"No Standing Armies!": The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England

CHAPTER VI

PRINCIPLE AND PROPAGANDA IN THE 1670s

The cry “No Standing Armies” reappeared in the 1670s. Reflecting a distrust of Charles II’s foreign and domestic policies along with a genuine fear of soldiers, the criticism of the troops began in the spring of 1673, became increasingly insistent in 1674, threaded through parliamentary debates in 1675 and 1677, and reached the point of parliamentary hysteria in 1678 and 1679. These attacks were a measure of the estrangement between Charles II and his supporters, who were more firmly organized as the Tory Party during this decade, and a growing number of men in Parliament, who by 1673 formed an identifiable “Country Party” and became by 1678 the “first Whigs.” The standing army issue was part of the ammunition used by the “country interest” and reflected the distrust of the court felt by men who did not hold office. The question was exploited as a propaganda weapon and a parliamentary tactic to undermine confidence in the court, smear royal ministers, and discredit foreign and domestic policies. At the same time, opposition to standing armies reflected a Whig philosophy of government which advocated a restricted monarchy and a powerful Parliament—that is, a “tempered” version of republicanism and parliamentarianism. Spokesmen for the opposition assumed the leadership in condemning the king’s armed forces, but they were joined by men who on other matters supported the court.

There was little theoretical speculation about the army in the press during this decade, but the issue did appear in a handful of tracts, among them A Letter from a Person of Quality and A Letter from a Parliament Man to His Friend, printed in the fall of 1675, Andrew Marvell’s An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government (1677), and Henry Neville’s Plato Redivivus (1681). The real battle over the question of standing armies was fought primarily in parliamentary debates.

There were thirty-seven members of the House of Commons, of 513, who led the opposition in the 1670s to Charles II’s armed forces and argued for a remodeled, nonprofessional militia as the land defense of the nation. The most prominent spokesmen were Colonel John Birch, Sir Thomas Clarges, Sir Thomas Lee, Sir Henry Powle, and William Sacheverell. Other notable speakers were Sir William Coventry,1 William Garroway, Sir Thomas Littleton,2 Lord William Russell, and Sir William Williams.3 A small minority, they resisted Charles II’s enlarged army and the policies associated with it for the entire decade and often managed to carry resolutions against the army by unanimous vote. Their success can be attributed in part to their great oratorical ability and persuasiveness. Powle and Littleton were said to manage the House with the “greatest dexterity.” A contemporary thought Birch was the “best speaker to carry a popular assembly before him that he had ever known,” while Sir William Coventry was regarded as a “wise and witty gentleman,” the “best speaker in the House.”4 These men were also widely read,5 skilled in the law, hardworking, and well prepared to take charge of parliamentary matters. They introduced motions about the army and the militia, served on committees, reported from committees to the House, initiated debates, carried addresses to the House of Lords, and exploited opportunities to keep the standing army issue before the Parliament and to connect it, sometimes tenuously, with some other issue that was being discussed.

All had lived as young adults through the Interregnum period.6 The memory of that experience was direct and personal and must have been a factor in their apprehension over Charles’s army. Cromwell’s army, however, was seldom mentioned in the debates. This may have reflected the feeling that such knowledge was too commonplace to warrant mention and that it was not an effective tactic to remind members of a recent experience through which almost all of them had lived. Further, these spokesmen delighted in classical and historical allusions, which came readily from their reading, and examples were adduced from the ancient world and England’s medieval past. Or, they turned to the contemporary scene, especially to events in France, to buttress their arguments against professional soldiers. Even more to the point, a reference to Cromwell’s army could have been regarded as a violation of the act of Indemnity, which was supposed to have forgiven everything (except the execution of the king) that had happened during the Civil Wars and Interregnum. When Tories brought up those troubled years, they were called to order. Finally, a reference to Cromwell’s army would have been politically rude and unwise in an assembly containing men who were themselves former Cromwellians or connected with old Cromwellians. But opponents of the army surely believed that the same kind of dangers that flowed from Cromwell’s army would flow from Charles’s military forces. Both armies had to be paid, housed, and disciplined, and both were feared as instruments of tyranny and corruption in the hands of the executive.7

Some of the men had taken part in earlier attacks on standing armies. Birch had argued in 1660 for disbanding the Cromwellian forces and had chaired the committee for disbanding the army. Hugh Boscawen had served on that committee, while Sir Thomas Meres reported from the committee that brought in the Militia Bill of 1663. Sir Thomas Littleton and William Garroway had participated in the debate in July 1667 in which the army raised for the Second Dutch War was attacked. Thus, there were some men who had been wary of Charles’s army from its very inception and were easily alarmed when it was enlarged in the 1670s.

Some of these spokesmen served as deputy-lieutenants or officers in their county militia force.8 The local militia which their class controlled was an acceptable military force, while a standing army threatened not only law, liberty, and Parliament but also their social status and power in the county. Their plea to depend upon the militia was made in an assembly filled with men who also served in the militia. In the fall session of 1678, it has been calculated that 337 of the members were either deputy-lieutenants or militia officers.9 These facts help to explain why votes on the issue could often be unanimous.

The names of the major opponents of the standing army read like a roster of the leadership of the “Country Party,” or as it was called by the end of the 1670s, the Whig Party. When Shaftesbury evaluated the membership of the newly elected House of Commons in the spring of 1679, all the major spokesmen against the army, except Sir William Coventry, were marked OW—meaning Old (experienced) and Worthy (men on whom he could count).10 This identification of the opposition to standing armies with the leadership of the Country Party refutes the suggestion sometimes made that the antiarmy attitude was especially characteristic of the Tory party and Tory assumptions. It is true that in the eighteenth century, antiarmy prejudice migrated to the Tory party, but as has been shown, its origins were heavily indebted to republican and libertarian traditions. In the 1670s, it was the “country”–Whig interest which exploited the fear for both partisan and ideological reasons. In their hands, the fear was shaped into a propaganda weapon and used as a parliamentary tactic to discredit the king, his ministers, and his policies.

Criticism of a standing army in the parliamentary sessions of 1673 and 1674 was precipitated by the Third Dutch War (1672–74), the several domestic policies associated with it, and the presence in England of newly raised levies. Fought in alliance with Catholic France against Protestant Holland, the war became increasingly unpopular with “country” members who suspected the court of inclining toward Catholicism and absolutism. The government’s domestic policies, notably, the Stop at the Exchequer in January 1672,11 which in effect financed the war without recourse to Parliament and in the process ruined many bankers, and the Declaration of Indulgence in March, which granted toleration to dissenters and Catholics and opened the whole question of the king’s suspending and dispensing power, could be perceived as evidence of that inclination. Distrust of Charles II’s political and religious intentions was reflected in the distrust of the soldiers he raised12 for the war.

The king’s handling of troops who were left in England because of the naval prowess13 of the Dutch provided specific grounds for anxiety and criticism. To feed and house the soldiers Charles II employed the traditional expedient of quartering the men in inns and public houses and, as necessary, in private houses. This he publicly ordered in 1672. Lacking barracks, Charles, as all other kings before him, had no alternative. The reaction to the policy was traditionally hostile, although there was no widespread popular outrage as there had been, for example, in 1628.14 Some members of Parliament, however, complained bitterly about billeting and used it as evidence of a design to impose an absolute government in England.

To strengthen procedures for disciplining the soldiers, Charles issued a code of “Orders and Articles of War” in 1672.15 The code set out regulations for courts-martial, authorized the use of the death penalty, and imposed on all soldiers oaths of allegiance to the king and of obedience to military officers. Although these military orders were printed in the summer of 1673, they were never used for soldiers on English soil.16 The reason was that officers feared that Parliament might “call them to question for it.”17 Members of Parliament were reported to be disturbed over the oath of allegiance and obedience, and to disapprove of the use of martial law and the death penalty.18

Next, Charles issued on December 4, 1672, a “Proclamation for prevention of disorders from the newly raised soldiers quartered till they are required.”19 The proclamation was illegal because the procedure it outlined by-passed the normal common law process,20 not because it imposed martial law. It was objected to by Parliamentarians, however, on the grounds that it introduced martial law and was used as proof of a royal design to impose absolutism. There is no evidence to show the popular reaction to the proclamation. In view of the war and the lack of system in providing discipline for the army, it would seem that parliamentary criticism of this proclamation was in part politically inspired.

Such considerations as these, rather than episodes in which the soldiers were turned against subjects or against Parliament, provoked rumors in the fall and spring of 1672–73 that the troops were “designed to control law and property.”21 Both Charles and his lord chancellor, Shaftesbury, took the rumors seriously enough to mention them in their speeches opening Parliament on February 5, 1673. Both boldly announced that, the rumors notwithstanding, more regiments had been raised. From the beginning of the session, members of the House of Commons lost no opportunity to stress the danger of a standing army. Spokesmen in the debate on the repeal of the Declaration of Indulgence tenuously linked the Declaration and a standing army.22 In the debate on grievances, the army was central. The proclamation of December 4 some said introduced martial law. The evils of quartering were recited. Others complained that soldiers had been sent from Scotland. Lee stressed the adverse economic consequences of an army which siphoned off manpower, thereby reducing the number of available workers and raising the wages of servants.23 Despite the efforts of supporters of the king, Sir John Duncombe and the secretary of state, Henry Coventry, to defend the policies of the court, the Proclamation of December 1672 was listed as a grievance. The diarist, Sir Edward Dering, declared that the critics of the king exaggerated the danger of the proclamation and suggested that they attacked it as a way of discrediting the king.24

In response to the Commons’s Address on Grievances, Charles promised that before they met again he would take care that no man should have any reason to complain.25 Dissatisfied by this reply, on March 28 some members urged that the Address on Grievances and the king’s reply be printed. The motion is pertinent for two reasons: first, it suggested a recognition of the political capital to be won from the criticism of the army. Proponents argued that printing of the address would help “end many disputes in the country about quartering of soldiers.”26 Second, the vote on the motion was exactly even, 105 to 105, which suggests that the king’s friends possessed greater strength than the account of the debate might indicate. The motion was defeated by the speaker’s vote, and the king adjourned Parliament that same day to October 20, 1673.27

Over the summer of 1673, the attitude towards Charles’s army stiffened as a result of the continued presence in England of soldiers that had been raised to fight in the Third Dutch War. Evidence shows that the English government intended to send the soldiers to the continent.28 The preparations, which included a general muster of the army at Blackheath in the spring and summer of 1673, however, played an important part in firming public opinion against the soldiers. It is not difficult to understand why a large number29 of poorly disciplined troops at Blackheath, only five miles or so southeast of London, should have been frightening. Although it was freely speculated that the army would be turned against English subjects, the camp became a kind of tourist attraction.30 In fact, the general muster was held as planned, and on July 14, the army decamped. Although the soldiers had not been at Blackheath a long time, their presence had undermined confidence in Charles’s intentions. From Blackheath, the army, now under the command of Count de Schomberg,31 the recently appointed captain-general of all the land forces, was sent to Yarmouth to await an opportunity to be transported to the continent. The opportunity never came. On August 11, the battle of Texel revealed the failure of the combined English and French fleets to establish command of the seas and “marked the end of attempts to land troops” on the continent.32 Three weeks later the government ordered the camp at Yarmouth dismantled, the numbers of men in the regiments reduced, and the soldiers sent into winter quarters. There is no evidence of wanton destructiveness by the troops.

When Parliament met on October 20, 1673, however, the army was criticized in more vehement terms than those used before.33 The debate on the king’s request for supplies was filled with “many digressions” about grievances, especially the standing army. Sir John Hotham implied that the army had no respect for Parliament. The number of Catholics among the troops was objected to, and critics charged that musters were omitted so that Papists might be concealed. Members were warned that they and the Peers might be subject to pressing, so flagrantly had statutes against pressing been violated. Yet it was acknowledged that the king had the right to raise an army so long as he paid it. In this session, that right was not challenged; it was agreed that the most effective tactic to force a change in policy was to withhold supply, and further supply was refused until the assessment granted the previous session had expired and the nation secured against the dangers from popery and popish counsels.34

When the debate on grievances took place three days later, the major issue again was the army.35 There is evidence that the opposition planned this debate to exploit the antistanding army sentiment which so many members felt. For example, Colonel Birch introduced a bill for the naturalization of foreigners, which he argued would help combat the problem of underpopulation in England. At this, Sir Thomas Meres said that he too wanted to increase the number of employable people, not by bringing in foreigners, but by avoiding policies such as maintaining a standing army that made the people at hand “useless and unprofitable by bringing them up in lewd and disorderly courses.”36 He went on to urge that the army, which he termed “a legion,” presumably to bring to mind the Roman legions that overran the ancient government, should be voted a grievance.37 The unlikely connection between naturalization of foreigners to deal with the problem of underpopulation and the danger of a standing army suggests prior preparation and recognition of the propaganda implicit in the antistanding army sentiment. Further support of this point is that the arguments against the army were reiterated by so many speakers in extreme terms.38 Fear of what the soldiers might do in the future was freely projected. The present suffering of the country was lamented in extravagant terms. Critics urged that the nation depend upon the navy and militia which, it was confidently asserted, “will defend us and never conquer us.” This was the first time in the 1670s, it should be noted, that the militia was mentioned as a counterweight to the army.39

Still further, the term, “standing army,” with all the pejorative overtones it carried from fifteen years or more of negative use, was deliberately sprinkled throughout the debate. At the end of the debates a resolution was passed which read, “that the Standing Army is a grievance.”40 At the insistence of William Sacheverell, the article “the” was substituted for “a” in that resolution. Dering pointed out, it is “easy to observe some difference in those words.”41 A fortnight later, another contemporary remarked upon the resolution, noticing that Parliament “call[s]” the forces a standing army.42

This wordplay was not lost upon the defenders of the court. Secretary Coventry led the rebuttal, demanding that the House define the terms “what is an Army” and what “a Standing Army” and inquiring with some sarcasm why the regiments should be called a “legion,” a word which referred to a Roman band of two thousand men. Arguing that the troops could not reasonably be called a standing army, he pointed out that the army was raised for a purpose, the war with the Dutch. Regiments raised for a war, he maintained, could not rightly be described as a “standing army.” Further, he asserted that for a thing to be a grievance, it had to be against law. No one, he went on, could “deny but raising of soldiers was in the king’s power when he thought fit.” As for the charge about martial law, Coventry acidly observed that the speaker who raised objections did not know what he was talking about.43

The outcome of the debate on grievances was an address to the king to tell him “in what manner” the army was a grievance. Drafted by Powle, Meres, Birch, and others, the address enraged Charles and was partly responsible for his decision to prorogue Parliament on December 4.44

Political observers predicted that when Parliament reconvened, members would have moderated their views.45 They were wrong. On January 7, 1674, Charles opened a very full Parliament,46 and both he and Heneage Finch, now his lord-keeper, attempted to placate fears and secure supply. Finch reviewed all that had been done to remove the fear of an army, asserting that the army had been drastically reduced and unruly soldiers “rigorously” punished.47

The disclaimers and explanations failed to mollify Parliament. The leaders of the “Country Party” exploited the antistanding army sentiment to identify the king and his ministers with Catholicism, French influence, and arbitrary power. Upon hearing of the dangers the country faced from Catholic plots, members asked Charles to order the militia of London, Westminster, and Middlesex be made ready at an hour’s warning and the militias of other areas at a day’s warning.48 The one man who had the temerity to say the king’s Guards were sufficient to protect the Parliament and court was “shouted down.”49 Not satisfied with calling upon the militia, some members argued that the way to redress grievances was to remove the king’s “evil councillors.”50 The next week three of the king’s chief ministers, John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale, the lord high commissioner of Scotland; George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, a member of the Privy Council without major office, whose influence was receding; and Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, secretary of state for foreign affairs, Southern province, were interrogated by the House. For each case the antiarmy sentiment was prominent in the interrogation. The central reason for the attack on Lauderdale was the conviction that he had designed the Scottish Militia Act of 1669 to put twenty-two thousand Scottish militia at Charles’s disposal to march anywhere he pleased, including England.51 The fact that the Militia Act of 1669 was based upon an earlier act passed before Lauderdale became commissioner in Scotland and contained nothing new about the king’s prerogative power to send the Scottish militia to any part of his kingdom, and the fact that the militia in Scotland was never mustered, did not diminish the force of the charge. The suspicion that Lauderdale had urged Charles to rely upon the Scottish militia to support his policies prevailed, and the address for Lauderdale’s removal was carried unanimously.52

The duke of Buckingham was accused of appointing popish officers to his own regiments, of pressing men in Yorkshire, and of advising that a “Frenchman,” i.e., Schomberg (in vain did Secretary Coventry try to straighten out members on Schomberg’s parentage) be appointed general of the army. Buckingham was asked who had advised bringing the army to London to overawe the Parliament, a question which patently assumed as fact that the army had been brought to London for that purpose. His defense was to incriminate Arlington, a tactic which failed to move members, and an address to remove Buckingham was passed 142 to 124.53

Arlington was next, and the question of his connection with the standing army was of major importance, too. He was charged with advising the king to govern by an army. To this, Arlington replied in terms that must have helped soften the animosity towards him: “I wholly abominate it, and am not so vain as to think this great nation can be awed by 20,000 men.” He denied that the matter was ever discussed in council meetings and asserted that he was “content to be guilty of all I am accused of, if this one thing be proved.” He was asked by whose advice the army was raised and Papists appointed to commands. He replied that the army was raised because of the war and Papists were commissioned because they were believed to be skillful. To the question of who advised that the army overawe the Parliament, he responded that he could say “nothing” to that.54 The charge of favoring a standing army, on which Arlington said he was willing to stand or fall, could not be proved against him, and for several reasons, it was resolved not to ask the king for his removal.55

The wrath of the Parliament against standing armies was not exhausted by these steps. On February 7, in a Committee of the Whole, Sir John Hotham opened debate with the assertion that the army was the root of all the grievances of the nation and urged his colleagues to demand that all the forces be disbanded.56 A “very Long debate”57 ensued because the question of the royal Guards was raised for the first time since 1663. There was clear agreement on declaring the newly raised regiments a grievance but no unanimity on whether the Guards should be disbanded as well. A small number of members argued for including the Guards. It was declared that the militia could serve as the king’s Guards by turns. Another speaker urged that the Guards be defined, saying that if the guards of the French king were the model, then a force of sixteen thousand men might be intended.58 But men who were known to be adamantly opposed to the idea of a standing army retreated before the proposition of removing the Guards as well, and they were not included in the Address on Grievances which begged the king to disband all troops that had been raised since January 1, 1663.59 But the sharp criticism of the Guards, who had been generally accepted, testified to the decay of faith in the king. The debate about the Guards, however, never addressed the central question, the king’s right to raise them without the approval of Parliament. Radical though some members were, they were not prepared in 1674 to examine the issue in terms that touched the king’s military prerogative.

Despite Charles’s gracious response to the Address on Grievances and his promise to reduce the forces to less than their size in 1663, some members remained disgruntled.60 In the House of Lords, Shaftesbury was preparing a proposal to disband the duke of York’s regiment.61 To the surpise, dismay, and fear of members,62 however, the king prorogued Parliament on February 24. He would not recall it until April 1675. Although Charles kept Lauderdale as his commissioner in Scotland and ignored the criticism of his Guards, he reduced the newly raised regiments and fixed the military establishment at just under six thousand men.63 However small compared to continental armies, this establishment was nearly twice the size of troops in 1663. It was large enough to provoke continued resentment and fear. The king’s critics had learned during these sessions how that resentment and fear could be exploited to discredit the king, his ministers, and his policies.

The year 1675 was of special importance in the history of the standing army issue.64 Although there was only a small military establishment, fear of Charles’s armed forces pervaded the debates in the spring and fall sessions of Parliament. Two circumstances nourished this anxiety: one was that Charles II had allowed an English contingent of soldiers to serve abroad in the pay of Louis XIV, and the second was the continued presence of the duke of Lauderdale in Scotland and the persistent apprehension that the Scottish militia would be used against England. This genuine fear of armies was exploited by the first earl of Shaftesbury and his friends in both Houses throughout the year as a parliamentary tactic to help gain certain partisan political ends. The issue of standing armies helped to bind together the Country Party in opposition to the new strength of the court and the Tory party, which had been built up through the financial wizardry and the patronage of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby.65

Anxiety over the implications of English soldiers serving in the French army was very real. Just a week after Parliament opened, the first of a series of addresses demanding the recall of such soldiers was presented on April 21 to Charles II.66 The petition was based on the argument that Louis XIV’s aim was to dominate the Western world, which, if achieved, would have disastrous effects on England economically, diplomatically, and politically. It was intolerable for ten thousand Englishmen to be kept abroad to threaten English liberties and to aid the French menace.67 Although the right of Parliament to participate in foreign or military policy was not specifically claimed, more than one member suggested that the House was competent to advise the crown in foreign and military affairs and that its advice should be heeded.68 It is plain that the petition, by implying a restriction on the king’s right to determine where soldiers could serve, invaded the royal prerogative.

A struggle between king and Parliament over the petition followed. On the grounds that his honor would be tarnished and peace endangered, Charles refused on May 8 to recall what he termed the “inconsiderable” number of English soldiers who had been in the French service since before the Treaty of Westminster. He did, however, agree to issue a proclamation to “forbid and hinder” any more men from going over.69 Parliament was not satisfied, and during May, several lengthy and emotional debates ensued.70 The opposition persisted in urging Charles to issue a “further and fuller Proclamation.” Not until the prorogation on June 9 did these efforts end.

Equally alarming to members of Parliament were the alleged threat posed by the Scottish militia and the fact that the duke of Lauderdale remained lord high commissioner in Scotland. On April 23, the House of Commons implored Charles to remove the duke of Lauderdale for the reasons they had cited previously. Members complained that Lauderdale had said in council that the king’s edicts had the force of law and charged that he was “principally” responsible for the Scottish Militia Acts which made England “liable to be invaded.” Dr. Gilbert Burnet, Lauderdale’s former chaplain, was called in to answer questions, and he confirmed the duke’s arbitrary notions.71 On May 7, the king rejected the House’s petition to remove his minister, but the opposition persisted until the end of the session in the attempt to get rid of Lauderdale.72

In the meantime in the House of Lords, Shaftesbury and his friends were using the menace of standing armies in speeches and tracts to oppose the Anglican Test.73 Introduced on April 15 in the House of Lords, the Anglican Test was designed by Danby to strengthen the position of the court party by limiting office power to Anglicans. The bill required an oath of nonresistance, like that imposed by the Militia Act of 1662, of all members of Parliament and all officeholders. For seventeen days, Shaftesbury and the duke of Buckingham, along with Presbyterian lords and moderate Anglicans, opposed the Anglican Test. Their basic contention was that the proposed oath would make the government absolute. It was said that a standing army would be the inevitable consequence, for the oath itself would foment jealousies which, according to plan, would be used as an excuse to “encrease and keep up a standing army.”74 A standing army had long been planned. In a limited monarchy, such as England’s, neither “mercenary nor standing Guards” were ever allowed the king. But by requiring an oath not to take up arms against the king or “those that are commissioned” by him, the Anglican Test would have the effect of bringing in “Arbitrary Government … and a standing Army.”75

Further, these Lords asserted that guards and standing forces were unlawful except in time of war or rebellion. It was said that “all the guards and standing forces in England cannot be secured by any Commission from being a direct Riot, and unlawful Assembly, unless in time of open War and Rebellion.”76 Although it was not elaborated, the point was plain: in peacetime the king cannot by his authority alone make guards or standing forces legal. For the first time in public discourse, the king’s right to raise soldiers so long as he paid for them, which had been tacitly allowed in the Restoration settlement of the military, was disputed. For this reason alone, the debate on the Anglican Test in the spring of 1675 is of great significance in the evolution of the antistanding army ideology.

Finally, opponents of the Test charged that the court had tried to undermine the House of Lords and upset the frame of government. Some men, therefore, must intend a “Military Government,” for “the power of the peerage and a standing army are like two buckets, the proportion that one goes down, the other exactly goes up.”77 In a powerful defense of the role of the nobility and of the medieval “Gothic” form of government, the opposition declared that the histories of all northern monarchies, including England’s, show that the nobility has always been the bulwark against arbitrary government and centralized military power.

The opposition Lords failed to defeat the Anglican Test, but they succeeded by their lengthy and eloquent speeches in embarrassing the court and delaying its business. Their charge that a professional, permanent army would be the inevitable consequence of an oath of nonresistance required of all members of Parliament and officeholders was a polemical conclusion, not a logically necessary one. It discredited the king, no matter the caveats which were introduced. To charge that some men close to the court intended to rule by a standing army was to play upon the deep-seated fear of country gentlemen. The insistence upon the idea that the aristocracy was a bulwark against military absolutism reflected the continuing viability of one of Harrington’s themes. At the same time, the medieval past was revitalized and the “Gothic” form of government idealized. Without worrying about the inherent inconsistencies between this emphasis and Harrington’s view of the medieval period, the opposition freely joined the one to the other to serve their own ideological and polemical purposes. Finally, the opposition Lords challenged what had been tacitly acknowledged since the Restoration, namely, that the king had the right to raise whatever forces he pleased so long as he paid them.

The expectation that the Anglican Test would be opposed with even greater vigor in the House of Commons was one consideration among others, such as the Shirley v. Fagg law case to be discussed below, which led an exasperated Charles to prorogue Parliament on June 9.78

When Parliament next reassembled on October 13, the same anxiety about English soldiers serving abroad in the French army and the same stratagem of exploiting the fear of a standing army to discredit the policies of the king reappeared. The opposition in the House of Commons used gossip, histrionics, and sensationalism and threw two men into the Tower to dramatize the fact that English soldiers were still serving in the French forces. For almost a month, members of the House of Commons focused their attention on an inelegant verbal and literary altercation involving their own members, William Cavendish (who became the first duke of Devonshire and marquis of Hartington in 1694) and Meres, on the one hand, and Thomas Howard,79 a Roman Catholic living in retirement, on the other. Cavendish and Meres allegedly insulted Howard’s brother John, who had died serving in the French army, by saying that he deserved such a fate because he had joined the French army “against the vote of Parliament.” To protest this slur on his brother’s reputation, Howard purportedly wrote and signed a letter which was distributed in St. James’s Park, in which he called the two M.P.’s “barbarous incendiaries” and described them as “unworthy,” “base,” and “bold and busy.” This letter was brought before the House of Commons by Sir Trevor Williams, who said his servant had found it in the park, because two members had been “shamefully traduced.” Whether Cavendish schemed to use Howard’s letter at the opening of Parliament to obstruct the king’s business, as was charged, is not clear, but it is clear that opposition leaders Russell, Sacheverell, Powle, and Mallet seized the opportunity to avoid any serious discussion of Charles’s demand for money. Ostensibly the issue was that the privileges of Parliament had been insulted by Howard, but no one could have been unaware that the fundamental reason for the episode was exasperation that English soldiers continued to serve in the French army in defiance of a vote of Parliament and a proclamation of the king.80

While this ruckus was going on, a relative of Howard’s challenged Cavendish to a duel. The incident was used by the opposition to draw the attention of Commons to the dangers posed by the king’s Guards. One member declared that the safety of the whole House was threatened by the challenge Cavendish had received and that “some course must be taken, or we shall be hectored by every life-guard man, and be obliged to fight him.”81

With excitement over the Cavendish-Howard episode running high, Powle introduced a motion on October 23 for a bill to impose penalties on any English subject who joined the French forces. Legal experts in the House supported the idea and members agreed to bring in a bill. The concurrence of the Lords was not obtained, however, and the bill was lost.82 But the effort in the fall of 1675 revealed the continued concern of members of the House to win some part in deciding where English soldiers might serve and thus indirectly to achieve a role in foreign policy and military command.

During these weeks, Shaftesbury and his circle in the House of Lords were fomenting dissension between the two Houses and distrust of the king’s policies in an attempt to force the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament. Again, the menace of standing armies was used. Tracts were printed. For example, the famous pamphlet, A Letter from a Person of Quality to His Friend in the Country, which recounted the arguments used in the debate on the Anglican Test in the spring, was circulating among members before Parliament opened.83 By early November, it could be bought on the streets. That the House of Lords ordered the tract burned and a committee appointed to find out who wrote, published, and printed it indicates that the pamphlet had an impact.84

Another tract published anonymously, Letter from a Parliament-Man to His Friend, Concerning the Proceedings of the House of Commons, This Last Sessions, Begun the 13th of October, 1675, used the danger of a standing army to underscore the thesis that the greatest enemy to English law and liberty was “encroaching prerogative.” The Letter recommended that religious liberty be given to dissenters, and scourged prelates as the “greatest friends to prerogative.” The prelates were bound to support prerogative because “all their promotions, dignities and domination depends upon it.” The pamphlet went on to identify a standing army with the prelates and the militia force with the dissenters! “The Militia must … be … for English liberty! … but a standing force can be for nothing but Prerogative, by whom it hath its idle living and substance.”85 By suggesting the unlikely equation of prelates and a standing army, the Letter cleverly used a common prejudice against professional soldiers to smear the reputation of the bishops. Further, this tract specifically asserted what the “Person of Quality” had suggested, namely, that the army was part of the corruption of government.

The revival of the Shirley v. Fagg case provided Shaftesbury with an opportunity to exacerbate tensions between the two Houses and obstruct the king’s business. That case had been brought in the spring before the House of Lords on an appeal by Dr. Thomas Shirley, who had lost a suit in the Court of Chancery against Sir John Fagg, a member of the House of Commons. The issue was whether the House of Lords violated the privileges of the House of Commons in acting as a court of appeal in a case involving a member of the Commons. Shaftesbury and his friends had argued for the jurisdictional rights of the Lords, while Danby and others had supported the privileges of the Commons. The two houses had become deadlocked, and the case was one reason for the prorogation in June. In October, the case was deliberately reopened and exploited by Shaftesbury.86 In a speech made on October 20, which appeared later in 1675 as a tract, Shaftesbury used the dangers of a standing army to support his plea to uphold the jurisdictional rights of the House of Lords. He argued that if the House of Lords abandoned its authority to serve as a court of final appeal, the consequence would be a standing army and arbitrary government. Declaring that it was in the interests of the entire nation that the Lords maintain their rights, the earl warned that “no Prince … ever Governed without Nobility or an Army” and drove home the point: “If you will not have one, you must have t’other.”87 If the nobility collapsed, the monarchy would go with it, or support itself by a standing army. To avoid a military tyranny, the jurisdictional rights of the Lords must be upheld.

The specter of a standing army was also used in the arguments for dissolving the Cavalier Parliament which Shaftesbury advanced in a speech in the House of Lords on November 20. This speech also appeared as a tract. The major thrust of Shaftesbury’s remarks was that the king’s refusal to call frequent and new Parliaments violated the ancient laws and customs of the nation. Such an unnatural situation as this, Shaftesbury warned, could only be maintained by force. Connecting the menace of a standing army with his political goal of dissolving the Cavalier Parliament, he declared that “a standing Parliament and a standing Army are like those twins that have their lower parts united, and are divided only above the navel; they were born together and cannot long out-live each other.”88 Such a warning must have been calculated to alarm members of Parliament and to persuade them to join in the effort to bring about a dissolution.89

These were not the only printed tracts that appeared in 1675 to discuss paid, professional soldiers. In a public letter to a friend in Amsterdam, Lord Holles approvingly referred to Machiavelli’s dictum that money was not the sinew of war and asserted that mercenary soldiers “will ever be found much weaker than the Native Militia.”90 A more important publication was Henry Neville’s translation of The Works of the Famous Nicholas Machiavel, Citizen and Secretary of Florence, which included The Discourses, The Florentine History and The Arte of Warre. Reprints of Machiavelli’s works appeared in 1680, 1694, and 1695. Anyone who read The Discourses and the Arte of Warre would find persuasive assertion and historical proof to confirm and stimulate the conviction that professional, permanent troops were a menace.

Throughout the year, then, the antistanding army sentiment was exploited in Parliament. Critics of the king repeatedly raised the specter of standing armies. This tactic was partly responsible for frustrating the business of the court. On November 22, 1675, Charles again prorogued Parliament. Better furnished financially than ever before by a grant from Louis XIV and by the expectation of higher yield from current taxes as a result of Danby’s reorganization and economy, Charles forfeited a grant from this Parliament and ruled without Parliament for fifteen months.

When Parliament reassembled in February 1677, the court’s foreign and military policies again came under fire. Exasperation over the continued presence of English troops in the French army and the rumors of recruitment of men in Scotland and Ireland for that service (despite the vote of Parliament and the royal proclamation in 1675) was sharpened by the startling military success of Louis XIV.91 On February 19, a strongly worded bill for the recall of English subjects was introduced. Severe penalties were laid on any soldier who remained in the French army after a certain time, and the power of the king to pardon such a soldier, except by act of Parliament, was denied. Despite the objection that the bill made service in the French army a crime greater than a sin against the Holy Ghost, the bill was read a second time on February 22 and handed over to a committee which included men who had long argued against Charles’s military and foreign policies, Sacheverell, Sir William Coventry, Meres, and Lee.92 On March 6, “country” members persuaded the House to address the king about the danger from France and to ask him to enter into alliances to secure England and preserve Holland. These anxieties were reinforced a fortnight later when an extraordinary episode relating to the English soldiers serving in France and reflecting most unfavorably on the king was revealed.

During the debate93 on March 16, when it was resolved that anyone who had encouraged an English subject to serve in the French army should be declared an enemy to England, Sacheverell revealed that a John Harrington94 had secured an affidavit about dragooning of men from Scotland into the French service with the connivance of the duke of Lauderdale. Because the government, including Charles himself, was deeply implicated,95 there was every reason for the government to arrest Harrington. When brought before the Privy Council and the king, according to some accounts, Harrington was rude to Charles and refused to answer questions. He was ordered off to jail, with personal instructions from the king that he be held “close prisoner.” On his way to jail, Harrington was clever enough to sign a blank piece of paper and slip it to a friend, so that a petition for his release might be drafted and presented to the House of Commons.96 Sacheverell had obliged. For two days, the details of this episode were recounted in the House. The procedure used in committing Harrington to jail was bitterly criticized. The House interrogated Harrington, one of the pressed Scotsmen, William Herriott, and Robert Murray, a confederate97 of Shaftesbury’s who had obtained an affidavit attesting to the dragooning of Scotsmen for Louis XIV’s army. But members refused to support Harrington’s petition, and on March 17, further debate on the matter was left sine die. Harrington’s indiscreet dealings with foreign embassies, his radical political views, Herriott’s retractions, and the general reluctance of most members to meddle directly with the king’s power blunted the arguments that Sacheverell and a few other opposition leaders made on Harrington’s behalf.

The “unhappy”98 debates on March 16 and 17, 1677, however, were not the last of this incident. In June, Harrington’s trial was postponed until the next term at the “express order from the King.”99 Around Christmas 1677. a tract appeared entitled Mr. Harrington’s Case, which must have reawakened interest in the issue and spread news of it still further among the politically conscious public. The tract was said to have caused Danby great alarm.100 Someone felt sufficiently concerned to draft a reply, which was not published. Entitled “Worse and Worse, or the Case alter’d in some short Reflections upon a late Scurrilous and Seditious Paper intituled Mr. Harrington’s Case,” the undated draft declared that the issue was much in “coffee House chatt” and that Mr. Harrington’s Case contained “poison of a most pernicious Nature.”101 When Harrington came to trial in January 1678, it was not for contempt but for his comments about the government being in three estates and rebellion being no rebellion unless directed against all three. He was heavily fined and jailed.102

Although Harrington’s petition had been argued on legal grounds in the House of Commons, no member could have been unaware that the basic issue was the connivance of the government at the continued pressing of men for the French service in the face of parliamentary vote and royal proclamation.103 If the petition had been taken up and the questions it opened thoroughly investigated, it could have created an acutely embarrassing situation for the government. That Harrington’s case was not championed by the House underscored the fundamental conservatism of most members. Even so, the debates in March 1677 further tarnished the reputation of the court and suggested that it was connected with practices that directly defied parliamentary sentiment. Although proof is lacking, it seems evident that opposition leaders in the House of Commons, and perhaps Shaftesbury himself, were aware of the political capital to be won from introducing the petition and thereby exposing the activities of the government.104 Andrew Marvell did not fail to include a scathing account of the episode in his famous tract, An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government, which appeared within a year. Sincere apprehension, principle, and propaganda were mingled in the opposition’s revelations of the Harrington episode.

Intensified criticism of the army in 1678 and 1679 reflected genuine alarm and confusion over the purpose of the king’s foreign policy. As before, the parliamentary leadership used the antistanding army sentiment to discredit the king and win partisan political goals, especially the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament. The complexity and duplicity of Charles II’s foreign policy from the spring of 1677 through 1679 may be followed elsewhere.105 The question was whether Charles intended to make war on France or not.106 Many men sincerely feared that the king, with the connivance of Louis XIV, was pretending to prepare for war with France as an excuse to raise men and money. Thus freed from Parliament, Charles and Louis would arrange a peace.

Genuine anxiety over this possibility led the parliamentary leadership to establish contact with the French ambassador, Paul Barrillon, marquis des Branges, in February and March 1678 to find out if war was intended or if an agreement had been made. Assurances were conveyed that no agreement had been made. In the course of the contacts, an identity of interest between the French king and the leaders of the opposition emerged: for vastly different reasons both wanted to dissolve the Cavalier Parliament and disband the army. Parliamentary and French spokesmen agreed that the way to accomplish these ends was to frustrate Charles’s policies in Parliament so effectively that he would turn to Louis, who would then advise him to dissolve Parliament. To show their good faith, the French offered money to bribe members of Parliament to vote against supply and the army. Although Shaftesbury is said not to have accepted money from the French, Russell, Cavendish, Hotham, Sacheverell, and others did.107 The fact that many of the parliamentary opposition accepted French bribes dilutes the disinterestedness of their opposition to standing armies and lends additional support to the thesis that the antistanding army sentiment contained ingredients other than fear and principle. Although the leadership was assured by Barrillon that no secret agreement existed between Charles and Louis to declare a sham war so that Charles might raise an army to make himself independent of Parliament, the parliamentary opposition persisted in describing the troops Charles was raising as a “standing army.” Predicting that once established the army would not be disbanded, they objected to its proximity to Parliament, suggested that Catholics had penetrated it, and called for the nation to rely on the militia.108

A telling illustration of the way in which the parliamentary leadership disingenuously manipulated the antiarmy sentiment occurred in the debate on March 14, 1678, which followed close on the heels of the meetings with the French ambassador. At the opening of the debate, Sir Gilbert Gerrard moved that war against France be declared immediately to provide employment for the soldiers. Although it was apparent that some members enthusiastically supported the motion, Lord Russell, Shaftesbury’s spokesman in the House of Commons, rose to offer a different motion, which would have turned the attention of the House away from foreign affairs to domestic matters. He wanted to “set the saddle on the right horse,” and for him, the “right horse” was the “apprehensions we are under of Popery, and a standing Army.”109 The comment was consistent with the strategy that had been used before; it discredited the government by implying that the armed force would be turned against the nation. The remark was poorly received by members who wanted an aggressive policy against France, for obviously to discredit the army was no way to implement war, but Powle, Lee and Mallet, among others, made certain that the government’s good faith was impugned by reiterating that newly raised regiments would be used at home, not abroad.

The menace of standing armies was also used in propagandist tracts to undermine confidence in the government. A Seasonable Argument To Persuade All the Grand Juries in England to Petition for a New Parliament linked the danger of standing armies and the goal of dissolving the Cavalier Parliament. The tract was a long list of men in the Commons who were said to be in the pay of the court and who, therefore, corrupted the deliberations of the House. These men had agreed, the lengthy title asserted, to “maintain a Standing Army in England under the Command of the Bigoted Popish Duke, who by the Assistance of the Lord Lauderdale’s Scotch Army, the Forces in Ireland, and those in France, [would] bring all back to Rome.”110 It was effective propaganda. The title alone suggested that a standing army, like “placemen,” was an instrument of corrupt court influence.

Andrew Marvell’s An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government was plainly designed for propagandist purposes as well. The Growth of Popery so annoyed the government when it appeared that a warrant was issued to seize all copies and to apprehend the printer.111 Showing remarkable affinities with the ideas and conclusions which the “Person of Quality” had advanced two-and-one-half years before, Marvell strove to demonstrate that a conspiracy had long existed to draw England into the French orbit, establish an absolute government, reintroduce Catholicism, and rule by a standing army. In terms of the antiarmy ideology, Marvell’s most important contribution was to make explicit that military officers who served in Parliament were a major element in the corrupt influence which the court exercised. They and other “placemen” would always support an increase in the standing army, or the levying of heavy taxes by illegal means, or indeed any bill the court desired. The presence of army officers in Parliament disrupted the normal functioning of government and unbalanced it in favor of the king. Sensitive as Marvell was to the army as a weapon to impose tyranny, he was equally alarmed over the army as an instrument of political corruption.

Another significant feature of the debates of the spring of 1678 was that the terms of the argument were radicalized. An implicit challenge to the king’s command of the military had occurred in January when some members claimed that Parliament should nominate the officers of the new regiments.112 Later “some murmuring” was heard against individuals who had been appointed officers, and at another time it was stressed that all officers in the army, with no exceptions, should be required to take the Test Act.113 No steps were taken by Parliament (as in 1641–42) to appoint men conformable to their views, but as distrust of the king deepened, the king’s prerogative to raise what soldiers he wished so long as he paid them was directly challenged. In the debate of May 7 Vaughan, Hotham, Clarges, and Cavendish asserted that the only time the king could legitimately raise forces other than the militia was in time of war. The Petition of Right was called upon to support this contention, and the House was reminded of previous resolutions that any force besides the militia was a grievance.114 At the end of the month, the theme surfaced again. In the discussion, Vaughan emphatically asserted that according to English law, “no men can be raised but for foreign service.”115 Williams was even more unequivocal. Friends of the court, among them Sawyer and Winnington, promptly and indignantly replied. It was suggested that Williams’s remark be written down, but Williams apologized and the matter was passed over.116 The exchange revealed, however, the increasingly radical thinking about the king’s military prerogative.

The king’s Guards came in for criticism, too. Meres felt it would be better for the king to live without any guards, as kings before him had done. He and Lee favored paying off and disbanding the Guards along with the other regiments raised for the war.117

Such actions testified to the Commons’s hardened determination to have some say in military and foreign affairs. Defying the king’s recommendations, the members decided, after a “strong debate” the end of May, to disband the army.118 Throughout June, days were devoted to examining the accounts of the army, questioning the commissary and paymaster of the Army, agreeing to postponing the date of disbandment, and deciding to raise money by a land tax for disbanding the army.119 But, despite their efforts, Charles did not disband the army. For reasons of personal diplomacy, Charles committed his soldiers, in the summer of 1678, to several battles against Louis XIV and, even after the Treaty of Nijmeguen was signed, English troops continued to be sent abroad. Not until September 8 were the ships for transporting the men discharged. Secretary Williamson was deeply concerned over Parliament’s reaction to the news that the army had not been dismissed.120 Thus, with his army still intact, Charles met Parliament on October 21, 1678, amid much speculation and many rumors about a “Popish Plot.”121 It may be presumed that even if there had been no Popish Plot, an effort would have been made to disband the army. But in the mounting excitement generated by the successive revelations of Titus Oates and by the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the opposition to the army took on an emotion that matched the panic over the plot. “No Popery” and “No Standing Army” became slogans which aroused almost every country gentleman to anger and fear.

Charles and the Lord Chancellor Finch opened Parliament with speeches that attempted to justify the government’s failure to implement the Disbanding Act and asked for further supply.122 The king’s plea, however, was ignored in the preoccupation with Titus Oates’s testimony about the plot. Parliament’s response was to call for disbanding the king’s army and calling up the local militia. What better way was there to underscore their distrust? Great activity to achieve that end followed. Overtures were made to the duke of York.123 It was resolved, on November 18, to ask the king to put the entire militia in readiness and raise one-third of it on a rotating basis for a fortnight. The basic purpose of the motion was to train the militia to be guards to the king, that the “King might have no farther use of an Army.”124 It took a fortnight to achieve agreement between the two Houses about the militia, but by November 28, a bill was agreed to which empowered the deputy-lieutenants to keep the militia embodied for forty-two days.125 Whatever the ultimate purpose of the House, the effort to embody the militia to defend the nation carried great psychological and propaganda significance for underscoring the distrust of the king.

This Militia Bill brought to a head the fundamental question at stake in the standing army issue—ultimate control of the military. Like his father before him, Charles regarded the matter as an altogether “fit subject” for a king to quarrel about. He said he would “consult and advise” with the Lords before he returned an answer.126 Apparently none of the king’s friends in either House spoke against the bill when it was debated.127 Burnet credited himself with pointing out to the king the dangerous implications of the bill and declared that Charles thanked him for his advice.128 On November 30, Charles II, for reasons similar to those his father had used nearly forty years before, rejected the bill and announced that he would veto any legislation that put the militia out of his hands “but for half an hour.”129

The opposition members of Parliament protested the king’s answer and denied categorically that it was their intent to invade the royal prerogative.130 In response, the king invited the House on December 4 to frame another Militia Bill and promised assent to any legislation for readying the militia so long as the royal authority over it was left intact.131 In a very thin House, the invitation was rejected. The difficulties of circumventing the prohibition on introducing two bills for the same thing in a session were stressed.132 The basic conservatism of most members acted as a brake to avoid actions which would have repeated 1641–42. In the meantime, a parallel effort was made to disband the army. A most effective way to discredit the army and to provoke the king to dismiss it was to identify it with Catholicism, a tactic which had been employed before, but not stressed. On November 18, the same day that the resolution about the militia was passed in Commons, Sacheverell charged that in the last month at least sixty Catholics had been commissioned by Secretary Williamson. The minister’s excuse that he did not have time to read every paper he signed and that the men had been dismissed and sent off to Ireland was ridiculed out of hand, and Williamson was thrown into the Tower.133 In the course of the attack, Cavendish made a significant remark which underscored the growing interest in stripping the king of the right to keep soldiers in peacetime if he paid them. Reflecting a sentiment voiced earlier in the year by Vaughan and Williams, Cavendish declared that he was of the opinion that a “standing Army, in time of peace, whether the Officers be Popish or Protestant, is illegal.”134

As details about the Popish Plot continued to be revealed, the effort to disband the army took another form. On November 27, a full-scale debate on disbanding the army was held in the House of Commons. There was much reiterative comment, but one suggestion was new. Members insisted that the money appropriated for the disbanding of the army should be placed in the Council Chamber in London (rather than in the Exchequer) where specially appointed commissioners would supervise its disbursement and assure that it was spent this time to disband the army and not to maintain it. The opposition intimated that Danby had been responsible for misappropriating the funds so that Charles could keep his army over the summer. Unanimously, the House resolved that all the forces raised since September 29, 1677 and all still abroad should be dismissed.135

To implement this resolution, the House of Commons applied itself for the next several weeks to the details of the Disbanding Bill. Exasperation, temper, and extremism overwhelmed some members. For example, on December 9, Sir George Hungerford wanted a proviso to the Disbanding Bill that would have made it treason to use the money for any purpose other than dismissing the army, and this idea was dropped only after the astonished speaker urged members to consider making an action treasonable by a rider to a bill.136 More liberally bribed by Barrillon at this time than at any other, opposition leaders framed a Disbanding Bill which granted more than £200,000 to disband the army and which specifically outlawed the billeting of soldiers on any subject who did not consent to it. On December 17, the bill was sent to the House of Lords where it was debated at length. The Lords were unable to agree that the money for the disbanding should be placed in the Chamber of London instead of in the Exchequer. On the grounds that such a step would be an invasion of the king’s military prerogative, the Lords, with twenty-one members dissenting (including Shaftesbury, Holles, Wharton, and Buckingham) amended the Disbanding Bill to place the money in the Exchequer.137

Another aspect of the standing army issue in the fall of 1678 was its connection with attacks on the king’s ministers. The most important target was Danby.138 A move against the lord treasurer was delayed until mid-December in part to allow time for the Disbanding Bill to be framed so that Danby would not have an army to defend himself.139 Then, using letters that Danby had written in 1677, Parliament appointed a committee to draw up articles of impeachment.140 Article II specifically charged Danby with raising a standing army under specious pretenses and keeping it up with funds designed by Parliament to disband it.141 Commons resolved to impeach the minister on that article. Although Danby was surely guilty of the charge, the House of Lords, impressed by his defense and persuaded that none of the charges amounted to treason, refused to send him to the Tower as the Commons wanted.

For many reasons, not just to save Danby, Charles prorogued Parliament on December 30. This, of course, meant that the king forfeited the supplies for paying the army that were part of the Disbanding Bill. Nonetheless, the king insisted to Parliament, his council, and the lord mayor and aldermen of London that he would see to it that the army was dismissed.142 Over the next three weeks, private meetings among Danby, representing Charles, and Lord Holles, and a small number of Presbyterian leaders were held. In the negotiations,143 Holles and his friends promised to moderate the attack on Danby, persuade the London gold- and silversmiths to lend money to the government for disbanding the army, and guarantee a supply from Parliament. In return, the king promised to disband the army and dissolve the Parliament that had sat for eighteen years. On January 24, Charles did dissolve Parliament. Thus, a political goal toward which many members of the opposition had worked for years was achieved. The antimilitary sentiment, directed as it was against the king and court, played an important role in bringing this about.

The disbanding of the army was less readily accomplished, however. Some of the army was still on hand when Charles opened his newly elected Parliament on March 6, 1679, with the announcement that he had dismissed as many soldiers as he could pay and that he hoped that more money would be granted to disband the rest.144 The House of Commons, preoccupied for the first six weeks with other matters, ignored the army. Then, on March 25, Shaftesbury delivered a speech in the House of Lords that played upon old fears: Popery in government, the Scottish Militia Act of 1669, and the presence of Catholic officers in the army. Probably, there is a connection between Shaftesbury’s speech and the motion introduced by Cavendish a few days later in the House of Commons that the disbanding of the army be taken into consideration.145 Lengthy debates about the army followed, familiar arguments were recited and the story of past efforts to be rid of the soldiers was reviewed. Garroway, Lee, and Sacheverell were truculent. On April 1, 1679, Commons resolved that the continuing of any standing forces other than the Militia was illegal and a grievance and vexation to the people.146

For the next few weeks, members attended to the details of disbanding the army and finally on May 2 passed the Disbanding Act, notable for its enormous bulk, which granted, as the Act of December 1678 had done, over £200,000 to pay off all the forces that were raised since September 29, 1677.147 The delay was explained by a contemporary: “Other things take up the time,” he wrote. Besides, the army was not “in number sufficient to give any fear.”148 A week later, on May 9, the House of Lords agreed to the legislation to disband the army.149 Although rumors circulated that the army would not be disbanded, all the soldiers who had been raised the year before to fight against the French were reported to have been dismissed by the middle of June.150 Thus, although new levies were immediately required for the specific purpose of putting down the uprising of the covenanters in Scotland, the army that had been the object of such bitter contention was removed.151 Moreover, a proposal to raise a new guard of gentlemen to protect the king was rejected, possibly because the court feared that such a step would provoke Charles’s critics “to question” the guards he already had.152

At the same time progress was being made on disbanding the army, some attention was being given to the militia. Members, however, were not really serious about making the militia more useful. On April 14, Gerrard introduced a motion to take the condition of the militia into consideration, but the effort was deflected by Powle who wanted to review the state of the Navy. Despite Sir John Lowther’s plea that the motion on the militia “not be stifled,” members were intent on discussing the number of Catholic officers in the Navy and attacking ministers who were responsible for the deplorable state of the Navy.153 At the end of the month, several changes in the militia were reported to be under consideration. Among them was the suggestion that Parliament nominate militia officers.154 Danby, now in the Tower, wrote to Charles that the Commons’s attempts to control the militia was consistent with their efforts to change the succession and showed that the House was aiming at nothing less than sovereignty in the state.155 In May, the Commons resolved unanimously to petition the king to raise the Militia of London, Westminster, Southwarke and the Tower Hamlets, and the counties of Middlesex and Surrey.156 The significance of these steps was polemical rather than substantive, for nothing concrete was done about the condition of the militia. What more might have been done was cut short on May 27 by Charles’s proroguing Parliament to destroy the first Exclusion Bill, which would have disabled the duke of York from inheriting the crown.

By mid-1679, the uses of the antistanding army sentiment as a political weapon had been demonstrated. Genuine fear of soldiers had been exploited to embarrass the king, undermine the credibility of his ministers, and thwart his policies. Criticism of the army provoked Charles more than once to prorogue Parliament in the 1670s and was partly responsible for his decision to dissolve the Cavalier Parliament. It brought about the disbandment of forces he raised in 1677 and restricted the total number of his army. It helped to radicalize men’s thinking about the crown’s prerogative powers and encouraged an anachronistic, perhaps altogether rhetorical, devotion to the militia. The belief that James favored a professional, permanent force was one factor in the effort to exclude him from the succession.

It is curious, therefore, that the antiarmy issue did not play a more important role in the Exclusion Controversy. The standing army question was almost completely ignored in the last two Exclusion Parliaments and in the many Exclusion pamphlets reprinted between 1679 and 1681.157 Only at the time of the Oxford Parliament (so-called because Parliament was summoned to meet at Oxford in March 1681 in hopes that away from London it would be more sympathetic to the king), was appeal made to the antiarmy sentiment. Then, much concern (some of it real, some politically inspired) was expressed about the king’s intentions of bringing his Guards to Oxford. Early in February, the Guards were protested in the Court of King’s Bench as illegal because they had not been authorized by a statute. Nothing came of the protest.158 About the same time, Shaftesbury sent members of the Oxford Parliament some instructions whose third point was that Parliament “should restore … that Liberty we and our Forefathers have enjoyd, untill this last forty years, of being free from Guards and Mercenary Soldiers.”159 A speech by Shaftesbury recommended that the goals the upcoming Parliament should endeavor to achieve were exclusion, annual Parliaments, and no standing armies.160 The “addresses of instruction,” which have been described as “the feature”161 of the elections of 1681, indicate that the standing army issue continued to be used, although not ranked first in importance.

Early in 1681, Henry Neville’s Plato Redivivus appeared in two editions.162 It was the only tract from these years that dealt in theoretical terms with the question of military power. Harrington’s protégé and Machiavelli’s translator, Neville was deeply indebted to classical and seventeenth-century English libertarian traditions. Like the “Person of Quality,” Neville rejected Harrington’s view of the Middle Ages. In contrast, he idealized the medieval era, finding in it the origins of England’s ancient mixed and balanced constitution, in which king, Lords, and Commons share sovereign power.163 Under this arrangement, the disposal of the militia was “natural.”164 The peers served as a bulwark to the ambitions of kings and “so long as the peers kept their greatness, there was [sic] no breaches but what were immediately made up in Parliament.”165 The power of the sword was exercised by the great men of realm and their freeholders acting under the commission of the king whose authority was “tacitly consented to.”

Neville asserted that this happy state of affairs changed around 1485, when land shifted from the king and peers to the gentry and commonalty. Tenures were abolished, and the limits on the crown removed.166 The situation in France well illustrated what can happen when the nobility is weakened. England could go in the same direction: the army kept in Scotland frightened many people.167 To remedy the “distemper” in the English government caused by the shift of property, a change in the administration,168 although not the nature, of the government was necessary. Steps should be taken to prevent the king from using his power for arbitrary purposes. He should be asked to hand over those prerogatives that touched his subjects’ “lives, liberties and estates” to four councils composed of men appointed by and answerable to Parliament. Among the prerogatives was the “sole disposal and ordering of the militia by sea and land.”169 Although Neville denied that his proposal would give ultimate authority to Parliament, it is plain that by controlling the membership of the councils, Parliament would have predominant authority.

Neville’s tract was of greater importance in the evolution of the antistanding army ideology than in the Exclusion Crisis. Plato Redivivus testified to the ongoing viability of classical, Renaissance, and seventeenth-century English libertarian ideas, especially about military power. It was reprinted in 1698 when the standing army issue reached a climax. Reissued four times in the eighteenth century, it continued to shape antimilitary notions. In 1681, Shaftesbury made no effort to use it in his campaign against the duke of York,170 and it was the only tract printed that dealt with the standing army issue.

It may be that Shaftesbury and his friends thought it was an effective tactic to stress one issue, Exclusion, and not deflect attention from it by bringing in other questions. On the other hand, the downplaying of the standing army issue may have reflected Shaftesbury’s failing health and a less acute political perception than he had shown before. For several years, the opposition had been trying to achieve some role for Parliament in the control of the military; if exclusion should be won by parliamentary bill, changes in military command and organization might be achieved. The temporary lapse of the Licensing Act gave opportunity to discuss such basic political problems in ways that might have strengthened even more the pro-Exclusionist case. Who can say what might have happened if Shaftesbury had moved this issue, which had proved its capability of arousing country gentlemen to the point of hysteria, to the forefront of the Exclusion battle?

From another viewpoint, it may be that the question was soft-pedaled because it posed difficulties in persuading men that no basic change in the government was intended by excluding James from the succession. The pamphleteers avoided discussing sovereignty in general; so too they avoided discussing military prerogative.171 The logical conclusion of the past criticism of the army and militia was an invasion of royal military prerogative as traditionally exercised and explicitly stated in Restoration laws. To justify that would have led men in 1679–81, as it had led Parker, Prynne, and others in 1642–43, to a theory of government in which sovereignty lay ultimately in the House of Commons. Whatever the indebtedness to Parker and Prynne, who were often quoted, and to republican theories, the Exclusion pamphleteers argued that barring York from the throne would preserve rather than change the ancient contractual constitution. Their problem in maintaining this fiction would have been infinitely compounded by discussing the standing army issue and royal military prerogative.

Charles’s success in the Exclusion crisis, his refusal to call Parliament after 1681, the discovery of the Rye House Plot, which implicated many Whigs in an alleged scheme to murder Charles and James and to place Princess Anne on the throne, and the subsequent prosecution of many leading members of the opposition defused the interest in libertarian issues, the standing army among them. But in 1683, at the time of Russell’s treason trial, the constitutionality of the Guards was questioned. One of the articles against Russell was that he planned to surprise and overcome the king’s Guards, and this point was a major reason for his conviction.172 Following Russell’s execution, an anonymous tract, A Defence of the Late Lord Russell’s Innocency,173 appeared, arguing that the attainder should be reversed because the charge he had planned to attack the royal Guards should be thrown out. Treason must be an act against something that is legal. The Guards were not legal, because neither statute, lawbook, nor custom sanctioned them. Only the militia was a legal guard for the king. Ceremonial guards were acceptable, it was granted, but not the “armed bands, commonly now-a-days (after the French mode) called the King’s life-guard, [which] ride about and appear with naked swords, to the terror of the nation.” For them, there was no law whatsoever, and therefore, the conviction was illegal and the attainder should be reversed.

This tract was of some importance. It provoked an answer174 and served as a basis for a pamphlet written in 1689 by Henry lord De la Mere entitled The Late Lord Russell’s Case, with Observations upon It which declared that it would “be easier to find a world in the Moon, than that the Law has made the Guards a lawful Force.”175

The antistanding army attitude was politicized in the 1670s. Principle, propaganda, and partisanship were joined. The parliamentary opposition took the initiative in criticizing the army and the king’s military and foreign policies. With deepening fury, they attacked the soldiers raised for the Third Dutch War, the Scottish Militia, the English troops serving in Louis XIV’s army, the men raised ostensibly for a war with France, and the king’s Guards. Fearful of Charles’s soldiers but also aware of the propaganda opportunities, “Country”-Whig spokesmen played upon the antiarmy sentiment to tarnish the reputation of the king, to discredit his ministers, to thwart his policies, and to achieve certain goals—the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament and the reduction of the army. As bold as they were, they avoided a forthright attack on the king’s military prerogative. In a few debates and tracts, however, the idea was expressed that the king cannot alone raise an army in peacetime, for neither law, legal commentary, nor custom sanctions it. By word and action, Whig proponents paved the way for further criticism of standing armies and of royal military prerogative.