The commission of array was ill-received by many of the king's friends, as not being conformable to law. Clarendon, iii. 91. Certainly it was not so; but it was justifiable as the means of opposing the parliament's ordinance for the militia, at least equally illegal. This, however, shows very strongly the cautious and constitutional temper of many of the royalists, who could demur about the legality of a measure of necessity, since no other method of raising an army would have been free from similar exception. The same reluctance to enter on the war was displayed in the propositions for peace, which the king, in consequence of his council's importunity, sent to the two houses through the Earl of Southampton, just before he raised his standard at Nottingham.
[243] According to a list made by the House of Lords, May 25, 1642, the peers with the king at York were thirty-two; those who remained at Westminster, forty-two. But of the latter, more than ten joined the others before the commencement of the war, and five or six afterwards; two or three of those at York returned. During the war there were at the outside thirty peers who sat in the parliament.
FROM THE BREAKING OUT OF THE CIVIL WAR TO THE RESTORATION
Factions that, while still under some restraint from the forms at least of constitutional law, excite our disgust by their selfishness or intemperance, are little likely to redeem their honour when their animosities have kindled civil warfare. If it were difficult for an upright man to enlist with an entire willingness under either the royalist or the parliamentarian banner, at the commencement of hostilities in 1642, it became far less easy for him to desire the complete success of one or the other cause, as advancing time displayed the faults of both in darker colours than they had previously worn. Of the parliament--to begin with the more powerful and victorious party--it may be said, I think, with not greater severity than truth, that scarce two or three public acts of justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few of political wisdom or courage, are recorded of them from their quarrel with the king to their expulsion by Cromwell.
Notwithstanding the secession from parliament before the commencement of the war, of nearly all the peers who could be reckoned on the king's side, and of a pretty considerable part of the Commons, there still continued to sit at Westminster many sensible and moderate persons, who thought that they could not serve their country better than by remaining at their posts, and laboured continually to bring about a pacification by mutual concessions. Such were the Earls of Northumberland, Holland, Lincoln, and Bedford, among the peers; Selden, Whitelock, Hollis, Waller, Pierrepont, and Rudyard, in the Commons. These however would have formed but a very ineffectual minority, if the war itself, for at least twelve months, had not taken a turn little expected by the parliament. The hard usage Charles seemed to endure in so many encroachments on his ancient prerogative awakened the sympathies of a generous aristocracy, accustomed to respect the established laws, and to love monarchy, as they did their own liberties, on the score of its prescriptive title; averse also to the rude and morose genius of puritanism, and not a little jealous of those upstart demagogues who already threatened to subvert the graduated pyramid of English society. Their zeal placed the king at the head of a far more considerable army than either party had anticipated.[245] In the first battle, that of Edgehill, though he did not remain master of the field, yet all the military consequences were evidently in his favour.[246] In the ensuing campaign of 1643, the advantage was for several months entirely his own; nor could he be said to be a loser on the whole result, notwithstanding some reverses that accompanied the autumn. A line drawn from Hull to Southampton would suggest no very incorrect idea of the two parties, considered as to their military occupation of the kingdom, at the beginning of September 1643; for if the parliament, by the possession of Glocester and Plymouth, and by some force they had on foot in Cheshire, and other midland parts, kept their ground on the west of this line, this was nearly compensated by the Earl of Newcastle's possession at that time of most of Lincolnshire, which lay within it. Such was the temporary effect, partly indeed of what may be called the fortune of war, but rather of the zeal and spirit of the royalists, and of their advantage in a more numerous and intrepid cavalry.[247]