Abstract
In this rich and thoughtful book, Gavin Robinson seeks to do a number of things. Firstly, in most detail and most convincingly, he explores the supply of horses to parliamentarian armies during the main civil war of 1642–6. Making excellent use of the neglected financial records in the so-called ‘commonwealth exchequer papers’ in the National Archives, among other sources, he explores in separate chapters the supply of horses. He shows how this supply came in the first instance via the ‘Propositions’, the semi-voluntary one-off contribution through which parliament got its army up and running at the start of the war. The records here permit a reconstruction of not only the numbers and locations of horses supplied, but also the gender and occupational and socio-economic standing of those who contributed them. Horses also came from seizure/theft, from county quotas, and via direct purchase, often through the use of professional suppliers, agents, and horse dealers. The author’s conclusion is that the Propositions worked well as an early and short-term measure, that seizure/theft was unsatisfactory in keeping armies supplied, but that county quotas and, even more so, purchase proved the best and most reliable routes in the longer term. The geographical coverage is a bit skewed, focusing on London, the south-east, the Home Counties, and East Anglia, but saying little about other counties which were largely under parliamentarian administration for much of the war and for which financial records survive, including several in the north-west and the north Midlands. Because of the dearth of such material surviving for royalist-controlled counties and the royalist administration, the author cannot say much about horse supply to the king’s armies; his chapter on ‘the other side’ instead explores how parliament identified and labelled its opponents and how it took resources, including horses, from assorted royalists, Catholics, and neutrals, concluding that this made only a limited contribution to the war effort.
Secondly, and spreading his net wider than horses, Dr Robinson offers plenty of evidence and analysis of the effects and effectiveness of parliament’s main sources of money and supplies, including the Propositions and the fifths and twentieths then imposed on those with means who had not made voluntary contributions, and the regular direct and indirect taxes, notably assessments and excise, imposed from 1643 onwards. Thirdly, and leading on from this, he addresses the broader question of how far resources of all sorts, especially but not exclusively horses, contributed to the effectiveness of the parliamentarian war effort, to the changing fortunes of the two sides in the course of the conflict, and to the overall parliamentarian victory of 1645–6. The latter discussion is rather disjointed, popping up in parts of chapters 1, 4, and 5, all of which really focus on the mechanics of horse supply. However, both in these and in his concluding chapter, Dr Robinson expresses dissatisfaction not only with interpretations based solely on the supposedly superior resources of and available to the parliamentarian armies, but also with counter-arguments that resources played little part and that the outcome was determined by purely military factors and by the results of particular campaigns, operations, and battles. Instead, the author argues that both resources, including the availability of horses, and the course and outcome of major battles – always very unpredictable, he suggests – must be considered in tandem to construct a convincing explanation for the fluctuating fortunes and outcome of the war. Interestingly Dr Robinson has since suggested in his blog (‘Cavalry Operations: Why Horse Supply Matters’, 13 October 2013, www.investigationsofadog.co.uk/2013/10/13/cavalry-operations-why-horse-supply-matters/) that he might have presented a stronger argument here for the operational level as the crucial ‘missing link’ between resources and battles: ‘Parliament did win the First Civil War because of cavalry, but because of superior numbers at the operational level, not because of superior tactics on the battlefield … And that’s how I should have ended my book.’
Fourthly, much of the opening chapter is given over to a lengthy discussion of how modern historians and contemporaries can, should, and did measure wartime allegiance, a theme to which the author returns from time to time. Part of this is useful, building on recent work by Mark Stoyle, Rachel Weil, and others, but it is taken too far, with musings about how far it is sensible to employ the terms ‘royalist’ and ‘parliamentarian’. He concludes that ‘nobody actually was “a royalist” or “a parliamentarian”’ (p. 220, stress in original), which is surely going too far, and would have come as a shock to the king or Prince Rupert, to Cromwell, Fairfax, or Pym. In similar vein, the author indulges in brief forays into philosophy, psychology, theology, and literary theory, which leads to some rather odd assertions. For example, he discusses the liberties and affections of horses and the degree to which they, too, might show or be taken to have (perhaps working class) allegiances during the war, an idea which he claims is ‘not as absurd as it might sound at first’ (p. 26), although by that stage he had lost this reviewer.
Overall, Dr Robinson probably tries to do too much in a single volume and there are perhaps two books here, one on parliamentarian horse supply, the other a fuller, more considered, and thorough assessment of how resources, operational factors, and military developments may have shaped the course and outcome of the war. But when assessing parliamentarian horse supply and exploring parliamentarian impositions, this is an excellent, rich, and thoughtful study.