The Self-Denying Ordinance and the New Model Army
The army reorganisation that empowered the Independent interest the Assembly’s Presbyterians had to negotiate with.
Settled clearly
Background
By autumn 1644 the parliamentary military command was factionalised: the Earl of Manchester (Eastern Association) favoured a negotiated settlement with the king; Cromwell, his Lieutenant-General of Horse, favoured prosecuting the war to victory. Their famous quarrel after the indecisive Second Battle of Newbury (October 1644) — Manchester's 'If we beat the King ninety and nine times yet he is King still…but if the King beat us once we shall be all hanged' against Cromwell's 'My Lord, if this be so, why did we take up arms at first?' — brought the matter to the Long Parliament. Zouch Tate (a lay assessor at the Assembly) sponsored the Self-Denying Ordinance in December 1644: members of either House of Parliament should resign their military commands.
The Assembly’s handling
The Self-Denying Ordinance passed on 3 April 1645. The army was reorganised as the New Model under Sir Thomas Fairfax as Lord General, with Cromwell exempted (by special vote) and made Lieutenant-General. The new army was professional, well-trained, well-paid, and (crucially for the Assembly's Presbyterian settlement) heavily Independent in religious sympathies. The New Model won the war (Naseby, June 1645; Langport, July 1645; the western campaign through 1645-46) and then politicised in 1647, presenting the Heads of the Proposals against the parliamentary Presbyterians. The army's 1647-49 dominance, culminating in Pride's Purge and the regicide, frustrated the Presbyterian settlement the Assembly had drafted. The Standards remained confessional, but the polity settlement was never fully implemented in England.
Parties
The Self-Denying parliamentary managers
The army must be professionalised and depoliticised; sitting MPs and peers must resign their commands. The settlement of the kingdom is the parliamentary task; the army's task is military.
- Zouch Tate (1606–1650)
- Sir Henry Vane the Younger (1613–1662)
- Oliver St John (c. 1598–1673)
- Sir Arthur Haselrig (c. 1601–1661)
The Presbyterian peers (resistant)
The Ordinance is a manoeuvre to displace moderate aristocratic command in favour of the militant Independent interest. It will make the army politically independent of Parliament.
- Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester (1602–1671)
- Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland (1602–1668)
- Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke (1584–1650)
Confessional language
The Self-Denying Ordinance, 3 April 1645: '…all and every of the members of either House of Parliament shall be discharged at the end of forty days, after the passing of this Ordinance, of, and from all and every office or command, military or civil, granted or conferred by both, or either of the said Houses…'
Legacy
The Self-Denying Ordinance and the New Model produced both the parliamentary victory and the eventual frustration of the Presbyterian settlement. The army's Independent religious sympathies — and the political ascendancy that followed — made the Westminster polity settlement a dead letter in England within four years of the Confession's completion. The Standards survived as confessional document; the polity they prescribed did not.
References
- Self-Denying Ordinance (1645)