Written by Stewart Fergusson
‘Such is the sad condition of these times as no man knows how to dispose himself, for now there is so much declared as makes all officers of the kingdom traitors of one side or the other, neither are standers-by in any better condition’ Thomas Knyvett, May 1642'1
On Wednesday the 25th of June in the hot summer of 1642 Coventry’s mayor and aldermen gathered in the Guild Hall to attend on Spencer Compton the Earl of Northampton. Northampton was the Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire, but more significantly he was Coventry’s Recorder. The Recorder was a mainly honorific, but important post elected by the Corporation to represent the interests of the city to the crown and vice versa. Northampton was a prominent supporter of Charles I chosen as Recorder by the governing elite in 1640 to help maintain their influence at Charles’ court during the political crisis that was unfolding between the king and his Parliament.
On the 25th of June 1642, as civil war loomed, Northampton was on the King’s business to muster the city’s militia and take control of the county magazine stored in Spon Gate Tower. It was to prove a prescient meeting. Coventry was to become a solid backer of the parliamentary cause. But choosing sides was a momentous decision and right up until Charles laid siege to Coventry in August 1642, it was not a foregone conclusion that the mayor and aldermen would back Parliament
When the mayor and aldermen gathered to meet their Recorder in late June 1642, they had already tried to steer a middle way and avoid backing one side or the other, despite increasing local pressure in the city that favoured Parliament fuelled by incendiary propaganda that played to the puritan sensibilities of the town. In the winter of 1641, this propaganda went into overdrive with wildly exaggerated and in many cases entirely untrue news of the revolt of Irish Catholics who perpetrated horrendous atrocities committed on Protestant settlers.2
The first sign of nervousness in the Mayors Council about the growing political crisis came at two well attended meetings on December 15th, 1641 and January 22nd 1642. The council declared they were fearful of the ‘...present troubles and dangerous times...’ They were also aware that Coventry, an important midlands communications hub and fortified town, would be a military asset in the tense stand-off between Charles and Parliament. Accordingly, the Council ordered that Coventry’s defences should be improved and the ‘Watch and Ward’ on the city’s walls and gates rigorously enforced.3 At this stage these were precautionary measures to protect the liberties of the city and assuage the fears of locals and not a commitment to one side or the other.
In the spring of 1642, war fever was heightened as both sides sought to control the local militia and magazines, piling more pressure on the Corporation to choose a side. The local militia and their magazines of arms were the basis of England’s military infrastructure. Coventry had its own trained bands and Spon Gate Tower held the county magazine. Parliament had passed the Militia Ordinance (legislation that had not been given royal approval) to enable them to control these local forces. Charles countered by issuing the Commission of Array, an old medieval royal mandate authorising local lord lieutenants to raise forces in times of danger.
Control of Coventry’s militia and magazine was the critical issue at stake at the meeting in the Guild Hall on the 25th of June. It brought to the surface a nascent three-way split in attitudes to Charles and Parliament amongst the members of the Mayor’s Council and, indeed, Coventrians in general. There were the committed royalist supporters of the Earl of Northampton including two influential aldermen Henry Million and John Clark who were made deputy lieutenants by Northampton. Robert Greville, Lord Brooke of Warwick Castle, whom Parliament had appointed as a rival Lord Lieutenant to implement the Militia Ordinance, was the leader of the county’s parliamentarians and could call upon the support of two prominent hardline Coventry puritans, aldermen John Barker, who was also a Coventry MP, and Thomas Basnet. The Mayor Christopher Davenport, Coventry’s other MP, the alderman William Jesson, and probably most of the other aldermen and members of the Mayor’s Council were reluctant to commit to either side. They were either neutral or just prevaricated to see who would come out on top in the growing crisis. We can imagine this ruling group of fifteen of Coventry’s merchant elite meeting formally and informally in a crowded council chamber debating and arguing and whispering in quiet corners. They were trying to find a consensus that best suited their varied political and religious views and that would preserve the ‘liberties’ of the city and their own hold on power. For some, for example Barker, Basnet, Million and Clarke, political or religious principles trumped local issues, for others it was the opposite. Tension amongst this group was heightened by familial and economic connections. This was akin to a family row, even more intense for being so. The two MPs, both aldermen, also had to address the demands made on them by an increasingly belligerent House of Commons. Something that Jesson found particularly troublesome.
On 21st June Barker was instructed by the Commons to return from London to Coventry to ‘...see the Ordinance touching the Militia put into Execution...’4 Northampton had come to Coventry from the court either on or just before the 25th of June taking lodgings at the Black Bull in Smithford Street. His task was to enforce the Commission of Array. Mayor Davenport dutifully sent three aldermen to attend their Recorder and ascertain his needs. Northampton informed the delegation he would come to the Guild Hall to inform the Corporation of Charles’ orders concerning his Commission of Array. He arrived at the Hall on the 25th of June. This was not a routine meeting of the Mayor’s Council and so is not recorded in the Corporation Minute Book. But John Barker sent a detailed account of the meeting to Lord Brooke who reported it to the House of Lords.5 It is likely this was a well-attended meeting that took place in St Mary’s Hall rather than the cramped Council Chamber. Here Northampton and the gathered members of the Corporation were surrounded by visible signs of support by, and for the crown. There were the great tapestry and north window, royal portraits and verses proclaiming how Coventry flourished through royal support. The symbolism of this iconography of royal patronage would have been obvious to the Earl and the gathered ruling elite of the city. From the dais below the tapestry, Northampton informed this gathering of Coventry’s governors of his intention to execute Charles’ Commission of Array. The
atmosphere must have crackled when Barker boldly declared that he had been sent from Parliament to execute the Militia Ordinance and would oppose the Commission of Array as both houses of Parliament had voted it illegal. For good measure he added ‘...it was one of the greatest oppressions to the Subject that ever was...’ Northampton was then challenged to present Charles’ commission, but embarrassingly, and no doubt angered that his word was not enough, had to admit it was not ‘...finished at his coming from Yorke, but he should receive it thence speedily...’
Barker went on to report that Northampton was confident that the mayor ‘...with some others...’ would support his demand regarding the Commission of Array, particularly since the mayor had refused to entertain a deputation from Brooke to implement the Militia Ordinance. He went on to say that many of the aldermen were lukewarm towards Parliament and that the Mayor had refused to execute the militia commission but perhaps could be won over. But Barker may have mis-read this refusal. The mayor and most aldermen wanted to be even handed in their dealings with these two powerful Warwickshire peers and so continued to hedge their bets, particularly since Northampton did not actually have the king’s commission to hand, and so giving the mayor and council an excuse to prevaricate.6
As the mayor with the support of most of the aldermen fended off the demands of Brooke and Northampton over the local militia, on the streets of the city Coventrians showed their allegiance in a very public manner. Million and Clark were the cheerleaders for Charles and gave out Northampton’s colours, green ribbons, to be worn in the hats of his supporters. Barker countered by ordering purple ribbons, Brooke’s colours, from a local draper, to be worn by his supporters. The Coventry analyst declared that ‘...There was great fears and dangers of men’s next neighbours...’ and went on to claim that Northampton’s followers were the more numerous. In response to the rebuff from the Mayors Council and perhaps encouraged by this apparent popular support, Northampton, with Million and Clarke, tried to secure control of the county magazine stored in Spon Gate Tower but Barker and Basnet, acting on clear instructions from the House of Lords, out manoeuvred them with the support of the two sheriffs. Thwarted, Northampton made a quick exit through the garden of the Bull Inn and a postern gate. Barker triumphantly reported to Brooke that ‘...After the said Earl was gone from the City, the sheriffs of the said City and County came and certified me they would serve the King and Parliament [my italics], and observe the Ordinances of both Houses concerning the Militia... and in Pursuance thereof have furnished themselves with Arms...’7
The initiative now lay with Barker and his patron Lord Brooke. Brooke had come up from London by the end of June and was active in holding musters for Parliament. He was at Stratford on the 30th of June, at Warwick on the 1st and 2nd of July and in Coventry on the 5th of July. Mindful of Barker’s comment that that the mayor and most aldermen were lukewarm and Coventry was not yet considered secure for Parliament, Brooke took the precaution of moving the magazine, now controlled by Barker and the two sheriffs, to his castle at Warwick.8 Notwithstanding this nervousness, it was clear from the four musters there was considerable popular support for Parliament. 2,850 volunteers responded to Brooke’s call, of which 800 were said to come from Coventry.9
Brooke was a charismatic figure who, unlike Northampton, did not play on his seigneurial status to gather support. His appeal was more ideological than deferential. He had intellectual acuity and a fervent commitment to reform in church and state. He deployed reason and propaganda in equal measure playing on local anti-Catholic fears and the reputation of cavaliers as prone to violence and looting. At the musters he also, judiciously, provided feasts and music to rally volunteers. For his officers Brooke chose men he could rely on to give unequivocal support. Barker was commissioned as colonel of the Coventry forces, whilst the captains were Coventrians who came from the ranks below the merchant elite, men like the lawyer Robert Phippes, who were not tainted with the doubts of the other aldermen.10
Coventry was now in a ferment, and the mayor and aldermen were clearly divided and struggling to control events in the city. The one thing that seemed to unite them was the need to keep control of any remaining weapons, now that the county magazine had been moved to Warwick Castle. At a full meeting on the 12th of July that included the opposing radicals, the aldermen voted to ensure all arms should be kept at St Mary’s Hall ‘...to be preserved for the safety of this Citie...’11
Meanwhile, Northampton switched his attention to securing the support of Warwickshire’s leading gentry, and Charles once again sought to recover influence in Coventry. This time he deployed the well-respected local lawyer and Steward of Coventry John Whitwick. The Steward, like the Recorder, was an elected post whose task was to provide legal services on issues related to the city and crown. Whitwick was a solid county royalist but had close ties to Coventry and had advised the Corporation in its dispute over the levy of Ship Money in the 1630s. He was to write of himself as ‘... a member and you all know sworne to that Cittie...and the care that I take of that place where I desire to live...’ On the 23rd of July he sent a letter to the mayor and sheriffs, part threatening and part emollient, requiring them to attend on Charles at Leicester the next day to explain their reasons for not executing the Commission of Array. The letter was presented to a formal meeting of the Mayor’s Council and, significantly, in the absence of both Barker and Basnet, it was agreed that Mayor Davenport, Sampson Hopkins and George Monck, all of whom were keen to adopt a conciliatory approach, should represent the city ‘...to give satisfaction to his Ma[jes]tie that so no prejudice shall happen against the citie or the liberties thereof...’ But the day set for the audience with Charles was a Sunday, a tactless choice on the part of Charles given the puritan sensibilities of Coventry, and according to one of the Coventry Annals ‘...being discovered to some that favoured Parliament, they compelled them to stay at home...’ The ‘some’ is not specified, but it suggests the belated intervention of either or both of Barker and Basnet who were not at the meeting. This was a significant snub to Charles who was notably sensitive about the dignity of his royal status.12
The next four weeks saw a flurry of menacing military preparations and manoeuvres across county and country. On the 30th of July there was a tense military stand-off between Brooke and Northampton at Banbury, possibly involving some of the forces raised in Coventry. These events aroused fears in Coventry that war was imminent. On the 23rd of July Jesson was given a warrant by Parliament to transfer more arms to the city, and the Mayor’s Council redoubled its efforts to defend the city. In the Guild Hall, as well as the Armoury on the second floor, the Undercroft was brought into use as a magazine. At two meetings at the end of July,
well attended by aldermen of all persuasions, new orders were agreed to arm each inhabitant and to further re-enforce the ‘Watch and Ward’.13
In early August Brooke returned to London for consultation and in his absence, Northampton seized the initiative in Warwickshire. The ordinance that Brooke had brought up from London and had agreed to leave at Banbury during his standoff with Northampton, was seized by the Earl and used to lay siege to Warwick Castle. Charles having returned to York now prepared to march to Warwickshire and was under the mistaken impression that Coventry was poorly defended ‘...he thought it convenient to possess himself of that city, which though encompassed with an old wall, having no garrison in it, he thought no hard matter to do...’ He sent a royal herald to the city on the 13th of August to inform the mayor and aldermen that he would soon require admittance.14 In fact, the parliamentary interest in the city was now boosted and the royalist interest overawed by the arrival of 400 volunteers from north Warwickshire, particularly from Birmingham, and puritan clerical refugees harassed by royalist forces came to Coventry to preach and promote the parliamentary cause. William Dugdale, the king's herald claimed that the parliamentarians prevailed in Coventry ‘...through the aid of many sectaries and schismatics which flocked unto them with arms and ammunition especially from the populous town of Birmingham...’, and in a letter of the 15th of August from the Warwickshire Commissioners of Array to their colleagues in Worcestershire, they claimed that ‘...great numbers of men from several parts of this county have since we sent to you gathered themselves together in a warlike manner and are already entered in the City of Coventry...’15
The pressure on the mayor and aldermen to take a stand for one side or the other was now intense. But still they hedged their bets. On the 17th of August, following Charles’ call for the city to admit him, and as he approached Coventry with a force of 1100 men, the Mayors Council held a crisis meeting. It was attended by 14 members, with only Jesson missing. The outcome was another attempt at a compromise to avoid offending either side. £300 was to be borrowed, £200 from Steward Whitwick and £100 from Mayor Davenport, for gifts and entertainment ‘...in case they [the king and the prince] shall be pleased to come to Coventry...’ Whether this agreement was unanimous or pushed through by the nervous majority on the Council is not known. But the outcome turned out to be another snub to Charles. Robert Phippes, the Coventry physician who was one of Barker’s captains and had no status within the governing councils of the city, informed Charles’ herald that the king could only come in with a small personal escort of no more than 200 followers, suggesting that the council had been bypassed. This snub roused Whitwick, who was with the king, to write urgently to the mayor and aldermen on the 20th of August a heartfelt and begging letter. Appealing to their sense of a united community and his own he pleaded that ‘...for gods sake, your owne sake and your wives Children, and myne and your servants sakes, with whome wee are trusted, not to be drawne, or persuaded to anie ill Counsell to your owne overthrow, or theirs, but that you presently and seriously consider of your own danger and that you embrace peace and quyett speedily while it may be had...’ He then added knowingly that the mayor and aldermen had ‘...for the present suffered the government of that Cittie to be transferred into other hands...’ and he advised ‘...it bee reduced presently into into your own power...’16
But it was all too late. Having snubbed him, Charles retired to Lord Leigh’s house at Stoneleigh and declared ‘...he would lay the city in a ruined heap of rubbish ere he left it.’17 His small army ineffectually began to bombard Coventry. An urgent appeal went out to Brooke on the 21st of August ‘...that the king lay before Coventry, and he was playing upon the town with his ordnance and desired his Lordship’s aid’ A large relieving force of nearly 6,000 men hastened to the city defeating a small force of royalists at Southam and arrived in Coventry on the 23rd of August. The mayor and aldermen seemed to have accepted the fait accompli as, according to Nehemiah Wharton, a London soldier with the relieving army ‘...the country welcomed us and gave us good quarter...’, and they vowed to ‘...valiantly fight the lord’s battle’. Charles and Northampton retreated from Warwickshire to Nottingham where on the 22nd of August Charles had raised his banner in a formal declaration of war.18
Right up until the siege of Coventry, Mayor Davenport, and many if not most of the aldermen tried to adopt a policy that avoided commitment to either side. The motives of the individual members of the Corporation to some extent remain inscrutable. An underlying issue for those reluctant to choose sides was a concern to protect what they described as the liberties of the city and their own prominent place in its governance. They adopted a conservative stance to avoid committing to a radical attack on monarchy that seemed a dangerous course. But in the debate over the control of the militia, they lost the initiative to the radicals like Barker and Basnet, and they never got it back. Significantly on the two occasions when Coventry openly defied Charles - his call to attend him at Leicester and his request to enter the city - were not initiated by the Corporation. Even after the siege and the formal declaration of war, Jesson, who had carefully adopted a stance balancing his loyalty to Parliament and to the aldermanic bench, still tried to hold a non-committal position. It was reported that in the Commons in September, he was asked if he, and perhaps by implication his city, would hazard life and fortune with the parliamentary commander the Earl of Essex, he requested more time to give an answer, but this was refused. When pressed he said ‘No’ leading to uproar in the House and a stubborn refusal of MPs to allow him to change his decision.19 As Coventry knuckled down to support the Parliamentary war effort led by Basnet and Barker, the latter appointed to the unusual post of Governor, Jesson was the champion of those on the Corporation who continued to try and put the interests of the city before those of Parliament. But that is a story for another time.
Sources
Manuscripts.
Coventry Archives: BA/H/C/17/2 Council Minute Book 1640-1696; BA/H/Q/A79 Corporation Correspondence; Journal of the House of Commons, volume 2 1640-43; Journal of the House of Lords volume 5 1642-45; Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Charles I 1641-3.
Contemporary Printed Sources.The Coventry City Annals, in F. Bliss Burbidge, Old Coventry and Lady Godiva, London undated.
Edward Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W. D. MaCray, Oxford 1958.
L. G. Wickham Legg ed, A Relation of a Short Survey of 26 Counties Observed in a seven weeks’ Journey begun on August 11, 1634, London 1904.
A Worthy Speech Made by the Right Honourable the Lord Brooke, at the election of his Captaines and Commanders at Warwick Castle (1643)
The Copie of a Letter sent from a speciall friend in Coventry (1642)
His Majesties Declaration and Propositions to the Mayor, Aldermen and Inhabitants of Coventry (1642)
A True Relation of the Lord Brook’s settling of the Militia in Warwickshire (1642)
A True Relation of His Majesties Coming to Coventry, 22nd August 1642.
Secondary Sources
D. Cressy, England on Edge, Crisis and Revolution 1640-42, Oxford 2007.
A. Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War, London 1981.
J. Healey, The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends, 1642, London 2025.
R. Howell, ‘Neutralism, Conservatism and Political Alignment in the English Revolution: The Case of the Towns 1642-9', in J. Morrill, ed., Reactions to the English Civil War 1642-1649, London 1983.
A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire, 1620-1660, Cambridge 1987.
A. Hughes, ‘Coventry and the English Revolution’, in R. C. Richardson, ed., Town and Countryside in the English Revolution, Manchester 1992.
T. John, Coventry’s Civil War 1642-1660, Coventry 1994.
B. Manning, The English People and the English Revolution, Harmondsworth 1978.
S. C. Osborne, Popular Religion, Culture and Politics in the Midlands 1638-1646, unpub. PhD thesis, Warwick University, 1993.
C. Russell, ‘Why Did People Choose Sides in the English Civil War’, The Historian, No. 63, Autumn 1999.
T. W. Whitley, The Parliamentary Representation of the City of Coventry, Coventry 1894.
1 B. Schofield, ed., The Knyvett Letters, Norfolk Record Society, XX, 1949, p. 105 2 A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire, 1620-1660, Cambridge 1987, pp. 134-5; ‘The Coventry City Annals’ in F. Bliss Burbidge, Old Coventry and Lady Godiva, Coventry n.d., p. 245. 3 Coventry Archives and Research Centre (CARC), BA/H/C/17/2 ‘Council Minute Book 1640-1696’, fs.23-5. 4 The Journals of the House of Commons (CJ) vol 2,1640-1643 p.634 5 The Journals of the House of Lords (LJ), vol 5, 1642-1643 pp.164-166 66 LJ vol 5, pp.164-166; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, p. 139. 7 ‘Coventry City Annals’, p.246; LJ, pp.164-166. In public and private documents from Parliament’s supporters, the trope used was always that they acted on behalf of King and Parliament. The target of their opposition was invariably Charles’ ‘evil counsellors’, not the institution of monarchy. 8 LJ vol 5, pp. 187-8. 9 Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, pp.139-40; T. John, Coventry’s Civil War 1642-1660, Coventry1994, p. 13. 10 For Brooke’s persuasiveness see Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, pp. 152-4 and ‘A worthy speech made by the Right Honourable the Lord Brooke, at the election of his captaines and commanders at Warwick Castle, 1643’, University of Michigan Library, Library Digital Collections, quod.lib.umich.edu. 11 CARC BA/H/C/17/2 ‘Council Minute Book’, f.28 12 CARC BA/H/Q/A79 ‘Corporation Correspondence’, f.206; BA/H/C/17/2 ‘Council Minute Book’, f.28; ‘Coventry City Annals’, p.246 13 CJ vol 2 pp.688-9; CARC BA/H/C/17/2 Council Minute Book, fls. 29-30 14 Edward Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W. D. MaCray, Oxford, p. 288; John, Coventry’s Civil War, pp.13-14. 15 Quoted in Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, p.147 and note 125 16, Coventry City Annals, p. 246; CARC BA/H/Q/A79, ‘Corporation Correspondence’, f.208 17 Quoted in John, Coventry’s Civil War, p.14. 18 LJ vol 5, p.313; CJ vol 2, pp. 720-22 and 730-32; Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1641-1643, pp.380-82. On the 15th of August the Commons Journals state that 4,800 Foot and 11 troops of Horse were to be sent to Coventry. 19 T. Whitley, The Parliamentary Representation of the City of Coventry, Coventry 1894, p. 84.
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