Role in the English Civil War, 1642-48
With the coming of the
First English Civil War, Pembroke sided with the
parliamentarians. However, Pembroke was always one of the most moderate parliamentarians.
Parliament regularly employed Pembroke and the earl of Holland during its negotiations with Charles. Initially, Pembroke maintained contacts with
Edward Hyde and professed continued loyalty to Charles. However, he became one of five peers to sit on the
English Committee of Safety, established in July 1642, and in August 1642 accepted the office of
Governor of the Isle of Wight from Parliament. In 1645, Parliament named Pembroke
Lord Lieutenant of Somerset and voted to raise him to the status of
duke.
Pembroke represented Parliament during the negotiations with the king at
Oxford in January 1643, and was present during the signing of the Treaty of
Uxbridge in 1645.
As a supporter of the godly cause, Pembroke was appointed to the
Westminster Assembly in 1643 as a lay assessor. Pembroke supported the moderate
episcopalian faction in the Assembly (most associated with
James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh), and remained fiercely opposed to the
presbyterian and
Independent parties in the Assembly. (
George Morley, future
Bishop of Winchester served as Pembroke's domestic
chaplain, and Pembroke was a member of
St Martin-in-the-Fields, where he worshipped regularly.) As such, in the House of Lords, Pembroke voted in favour of the bill of attainder against Archbishop Laud in 1645, but in 1646 voted to reject a petition in favour of presbyterianism submitted by the
City of London.
During the politics of the 1640s, Pembroke was initially associated with the group of lords headed by
William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele and
Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, which supported the
Self-denying Ordinance and the creation of the
New Model Army in 1645. By mid-1646, however, Pembroke was distancing himself from this group and became one of the most outspoken opponents of the New Model Army, favouring its immediate disbandment. Following anti-New Model Army riots in London in July 1647, Pembroke refused to join the Saye-Northumberland group, who left the capital and joined the army at this time. Pembroke quickly changed his tune in August, however, when the New Model Army marched into London: he claimed that he had previously been acting under duress and that he had always been a supporter of the New Model Army.
Following Laud's arrest in 1641, the University of Oxford elected Pembroke to replace him as chancellor. (Pembroke, who was at the time allied with Saye, nominated Saye to replace him as high steward when he left the post to take up the chancellorship.) When royalist forces took Oxford, they removed Pembroke, installing
the marquess of Hertford in his place, but, after Parliament took Oxford, it had Pembroke re-installed as chancellor in 1647 and ordered him to reform the university. The
visitors of the university began this work under the direction of a committee of both houses chaired by Pembroke. They ordered all university officers to take the
Solemn League and Covenant, and when the heads of
houses complained, Pembroke summoned them to the committee and berated them. In February 1648, he installed a new vice-chancellor and replaced many of the heads of houses, and then, in March, Parliament ordered him to take up his office in person, so he travelled to Oxford and presided over the
Convocation, thus putting an end to resistance to the reforms. However, Pembroke, although a patron of literature, was far from a
man of letters himself and thus became the subject of bitter
satires written by
royalists during this period.
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