It is not great individuals, but mass action which drives history, argues Dominic Alexander in a series on the Great Revolutions from England in the 1640s, France to 1917 in Russia 

Part 2: The English Revolution: the first civil war
Part 3: The English Revolution completed

How do revolutions happen? Lenin pointed out that ‘it is not enough for revolution that the lower classes should not want to live in the old way. It is also necessary that the upper classes should be unable to rule and govern in the old way.’ Revolutions don’t happen simply due to high levels of popular discontent, although that is a necessary condition. They happen when a system enters crisis, with the ruling class unable to find a way to solve it. When rulers are divided amongst themselves, unable to agree on how to stabilise society or adapt to new social conditions, this is when popular movements are able to make a decisive impact. 

Sometimes states are notably weak, and revolutions appear to be relatively easy to accomplish. This was the case, for example, in Germany and Italy during the post-Napoleonic years from 1815 to 1848. Both nations were fractured into a patchwork of small states that tended to lack either legitimacy or capability. In 1848 in Germany, it was enough for mass demonstrations to break out in German cities as news spread of the February 1848 revolution in Paris for many of these regimes to crumble. 

The petty rulers of a host of the small German states fled their palaces for the safety of the countryside, and for a time revolutionaries had the upper hand. The conditioning behind this ruling-class panic, however, was not just the contemporary revolution in France, but the legacy of the great French revolution of 1789. Confidence was low among aristocrats that they could continue to defend absolutist regimes in the new age that the original French revolution had brought. The ‘great revolutions’ have a massive conditioning impact on the times that follow, and the regions around them. To grasp how fundamental social change happens, it is necessary to understand the great revolutions. 

The great revolutions are those which are more than just a change in political regime in one state, but which result in profound changes to the social order and the composition of its ruling class. To a degree, there is a sliding scale here, but with confidence, there at least three which are usually considered as the great revolutions: The English Revolution of the 1640s, the French Revolution beginning in 1789, and the Russian Revolution of 1917. 

All of these revolutions had, of course, deep, long-term origins, which have been endlessly debated, without academic consensus. The focus here will instead be on how events unfolded and the role of mass political activity in driving them. 

The English Revolution 

The English Revolution of 1641-49 is probably the least recognised in the group of great revolutions, downgraded into a ‘civil war’ in the standard formulation. This consigns it to the category of an unfortunate blip in the serene continuity of the British state in liberal and conservative historical narratives. Yet, this was the first occasion when a king was tried for treason and executed. Like other revolutions, it can also be dismissed as being the result of incompetence on the part of ruling figures, in this case King Charles I. However, Charles’ errors were driven by the increasingly difficult position of the monarchy in the first half of the seventeenth century. This was certainly a case of the ruling class being ‘unable to rule and govern in the old way’. 

The monarchy was caught between the parlous state of its finances, and a House of Commons representing mostly the landowning gentry, many of whom were tied into the newly developing capitalist economy. The gentry, in any case, were increasingly unwilling to grant taxation without more influence on government. The King’s attempt to square the circle through the period of ‘personal rule’, that is without a parliament, during 1629-40, was effectively an attempt to develop a system of absolute rule, such as that enjoyed by some continental monarchs. However, raising various new taxes, such as the infamous ‘ship money’, and other revenue streams from such things as granting trade monopolies, created huge levels of discontent among a wide range of wealthy landowners and merchants. As Christopher Hill put it, ‘the system proved a total failure, and broke down of its own accord’.ⁱ 

These issues led to an increasingly fraught conflict over the nature and extent of royal power, and was only further exacerbated by religious questions, particularly Charles’ attempt to strengthen the authority of Bishops and church courts. The latter were widely hated, particularly amongst poorer people who were most likely to be victims of the courts’ policing of their private lives. A Protestant did not have to be a radical puritan to find the king’s religious policy alarming and offensive. 

Religious policy was an even more dangerous issue in Scotland. Here the king’s efforts to centralise power and reinforce social hierarchy by trying to impose a religious settlement similar to that in England, stirred Presbyterian rage. There was also resentment against rule from London which had only begun in 1603, under the king’s father, James I of England and VI of Scotland. Charles I’s conflict with Scotland was no accident. The same structural problems of the decay of the old social hierarchy, which lay at the heart of religious conflicts, and problems of royal authority and power, operated north and south of the border. 

The Short Parliament 

Tensions with the Scots erupted into the first ‘Bishop’s War’ in 1639, in which Charles was unable to confront the Scots effectively because his army was largely unpaid and ramshackle. The king was forced to accept an inconclusive truce. He then needed to raise money for a new army against the Scots, but events had roused further opposition in England, and pro-Scottish pamphlets even began to circulate in London. This was the context in which Charles was forced to bring an end to his period of personal rule, and call a parliament, which assembled in April 1640. The parliament immediately demanded reforms of the Church and the state, before it would authorise the raising of new taxes to fund an army. The king reacted by dissolving the parliament after three weeks, hence its moniker, the ‘Short Parliament’. 

This didn’t, of course, solve the king’s problems, and he resorted to attempting to extort loans from the wealthy commercial inhabitants of the City of London. However, the aldermen refused to cooperate, at which point Charles, eschewing advice from the Earl of Strafford to have them executed as an example, imprisoned the four most senior aldermen. Charles then further outraged City opinion by appropriating bullion held in the Tower that had been meant to pay his creditors (the king had a poor reputation for repaying his debts anyway). This seriously disrupted money circulation and trade, which added to an already grim economic situation in the country. 

At this point, functions of state were beginning to break down across the country, with large swathes of the landowning class, the gentry, on whom it depended as personnel, increasingly alienated from the king’s government. In these conditions, the poorer classes began to feel more able to express their discontent with riots against enclosures in the countryside, and, crucially, mass demonstrations by apprentices and others of the poorer sort in London. 

On one major occasion, crowds of ‘apprentices, and the glovers and tanners of Bermondsey and Southwark on holiday for the May Day celebrations … joined up with the sailors and dockhands, now idle through lack of trade’ⁱⁱ, all united by their hostility to Archbishop Laud. He was Charles’ favoured prelate, and was not unreasonably seen as a threat to Protestant religion, and certainly a figurehead for the forces that were persecuting religious dissent. The crowds who marched on Lambeth Palace could not be stopped by the militia force called the ‘Trained Bands’, not least because these were largely composed of the masters of the marching apprentices.ⁱⁱⁱ Archbishop Laud had to flee by rowing himself to Whitehall. 

There are signs that this was more than a spontaneous riot. Following the dismissal of parliament, ‘placards suddenly appeared throughout the City urging the apprentices to rise and free the land from the rule of Bishops.^iv Throughout 1640-42, there is extensive evidence that plebian radicals, based around dissident printers and the ‘gathered’ churches (illegal dissenting congregations), played an important role in mobilising artisans and their apprentices at crucial moments.^v 

A few days after the attack on Lambeth Palace, the crowd invaded the prisons and released those who had been arrested for it, as well as one of the aldermen arrested by the king for refusal to co-operate in his attempt to extort funds from the City. The common people of London were now fully involved in political events, and would even begin to drive them in the course of the following year. 

The last time the rack was used legally in England was to torture an apprentice involved in the procession against Lambeth Palace.^vi He and another were executed for treason, one by the grotesque spectacle of drawing and quartering. It’s in this context that we should see the violence on the part of revolutionary crowds, whether demanding the execution of Strafford, or later Charles I. They were subjecting their rulers to the same standard of exemplary violence that had been inflicted on them. This sort of violence was fairly limited in the context of the English Revolution, but should be remembered in the context of the much greater popular violence of the French. 

In August, the Scottish army invaded England in the ‘Second Bishop’s War’. Charles’ hastily assembled army was routed, and the Scots were to remain in England, occupying Newcastle. The aristocracy had lost confidence in the king by this point, and he was forced to accept the Privy Council’s advice to call another parliament. The opposition to the king was only strengthened in this assembly, which was to become known as the ‘Long Parliament’. 

The Long Parliament 

A standard summary narrative of 1640-1 would focus on the landmark blows to the king’s power dealt by the anti-royalist opposition in the Commons, from The Grand Remonstrance to the impeachment and execution of the hated Earl Strafford and from the arrest of Archbishop Laud to the dissolution of the High Commission court. However, at every point, the Commons was pushed along the path to confrontation with royal power by the actions of the crowds. 

The High Commission was a crucial part of the apparatus of the church courts, and its abolition lifted the lid on social, religious and political dissent, allowing the gathered churches to meet openly, and leading to the collapse of censorship and the flowering of radical pamphleteering. The High Commission was widely hated, even among the wealthy, as a significant arm of the king’s arbitrary power, but its abolition by parliament in 1641 was preceded in October 1640 by a crowd of thousands disrupting its proceedings with ‘a hemming, hooting and shouting’. The protestors also ‘began to throw cushions at the commissioners’. A particularly hated judge had his robes shredded and had to flee.^vii Events like this, and a general atmosphere of rebellion, led to the collapse of the church court system, ending the ability of the ruling class to suppress religious dissent and interfere in private life. 

Over and again, events in the political struggle between King Charles and parliament turned on the presence of the massed crowds of the commoners of London. When MPs were divided on whether to defy the king over Earl Strafford’s trial for treason, a mass petition was presented to them by a crowd of up to 10,000 led by captains of the Trained Bands. A Bill of Attainder against Strafford was passed the same day, with MPs who had voted against being denounced on placards posted up throughout the city.^viii 

The issue of Strafford continued to drive tensions for much of 1641. These reached a height when the uncovering of a royalist plot to release Strafford from the Tower by force in May led to militant demonstrations of support for the House of Commons against fears the king’s forces would take action against it. At one demonstration, the future Leveller leader, John Lilburne declared that they ‘came unarmed today but tomorrow they would bring their swords’. And so they did: ‘ordinary mechanic folk’ brought ‘swords and staves’ to the next rally in support of parliament. For commoners to bring swords was a particular affront to the ruling class, since it was seen as exclusively a gentleman’s weapon.^ix The peak of tension was reached when parliament asked the king to assent to the Bill against Strafford, and his closest advisors, including some bishops urged him to sign: ‘All day long the street in front of Whitehall was blocked by a shouting multitude. Every minute it was expected that an attempt would be made to dash the doors’.^x 

The enthusiasm of the people for the execution of Strafford may seem bloodthirsty, but this must be seen in the context of arbitrary power, which Strafford had beseeched the king to strengthen. There was great alarm that Strafford intended to engineer a Catholic invasion, and rumours spread that Protestants were being massacred in Ireland. In the context of this period, these were not outlandish fears. It was also suspected that Strafford was planning to have key opposition figures arrested and executed, so parliament’s action against him was a pre-emptive move of self-defence. Added to these immediate concerns was the legacy of repression of religious and political dissenters, who regularly faced public whipping, mutilation and other forms of judicial torture. Many people had directly experienced the violence of the royal regime. 

The execution of Strafford was followed, in July 1641, by the king being stripped of his main prerogative powers, including the abolition of the tyrannous and vicious Star Chamber court, and royal powers over property. This was a major step towards the end of what can loosely be called feudal powers. However, as the Commons’ actions against the king’s power became more radical, a ‘party of order’ began to form around the king that was prepared to take violent action in his defence. Consequently, divisions among MPs widened, with many increasingly fearful about the extent to which the parliamentary side was dependent upon the support of the crowd, and where that might lead. 

Careering towards civil war 

In November 1641, the Commons passed the Great Remonstrance by a narrow margin, with some erstwhile oppositionists switching over to the royalist side, alarmed by the growing radicalisation of people and events. This petition was a list of 204 objections to the king’s rule, and contained demands such as expulsion of the bishops from the House of Lords. Manoeuvring between the king and the Commons over who should control the Trained Bands that guarded parliament followed. The Commons in the end opted to do without the guard, effectively relying on the radical crowds of London to protect them against any royal attack. Indeed, the king replaced the Lieutenant of the Tower, who had foiled a royalist attempt to rescue Strafford, with Colonel Thomas Lunsford, a royalist with a vicious reputation; the man’s own cousin called him ‘a swaggering ruffian’. 

The day after this appointment, a newsletter published in London declared: ‘I say still, provide weapons, get muskets, powder and shot. Let not the Popish party surprise us with a riding rod only in our hands.’ Meanwhile, a petition from 30,000 apprentices was presented calling for fundamental reform of the church, opposing Lunsford, and declaring they would fight against any ‘royal coup’.^xi Such was the level of hostility to Lunsford, and the disorder in the city, that the king had to dismiss him from the post. This was the degree to which Charles had lost control of the situation. His authority had been shredded to the extent that his moves to regain control, even by force, were being countered by the militant populace. 

On 27 December 1641, hundreds of Londoners surrounded the House of Lords attempting to prevent bishops from taking their seats. It was the bishops in particular who had been instrumental in blocking legislation sent from the Commons, so this hostility had a precise political goal. The crowds largely succeeded in blocking the bishops, but the demonstration was the occasion of the first fatal clash between the two sides. Forty gentlemen, armed with swords and pistols, and led by none other than Lunsford, attacked the anti-royalist crowd. Among the latter was the future Leveller leader, John Lilburne, playing a leading role in rallying the crowd to beat back the cavaliers. Sailors were armed with clubs, and apprentices hurled tiles and stones. Further crowds arrived to reinforce the citizens once news of the clash spread. The gentlemen fled or were beaten back, at the cost of the life of one prominent parliamentarian, Sir Richard Wiseman. 

Events continued to escalate over the next days, until the Commons impeached and imprisoned twelve bishops. Shops began to shut in a kind of popular strike, all while the king gathered his forces, and issued an order that demonstrators should be shot. On 4 January, Charles arrived at parliament with several hundred armed men intending to arrest five MPs most strongly identified with the opposition. The Commons had already refused to hand them over, so this was meant to force the issue, but the members, forewarned, were already in hiding. 

At this point, the City of London government was divided on the stance it should take towards the King and the Commons, but the militant reaction of working people in London to the king’s attempts to locate and arrest the five members (John Hampden, Arthur Haselrig, Denzil Holles, John Pym, and William Strode) certainly shaped the decisions that were made. On a rumour that a royal force was about to attack, tens of thousands of armed men assembled in the streets, while women built barricades and boiled water to use against the enemy. This show of willingness to resist doubtlessly precipitated the Commons and the City Council to take formal control of the Trained Bands, perhaps as much to gain control of the situation, as to defy the king. 

On 10 January 1642, Charles left London for Hampton Court, never to return until his trial for treason after having been defeated in the two civil wars that followed. The five members returned to Westminster to cheering crowds. More royalist inclined MPs and Lords increasingly slipped away from the capital, while parliament cemented its position as a legitimate authority without need of the king. It would be months before Charles openly declared war on parliament, and the civil war would begin in earnest, but the die had been cast by this point. 

Throughout the period of 1640-2, the Commons was greatly divided over the extent to which the king’s power should be confronted. That the most uncompromising tendency prevailed in the end has everything to do with the actions of the artisans and wage workers of London and its suburbs, who both protected parliament from royalist attack, and stymied the efforts of the king’s party to reassert control of the capital. Dissenting congregations and radical printers provided the networks and means through which the crowds could be informed of political developments, and thus the basis of a popular force was organised. 

Clearly, there is a complex history behind the plebians’ ability to act in this way, but if the authority of the king had not dissolved, it is likely that none of it would have been visible to history. The process of the decay and dissolution of the authority of a ruling class is both long-term and structural in nature, but also highly circumstantial. Challenges to ruling-class power, even when that has weakened, are dangerous endeavours, but it is the collective action of the mass of people which is capable of paralysing the normal functions of the state, and opening up the possibility of transformative events. 

That parliament was in a position to contemplate this scale of resistance to royal power and then defend its position in a civil war was ultimately down to the support it had from the ‘middling sort’, the broad range of plebian people from artisans and shopkeepers up to small manufacturers and lesser merchants. That support also tended to be concentrated in the most economically advanced regions, so parliament had mass support in those regions as well as more financial resources than the royalists. 

Radical ideas and groups proliferated from 1640 onwards, and the 1640s as a whole saw a flowering of democratic, egalitarian and even revolutionary secular and religious dissent. Not since the Reformation in Germany in the 1520s and 30s had the repressive lid that kept political and religious thinking within narrow orthodox lines come off so spectacularly. In this case the thinking, the activism and the legacy was far more advanced, and perhaps even more consequential than that of the anabaptist movement which had emerged from the German Reformation. 

Nothing, however, had really been settled when the king fled London in January 1642. Few in parliament wanted, or were prepared for, a full-scale confrontation with the king, and hopes for a compromise settlement were high from the start. The trajectory of the five members is instructive. Strode, Hampton and Pym each died during the civil war, the second in battle. Hesilrige went on to become a close ally of Cromwell, but refused to take part in the trial of the king. Denzil Holles raised a regiment for parliament, but it was decimated at Brentford in November 1642. Thereafter, he became increasingly hostile to the radical side of the revolution, being a leading member of the parliamentary ‘peace party’, and was part of the hard core of the Presbyterian opposition to Cromwell. Exiled during the Commonwealth, he was ennobled by Charles II. Opposition to the king in 1640 reached up and down the social scale, but the process of challenging him revealed the class and political tensions underlying that previous unity. These conflicts had to be thoroughly worked through for the revolution to be completed.