The Wars of the Three Kingdoms

Jane Ohlmeyer argues that the English Civil War was just one of an interlocking set of conflicts that encompassed the British Isles in the mid-seventeenth century

Proponents of the New British Histories agree that British history should not be enriched English history which focuses on Whitehall and uses events in Ireland and Scotland to explain developments in England. Yet the traditional terms used to describe the conflict which engulfed Britain and Ireland during the 1640s, which include 'Puritan Revolution', 'English Revolution', and more recently 'British Civil War(s)', tend to perpetuate this anglocentrism. None of these reflect the fact that the conflict originated in Scotland and Ireland and throughout the 1640s embraced all of the Stuart kingdoms; or that, in addition to the war enjoying a pan-British and Irish dimension, each of the Stuart states experienced its own domestic civil wars. The phrase 'Wars of the Three Kingdoms' acknowledges the centrality of the various civil wars fought within the Stuart kingdoms as well as the interactions between them.

Certainly contemporaries remained acutely sensitive to the interrelationships between the Stuart monarchies. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, James VI and I may have concerned himself more with England and Scotland and treated Ireland as a colony rather than a kingdom, but his Magna Britannia undoubtedly included Ireland. He genuinely hoped to unite his three kingdoms 'under one imperial crown' and to give his peoples the freedom 'to commerce and match together, that so they may grow into one nation'. The same held true for his heirs. After 1638 Charles I treated his problem in Scotland as a 'three kingdoms' one and mobilised Irish and English armies to quell his rebellious Scottish subjects. Throughout his struggle with the Westminster Parliament, Charles shamelessly drew upon the human and financial resources of Ireland; after December 1647 he drew on Scottish resources, too, in a desperate attempt to win back his English kingdom.

The Stuarts surrounded themselves with like-minded individuals. The English Lord Deputy of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, later Earl of Strafford, the King's cousin and Scottish favourite, James, Duke of Hamilton, and Charles' leading Irish supporters - the Earls of Antrim and Ormond - all maintained a pan-British and Irish perspective and consistently favoured using the resources of one kingdom to solve their master's problems in another.

England's inability effectively to wage war abroad during the 1620s had soured relations between the King and the political nations in all three kingdoms. For example, the Irish Parliament only agreed to vote the huge subsidies needed to maintain an army and overhaul the nation's defences once the King had addressed concerns, especially over the security of land tenure. In England, Charles' attempts to levy forced loans to sustain the war-effort resulted in a major confrontation with his traditional supporters in Parliament. In 1628-29, Charles was forced to accept a Petition of Right which declared illegal many forms of prerogative revenue raising and outlawed arbitrary imprisonment. Despite this, the King continued to resort to dubious fiscal expedients during his eleven-year 'Personal Rule' (1629-1640). This, combined with the ecclesiastical reforms undertaken by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury and the conspicuous role assumed by Henrietta Maria, his Catholic queen, alarmed many. Yet, despite their grumblings, if Charles had managed to rule his other dominions as he controlled England, his peaceful reign could have been extended indefinitely. Scotland and Ireland proved his undoing.

In 1633, Thomas Wentworth became Lord Deputy of Ireland and set out to govern the country without any regard to any interest but that of the crown. His 'Thorough' policies aimed to make Ireland financially self-sufficient; to enforce religious conformity with the Church of England as defined by Laud; to 'civilise' the Irish; and to extend royal control through the policy of plantation. In fact, English demands for colonial enterprise and expropriation of native Irish lands dated from the later Middle Ages. During the sixteenth century the government had attempted, with varying degrees of success, to plant parts of Laois, Offaly, Down and Antrim, together with the Earl of Desmond's patrimony in Munster. However only after the Desmond rebellion of 1579 did wholesale plantation win widespread acceptance. Edmund Spenser in 1596 had called for the destruction of the existing Gaelic order and the systematic colonisation of Ireland with English settlers, who were to be made responsible for the erection of the political, economic and social framework to support a civil life and the Protestant faith. Subsequently, the unexpected flight of leading Ulster lords to the Continent in 1607, and the revolt of Sir Chair O'Dogherty in 1608, had enabled the state to confiscate and redistribute to English and Scottish colonists much of Ulster.

Wentworth believed that the settlement of English colonists remained the best means of enriching the English government and of 'civilising... this people, or securing this kingdom under the dominion of your imperial Crown'. To this end, he challenged the legitimacy of land titles wherever he could and after 1635 attempted to plant parts of Clare, Connacht and the lordship of Ormond with English colonists (he loathed the Scots). Wentworth's eagerness to meddle in land titles fostered an uneasy alliance among his Catholic and Protestant opponents and this anti-Wentworth interest, which joined forces with the King's adversaries in the Long Parliament and with the Scottish Covenanters, played a prominent role in orchestrating his downfall.

The crown's determination to interfere in Scottish land titles also proved disastrous. The comprehensive nature of the 1625 Act of Revocation particularly rattled Scottish landowners. It aimed at renegotiating the terms on which secularised church lands were held so as to ensure an enhanced revenue for the clergy and a regular rent for the crown. While Charles's willingness to tamper with land titles alienated landowners, his ecclesiastical policies triggered a rebellion which involved all elements of Scottish society.

The major issue in Scotland was the future of the Presbyterian Kirk. James VI and I had never relented in a thirty-year campaign to bring the Kirk under crown control, culminating in the 'Black Articles' of Perth in 1618, which had re-introduced the office of bishop. Charles wholeheartedly embraced and then extended his father's policies and instructed Laud to prepare a modified version of the English prayer book for use in Scotland. The attempt to introduce this in 1637 provoked a wave of riots. A National Covenant calling for the immediate withdrawal of the prayer book was speedily drawn up in January 1638. The National Covenant was a radical manifesto against the Personal Rule of Charles I which justified a revolt against the interfering sovereign. One of its co-authors, Sir Archibald Johnstone of Wariston, hailed the signing of the Covenant as 'that glorious marriage day of the kingdom with God'. In order to defend it, the Covenanters (as the Scottish 'rebels' were now known) also began to levy an army.

The turn of events in Scotland horrified Charles. Determined to bring the rebellious Scots to heel, he immediately prepared for war. He urged his supporters in the north-east of Scotland, led by the Marquis of Huntly, to rise in arms; he authorised Randal MacDonnell, Earl of Antrim, to raise an army of 5,000 from among his Irish and Scottish dependants, and to wrest control of the western Highlands and Islands; he ordered James, Marquis of Hamilton, to land a force in the Firth of Forth; while he himself planned to rally an English army at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Between his allies inside Scotland and the concentric blows from the forces outside the country, the King felt confident of victory. But from the outset his grand strategy fell far short of his expectations. In February 1639, the Covenanters moved against Huntly and quickly subdued the royalists within Scotland; Hamilton sailed aimlessly up and down the Scottish east coast; while a breakdown of communications between Antrim and the King, combined with a lack of support from the administration in Dublin, ensured that those soldiers never left Ireland. The poorly-trained English army which the King had managed to scrape together was overwhelmed by the Covenanting forces and on June 18th, Charles signed the Treaty of Berwick which stipulated a return to the status quo ante bellum.

Though the Covenanters had won the First Bishops' War, Charles refused to concede victory. Almost at once he planned a fresh offensive which involved levying an Irish army of 10,000 men, led by Wentworth, who had been elevated to the earldom of Strafford, invading the west, while Scottish royalists tied down the Covenanters. Strafford, now in charge of the King's war effort, at once called for a parliament as the only way of raising money quickly, and it assembled in April 1640. The Commons were willing to vote the huge sum of twelve subsidies, but not until their grievances had been redressed. Furious, the King precipitately dissolved the Short Parliament - as it became known (it had lasted only three weeks). As a result an untrained, ill-armed, poorly-paid crew of misfits and drop-outs trailed north to fight the Covenanters in the Second Bishops' War. As it was, the Covenanters had seized the initiative in the spring of 1640 by moving against the pro-royalist Gordons in the north-east, while Archibald Campbell, 8th Earl of Argyll, leader of the Scottish anti-royalists, ravaged the lands of the MacDonalds and other supporters of the king. Meanwhile in Ireland, the levy of Strafford's 'New Army' was fraught with delay and it only assembled in July. Then, on August 20th, the Covenanters invaded England for the second time and in a spectacular military campaign took Newcastle. Demoralised and humiliated, the King had no alternative but to negotiate. The main provisions of the Treaty of Ripon ensured a military status quo, but at the insistence of the Scots, the king also had to recall Parliament.

The new Parliament, which would unexpectedly become 'The Long Parliament', assembled at Westminster on November 3rd, 1640, and immediately called for Strafford's impeachment. The Irish Parliament, which had been summoned in March 1640 to pay for the 'New Army' destined for Scotland, supported its English counterpart. Strafford's trial at Westminster, orchestrated by Protestants and Catholics from Ireland, Scottish Covenanters and the King's English opponents, highlights the importance of the interconnections between the Stuart kingdoms. Individuals like Sir John Clotworthy personified these linkages. Related by marriage to the parliamentary leader, John Pym, Clotworthy was a staunch English Presbyterian who owned an extensive estate in County Antrim. After 1638, he had served as a vital conduit who nurtured a complex web of alliances between the Scottish Covenanters, the English parliamentarians and the anti-Strafford interest in Ireland, and played a very prominent role at Strafford's trial, marshalling evidence and testifying against the Lord Deputy.

To some extent, the removal of Strafford's draconian hand in Dublin facilitated the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland. From February 1641, various designs were hatched which planned to overthrow the Ulster plantation by capturing key strongholds in the north. On October 22nd, the rebels finally acted and, while Dublin eluded them, they managed to capture the key strongholds of Charlemont, Mountjoy Castle, Tandragee and Newry. From Ulster the insurrection spread to Leinster; by the spring of 1642 it had engulfed much of the country.

The 1641 rebellion is one of the central military events in Irish history and played an important role in shaping the fate of the triple Stuart monarchies during the seventeenth century. It derived, on the one hand, from 'long-term' tenurial insecurity, economic instability, indebtedness and a desire to have the Catholic Church restored to its pre-Reformation position and, on the other, from 'short-term' political factors which triggered the outbreak of violence. The plantation of Ulster combined with government attempts to replace the existing economic order had alienated many members of the Catholic population, resulted in widespread debt and in a dramatic increase in mortgages throughout Ireland. A chronic shortage of coin, combined with a run of poor harvests between 1636 and 1639, exacerbated the economic crisis and helps to explain the willingness of many to contemplate rebellion. Political and military developments in Scotland and England offered them an opportunity. To begin with, the Scottish example of successful rebellion had a profound impact on Ireland and according to one pamphleteer filled the Irish 'with thoughts of emulation'. Charles I had sought aid from Ireland and thereby involved the kingdom directly in his struggle with the Covenanters. For, as the royalist historian and statesman, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, perceptively noted in his History:

if this sottish [sic] people had not, without any provocation, but of their own folly and barbarity, with that bloody prologue engaged again the three kingdoms in a raging and devouring war; so that though Scotland blew the first trumpet, it was Ireland that drew the first blood; and if they had not at that time rebelled, and in that manner, it is very probable all the miseries which afterwards befell the King and his dominions had been prevented.

Whether 'all the miseries' which later befell Charles I could have been avoided remains open to debate. Certainly, the Irish standing army - a poorly armed Protestant force - failed to crush the insurrection in October 1641, and this resulted in a struggle between Charles I and his Westminster Parliament over who should control the army to quell the Irish insurgents. Had the English king accepted the 1641 'Grand Remonstrance' and somehow reconciled his differences with Parliament, there can be little doubt that the revolt in Ireland could have been quashed with relative ease. Instead, rumours circulated that Charles had somehow been involved in the Irish rebellion. Certainly the Irish insurgents themselves, like the Scottish Covenanters, maintained that they had risen,

...only for the preservation of his majesty, and his rightful government over them... the defence of their religion, laws, and liberties.

These both confirmed and inflamed fears of a great Catholic conspiracy, which parliamentary leaders exploited, claiming that England was on the verge of being reduced to popery.

The outbreak of rebellion in Ireland thus triggered the First English Civil War. It also offered the Covenanters, worried that a total Catholic Irish victory would provide the King with a ready ally against his Scottish subjects, an opportunity to meddle directly in Ireland. Thus, within days of learning of the insurrection, the Scottish Parliament offered to send an army of 10,000 on the grounds that 'unless we do fully vindicate these malicious papists [in Ireland], these two kingdoms both Scotland and England, cannot sleep long in security'. The 'Wars of the Three Kingdoms' had begun.

The courses of the various civil wars fought on English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish soil during the 1640s have been well documented. The interactions between the three kingdoms have received less attention, especially from historians of England. Yet it is doubtful whether Parliament could have won the First English Civil War without Scottish intervention. Royalist successes in England in the spring and early summer of 1643, combined with the prospect of aid from Ireland for the king, prompted the Covenanters to sign the Solemn League and Covenant with the parliamentarians. Desperate to protect their revolution at home, the Covenanters insisted upon the establishment of Presbyterianism in England and in return agreed to send an army of 21,000 men to serve in England. These troops played a critical role fighting for Parliament at the battle of Marston Moor in 1644. The decisive victory deprived the King of two field armies and, equally importantly, paved the way for the reform of the parliamentary armies with the creation of the New Model Army in April 1645. For his part, Charles looked to Ireland for support. However, the Irish troops that arrived after September 1643 never equalled the Scottish presence while the King's willingness to secure aid from Catholic Ireland sullied his reputation in England.

In Scotland, loyalties variously to the Covenant, to the King, and to the house of Argyll resulted in a lengthy and, at times, bloody civil war which had begun in February 1639 when the Covenanters seized Inverness, and ended with the surrender of Dunnottar castle, near Aberdeen, in May 1652. External factors - whether in the form of armed intervention from Ireland or England - exacerbated domestic divisions within Scotland, especially over religion, and heightened traditional baronial rivalries.

In the case of the ancient feud between the Campbells and MacDonalds, the onset of war after 1639 elevated what had previously been an 'Irish Sea' struggle into a major international conflict. Hatred of the house of Argyll and the urge to regain from the Campbells the forfeited lands of his Clan Donald ancestors underpinned Antrim's eagerness to rally to the King's cause during the Bishops' Wars; while a determination to prevent Clan Donald from re-asserting its authority in Scotland drove Argyll deep into the Covenanting camp. Similarly, in June 1644, Antrim sent nearly 2,000 Irish veterans to serve in Scotland under the Marquis of Montrose in the hope that he would not only rid his County Antrim estates of a Scottish army, but would recover his patrimonial lands in the Western Isles. Unsurprisingly, he and his kin hailed Montrose's string of victories as triumphs of the MacDonalds over the Campbells. These royalist successes also had an immediate and dramatic impact on developments in Scotland and England: the Covenanters sent an army of 6,000 to counter the Irish invasion; while Montrose's onslaught in the north prevented a second Scottish army from invading England. The Campbell-MacDonald feud again made an impact on national affairs when, in June 1646, Antrim and his allies in the Western Isles not only refused to surrender at the end of the First English Civil War but, in conjunction with Scottish, Irish and English royalists, threatened to raise an army of 30,000 men which would march into England and free Charles I. Though it came to nothing, Antrim's design threatened any chance that a peace would be secured between the King and the English and Scottish Parliaments.

Just as military intervention from Ireland had a dramatic effect on the course of the war in Scotland, so too English and Scottish aid for the Protestant war-effort prolonged the Irish Civil War (also known as the Confederate Wars since between 1642 and 1649 the Irish Confederates, with their capital at Kilkenny, directed the Catholic war effort). Though the presence of 10,000 Scots in east Ulster achieved relatively little in military terms, it did maintain Protestant resistance in the north. Elsewhere in Ireland, the Protestant settlers depended on aid from England. Periodic influxes of men and supplies enabled James Butler, Earl of Ormond, to hold Dublin and parts of the Pale for the King and allowed Murrough O'Brien, Lord Inchiquin, to maintain a foot-hold in south-west Munster. However, the outbreak of the First English Civil War in 1642 reconfigured the military balance in Ireland. On the one hand, it shattered the anti-Catholic coalition into those who supported Charles I (these Irish royalists were led by Ormond) and those who favoured Parliament (the British settlers in Ulster and Munster and the Scottish army stationed in Ulster); while, on the other, it diverted resources from the Irish theatre of war making it increasingly difficult for the Protestants to fight at all. The Irish royalists attributed their military ineffectiveness to logistical difficulties and Ormond concluded a ceasefire with the Irish Confederates shortly thereafter.

Just as the issue of loyalty to Charles I divided Irish Protestants, so too it became the key factor in deciding allegiances among Irish Catholics. Despite the fact that the Confederates blatantly violated the King's prerogative and refused to obey his orders, they nevertheless referred to themselves as 'loyal subjects'. The Confederate seal of office bore the inscription Pro Deo, Rege et Patria, Hibernia Unanimis - strikingly similar to the Covenanter pledge of loyalty 'to God, to our King and Country'. The majority of Confederates had no wish to wrest Ireland from Stuart control and throughout the war Gaelic poets lauded Charles I as 'their rightful king', and saw themselves as 'Charles's people'. Reaching a political and religious settlement acceptable to all parties proved predictably difficult, especially as the war ground on. After 1646, debates over whether the Irish Confederates should conclude a peace with the King undermined Catholic unity and during the summer and autumn of 1648 hard-line Catholics declared war on their former compatriots within the Confederation of Kilkenny for allying with Charles I. Ultimately these divisions facilitated the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland but in the short term they ensured that Ireland's contribution to the royalist cause after 1648 remained limited.

This burden fell instead to the Scots and without their support the Stuarts could not have fought the Second and Third English Civil Wars. On December 26th, 1647, Charles signed an agreement, the 'Engagement', with a number of leading Covenanters. In return for the establishment of Presbyterianism in England for a period of three years, the Scots promised to join forces with the English royalists and restore the King to his throne. Hard-line policies in England had not only aroused fears in Scotland that Parliament was intent on reasserting English dominance throughout the Stuart kingdoms, but also alienated key parliamentarians in Ireland. This resulted in the formation of a pan-archipelagic coalition involving English royalists, Scottish Covenanters, former Irish parliamentarians, Irish royalists and a number of Irish Confederates. Early in July 1648, a Scottish force invaded England, but the English army routed them at the battle of Preston and thus frustrated this anti-Parliament alliance.

The execution of Charles I in January 1649 served to galvanise Irish and Scottish support for his son, who was crowned King of 'Great Britain, France and Ireland' at Scone Palace on January 1st, 1651. Ultimately, the defeat of the combined forces of the Irish royalists and the Confederates at the hands of the English parliamentarians after August 1649 prevented them from serving alongside their Scottish and English allies in the Third English Civil War.

As it was, this war was largely fought on Scottish soil. Defeat at Preston had facilitated the disintegration of the Covenanting movement which in turn frustrated attempts to raise an army to withstand the parliamentary army which invaded Scotland in July 1650. Despite being routed at the battle of Dunbar, the Scots managed to raise another army which made a spectacular dash into England. This wild attempt to capture London came to nothing and Cromwell's resounding victory at Worcester in 1651 not only gave him control over England but effectively ended the wars of - and the wars for and in - the three kingdoms.

For further Reading:
Martyn Bennett, The Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland 1638-1651 (OUP, 1997); Mark Fissell, The Bishops' Wars: Charles I's Campaigns Against Scotland 1638-40 (CUP, 1994); Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: the Career of Randal MacDonnell, Earl of Antrim (CUP, 1993); Jane Ohlmeyer (ed), Ireland from Independence to Occupation 1641-1660 (CUP, 1995); Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637-1642 (OUP, 1991); David Stevenson, Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates: Scottish-Irish Relations in the mid-Seventeenth Century (Belfast, 1981); J.R. Young (ed) Celtic Dimensions of the British Civil Wars (Edinburgh, 1997).

This article derives from John Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), The British and Irish Civil Wars. A Military History of Scotland, Ireland and England 1638-1660 (Oxford University Press, 1998). Jane Ohlmeyer is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Aberdeen.

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