and fifth Monarchist plot to break into holmes
that very night and slit the throats of all those who rejected their false religion.
Well, it's impossible to say with any degree of certainty. These incidents
were likely a mixture of spontaneous paranoia among the populace and an organized campaign of
intimidation orchestrated by local officials. Royalist sympathizers also did their part to stoke fears
of a Quaker coup, though really they were adding fuel to an already blazing
fire. But despite my argument here that this uprising was different, that the
regime in power was weaker than ever before and the wider population more willing to
support insurrection, the opening moves played out in a fairly familiar pattern. The
Great Spymaster John Thurlow had been ejected from office as a Cromwellian loyalist, but
his successor, Thomas Scott, inherited an impressive intelligence network. Of course,
as you may recall, Scott was both Thurlough's predecessor and successor. He had
been Chief Intel's officer in the first iteration of the rump regime earlier in the
decade. Scott got word of the uprisings before the designated start date, the
first of August. A series of coordinated arrests throughout England spread confusion among the
ranks of the plotters. The Seal Knot didn't help things by sending out messages
calling off the whole operation, since they weren't involved in the planning or organization.
They weren't exactly authorized to do so, but the resulting confusion was a
useful pretext to stay away for those who worried that it was a lost cause.
Local leaders in Kent and Sussex found that no one appeared at their designated
gathering points, that is, except for the government officials who came to arrest
them. In Oxford, the local rising was to be led by Henry Carey,
Viscount Falkland, the son of the Falkland who was Charles the first Secretary
of State early in the Civil War, but he was arrested before his followers
could assemble. Edward Massey hoped to stage an insurrection at Gloucester, the sight
of his heroics during the Civil War, but when several of his deputies were
arrested, he fled the country rather than risk getting caught in the net.
Risings were also disrupted in Cornwall, which had long been a potential Royalist base.
The key man there was John Grenville, the son of the Cornish hero
Bevel Grenville, who had been killed in the Civil War. John had fought
alongside his father, despite being just fourteen years old at the time, and
continued to support the Royalist cause late in the war. When the Prince of
Wales, the future Charles the Second, fled into Cornwall, John Grenville became
a close companion and member of the Prince's bed chamber. They were both teenagers
whose families had been devastated by the war. When the Prince had to abandon
England altogether, Grenville stayed in royal service, commanding the exiled garrison on the
Cilly Isles off the coast of Cornwall. From there, Royalist raiders were able
to pillage local shipping until Robert Blake captured the islands in sixteen fifty one.
Since then, Grenville had been an active member of the Royalist exile community,
but retained his links to Cornwall. Even more importantly, though Grenville's mother,
Grace, was a cousin of George Monk, the overall commander in Scotland,
Charles himself had commissioned Grenville to reach out to the General and see whether he
might use his Scottish army to intervene on behalf of the Royalist cause. This
wasn't as unlikely as it sounded. Monk's political loyalties were far from clear.
Although weeks earlier he had ignored Richard Cromwell's please to save the Protectorate, he
hadn't exactly given the new rump a full vote of confidence. It was one
of the many signs that the regime was in a more precarious position than any
of its predecessors that the lines of communication between Grenville and Monk remained open even
after the Cornishment was briefly arrested in August. But Monk was too cagy a
politician to get involved in a failed insurrection. As Grenville's arrest would suggest,
the uprising in Cornwall was rather easily suppressed, as well. Monk's Scottish Army
held back, but he remained poised to be an influential figure in the near
future. There was one place, however, where the uniform pattern of arrests
and suppression was broken. In the county of Cheshire, just across the border
from North Wales, a well organized insurrection emerged. The reasons that the uprising
was successful in Cheshire are partly to do with happenstance and partly to do with
local conditions there So an examination of the county will be duly beneficial. On
the one hand, Cheshire was much like several other counties across England. The
motivations that drove a critical mass of its population to rise up were also avid
and elsewhere. Studying Cheshire gives us a degree of insight into local attitudes more
generally. On the other hand, on some level, Cheshire was different.
The conditions for insurrection may have existed in other county's too, but what sequences
of events and decisions made the rising there succeed at least initially, where others
failed. We've made a couple brief stops in Cheshire so far in the podcast,
most notably, the county played host to the Nantwich Campaign in the winter
of sixteen forty three forty four. As you may recall, that was when
the Royalists tried to make the most of the ceasefire with the Irish rebels,
troops no longer needed in Ireland moved across the Irish Sea and landed in Wales
and the west of England. As it happened, George Monk was among those
soldiers coming over from Ireland. At Nantowitch, he fought for the King,
but eventually changed sides after being captured there. In terms of Cheshire politics,
though, the key player during the war years was William Brereton, the commander
of parliamentary forces in the county. He only made a few scattered appearances in
our national narrative of the conflict, but the Civil War was in many ways
a series of local wars, and in the Northwest of England, no one
was more responsible for Parliament's victory than Brereton. Brereton's service in the war was
well rewarded. He had already been a prominent figure in Cheshire before the war,
but during and after the conflict he accumulated new estates that made him the
most influential figure in the county. Like most parliamentarians, Brereton was a devout
Puritan. Through the course of the war he moved to a congregationalist position within
the larger independent movement. This prevented him from being targeted by the Purges of
sixteen forty eight. But really Brereton didn't involve himself in postwar politics. Although
appointed to the court that tried and condemned the king, he, like Thomas
Fairfax, didn't participate in the proceedings, nor did he take up an offered
position in the Council of State. Instead, Brereton withdrew from public life and
enjoyed his private status as the leading man of Cheshire. That and much else
in Cheshire began to change with the creation of the Major General system in sixteen
fifty five. Cheshire fell under the jurisdiction of Major General Charles Worsley, who
oversaw the counties of Cheshire, Lancashire and Staffshire in the northwest. Unlike Brereton
and his gentry friends, Worsley was the son of a Manchester cloth merchant.
During the war, he built a reputation for prowess in the battlefield, but
also for ruthless manipulation of the state's power to confiscate land. Through the Lancashire
County Committee, Worsley managed the sequestration of huge tracts of Royalist property. Now,
to be fair to Worsley, Lancashire had a significant Catholic and Royalist community,
so there was plenty of property to cease, but even devoted parliamentarians couldn't
help. But note that Worsley personally benefited from his energetic pursuit of traders.
After the war, Worsley continued his rise in army politics through a fiercely devoted
loyalty to Oliver Cromwell. In fact, when Cromwell broke up the rump Parliament
in sixteen fifty three, Worsley commanded the soldiers who escorted the parliamentarian men out.
Worsley then was the ideal major general. He knew how to keep tabs
on Royalists and other troublemakers in the Northwest, and his dedication to the Cromwellian
regime was unquestioned. At least, Worsley was the ideal major general from the
perspective of Whitehall, but from Cheshire things looked quite a bit different. Like
many other counties in England, The traditional gentry elite viewed the changes in local
governance with alarm. The wartime county committees had elevated merchants, lesser gentry,
and even some artisans to positions of political power. Now in the major generals,
power rested with army officers, usually not drawn from the traditional ruling classes,
and while Cromwell tried his best to select major generals with local connections to
their regions, it was impossible to achieve this in all places. Worsley,
for instance, was a man of the Northwest, but he was from Lancashire.
To William Brereton and the other gentleman of Cheshire, the major general was
very much an outsider, and Worsley wasn't the type of guide to worry about
stepping on anyone's toes. He energetically pursued his mandate to instill obedience and good
order in the county. Within weeks of his arrival, Cheshire's jails were full
to bursting with drunks, vagrants and alleged royalists. Even compared to other major
generals, Worsley was remarkably adept at finding potential traitors everywhere he looked. Almost
immediately Upon taking up his job, he rounded up a collection of suspected royalists,
then reported to Cromwell, I am afraid I shall find more of that
gang. When the government implemented a program of demanding bonds of good behavior from
suspected royalists, Worsley managed to target three times more than any other major general.
Unlike his colleagues, Worsley even reached into the Yeoman class for targets.
Some historians suspect that he was using the surety system as a kind of supplement
to the decimation tax, reaching people who didn't qualify under its guidelines. Brereton
and the other gentry leaders of Cheshire weren't happy with this state of affairs,
but were cautious in their response. Cromwell's regime provided a degree of stability and
a check on the more radical religious, political, or economic ideas floating around
England. For wealthy congregationalists like Brereton, the protectorate regime by today welcome balance
between religious freedom and social conservatism. If they rocked the boat too much,
a truly radical regime might emerge. Therefore, Cheshire's gentry elite did their best
to obstruct Worsley's work. Through legal protests and indirect obstruction. In this life
in Cheshire mirrored that of other counties throughout the nation. The major generals were
often treated by elites as an unwelcome and hopefully temporary inconvenience, though the longer
their rule lasted, the more the people of Cheshire resented the whole concept of
military governance. When Lord Protector Cromwell, in consultation with his major generals,
decided to call the Second Protectorate Parliament in the summer of sixteen thirty six,
the provincial elites got a new venue in which to express their opposition elections.
This opportunity took a distinct form in the Northwest, as Charles Worsley unexpectedly died
aged just thirty three while meeting with the other major generals in London. Tobias
Bridge was appointed to succeed him, but the parliamentary elections that summer were conducted
amid a confused transition process. Multiple groups competed for the slate of four members
Cheshire would send to Westminster. Major General Bridge put forward a list of government
supported names, while some members of the Cheshire elite put themselves toward independently as
candidates including William Brereton. Although not necessarily opposed to the protectorate regime, Brereton
had publicly resisted the major general system for months and could be expected to argue
for its disillusion in parliament. Other more radical voices joined the campaign too,
most notably John Bradshaw, the president of the Court that had tried King Charles
the First and perhaps the one man who could challenge Arthur Hasselrigg for the title
of most die hard rumper. In a confused election season, the Cheshire elite
were torn between their desire to end the rule of the major generals and their
fear of the instability that might come from a parliament led by the likes of
John Bradshaw. In the end, Oliver Cromwell himself reached out to Brereton,
asking for his help in keeping Bradshaw out. Brereton agreed, possibly to the
dutchriment of his own bid for Parliament. Neither he nor Bradshaw secured a seat.
As it turned out, the Cheshire and peas in the second Protectorate Parliament
were neither firm supporters of the regime nor ardent critics, though one member is
worth highlighting, George Booth will have time for a more thorough introduction in a
moment. But like Brereton, Booth was a member of the Cheshire landed elite.
Also, like Brereton, he had fought for Parliament in the Civil War,
though Booth had been among the Presbyterians purged in sixteen forty eight. Two
years later, when Richard Cromwell succeeded his father and called for another round of
elections, the Conservative coalition between Cheshire elites and the Protectorate leadership failed to repeat
their victory. Bradshaw and his Rumper allies won and set off to Westminster to
help dismantle the Protectorate State. The value all of the Cromwell had provided in
keeping back the tide of radical religious and political change became immediately obvious to the
property men of Cheshire. In the spring of sixteen fifty nine, as the
Rump and the Army swept away the last vestiges of the Protectorate State, the
anxiety in Cheshire only grew. The Cheshire gentry were virtually united in their opposite
to the new regime that was forming at Westminster. The only thing they lacked
was a leader. William Brereton was perhaps the obvious choice, but he balked
at taking up arms against Parliament, no matter how illegitimate its claim to authority.
Also, as an independent who had at least played a nominal role in
the creation of the Commonwealth, Brereton wasn't part of the Presbyterian network through which
the sixteen fifty nine uprisings were planned. Leadership of the resistance in Cheshire therefore
fell to George Booth, the man we saw elected to Parliament a few minutes
ago. Booth was thirty seven years old and a member of an important Cheshire
gentry family. He had joined the parliamentary cause in the Civil War as a
teenager and fought with William Brereton's County Army. But before the war had even
ended, the Brereton and Booth families were at loggerheads. The dynamic was similar
to that of the Fairfax and Hotham families in Yorkshire. As you may recall
from way back in the early days of the war, both the Fairfaxes and
the Hothams fought for Parliament, but competition over influence in the county, heightened
by religious and ideological differences, led John Cotham and his son to defect to
the Royalist side, while a similar process played out in Cheshire at the end
of the war. This time the local rivalry played out against the backdrop of
the Presbyterian Independent divide. Before the war was over, Booth traveled to London
to spread rumors of Brereton's corruption and religious radicalism. Despite Brereton's attempts to dispel
these accusations, Booth managed to turn suspicions of the General into victory in a
Cheshire recruiter election in sixteen forty five. Ultimately, however, Booth fell on
the losing side of the Presbyterian Independent conflict. In sixteen forty eight, he
was one of the men purged from Parliament, paving the way for the Commonwealth
and then Protectorate. Since then, Booth's status had been a bit uncertain.
His political loyalties remained suspect, though his influence in Cheshire made him a tempting
local partner for the central government. Booth was selected to represent the county in
the nominated Assembly, a data point against the argument that the Bearbonne's Parliament was
a hive of radicalism. He also won a seat in the first Protectorate Parliament
of sixteen fifty four, but no one forgot that Booth was a Presbyterian who
had been purged in sixteen forty eight. There was some suspicion that he was
involved in the sixteen fifty five Royalist unrest, best remembered for Penruddick's brief uprising
in the West Country. But if Booth had been involved in organizing insurrection in
Cheshire, he withdrew before John Thurloe's crackdown and avoided arrest. Neither was Booth
targeted by the major generals, though Charles Worsley did imprison his uncle John Booth.
It's possible that even Worsley saw George Booth as too influential within Cheshire to
risk alienating. But while there wasn't enough evidence to arrest Booth, Cromwell had
lost his earlier trust in him. When the Lord Protector excluded a large swath
of MPs in the Second Protectorate Parliament, he made sure to include Booth's name
on the list. When the Protectorate crumbled and the Rump returned to power,
the alienation of Booth and the Cheshire gentry he represented was almost inevitable. One
last possible avenue of reconciliation was the composition of the restored Rump, Booth and
others who had been purged in sixteen forty eight urged the Rump to turn back
the clock, not to Cromwell's force dissolution of sixteen fifty three, but all
the way to the illegal purge of sixteen forty eight. The only way to
establish a legitimate legal government was the restoration of a truly free parliament. This
would soon become the rallying cry of the opposition to the regime. The religious
component of Presbyterianism was finally overshadowed by the political meaning of the label in encompassing
calls for a free parliament. The Presbyterian movement was turning into a popular demand
for truly representative government and a rejection of the radicalism of a minority that the
Rump stood for, but that process would take time to develop. In the
immediate term, Booth tried to force the Rum's hand. In May. He
was one of nine men led by William Prynne, who attempted to take their
seats in the restored Long Parliament, but the Rummen, aided by their allies
in the army, blocked their path. The Rum's refusal to live up to
its avowed principles of representative government, left Booth little choice. While still in
London, he was approached by the Great Trust, the collection of Presbyterian plotters
who placed the Seal Knot as the King's official agents in England. At the
moment, they had no one to lead the Cheshire component of the national uprisings,
and Booth was the perfect man for the job. Booth accepted and immediately
returned home. By the middle of July, he had secured widespread support within
the Chechi gentry. Even those who refused to join promised to stand aloof and
provide no aid to the regime. In his campaign, Booth made full use
of the flexibility the exiled king had offered. Cheshire wouldn't be rising in the
name of the King. They would be rising to protect English religion and the
social order. The Quaker panic that seized England in the spring and summer of
sixteen fifty nine, who was particularly strong in Cheshire, especially among the land
of elite. The national uprisings were scheduled for the first of August, which
was a Monday. Booth's preparations included the cooperation of the local clergy, who
would read out the call to arms and their sermons on the preceding Sunday.
Booth was also careful to work through traditional forms of governance. He had a
commission from Charles the Second, through which he drew up warrants for constables.
These were distributed to every village in the county, calling from militias to muster
on the first. This wasn't so much a rebellion as the lawful operation of
the state in opposition to an illegal regime. By Sunday the thirty first,
Booth and his allies had completed all the preparations they could. For the next
few hours, they could only wait and hope the county was with them.
So it was doubtlessly with some alarm that Booth received a note from the Sealed
Knot late in the afternoon. The old Royalist network informed him that the regime
had once again uncovered the plot and made mass arrests all over England. With
the Great Trust broken and scattered, the men of the Sealed Knot were taking
upon themselves to call off the uprisings. Anyone who was not yet in custody
ought to disperse and cover their tracks. Hopefully there was still time to avoid
getting caught in the net for Booth. However, it was too late.
The sermons announcing the rising had already been delivered, the mobilization warrants were already
out, the rising had already started. The next day. The main militia
assembly point was Warrington, about halfway Liverpool and Manchester. The turnout was high
enough that the army units that had been sent to disperse the rebels turned and
fled back to their garrisons. Booth also received reports that he had support elsewhere
in the region. Just across the border in North Wales, Wrexham joined the
revolt. Forces there were led by Thomas Middleton, another Presbyterian Army officer who
had secured North Wales for Parliament in the sixteen forties. Meanwhile, on the
other side of Chester, in the southern part of Lancashire, another rising emerged.
On the second day. Booth marched his small army into Chester, occupying
the town and chasing the army garrison into the castle. To this point everything
had gone according to plan. Booth had yet to hear about how operations were
going elsewhere, but it seemed as though the pessimism of the sealed knot was
overblown. Once he secured Chester, Booth promulgated the manifesto he had prepared explaining
his actions. The most noteworthy element of Booth's official statement was the total absence
of any mention of the King or the monarchy. Booth was threatening a fine
needle. He hoped to attract Royalists who were willing to read between the lines
without alienating the broader opposition to the current regime by invoking the Stewarts. Instead,
Booth focused on the dangers England faced. The new regime was threatening to
destroy English liberty, religion and property. He called upon the people of Cheshire
to fight for the rule of law, free parliaments, and an end to
religious anarchy. Their demands were the restoration of the Long Parliament to its pre
sixteen forty eight composition, or, failing that, free elections. Booth's manifesto
acts as a useful signpost in the emerging partnership between the old Presbyterian faction and
the Royalists. The two groups still had real disagreements on religion and ideology,
but both now identified the regime at Westminster as the greatest threat to England.
The call for a free parliament was a convenient way to bridge their differences.
The Presbyterians were confident that a parliament that truly represented the people would reject the
radicalism of the army in the rump. Meanwhile, the Royalists believed that a
freely elected parliament would seek to end fifteen years of turmoil by inviting the king
to return. Both wisely avoided explaining what political settlement he hoped a free parliament
might achieve. In a sense, it didn't matter. Its mere existence would
pave the way for a stable, peaceful England in the coming months. Other
leaders would follow Booth's lead and focus on free parliaments as a panacea, allowing
everyone to imagine for themselves what specific medicine it would provide. But for now,
Booth had a more immediate problem. Now that he had set up the
standard of a free parliament, he had to defend it against the army.
By the sixth of August, Booth commanded some four thousand men, mostly from
Cheshire, though groups of Welshmen also joined from across the border, leaving enough
men in Chester to guard the army garrison in the castle. He set out
for Manchester to gather more troops. The larger strategic plan had been to continue
moving northeast and link up with the wider northern rebellion at York, but on
his way to Manchester, Booth started to get a sense of the larger national
picture. His regional success was the outlier. Virtually all other uprisings had been
immediately suppressed or abandoned at the last minute. Detailed intelligence on the government response
was hard to come by, but the regime had almost certainly mobilized its forces.
It would only be a matter of time before they concentrated on the one
side of real resistance, Cheshire. In fact, on the fourth of August,
John Lambert had set out from London at the head of two thousand New
Model Army veterans. More Government troops were converging from South Wales in Yorkshire.
At Manchester. Booth paused his march and assessed his options. He could concentrate
as many men as he could and meet John Lambert in battle, but although
he could likely outnumber the general's force, it would be untrained farmers against the
battle hardened New Model Army under one of England's greatest commanders. Defeat seemed inevitable.
Another option was to fall back on Chester and prepare for a lengthy siege,
but that would only prolong the inevitable. There had been some hope that
George Monk might bring his army from Scotland to intervene on the side of the
rebels, but Monk was unlikely to commit himself unless the uprisings looked like they
might succeed. The other potential savior, the exiled king, was even less
likely to ride to the rescue. Charles would not risk landing in England until
the rebels established a secure beachhead. Besides, Booth's men wouldn't be able to
hold up in Chester's Castle until they evicted the garrison that was still hiding there.
There was no guarantee that they could do that before Lambert's army arrived.
Some of the Welshmen in Booth's army suggested a retreat across the border into their
homeland. The rugged terign of North Wales was the perfect place to conduct a
guerrilla war against an occupying army, but Booth's gentry allies flatly rejected that option.
They would not abandon their homes and property to the enemy. Better to
stand and fight, or perhaps negotiate some kind of settlement that allowed them to
retain at least some of their estates. In the end, Booth was paralyzed
by indecision. He spent the next two weeks wandering aimlessly around the countryside of
Cheshire. He made a half hearted attempt to appeal to levelers, hinting that
the free parliament he sought might be a truly democratic one. But as the
leader of an insurrection mounted by the landed elite in the name of maintaining the
social order, Booth was not a convincing pitchman. On the nineteenth of August,
Lambert caught up with Booth's army at Winnington Bridge, about fifteen miles east
of Chester. Booth led about four thousand rebels, while Lambert had linked up
with other army units, creating a force of some five thousand veterans. The
confrontation was more skirmish than battle. Lambert lost just a single man. The
rebels scattered almost immediately. Chester and Liverpool both opened their gates to Lambert when
he visited them. In the aftermath. Booth's gentry allies surrendered and put themselves
at the mercy of the state. As for Booth himself, he fled the
county. He was eventually caught three quarters of the way to London. The
authorities were tipped off by an innkeeper who reported a suspicious traveler. Despite traveling
disguise as a woman, Booth had called for a razor and a barber.
The rebel leader was taken to the Tower of London. But while the regime
was successful in suppressing Booth's uprising, as the rebellion came to be known,
Lambert's victory brought little security or stability. The threat of Royalist insurrection had momentarily
united the competing factions within the new rump army partnership, but even by the
standards the politically unstable sixteen fifties, that working relationship was short lived. In
fact, many of the Rummen were deeply uncomfortable with the fact that Lambert now
had an army in the field. Back at Westminster, Charles Fleetwood suggested formalizing
Lambert's role in the state by restoring him to the office of Major General.
However, Arthur Hasselrigg and his allies flatly refused to them. Lambert was another
Cromwell in the making. After all, it was Lambert who had drawn up
the instrument of government legalizing the dissolution of the Rump, and up until Lambert's
break with Cromwell in sixteen fifty seven, the General had seemed like the Lord
Protector's most obvious successor. Certainly, Lambert was not short on ambition. Instead
of confirming Lambert's role in government, on the third of September, Hasseligg introduced
a motion to implement new odes of loyalty on the country's militias. Fleetwood,
Lambert and other army leaders suspected, quite correctly, that Hasselrigg was attempting to
create a new military power those loyal to the rump rather than army leadership.
The motion drew figurative battle lines in Parliament that seemed awfully close to actual battle
line. This looming civil war within the Rump Army coalition was especially dangerous because
the capture of George Booth had not ended the regime security threats. The same
day Booth was captured, Edward Montagu, the devoted Cromwellian, decided to sail
his Baltic fleet home to England. To what purpose no one knew. Meanwhile,
in Scotland, George Monk had yet to make his intentions clear. Next
time We'll see if facing up to exterior dangers are enough to sustain the internal
unity of the shaky regime.