This Confused, Divided and Wretched City”

From an early stage in the conflict between king and parliament during the 1640s the City of London and its environs were significantly less committed to the parliamentary cause than most accounts of that conflict suggest. The battle of Edgehill (October 1642) shattered the expectation that the civil war would be quick and clean with minimal casualties. From December 1642 onwards the peace movement in the metropolis swelled steadily in numbers and influence. Adherents of the war party worked to minimize the demoralizing impact of the peace movement in 1642-43 by launching a campaign for a general rising — a mass mobilization and arming of the people of London to defeat the royalist forces. The campaign was a complete failure, leading the war party to resort to the conscription of men and money, as well as a military alliance with Scotland. It was these latter measures that finally neutralized the growing peace sentiment in the capital, and led to parliament’s victory over the king

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