London’s Counter-Revolution

Abstract

The abortive attempt to establish a ‘high’ or ‘rigid’ Presbyterian Church settlement is a dominant theme of the later 1640s. This powerful movement — backed in 1645 and early 1646 by the Assembly of Divines, Sion College, the city clergy and the municipality — was hardly touched upon by S. R. Gardiner in his History; a fuller knowledge will modify our understanding of the religious settlement, the political attitudes of members of Parliament, and relations between the Long Parliament and the Scots. Similarly the story told in this chapter of Holles’s attempt to build a counter-revolutionary army in London adds an additional dimension to the conflict between the New Model and Parliament. The sources that are providing new evidence include the 30,000 tracts now housed in the British Museum and collected by George Thomason, the London bookseller; the unpublished parliamentary diaries, particularly those of Walter Yonge which are partly in shorthand; and the records of the City of London preserved at the Guildhall Library and at the Corporation Record Office.