The Saffron Walden debates
In June 1646 as the First Civil War ended, there was an ever-widening gulf between the New Model Army and Parliament which would eventually split the two pillars of what later became Britain’s only experiment with a republican constitution.
By the end of the year the pay of the New Model Army was many weeks in arrears. The soldiers now faced the prospect of being sent to fight a bloody campaign in Ireland for which they had little appetite.
Meanwhile, the country’s economy had been shattered by a costly civil war and a series of disastrous harvests leaving Parliament with a mountain of debt. In desperation, it resorted to a series of highly unpopular taxes. It made frantic attempts to reach an agreement with the intransigent Charles I, who was now its prisoner in Northamptonshire but most importantly, Parliament urgently needed to disband an expensive army without giving guarantees of full back-pay for its soldiers. Unsurprisingly the Army – officers and men – were not prepared to tolerate what they saw as Parliament’s betrayal.
In May 1647 all this dissatisfaction came to a head when representatives of the regiments met in the market town of Saffron Walden in Essex – then the Army’s headquarters – to clarify their demands in what became the precursor of the more famous Putney Debates held in November that year.
Talking with Professor Andrew Hopper of the University of Oxford, Emeritus Professor John Morrill of Selwyn College, Cambridge, discusses the Saffron Walden debates and the Army’s revolt against Parliament.
