1D - Post-war divisions between Army and Parliament and the failure to secure a post-war settlement
Defeating Charles I in 1646 settled who had won the fighting, but left open who would govern and on what religious terms. This lesson explains how disputes over the army, competing proposals and the king's choices prevented a secure peace between 1646 and 1648.
Different meanings of victory
The parliamentary coalition had agreed to fight Charles without agreeing on a final constitution. Most MPs in 1646 still expected a monarchy restrained by Parliament. They differed over how much control of the armed forces, appointments and religion would make that monarchy safe. A settlement needed not only the king's formal assent but also enough support to enforce it.
The groups usually called Presbyterians wanted a national church governed through elders and assemblies. Many leading Presbyterian MPs sought a prompt agreement with Charles, the reduction of military expenditure and an end to army interference. The political label did not describe every individual's theology or an organised modern party. It connected a religious preference with a broadly conciliatory approach to the king.
Independents defended a greater degree of freedom for Protestant congregations. Many feared that a compulsory Presbyterian system would replace one form of religious coercion with another. Senior army officers such as Cromwell and Ireton also wanted guarantees that victory could not be undone. In 1646–47 they were generally negotiating with Charles, rather than working from an established intention to abolish monarchy.
Scottish Covenanters had their own interests. They had contributed troops under the Solemn League and Covenant and expected the settlement to secure Presbyterian religion and their kingdom's position. English Independents' growing influence threatened both expectations. Scotland, England's Parliament and the New Model therefore could not simply be treated as one victor imposing identical terms.
The problem was about institutions and trust together. Who would control soldiers if the king repudiated concessions? Who would protect religious minorities if Parliament imposed uniformity? Each proposed safeguard for one group appeared as a threat to another.
Army grievances and political power
The immediate dispute in 1647 concerned what would happen to the New Model Army. MPs wanted to reduce the cost of a force whose political and religious views they distrusted. Proposals to disband regiments or send troops to Ireland sharpened soldiers' fears that they would lose both wages and protection.
The soldiers demanded payment of arrears, wages already owed, and indemnity, legal protection against prosecution for actions performed during the war. A soldier who laid down his weapons before these questions were settled would lose his main means of securing redress. Irish service appeared particularly dangerous if it involved separation from sympathetic units and commanders. The issue was therefore more than greedy soldiers refusing to go home: it concerned the security of those who had carried out Parliament's orders.
Soldiers elected representatives, or agitators, and developed a collective commitment not to disperse until their grievances were answered. Officers and representatives formed a General Council of the Army. Civilian Leveller ideas influenced some participants, but the army leadership and all rank-and-file soldiers did not share one political programme.
In June 1647 Cornet George Joyce took Charles from parliamentary custody at Holmby House into army custody. Possession of the king gave the army a powerful position in negotiations. Its subsequent advance on London and entry into the city in August showed that it could determine which political actors could operate safely at Westminster.
This was a reversal of the relationship between Parliament and its military instrument. The army had been created to win a war on Parliament's behalf; its grievances and religious fears now led it to claim a right to influence the peace. MPs, meanwhile, could argue that an unelected armed force should not dictate the nation's constitution. Both arguments were intelligible, but they were difficult to reconcile while neither side trusted the other.
Competing settlement proposals
The Newcastle Propositions of 1646 sought to make a restored Charles govern on terms acceptable to Parliament and its Scottish allies. They required acceptance of the Covenant and Presbyterian religious reform, parliamentary control of the militia for twenty years, and measures against leading royalists. Charles regarded these restrictions as excessive and hoped that the victors' differences would let him improve the terms.
The army officers' Heads of the Proposals in 1647 offered another route. Associated especially with Ireton and John Lambert, they preserved king and Lords while providing regular parliaments, a redistribution of representation and limits on royal military power. Parliament was to control important appointments and the armed forces for a shorter period than Newcastle proposed. The proposals offered greater freedom from compulsory church practices, rather than imposing the Covenant throughout England.
Why could more lenient terms still fail? Charles wanted to recover substantial authority, not merely choose the least restrictive loss of it. Officers also needed to convince their own supporters that concessions to the king would be enforceable. Leveller-influenced radicals objected that the Heads retained too much of the old order and did not provide the broad franchise they wanted. Presbyterian politicians distrusted an army settlement that weakened their religious plans and their control of negotiations.
The Agreement of the People, debated at Putney in autumn 1647, offered a different basis of legitimacy: constitutional rights and representation grounded in the people, with restrictions on what even Parliament could do. It was not the settled programme of the entire army. The contrast revealed divisions between senior officers willing to retain a negotiated monarchy and radicals who wanted to establish rights beyond the king's or MPs' discretion.
A proposal's content therefore tells only half the story. The Heads could be relatively generous to Charles and still lack an alliance willing to accept and enforce them. The more the groups competed for control of the settlement, the more attractive delay appeared to the king.
Charles and the return to war
Charles's choices made mistrust harder to overcome. After surrendering to the Scots in 1646, he continued bargaining with several groups. The Scots transferred him to parliamentary custody in early 1647 as their forces withdrew from England. Army custody later that year did not end his contacts with potential allies. In November he escaped from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight, where he was held at Carisbrooke.
In December 1647 Parliament presented the Four Bills, requiring important concessions, particularly long-term parliamentary military control, before further negotiation. Charles refused and secretly concluded the Engagement with Scottish commissioners. In return for support, he accepted a temporary Presbyterian settlement in England. This showed that he could make religious concessions when they served recovery of power, but gave his English opponents reason to doubt whether any agreement would end his attempts to regain control.
The Engagement divided Scotland and helped bring about the Second Civil War in 1648. English and Welsh uprisings and Hamilton's Scottish-led invasion were defeated by the New Model. Officers interpreted renewed fighting as evidence that Charles could not be trusted with another opportunity to rule. Religious language intensified their judgement: his responsibility for bloodshed was a moral offence as well as a strategic danger.
Parliament was still willing to negotiate at Newport on the Isle of Wight in autumn 1648. Some MPs believed the king's concessions could provide a basis for settlement. Army leaders instead pressed for justice against him through their November Remonstrance. In early December the Commons accepted continuing negotiation; on 6 December soldiers carried out Pride's Purge, excluding or arresting MPs thought likely to resist the army's course. Failure to agree a peace had become a struggle over who could sit in Parliament at all.
Why a secure peace failed
The failure of settlement can be explained through interacting causes. Religious differences made the future church difficult to agree: Presbyterian uniformity offered security to some and persecution to others. Material grievances gave the army reasons not to disperse. Constitutional disagreement concerned whether king, Parliament or a broader people possessed the final authority. Charles's bargaining and renewed military coalition undermined confidence that concessions would last.
Charles was especially important because most proposed settlements still needed a cooperative king. His refusal to accept a restricted monarchy prevented a potential shared institution from binding the victors together. Nevertheless, blaming his character alone understates the problem. Even a more cooperative Charles would have faced rival demands about the franchise, religion and the army. These disagreements were real, rather than inventions caused only by royal manoeuvring.
The distinction between a condition and a turning point helps weigh the explanation. Divisions over religion and the army made agreement fragile during 1646–47; the renewed war in 1648 persuaded influential officers that retaining Charles was intolerably dangerous. Pride's Purge then removed parliamentary resistance. Neither military victory nor negotiation by itself created an authority accepted by all the major parties.
Compared with 1603, power had become more widely contested: soldiers and civilian petitioners could challenge the settlement, while the king had lost independent military strength. Yet power was not evenly shared. The army's ability to exclude MPs demonstrated how coercion could narrow participation at the very moment revolutionary language appealed to the people.
Victory removed the royalists' military advantage without producing agreement among the victors. The Second Civil War converted distrust of Charles into a case for removing him, while the army's power decided whose judgement prevailed.