Abstract
MUCH has been written in a general way about the ideology of the officers of the New Model Army. In historians’ changing interpretations of the English Revolution the Army has always held a central place. Representation of its role and of its underlying motivations are as varied as those of the Revolution itself. The Army was composed of Saints in Arms whose aspirations were the culmination of the Puritan movement;1 or of men from the forests and the fens who represented the hopes of the dispossessed in their struggle with the privileged few.2 Service in the Army was a career open to the talents, accelerating the replacement of status by ability;3 or it was the prototype for the armed citizenry, taking the first unsteady steps on the path towards participatory democracy.4 In each explanation the New Model has been used as a symbol for a larger process of social change through which the meaning of the Revolution is revealed. It is many things to many men and this diversity mirrors the true heterogeneity of the Army’s composition and conduct.
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Notes and References
Leo Solt, Saints in Arms (Stanford, 1959); William Haller, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1955).
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (1972).
C. H. Firth, Cromwell’s Army (1902); Hill, The World Turned Upside Down.
Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints (New York, 1968).
M. A. Kishlansky, The Rise of the New Model Army (Cambridge, 1979) ch. 7.
CJ, vol. v, p. 129.
J. Rushworth, Historical Collections, 8 vols (1721) vol. vii, pp. 744–9.
William Clarke’s Accounts, Chequers MSS 782.
For the records of these debates see The Clarke Papers, ed. C. H. Firth, 4 vols (1891–1901); A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty (1938).
Rushworth, Historical Collections, vol. vi, pp. 510–12; A. L. Morton, Freedom in Arms (1975) pp. 101–10.
Rushworth, Historical Collections, vol. vi, pp. 564–70; William Haller and Godfrey Davies, The Leveller Tracts (New York, 1944) pp. 52–63. The additions to this tract (bracketed on pp. 60–1) should not be considered authentic.
Worcester College, Oxford, Clarke MSS, vol. XLI, fos 105–27.
Reprinted in Haller and Davies, Leveller Tracts, pp. 65–87.
S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1906) pp. 333–5; Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, pp. 443–5.
Rushworth, Historical Collections, vol. vii, pp. 744–9.
Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, pp. 316–25; Rushworth, Historical Collections, vol. vii, pp. 731–6.
Firth, Clarke Papers, vol. i, p. 349.
The Parliamentary or Constitutional History of England, 24 vols (1751–62) vol. xviii, pp. 161–238.
Ibid., pp. 519–36.
The Army very nearly did disband twice during this period: at the end of July and in the middle of October, 1647. On both occasions intervening events scotched their carefully laid plans.
What the mob demanded was the restoration of the old militia committee, the reversal of a vote against a covenant taken by apprentices, and other rather arcane matters. For this, see Kishlansky, Rise of the New Model Army, pp. 266–7.
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© 1982 Robert Ashton, Anthony Fletcher, Roger Howell, Ronald Hutton, Mark Kishlansky, John Morrill, Donald Pennington, Richard Tuck
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Kishlansky, M. (1982). Ideology and Politics in the Parliamentary Armies, 1645–9. In: Morrill, J. (eds) Reactions to the English Civil War 1642–1649. Problems in Focus Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16911-5_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16911-5_8
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