Missus Stuart England The Civil Wars Episode two point one hundred and six Dangerous to
the Commonwealth. Sixteen fifty nine was an eventful year in England. In late
January, Lord Protector Richard Cromwell opened the third Parliament of the Protectorate era.
Within days, that parliament, who was debating whether to recognize the legitimacy of
the Lord Protector or what powers he ought to wield. By March, republicans
and army officers were plotting to overthrow the Protector of regime, and in April
they succeeded, essentially forcing Cromwell from power. Over the summer, a restored
Romp consolidated its hold over the state through an uneasy partnership with a group of
army officers. The tensions between those groups were temporarily set aside in August,
when Royalists slash Presbyterian uprisings broke out all across the country. John Lambert led
an army into Cheshire to suppress the most successful of these insurrections, led by
George Booth. The pace of events was incredible. Those following the news outside
of England struggled to keep up, and there was no shortage of interested parties.
In Scotland, George Monk commanded an army that operated more or less independently
from the new government of Westminster. Meanwhile, Edmund Ludlow, a member of
the Rump's inner circle, traveled to Dublin to replace Henry Cromwell as the head
of the Irish government. He immediately began reversing Cromwell's marginalizing of the Baptists in
the army. But while this campaign aimed at aligning the Irish regime with the
Rump, who was resented by the traditional New English elites Cromwell had partnered with,
Ireland was more divided than ever, and its place in the new order
remained uncertain. On the continent, the war with Spain was winding down.
In May, the French and Spanish agreed to a truce, which would ultimately
lead to a formal peace treaty by the end of the year, finally ending
the decades long war between the two superpowers. Spain was forced to recognize the
territory France that acquired in the Peace of west Falia ten years earlier, as
well as new acquisitions in the Low Countries and along the Pyrenees that lay between
France and Spain. In exchange, France renounced its claims on Catalonia and withdrew
support for Portugal in his War of independence against Spain. The peace was secured
through the marriage of Louis the fourteenth to Maria Theresa, the daughter of King
Philip the Fourth of Spain. The agreement brought to an end the bipolar European
world dominated by the rivalry between Spain and France. For the next fifty five
years, Louis the fourteenth would be the central figure of European geopolitics. England
secured its prize as well. The treaty officially recognized the annexation of Dunkirk and
Mardick. The commander of the English expeditionary Force, William Lockhart, sat at
Dunkirk while the Franco Spanish negotiations were ongoing. The cease fire held and the
men had no fighting to occupy them. Lockhart awaited instructions from home, but
it was unclear who would be giving those instructions. Lockhart was a scott whose
loyalties were ambiguous. In sixteen forty eight, he had joined with the Engagers
and squared off against Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Preston, Lockhart at trying
to join the next Scottish invasion of England in sixteen fifty one, but his
application was rejected. As you may recall that Scottish slash Royalist coalition was organized
by men who had been marginalized by the earlier engagement alliance, most notably the
Marquess of Argyll. Argyle saw Lockhart as politically unreliable and prevented him from joining
the coalition. Having been rejected by Argyle's Scottish regime for in effect being too
royalist, Lockhart offered his services to the new Commonwealth regime. The English occupiers
were looking for local partners to help them govern Scotland, and so Lockhart's offer
was accepted, despite his past history of royalism. In fact, Lockhart and
Cromwell were able to put the Battle of Preston behind them and actually developed a
personal relationship. Lockhart married Cromwell's niece, Robin Suster, and the couple even
named their first son Cromwell. When Cromwell became Lord Protector, he trusted Lockhart
enough to send him to Paris to negotiate the all important French alliance with Cardinal
Mazarin. That experience, in turn made the Scot the ideal man to lead
England's forces on the continent. He had the trust of the Lord Protector and
recent experience with the Byzantine world of French politics, which is how Lockhart found
himself in an awkward position in the summer of sixteen fifty nine, as the
Protectorate crumbled, the new regime at Westminster called on him to send troops home
to deal with the Royalist uprisings of early August. Assuming the Franco Spanish truce
turned into a permanent peace, his men weren't needed in Flanders anymore, but
it was entirely clear that Lockhart saw the restored rump as England's legitimate government.
At the same time, Lockhart received back channel invitations from the Royalist camp.
The scott had fought for the king before, so why not do so again.
He already held Dunkirk, a perfect base from which to launch a Stuart
restoration. In the end, Lockhart refused to defect to the Royalists, but
neither was he a reassuring figure for the new regime at Westminster. But while
Monk and Lockhart remained Enigmas and Edmund Ludlow faced a divided Ireland. The rump
Army coalition's most immediate problem came in Denmark. To understand why we're gonna have
to leap back into the confusing Northern War with both feet. You may recall
from four episodes ago that a war was raging between Sweden and Denmark. The
conflict threatened to spread across Northern Europe, mostly because of English and Dutch interests.
The English were aligned with the Swedes and the Dutch backed the Danes,
but neither of the two western powers wanted to get dragged into the conflict.
In fact, in sixteen fifty eight, English diplomats had broke her to peace,
but that agreement was short lived. In August sixteen fifty eight, just
weeks after he had signed the peace, Charles the Tenth of Sweden launched a
surprise attack on Copenhagen, just as a reminder of how quickly events were developing
in England. When Charles reopened the war, all of a Cromwell was still
alive, ailing quite badly, but still breathing. He died less than a
month later. In response to the Swedish invasion, the Protectorate decided to send
a fleet into the region, officially to make sure the Danes and their Dutch
allies didn't win any advantage in the new warm but in reality this was a
delicate diplomatic mission for the Navy. The presence of their ships would hopefully convince
the Dutch to stay out of the fight, but at the same time they
didn't want to encourage Sweden. The primary goal was a climb down, not
an escalation. That mission was further complicated when Alver Cromwell died, bringing in
a new lord, protector his son Richard. Planning a naval expedition in the
midst of a transition in government was difficult. By the time a fleet was
assembled in November, the weather in the North Sea had turned unfriendly. Vice
Admiral William Goodson sailed as ships to the west coast of Denmark in early December,
but persistent storms discouraged him from sailing around the Danish Peninsula into the Sound
where the action was. He returned home for repairs. As you know,
over the course of the next few weeks, Richard Cromwell's Protectorate government crumbled,
but one of the regime's last acts in March sixteen fifty nine was to commission
a massive fleet of forty one ships and eighty seven hundred men to sail for
Denmark and resolve the increasingly volatile situation there. Command was given to Edward Montague,
Robert Blake's old deputy and more importantly for US, a staunch Cromwellian loyalist,
Montague wasn't just personally loyal to the Cromwell family. He also had a
hand in crafting the Humble Petition and Advice, and was ideologically invested in the
constitution that melted away just days after he sailed. News of the political turmoil
followed on Montague's heels across the North Sea. But as much as he was
a Cromwellian, Montague was also an English patriot on the European stage. He
had a job to do and couldn't abandon his post to participate in domestic politics
without damaging England's interests for now. He kept an ear out for developments at
home, but focused on the task before him, and it was an exceedingly
difficult task. Montague's mission priorities were clear. Plan A was to coordinate with
the Dutch in convincing their respective allies to return to the negotiating table. Failing
that, Montague's job was to provide limited support to Sweden, enough to maintain
good relations with King Charles, but not so much as the spark of war
with the Dutch. Neither of these options appealed to the Sweden. What kind
of ally was England that refused him in his time of need? And why
send a war fleet if it wasn't going to wage war just to taunt him.
Montague's job was further complicated by the fact that some English warships were actually
joining the Swedish war effort, they just didn't belong to the English Navy.
In addition to an official naval expedition, the Protectorate government had also authorized the
Swedes to privately hire ships and recruit sailors within England. Organizing the effort was
Gustav Duval, a Swedish diplomat by ancestry. Duval was a Scott. His
grandfather, Albert McDougall, had been one of many Scotsmen to join the Swedish
military over the past two generations. After his military service, McDougall settled permanently
in Sweden and brought over much of his family. His grandson Gustav Duval made
use of kinship connections still in Scotland to increase his value as a diplomat.
Initially, Duval had been sent by Charles the Tenth to offer formal condolences on
the death of Oliver Cromwell, but his real job was to press England to
join the war. Failing that, Duval achieved the next best thing, hiring
an English mercenary fleet. George Ayscue signed on as commander. You'll remember Ayscue
as the guy who suppressed the Royalist uprisings in Barbadoes and Virginia. It had
subsequently fought in the Anglo Dutch War. He now led a group of English
mercenaries across the North Sea. He arrived in April sixteen fifty nine, and
his eight ships were folded into the Swedish Navy as a squadron. From Montagusee
perspective, Ayscue's ships made it difficult to build trust with the Dutch. How
could montagu be a good faith broker in peacetocks when English ships were directly involved
in the fighting. In fact, in July, one of Ayscue's deputies,
Owen Cox, scored a major victory Some of the fiercest fighting was taking place
on the island of Funan, the second biggest of the Danish archipelago, which
sits between mainland Denmark and Zealand, the largest Danish island that houses Copenhagen.
The Swedes held Funan, but a large force of enemy troops sat on the
mainland just waiting for a chance to cross. These would be attackers were provided
by the Elector of Brandenburg, who had joined the war on the side of
Denmark, a sign that the conflict was already starting to dry in outsid powers.
Sensing an opportunity to land troops, the Germans boarded more than forty transports,
protected by five warships, two Danish and three Dutch. Cox, however,
was prowling nearby and pounced. He succeeded in sinking one of the Dutch
ships and capturing the rest of the escort. The German soldiers were taken prisoner
and their transports burned. It was a major Swedish victory, for which King
Charles promoted Cox to admiral in the Swedish Navy and dubbed him the Sea Lion.
Nevertheless, the desire of both the English and the Dutch to avoid a
war overcame these obstacles. By July, Anglo Dutch officials reached to consensus they
would present a united front to their Scandinavian allies. The earlier piece would be
restored, and if either Sweden or Denmark refused, they would face the wrath
of both English and Dutch warships. As it happened, both the Danes and
the Swedes refused to lay down their arms, setting the stage for a tenth
standoff. King Charles felt that his English friends had betrayed him. Meanwhile,
Montagu wasn't very pleased either. He thought that um negotiating in bad faith.
This was merely a temporary ceasefire to buy time for the Dutch to send another
war fleet, negating the English naval presence in the region. But by this
time, the summer of sixteen fifty nine, Montagu's attention was shifting from Denmark
to the political situation back home. News traveled slowly across the North Sea,
so it was difficult for Montague to get up to date information on the unraveling
of the Protectorate regime. But while peace talks gained momentum in late July early
August, he was aware of the growing crisis in England, and Montagu wasn't
just receiving intelligence from England, he was also visited by envoys from Europe.
The most provocative of these guests was Thomas Whetstone, a former officer and the
protectorate Navy. Wheatstone had credentials as a Cromwellian, and not in the way
Montagu was a Cromwellian, a friend and ally of the late Lord Protector.
Wheatstone was literally part of the Cromwell clan. He was Oliver Cromwell's nephew.
That kinship connection seems to have been the entire basis of Wheatstone's career in the
Navy, despite no obvious track record. At the age of twenty four,
he was given end of a ship in the Western Design Expedition, almost certainly
due to the intervention of his powerful uncle, though it has to be said
Wheatstone seems to have been at least competent in operating on the blurry line between
Navy officer and privateer in the Caribbean. By sixteen fifty seven he was transferred
to the Mediterranean, where the Navy operated with a bit more professionalism. This
got Whetstone into a bit of trouble. He was accused of selling captured prizes
for personal profit rather than turning them over to the treasury. Whetstone was also
accused of disobeying orders to participate in operations he didn't like or thought were too
dangerous. So long as his uncle ruled, however, he was immune to
these criticisms. Cromwell's death therefore had a detrimental effect on Whetstone's career. Almost
immediately, he was unceremoniously dismissed from the Navy and even arrested pending a court
martial. But before that could happen, Whetstone fled into exile, which is
how Oliver Cromwell's nephew became a Royalist agent in Denmark. Whetstone arrived at Montaguz
door in July. He carried with him a commission from the exiled camp for
Edward Montague to take command of it would once again be termed the Royal Navy.
The offer was the handiwork of Edward Hyde, who thought he saw in
Montague a kindred spirit. The humble petition and advice certainly wasn't Hyde's cherished English
constitution, but it was a step in a traditionalist direction. The dismantling of
that system likely alarmed Montague. Perhaps the fresh rounds of turmoil in England would
force him to complete his journey to true constitutional thought. Montague, much like
George Monk in Scotland, was noncommittal. He didn't accept the commission from the
King and officially continued to answer to the current regime at Westminster. But Montagu
did nothing to Brent Whetstone from meeting with officers and captains drumming up support for
the Royalist option. Montague's loyalties and intentions were very much up in the air
when an official representative from Westminster arrived at the end of July. This was
Algernon Sydney, a dedicated Republican and close ally of rumpers like Arthur Husselrig.
Sidney was authorized by Parliament to act as a political commissioner in the Scandinavian Theater,
ostensibly took the diplomatic pressure off Montague, allowing him to act purely as
a naval officer. But Montagu wasn't fooled. Sydney was there to monitor him
as much as the Peacetocks. Soon after the Rumper arrived, Montague sent Whetstone
away before his plotting was exposed, the Royalist agent returned to hide with an
ambiguous report. Montagu sent along a message of goodwill to the king in exile,
remarkable words from a dedicated Cromwellian, but he gave no concrete indication that
he would support the Stewart cause, either now or in the future. In
fact, the longer Sydney remained in Denmark, the less viable the defection of
the navy seemed. There's evidence that there was significant Cromwellian sentiment within the officers
and sailors of the navy. Had Montagu declared for Richard Cromwell back in April
or May, he might have carried the bulk of the navy with him.
But Sidney did much to diffuse anxieties within the officer corps. He assured them
that the new regime would not be executing any purges in the Navy. Captains
and officers could feel secure in their jobs. In fact, Montagu's allies reported
that the Rump Commissioner was downright wooing the Navy, perhaps a sign of the
Rump's desperation, but the public relations campaign was sapping any remaining loyalties to the
Cromwellian regime. The turning point came on the twenty fourth of August, when
Montagu got word of the Royalist uprisings in England. Montagu had no way of
knowing that the only successful rising was George Booths in Cheshire, and that Booth
had been defeated at winnington Bridge five days earlier. As far as he knew,
his moment had arrived. Previously, Montagu had held back from throwing England
into the chaos of another civil war, but if one had already started,
he intended to use his navy to make sure the right side won. At
a war council, Montague announced that the fleet would sail for home immediately.
Their supplies were running low, he explained, and they weren't outfitted to spend
the winter in Danish waters. Algernon Sydney wasn't fooled for a moment, but
he could do little to stop Montagu. As for the Northern crisis that Montagu
was leaving unresolved, fate soon provided its own solution. A few months later,
in February sixteen sixty, Charles the tenth of Sweden died. The driving
force behind the war died with him, and peace was immediately restored on Anglo
Dutch terms. As for Montague's fleet, it arrived back in England to find
that Booth's uprising had failed. There was no civil war to join. Montagu,
unwilling to once again throw England into chaos, simply took his ships into
winter quarters, as per his stated intentions. Once ashore, Rump officials immediately
interrogated Montagu, but he had covered his tracks well. Really, Montagu had
never stopped hedging his bets. There was no evidence that he had ever been
anything but loyal to the regime. Satisfied, the government allowed Montague to resign
with honor and retire from public life, though with the political situation as uncertain
as it was, who knew how permanent that retirement would be. On the
surface, Montague's returned to England seems a little anticlimactic. His navy would not
be the instrument by which the Army Rump coalition was broken, at least not
directly. But despite Montague's quiet retirement, his decision to bring the fleet back
from Denmark did have a significant indirect effect. Throughout September, the regime was
faced with a series of escalating financial demands in the panic surrounding the uprisings of
August, Westminster had called on all the resources it could. Troops were recalled
from both Ireland and Flanders to help put down the Royalists, not to mention
the emergency militias John Lambert had raised. At the time, the call to
arms had seemed necessary to for stall an existential crisis, but once the Royalist
threat had passed, the simultaneous arrival of so many soldiers created a new kind
of crisis. One of the advantages of having troops stationed outside of England was
that it was far easier to withhold their pay. It was difficult for a
soldier to agitate for his wages when he was in an army camp outside Dunkirk,
or for a sailor to do the same while he was living below decks
in Scandinavia. But once they congregated in London, the pressure to release funds
became immense, adding fuel to the fire. Where the men who had helped
John Lambert put down booths uprising, they refused to demobilize until they were paid.
The last ten years of English politics had taught them that their leverage only
lasted as long as they remained in arms and money was a real problem for
the regime at Westminster. The ROMP was hardly a font of legitimacy. I
mean, it hadn't really had a great deal of that valuable commodity in sixteen
fifty three when Cromwell shut them down. The intervening five years had done little
to improve the reputation of the Rump. Parliament moved to raise the assessment tax
to cover these new expenses, but the result was the worst of both worlds.
The increased tax burden was resented by the population, and it almost immediately
became clear that it wasn't enough. More taxes would have to come soon.
In the meantime, the government made use of its customary power to play soldiers
and sailors in the homes of private subjects, one of the notorious abuses of
liberty that had led Parliament to go to war with the King in the first
place. But as much as the rump slash army regime found itself in a
difficult financial predicament, it has to be said there was its own actions that
escalated the crisis from a serious problem into a potentially fatal one. Of all
the soldiers demanding their pay, the most dangerous group was John Lambert's army,
slowly making his way back to London. That danger mostly arose from the fact
that Lambert and his allies in the army were fully integrated into the factional power
struggle at the heart of the regime. Demands for army pay were almost guaranteed
to bleed over into the contest to define the relationship between the army and the
rump. As he recalled, that relationship on which the long term viability of
the government depended, had not been resolved before the Royalist uprisings produced a temporary
state of unity. The second George Booth was apprehended, that unity disappeared and
John Lambert was at the center of the dispute. Charles Fleetwood, who was
acting as the army's main liaison with the Rump, requested the Parliament reconfirm Lambert's
commission as Major General, which Oliver Cromwell had forced him to resign. Fleetwood
argued that this would be a just reward for the man who had just saved
the regime, and perhaps a way to build goodwill between the two institutions that
now governed England. But while Fleetwood's instincts pushed him towards accommodation. His counterpart
in Parliament, Arthur Hasselrigg, took the opposite approach. Clegg and his allies
convinced the rest of Westminster to reject Fleetwood's proposal. Parliament ruled England and would
not be beholden to unelected army officers. What's more, on the third of
September, Hasselrigg proposed a motion for a new oath of loyalty to be taken
by all militias. The men were to swear their loyalty to the Commonwealth,
whose power was invested in the House of Commons. Additionally, the oath explicitly
denied the authority of any king, House of Lords, or any other body.
Army leadership and some men in Parliament saw this as Hasselrigg's atempt to unilaterally
define the new terms of the Constitution. He was making a bid to craft
the new order without the input of the army. In fact, it didn't
take a cynical eye to see this as an attempt to construct a rival military
force loyal directly to Parliament. Now that Hasselrigg no longer needed the new model
Army, he was seeking to destroy it. Senior officers like Charles Fleetwood were
alarmed, but as it happened all too often in the past few months,
it was an army leadership that seized the initiative but the men. While Fleetwood
scrambled to come to some arrangement with Hassel and Lambert rushed to London. The
men who had just suppressed Booth's insurrection produced their own response to Parliament on the
sixteenth of September. Lambert's men drew up what became known as the Derby Petition,
so called because they were stationed at Derby. Although Hasselreagan his allies would
cast Lambert as the true author of the document, he had left for London
before it was written, and Lambert's later behavior suggests that he didn't authorize or
approve of the petition, as was obligatory for army petitions. The men demanded
the pay they were owed, but they were candy enough to see that the
government as currently constituted was not likely to be sympathetic to the army in the
long term. The Derby Petition therefore called for a new system of governance that
would protect the interests of the army and, by extension, the good Old
Cause as understood by the petitioners. First, the petitioners called on Parliament to
confirm Fleetwood as Commander in Chief, thus climbing down from any attempts to take
control of the army. Other officers like Desboro Lambert and George Monk were to
be given high army offices as well that couldn't be unilaterally rescinded by Parliament.
Monk's inclusion in this group was interesting considering his ambiguous role in the crisis so
far. In order to further confirm a kind of constitutional equality between the army
and the rump, the petition also called for a second house of Parliament,
not a House of Lords, but a Senate, populated by men who understood
the good Old Cause the army had fought for. This was perhaps the key
ideological difference between Hasselrigg and the army men. For Hasselrigg, the supremacy of
the House of Commons, especially this House of Commons, was non negotiable.
But for the army petitioners, any constitution that betrayed the ideals of the Civil
War was fundamentally illegitimate. Both parties agreed that the Conservative Protectorate constitution had violated
both their principles, and so they had joined forces. But it was now
becoming apparent that their two visions were incompatible. The Rumpers had already rejected any
limitation on parliamentary supremacy and had suffered five years of political exile for their principled
stand. They had stood up to Oliver Cromwell. They weren't going to bow
to a few soldiers in the Midlands. Once completed, the Derby petition wasn't
sent directly to Parliament, but circulated to other army units in England, Scotland
and Ireland. The first to receive it in London was Charles Fleetwood. He
immediately saw that Hasselerigg would never accept its terms. In fact, if the
petition were formally presented to Parliament, it would likely provoke a civil war within
the regime. Fleetwood therefore decided that his only option was de escalation and damage
mitigation. In a private interview with Hasselrigg, he shared the petition with the
Rubber and proposed that they worked together to prevent a disastrous public confrontation. Lambert
had no hand in it, Fleetwood shured him, if they nipped this in
the bud, the Army grandees could tamp down the unrest in the ranks.
The best way to neutralize the petition and the grievances that represented was to come
up with a compromise settlement before it went public. Fleetwood, however, had
badly misjudged hasselrik and perhaps his own skill in crafting a political solution to the
crisis. Hasselerigg took the news directly to Thouse of Commons, where he called
for the doors to the lobby to be locked once again. Elament, who
was threatened by an illegal army coup, Hauseric himself moved that John Lambor be
seized and placed in the Tower of London. Cooler heads prevailed and that provocative
measure was not adopted, but the House did declare that anyone involved in this
latest army intrigue was an enemy of the state dangerous to the Commonwealth. No
one in the Commons chamber could have missed the significance of that language. It
was precisely that threat from Parliament that had driven the army coups of the past,
especially the purge of sixteen forty eight, that had created the rump in
the first place. In fact, an uneasy sense of deja vu descended on
Westminster. Rumors swirled that the Rump was discussing recruiter elections to fill out the
House of Commons, just as in sixteen fifty three, House a Rake seemed
intent on avoiding free elections and repopulating Parliament under the close supervision of its existing
members, the exact policy that had led Uliver Cromwell to shot of the Rump
in sixteen fifty three. Meanwhile, Army officers were meeting daily in London Fleetwoods.
Attempt who quietly resolved the crisis had backfired in spectacular fashion. He and
his allies now faced immense pressure to fulfill the terms of the Derby Petition and
defend the interests of the Army against the old tyranny of the Rump. After
several filled attempts to placate the junior officers, the army leadership decided that it
had to throw its weight behind the Derby petition. On the fifth of October,
John desbro formally delivered the petition to Westminster. He denied that the Army
had any intention of carrying out a coup, but informed the House of Commons
that the constitution the petition called for was the only way forward. Anything less
risks throwing England back into turmoil, possibly even civil war again. However,
Hasselreagan his allies refused to back down. Rather than responding to the petition or
Desbro's pleas for a settlement, Parliament prepared for a fight. A series of
bills were quickly passed with the goal of preemptively discrediting an army coup. All
laws passed by any so called parliament since April sixteen fifty three were formally invalidated,
and the collection of taxes without the consent of Parliament was declared an act
of high treason. Both measures were designed to the army's attempt to use any
of the state infrastructure that had sprung up during the protectorate period. The battle
lines were drawn just two months after vanquishing the Royalist threat. The regime was
tearing itself apart, As had been the case in sixteen forty two and many
times since then, the outcome of the struggle would depend on London. The
city government at Guildhall, the London militia and the apprentices would all play a
role in how the crisis played out. In October sixteen fifty nine, which
means we're gonna have to wind back the clock a bit to establish in context.
The mayor of London was John Ireton, the younger brother of the late
Henry Ireton, Cromwell's longtime right hand man. This Ireton had moved to London
before the Civil War, securing a position as a mercer in the city's cloth
Workers Company. Through his influential brother, John made out quite well from the
Civil War. He made a fortune managing sequestered royalist estates in his native Nottinghamshire
and a few other places. By the early sixteen fifties, Ireton had parlayed
his good fortune into a prominent position within the cloth Workers Company. As a
leading business man in the city, with personal connections in the highest corridors of
power, it was only natural that Ireton moved into politics. He was appointed
to the Nominated Assembly that followed the dissolution of the Rump in sixteen fifty three.
There, Ireton played a leading role in the committees handling the reform of
the law in public finances. Ireton was a rare creature in London politics,
a city father with close ties to the Protectorate regime. As you may recall,
London had not fared well in these successive purges that marked the Civil War
period. Many traditional city leaders were tainted by their reliance on Crown monopoly charters.
The rest tended to be Presbyterians and so were pushed out by the purges
of sixteen forty eight. Even the new merchants who stepped in with the ascendency
of the Rump were eventually marginalized by the rise of the Protectorate. John Ireton
was one of the few city leaders who remained sympathetic to the various regimes throughout
this period, so in October sixteen fifty eight he had been the natural choice
to serve as mayor, a key link between Westminster and London in an increasingly
turbulent political environment. As that political roment further degraded throughout sixteen fifty nine,
Ireton aligned himself with the reanimated Rump, and as a conflict between the army
and Parliament loomed, Ireton's status as mayor took on even greater significance. In
July, just before the Royalist uprisings, Parliament passed a major reorganization of the
London Militia. In theory, the goal was to ensure the loyalty of the
city militia amid the rumors and reports of the coming insurrection, But there were
whispers that the rumpers had a longer game in mind. Back in sixteen forty
seven, the Presbyterians had attempted to turn the London militia into a military force
capable of standing up to the new Model army. Was the rump trying to
do the same thing now? If so. Parliament had willing allies in Mayor
Ireton and the elite aldermen of the city. As far as they were concerned,
law and order were good for business, especially in these uncertain times.
But the more populist Common Council was wary. The Westminster regime was hardly popular
or trusted in the streets of London, and when the Royalist uprisings came just
days later, that wariness started to look a lot like outright treason. In
particular, George Booth's call for a free parliament struck a chord in London's Common
Council. Meanwhile, many ministers in the city, especially Presbyterians, refused the
government's order to declare Booth a traitor from the pulpit. The danger that the
Common Council might pass a resolution in favor of a free Parliament. Was so
great that Lord Mayor Ireton posted armed guards at Guildhall to prevent the Council from
sitting. London seethed, especially the apprentices, always at the forefront of political
unrest in the city. The temperature was elevated another notch in September. Ireton's
term as mayor was coming to an end with the annual election on the twenty
first of the month, but considering the crisis atmosphere, the Rump took the
provocative step of delaying the mayoral election. Ireton was too valuable an ally to
lose. However, after a week of heated protests, Parliament was forced to
back down. Ireton was voted out. So when relations between the Army and
the Rump finally broke down in early October, they were wearing off within a
larger London environment that was hostile to both factions. On the twelfth of October,
hassereg once again called for the doors of the Lobby to be locked.
Parliament had matters of the utmost urgency to discuss. The Rump formerly Cashier John
Lambert, John desbro and a handful of other officers behind the allegedly impending coup.
Fleetwood was stripped of his office as Commander in Chief, though he was
included in a new seven man commission that had authority over the army. However,
the real force in the new commission was a collection of rumpers, Thomas
Scott, Edmund Ludlow and most of all, Arthur Hasserig himself. That night,
Hasseregg exercised the powers of the newly christened Commission to summon the army to
the defense of Parliament. The turnout was disappointing. Only a handful of troops
answered the call and guarded a collection of MP's who decided to spend the night
within Westminster Hall for their own safety. Outside, John Lambert assembled a much
larger force of soldiers still loyal to him, despite the withdrawal of his commission
by Parliament. Barely three months after the regime bannoned together to see off a
series of Royalist uprisings, it had devolved into an armed standoff. Oppositional figures
in London, the provinces, Scotland, Ireland, the Navy, and even
among the Royalist exiles in Europe had given up after Booth's defeat, Suddenly,
those hopes sprang back to life. Next time. The army and the rump
finally settled their long dispute.