ERLE, Sir Walter (1586-1665), of Charborough, Dorset, and Bindon House, Axminster, Devon.

The Erle family originated in Newton in Somerset but had moved to Axminster in Devon under Henry III, and acquired the substantial estate at Charborough in Dorset through marriage only in 1549. By the time Sir Walter’s father died in 1597, the family had gained possession of two other lucrative holdings in east Dorset, at Combe Almer and Morden. A series of marriages extended the influence of the Erles within the county. Sir Walter’s father, Thomas Erle, had married a daughter of William Pole, Sir Walter himself married into the Dymoke family, and his sister married Sir Richard Strode, brother of Erle’s future colleague, William Strode I*.57Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 497-8, 502-3; Vis. Dorset 1623, 37. These extensive west country connections were further enhanced by a shared religious outlook. Erle was later described as ‘inclined to the puritan’, and he certainly had little truck with the more worldly Dorset social set which attended the bowling parties held by Richard Rogers* at Handley and Bryanston.58Christie, Shaftesbury, i, appx i. p. xviii; Bayley, Dorset, 35. Erle’s puritan streak is also suggested by his involvement in the Virginia Company from 1620, and as governor of the Dorchester Company from 1624-7. He also travelled to the Low Countries in 1630, and served as a volunteer under Lord Vere, fighting for the prince of Orange.59Hexham, Historicall Relation, Sig. C5v. On his return, Erle grew close to John White, the godly patriarch of Dorchester, and in 1632 warned him against one candidate for the vacant living of Seaton because he was merely a ‘conformable clerk’, not one of the godly.60CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 402.

Erle first entered Parliament in 1614. He sat in all the turbulent late Jacobean and early Caroline Parliaments, representing the boroughs of Poole and Lyme Regis, and twice being elected as knight of the shire. Erle’s sympathies in the 1620s lay with the godly critics of the government. The dual themes of religion and parliamentary liberties characterised Erle’s reaction to the Parliaments of 1621 and 1624, and he became a more prominent critic of the crown in 1626, supporting the remonstrance presented to the king, and helping to prepare the impeachment case against the 1st duke of Buckingham. His vigorous opposition to the Forced Loan led to his prosecution in the notorious Five Knights’ case, and imprisonment with that other Dorset malcontent, Sir John Strangways*. Erle emerged from prison unrepentant, however, was elected with Strangways as knight of the shire in 1628, and continued his opposition at Westminster. He defended John Rolle* in the tonnage and poundage controversy, warning in January 1629 of the consequences to English liberties ‘if popery and Arminianism, joining hands as they do, be a means, together with the Roman hierarchy, to bring in a Spanish tyrant amongst us’. The connection between popery and tyranny was a theme that would reappear later in Erle’s career.61HP Commons 1604-1629.

Erle continued to oppose government policies during Charles I’s personal rule. He was an ardent opponent of Ship Money, and was cited as a defaulter by successive sheriffs in 1636 and 1637.62SP16/319/89; E179/272/54. Attesting to Erle’s role as local agitator in 1637, Francis Cottington†, 1st Baron Cottington reported that distraining him and ‘other great ones’ had effectively reduced the rest of Dorset to conformity.63CSP Dom. 1637, p. 400. Erle’s opposition to the government had an adverse effect on his tenure of local offices. He had already been temporarily removed from the commission of the peace in Dorset for his misdemeanours in the 1620s, and his attitude to Ship Money again led to his expulsion from the commission of the peace in 1636.64Dorset RO, QSM/1/1, pp. 1-19, 714-907. Similarly, Erle was absent from other local commissions for much of the 1620s and 1630s, although his re-emergence as commissioner for sewers and charitable uses for Dorset in 1638 suggests his partial rehabilitation by that time, and from June 1640 he was again a regular member of the western oyer and terminer commission.65C181/5, ff. 113-v; 189-221v; C192/1, unfol. Despite such appointments, during the later 1630s Erle was firmly aligned with the radical opponents of Charles I. In a settlement drawn up in May 1639 Erle’s eldest son, Thomas Erle*, married the fourth daughter of Viscount Saye and Sele.66Dorset RO, D/BLX/F2. In November of that year Erle was listed as having refused the king’s request to contribute to the second bishops’ war.67PC2/50, p. 300; PC2/51, p. 79.

Short Parliament

Erle’s chance to voice his continuing opposition to the government came in April 1640. In the elections for the Short Parliament, he stood for, and won, one of the county seats, but ‘did sit down unto the Lord George [Digby]*’, in a diplomatic gesture towards that other opponent of the crown, the 1st earl of Bristol.68Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, f. 52. Erle was subsequently returned for the borough of Lyme Regis, which he had represented in the stormy Parliament of 1626, and on this occasion he was joined as burgess by another critic of the crown, Edmund Prideaux I*.69C219/42/94. The opening of the Parliament on 16 April was greeted with evident relish by Erle, who returned with vigour to the themes of liberty and religion, which had dominated the Parliaments of the 1620s. On 18 April he was named to the select committee to examine the breach of privilege on the last day of Parliament in 1629, which took charge of preparing a representation to the king about the violation of the liberties of Parliament.70CJ ii. 6b, 7b. Erle also resurrected the religious grievances of the 1620s. On 17 April he moved that the clerk look up the remonstrance on religion prepared in 1628-9, and on 21 April he moved for a closer examination of the commission set up by the church Convocation, arguing that Parliament should look to the settlement of religion as ‘their commission was so large and they by virtue thereof [are] about to make new canons’.71CJ ii. 4b, 8a; Procs. Short Parl. 164. He also targeted other abuses which had arisen since 1629: on 21 April he was named to a committee to examine various cases concerning Ship Money, and at the beginning of May he bluntly stated that ‘the way to come to the point was to vote the illegality’ of that tax.72CJ ii. 8b; Aston’s Diary, 134. The individual complaints forwarded by Erle in the first week of the Short Parliament were considered collectively in a conference of both Houses concerning general grievances. Erle was involved in lobbying the Lords to agree to this meeting on 23 April, and he seconded Edward Kyrton’s motion that a conference on religion, property and the liberty of Parliament should be convened.73CJ ii. 10a; Procs. Short Parl. 171. Erle reported the activities of this conference to the Commons on 24 April, and he was named to the committee to manage the business discussed.74CJ ii. 11a, 12a; Procs. Short Parl. 174. He was again reporter of this conference on 29 April.75CJ ii. 16a.

The diaries and journals of the Short Parliament give an indication of Erle’s continuing preoccupation with parliamentary liberty during this conference with the House of Lords. In his eyes, the solution to all grievances lay with frequent, free Parliaments. He drew on his extensive knowledge of procedure to bolster this case, quoting statutes of Edward III ‘requiring frequent assembling [of] Parliaments when grievances happen’, and adding that, in this matter, ‘if [there is] no redress, this is a grievance’.76Aston’s Diary, 58. But privilege also meant freedom from interference from the House of Lords, and from 27 April Erle objected to the Lords’ attempt to guide the Commons over the subsidy bills, as ‘the liberties of Parliament were our inheritance ... [and] the House had ever one privilege, viz. to order their own business in priority without any directions therein’.77Procs. Short Parl. 177-8. Insistence on strict procedures in such a matter also had the convenient effect of delaying the vote of money for the Scottish war until grievances had been examined. On this last matter, Erle was adamant, and again looked to the 1620s for his model, advising the Commons ‘to walk in the same steps as our predecessors did in the Petition of Right’.78Aston’s Diary, 103. In the face of such obstinacy from Erle and his allies, the Parliament collapsed without voting supply on 5 May. The obstructive tactics and violent demands of the opposition MPs in the Short Parliament elicited a swift response from the government: on 7 May 1640 the 2nd earl of Warwick, Viscount Saye, Lord Brooke, John Pym*, John Hampden* and Erle himself were arrested, and their papers searched for evidence of collusion with the Scots. Erle was released shortly afterwards, ‘there being no papers at all found in his lodging’, but suspicions remained.79CSP Dom. 1640, p. 152-3; HMC De Lisle, vi. 261.

The Long Parliament, Nov. 1640-May 1641

Erle’s election for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in October 1640 was probably on the interest of his opposition colleague from the 1620s, Sir John Strangways, who had enormous influence over the borough. The election was unopposed, and, perhaps to underline its legitimacy, Erle was made a freeman of the corporation on the following day.80Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 113. From the very start of the Long Parliament in November 1640, Erle was active against the government. A list of MPs averse to the court drawn up in November 1640 included Erle, as well as Digby, Saye and Brooke, Hampden and Pym.81CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 285. Erle was named to 44 committees, and was added to a further four, in the period before the execution of Strafford on 12 May 1641. These appointments, and his activities as manager, messenger and reporter within Parliament, can be broken down into various categories, which show how Erle’s concerns in 1640-1, though essentially the same as in the 1620s and in the spring of 1640, were beginning to become more radical.

Once again the issue of parliamentary liberties and privileges was close to Erle’s heart. On 6 and 7 November 1640 he was named to three committees concerned with fasts, the records of the House and the general problems of elections and privileges.82CJ ii. 20b, 21a, 21b. In November, December and January, Erle was repeatedly named to committees to consider electoral disputes, including that of his own son, Thomas.83CJ ii. 29a, 61b; D’Ewes (N), 69, 120-1, 206, 311, 322. Erle was also increasingly involved in procedural questions, which were important to securing the liberty of the Commons.84D’Ewes (N), 108, 152; Northcote Note Bk. 64. On 18 December 1640 the Commons ordered the privileges committee to consider the imprisonment of MPs after the 1628-9 and 1640 Parliaments, including Erle himself.85CJ ii. 53b. Connected with the privilege question was the need for legislation to ensure regular Parliaments were summoned in the first place. Erle was involved in the planning stages of this process, being named to the committee on the bill for yearly Parliaments on 30 December 1640, and on 12 February 1641 he was appointed manager of a conference concerning the revised triennial Parliaments bill.86CJ ii. 60a, 84a. As well as decrying the absence of Parliament during the 1630s, Erle was concerned with a range of other grievances against the crown. On 10 November 1640 he was named to a committee to represent the state of the kingdom to the Commons, and on 27 November to another committee to consider illegal taxation in the exchequer.87CJ ii. 25a, 38a. He was also named to committees against coat and conduct money levied during the bishops’ wars, the extortions of customs officers and patentees, the abuses of the court of wards and the iniquities of Ship Money.88CJ ii. 50b, 55a, 77b, 80a, 87a.

The two greatest grievances claimed by opponents of the crown at the beginning of the Long Parliament concerned religious innovation and the evil influence over the king of the 1st earl of Strafford. Erle was zealous in his pursuit of both. His involvement in religious affairs was bi-focal: he attacked the wrongs of the Laudian church while trying to reverse what he saw as the rise of popery – abuses which, in puritan eyes, went hand in hand. In November and December 1640 Erle was named to committees to consider the harsh treatment received at Archbishop Laud’s hands by Dr Leighton, William Prynne* and John Bastwick.89CJ ii. 28b, 44b, 52b. Erle also attacked the Laudian episcopate, as promoters of the notorious new Canons in Convocation, and as visitors oppressing godly colleges, such as Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and puritan towns, including Ipswich.90CJ ii. 52a, 56a; Northcote Note Bk. 73. Erle was also named to committees for puritan causes such as the Virginia Company (Dec. 1640), and St Gregory’s Church in London (Feb. 1641).91CJ ii. 54a, 82b. In tandem with this, Erle renewed his attack on Catholicism. On 9 November he was named to the committee to investigate and disarm papists in London, and on 21 November he was named to the committee for purging the royal army of its Catholic officers.92CJ ii. 24b, 34a. On 4 December Erle told the Commons that the crypto-Catholic secretary of state, Sir Francis Windebanke*, had fled, and moved for an investigation.93D’Ewes (N), 103. In January 1641, he was named to committees to oppose the reprieve of the condemned priest, Thomas Goodman, and to extend such harsh measures against all Catholic clergy, and also became involved in investigations into the raising of money by northern recusants during the bishops’ wars.94CJ ii. 72a, 73b, 74b.

The connection between Catholicism and the future of the English and Irish armies was of particular concern to Erle during the spring of 1641. He managed a conference for the disbandment of the new Irish army at the beginning of January 1641, and expressed his fears openly: the business ‘appeared to him to be full of danger... that this army did not only fill the kingdom with fear, but burdened it also with charge’.95CJ ii. 62b, 64b; D’Ewes (N), 229. In February he reported two conferences for disbanding the Irish troops now stationed in Ulster, ‘the ancient seat of rebellion’, and reported rumours of a Welsh papist rising under the 5th earl of Worcester.96CJ ii. 83a, 93b; D’Ewes (N), 325, 346-7. He managed the same conference in March, reported the obstacles to raising money to disband the Irish forces, and urged that more pressure be put on the House of Lords to solve this serious threat to security.97CJ ii. 111a, 111b; Procs. LP, iii. 86, 88. On 24 April Erle again moved the Commons for the disarming of papists and the disbanding of the Irish army, which ‘grew daily more dangerous’.98Procs. LP, iv. 88. Erle’s hatred of the Irish army was in contrast to his moves to appease the Scots, whose army still occupied northern England. In December 1640 he reported from the commissioners treating with the Scots about money; on 1 March and 25 March 1641 he was directly involved in negotiations for a loan from the City of London in order to pay the Scottish army.99Northcote Note Bk. 11; D’Ewes (N), 188; CJ ii. 94b, 113a. From 17 March he was a member of the conference concerning the affairs of both kingdoms.100CJ ii. 106b. On 19 and 22 April 1641 Erle was a reporter of the conference for the treaty between England and Scotland.101CJ ii. 123b, 125b. Such pro-Scots activities may indicate a basic sympathy towards Presbyterianism on Erle’s part consistent with his own religious views, and would also suggest that government suspicions that Erle was in collusion with the Scots in the summer of 1640 were not without basis.

Erle’s other major concern at the start of the Long Parliament was the prosecution of the earl of Strafford. On 12 November 1640 Erle was added to the select committee of six, which were to prepare heads for a conference with the Lords on the charges against the Irish lord lieutenant; with additions, this committee’s membership included Pym, Hampden, Strode, Oliver St John, Digby, Strangways and (for a period) the Dorset MP, Denzil Holles: almost a cast-list of the influential managers of the Commons at the start of the Parliament.102CJ ii. 27a. Erle was involved in preparing witnesses against Strafford during the winter, and was also anxious to detain other Irish officials, such as Sir George Radcliffe, and to prevent contact between the accused parties.103CJ ii. 39b, 43b; D’Ewes (N), 86; Northcote Note Bk. 17. In the weeks before the impeachment proceedings began on 25 March 1641, Erle was increasingly busy: he reported a conference concerning the removal of Strafford from all his offices on 18 February, and on the same day led a committee to consider the report on the case against the earl presented by Pym.104CJ ii. 88b; D’Ewes (N), 374. On 26 February he followed Holles in defending Secretary Coke against the aspersions in Strafford’s answers to the initial charges, and on 6 March he was named to the committee of 48 MPs who were to attend a free conference on the trial.105D’Ewes (N), 412; CJ ii. 98a.

Erle’s eagerness to prosecute Strafford was heightened by his fears of the security risk posed by the Irish army. As early as 11 February 1641 he had made the connection between the two explicit, when he argued that the Irish army was especially dangerous as ‘the earl of Strafford still continued general of them’, and he pursued a similar line during the trial itself.106D’Ewes (N), 346-7. On 24 March Erle took charge of the 24th article of the impeachment, relating to the design of bringing an Irish Catholic army into England in 1640. The charge could not be proved, however, as the most convincing witnesses were not present, and it soon collapsed, ‘upon which the knight was very blank and out of countenance’. An effective rebuff from Strafford himself was only parried by Lord Digby, who made light of the mistake ‘in a very witty and rhetorical speech’.107Whitelocke, Mems. i. 123. Erle’s performance was received scornfully at court. The queen, who was present at the trial, asked who he was, ‘and being told his name was Sir Walter Erle, she said, that water-dog did bark, but did not bite’.108Whitelocke, Mems. i. 124. Such mockery did not stop Erle from reiterating the charge of the 24th article on 8 April: ‘that the Irish army was to come against England’.109Procs. LP, iii. 459, 462. He was soon vindicated: the attainder proceedings against Strafford would eventually stand or fall on evidence to prove the 24th article of the impeachment. Erle was active in the attainder, and on 19 April moved the Commons to send for the solicitor, even though he was ill, ‘concerning the expediting of the earl of Strafford’s trial’.110Procs. LP, iv. 6, 12.

Erle was also a prominent figure in the investigations that followed the discovery of the army plot to overawe Parliament by force, and to free Strafford. On 4 May, a day after the Protestation was signed MPs, Erle was named to the committee to examine Sir John Suckling* and his fellow conspirators.111CJ ii. 134a. He was also appointed to a committee to send a letter from the House to steady the English army in the north.112Procs. LP, iv. 191, 194. In a debate on 5 May, Erle reported a letter from the lieutenant of the Tower, voicing his fears of an attempt to by 1,500 Irish soldiers to surprise the stronghold, and begging assistance from the City militia.113Procs. LP, iv. 220. A day later, Erle acted as manager of the conference to prevent other plotters from absconding abroad, and he joined Holles and others in preparing the heads for this meeting.114CJ ii. 136b, 137a. He also reported the capture of one of the plotters, Henry Jermyn*, and told of rumours that quantities of gunpowder were being taken to Portsmouth.115Procs. LP, iv. 233. Investigations continued during the following month, and Erle became involved in persuading the 4th earl of Northumberland (Algernon Percy†) to yield to the Commons the account of his brother, Henry Percy*, who was also suspected of involvement in the army plot.116Procs. LP, v. 108, 117, 133. On 7 May, amid fears that the plot was more widespread, the Commons sent Erle to Dorset ‘to employ his best endeavours there, for the safety of that county’, and to guard against a French invasion.117CJ ii. 138a, 138b; Procs. LP, iv. 249, 254-5. During this time he produced a detailed survey of munitions and soldiers in Dorset, which was presented to William Cecil*, 2nd earl of Salisbury.118HMC Salisbury, xxii. 353-4.

Plots and rumours of plots: summer 1641

Fears of an immediate attack on Parliament had died down by the time Erle returned to Westminster at the end of May 1641. During the ‘slow movement’ of the summer of 1641, Erle was occupied increasingly with the practicalities of disbanding the armies in the north, which were not only a threat to security, but also a strain on the royal finances. Erle’s sympathies with the Covenanters made him an ideal intermediary with the Scots, and he defended them in Parliament, supporting Sir Robert Harley’s statement against Sir William Withrington’s attack on any ‘in this House [who] should call the Scottish men brethren’.119Procs. LP, v. 133. On 7 June 1641 Erle reported a conference with the Lords for a treaty with the Scots to allow their army to return home, and on 10 June was named to committee which was to consider the best way to disband both armies.120CJ ii. 170a, 172b. Erle was also active in implementing the Scottish treaty. He was ordered to administer money due to the Scots, and he was named to a committee to prepare instructions for the lord general for disbanding the English army.121CJ ii. 182b, 188b. In July, Erle was involved in committees to compensate the inhabitants of Yorkshire for damages caused by the royal soldiers billeted there, and to prepare accounts for the disbandment monies.122CJ ii. 196a, 214a. On 24 July he reported a conference for the raising of £40,000 from the City for the armies, and a few days later he was added to the committee for the king’s army, and reported a conference on the forces in northern England.123CJ ii. 223b, 226a, 227a. In the beginning of August, Erle was named to two committees to prepare further heads for the disbandment, and on 13 August reported a conference on allowing the Spanish and French kings leave to recruit de-mobbed English soldiers.124CJ ii. 238b, 240a, 254a.

During this period Erle was also concerned with religious affairs. On 26 May 1641 he was listed as being reporter with Pym, Holles, Nathaniel Fiennes I and William Pierrepont for a conference concerning the bishops’ bill.125Procs. LP, iv. 616. On 3 June 1641 he was named to a committee to reply to the objections of the Lords to the bill for removing the bishops from their House, but apparently played only a minor role in the root and branch debates later.126CJ ii. 165b. On 30 June he acted as messenger to the Lords for a conference on the bill against the star chamber and high commission, and on 2 July was involved in the committee stage on act confirming the statutes of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but these were merely the completion of cases that he had championed earlier in the Long Parliament.127CJ ii. 194a, 197a; LJ iv. 295b. Erle’s religious concerns were given added urgency by the king’s announcement that he would travel to Scotland later in the summer, and this raised fears of a further army plot, backed by Catholic insurrection. As a result, the issue of the papists within the royal household again took hold, with suspicions starting at the very apex of the court hierarchy. On 5 July Erle was named to a committee to raise money to hasten the removal of the Catholic queen mother abroad; on 7 July he was first-named to a committee to prepare heads to prevent the continued payment of allowances to such Catholic sympathisers as Windebanke and Walter Montagu, and the suspected plotters Jermyn and Suckling.128CJ ii. 199a, 201a. Equally suspect was the queen’s plan to go to Holland. On 14 July Erle was involved in preparing heads for a conference on this matter, and a week later reported a conference concerning the queen’s reply to the Lords.129CJ ii. 210a, 219a. Politics lay behind much of these measures. Erle was still heavily involved in the investigation of the army plot conspirators which continued throughout the summer, and on 27 July, he made a motion that the committee for scandalous ministers be revived to consider abuses by magistrates in Wales (where in the south east the Catholic earl of Worcester exercised great power), who ‘had committed several persons for going to hear sermons when they had none in their own parish’.130CJ ii. 225b; Procs. LP, v. 621: vi. 57, 103. On 30 July Erle was named to the committee to prepare the impeachment of the bishops, which was essentially a political move to destroy the royal majority in the Lords.131CJ ii. 230b.

In response to the popish threat, Erle was also given a prominent part in the reinforcement of the trained bands, perhaps in light of his effective response to the army plot locally. In July, he was named to committees for regulating arms and the manufacture of gunpowder, and was first-named to the committee to consider an act for the trained bands and ammunition.132CJ ii. 212b, 219b, 223a. On 29 July he acted as chairman of the committee on the bill for trained bands, which required the submission of lists of the lord lieutenants and their deputies from each county, ‘whether they be fitting to enjoy their places’.133CJ ii. 228b; Procs. LP, vi. 141. On the strength of this, on 5 August Erle moved that MPs from each county should meet to nominate commissioners of arms and trained bands.134Procs. LP, vi. 214. He was still apprehensive, however. When the heads of bills to be considered in the recess were put forward, Erle proposed ‘that the bill for bringing in gunpowder [from abroad] be one’.135Procs. LP, vi. 320. After the departure of the king for Scotland in August, he was an active member of the committee led by Pym and Barrington to prepare heads for a conference on putting the kingdom ‘in a posture of defence’.136CJ ii. 257a; Procs. LP, vi. 433, 440.

The king’s decision to go to Scotland also caused agitation because of the time-limits it imposed on the enactment of parliamentary business. In the weeks that followed the announcement Erle was increasingly involved in the legislative side of the equation. He joined with Sir John Culpeper in pushing for the limitation the membership of the ‘committee of seven’ to increase its efficiency.137Procs. LP, iv. 294. On 29 June he was a reporter and manager of a conference concerning the king’s journey, and on 12 July he was named to a committee to consider what parliamentary business might be concluded before the king’s departure.138CJ ii. 192a, 207b. Fears were already beginning to grow: on 22 July Erle managed a conference by committee of both Houses on the adjournment, but would not agree to a time being stipulated, ‘and declared what a dangerous thing it was to name a recess for the present’.139CJ ii. 220a; Procs. LP, vi. 53. Six days later he was named to the committee to consider what legislation should come before the Commons before the king’s departure.140CJ ii. 227a. At the beginning of August, as time began to run out, Erle was again a key figure, being named to a committee to bring in a remonstrance on the state of the kingdom and the church on 3 August, reporting the conference on the custos regni two days later, and continuing his efforts to effect the disbanding of the armies.141CJ ii. 234a, 238a, 238b, 240a. The pressure apparently took its toll. On 10 August Erle was given leave of absence from the House ‘to go into the country to recover his health’.142CJ ii. 250a.

Despite his health problems, it seems that Erle refused to leave his post. As well as his attempts to disperse the newly-disbanded English army, later in August he continued to be involved in the parliamentary reaction to the royal visit to Scotland, being named to a committee to advise the MPs sent north to perfect the treaty with the Scots, and arguing that the defence of the realm required power to be placed in the hands of a ‘single person’ during the king’s absence.143CJ ii. 256b, 258b. He was also a reporter for the conference concerning the commission, instruction and petition to be sent from the Houses to the king.144CJ ii. 262a. Erle also continued his efforts to support the godly. He was manager of a conference to consider the complaints of Sir John Corbet against Laud and others, and was named to a committee to consider a petition to prevent papists from trading in London.145CJ ii. 257a, 258a. On 17 August Erle was named to a committee, with Holles and Sir Philip Stapilton, for disarming recusants.146CJ ii. 261a. Erle had lost none of his zeal: two days later he encouraged one Francis Seward in his denunciation of the 5th marquess of Winchester, who, it was rumoured, kept 1,500 weapons at Basing House in Hampshire.147Procs. LP, vi. 487. On 30 August Erle was appointed commissioner to disarm papists in Dorset, and ordered to return to the county to enforce this.148LJ iv. 385a.

Rebellion in Ireland and crisis in England: autumn and winter 1641-2

Erle’s absence from Westminster was brief, and he had returned to his parliamentary activities by 23 October 1641.149CJ ii. 297b. Barely a week later news broke at Westminster of the Catholic rebellion in Ireland. Erle had warned of the conjunction of rebellion, popery and the Irish on numerous occasions in the previous year, and now his fears were being realised. He immediately became involved in Parliament’s response to the Irish rising: on 2 November he was named to the committee of both Houses for Irish affairs, and two days later he was nominated to the committee stage of an act to raise soldiers for the defence of Ireland.150CJ ii. 302a, 305b. Erle further demonstrated his enthusiasm for the suppression of the Irish rising and his trust in the Scots on 12 November, when he joined Henry Marten as teller against limiting the number of Scottish troops to be accepted for the Irish service.151CJ ii. 308b, 314a, 324b. At the beginning of December, Erle managed and reported a conference to discuss the sending of ammunition to Ireland, and on 18 December he and Pym were appointed to prepare the heads of a conference concerning the Irish Parliament.152CJ ii. 331a, 349a. In the latter conference, Erle argued for the prorogation of the forthcoming Irish Parliament, ‘which might be of very dangerous consequence as matters now stood’.153D’Ewes (C), 315. The implication was obvious: Ireland could no longer be trusted to govern itself, and the suppression of the rebellion was best left to England, with the assistance of Scotland.

The Irish rebellion renewed fears of popish plots in England, and Erle again took a leading role in investigating allegations and rumours. On 2 November, the same day he joined the committee for Irish affairs, Erle reported a conference to consider messages from various lords to the queen, and also to provide a guard at Westminster: the two were closely related, as the queen was suspected of harbouring incendiaries.154CJ ii. 302b. A particular fear was that Irish plotters had already gathered in London. On 11 November Erle moved for an investigation into a company of Irish soldiers (bound for foreign service) which had mustered in Milford Lane near the Strand.155D’Ewes (C), 119-20, 129, 139; CJ ii. 313b. On 15 November Erle was named to a committee to draft an ordinance for putting the trained bands on alert, and for securing papists.156CJ ii. 316b. On 16 November he reported to the House intelligence of a planned French attempt on Portsmouth.157D’Ewes (C), 146. Erle also suggested that the prayers of the House, as well as including a thanksgiving for their delivery from the Armada and the Gunpowder Plot, should also praise God ‘for our deliverances since the beginning of this Parliament’.158D’Ewes (C), 147. On the following day Erle was a leader of another committee against papists and for removing the unreliable Jerome Weston†, 2nd earl of Portland from the governorship of the Isle of Wight.159CJ ii. 318b.

The return of the king to London at the end of November 1641 did not calm matters; rather there was a new spate of demands addressed to the king. On 22 November, Erle was teller on two motions concerning the Grand Remonstrance, including a declaration on the state of the nation, and he supported the inclusion of complaints against the secular power of bishops.160CJ ii. 322b. At the end of the previous October Erle had moved to prevent the creation of five new bishops, and on 3 December he was named to a committee to draft heads for a conference against the delaying of bills in the Lords: a direct criticism of the influence of the episcopal lords in the upper House.161D’Ewes (C), 51; CJ ii. 330b. Erle’s objections were not merely political in nature, moreover. On 4 December, when leniency towards the scandalous divine, William Chillingworth, was debated, Sir Simonds D’Ewes* noted that ‘Sir Walter Erle, who was seldom out when controversies in religion were named, rejected it’.162D’Ewes (C), 234n. On 14 December Erle was named to a committee to present complaints about breach of privilege to the king, and on the next day he joined Holles as teller in favour of printing the Grand Remonstrance recently presented to the king.163CJ ii. 343b, 344b.

The second half of December saw increasing tensions, and sporadic violence in the streets of London. Erle continued to fear a popish insurrection: on 18 December he was named to a committee, and reported a conference, on letters from France seized in Surrey, and on 20 December he led a committee on the bill to disarm recusants.164CJ ii. 348b, 349b. On the same day Erle joined a delegation to investigate reports that a member of the king’s privy council had declared ‘there would be cutting of throats ere long’.165CJ ii. 350a. In the light of this, the dismissal of Sir William Balfour as lieutenant of the Tower was ominous, and Erle objected strongly in the Commons.166D’Ewes (C), 330. Counter-accusations, such as that concerning the 1st earl of Newport’s alleged threats against the queen, were investigated by Erle and others on 27 December.167CJ ii. 358a. On 31 December, the day after the impeachment of the 12 bishops, he was named to committees to supply the trained bands with ammunition and arms, perhaps as a precaution against a possible coup, and he was also chosen to consider the king’s answer considering the guard at Westminster.168CJ ii. 364b, 365b.

The political crisis came to a head early in the new year of 1642. On 4 January parliamentary business was interrupted by the king’s attempt to arrest the Five Members. When the Commons was warned of the king’s approach, four of the accused Members fled, but William Strode I obstinately refused, and, ‘when no persuasions would prevail with the said Mr Strode, Sir Walter Erle, his entire friend, was fain to take him by [the] cloak, and pull him out of his place, and so got him out of the House’.169D’Ewes (C), 384; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 477. Erle joined the outcry which followed the attempted arrest of the Five Members, and on 5 January he was named to a committee to consider how to vindicate the privileges of the Parliament against such an outrage.170CJ ii. 368b. Erle was now notorious as a radical parliamentarian. On 11 January, the day after the king and his entourage left London, the Commons considered a letter attacking the Five Members and their supporters, saying ‘the solicitor [Oliver St John], and Fiennes, and Erle, we must serve with the same sauce’.171CJ ii. 369b; Clarendon, Hist. i. 513n.

Security concerns in England and Ireland, Jan.-Mar. 1642

In the early months of 1642, Erle was busily engaged in work relating to two subjects: the safety of the kingdom and the relief of the Protestants in Ireland. The first was in effect an attempt to defend Parliament against a re-run of the 4 January incident, and had as its objectives the suppression of plots and the securing of the trained bands. The presence of his former ally, Lord Digby, and other royalists on the continent from January and the departure of the queen in February heightened fears of continental intervention in support of the king. Erle was named to committees to peruse letters from France, and to search the correspondence of various suspected plotters, including Mr Crofts, Sir Basil Brooke, Endymion Porter*, Digby and Jermyn.172CJ ii. 376b, 375a, 398b, 431a, 433b; PJ, i. 58, 188. In March, Erle was ordered to join Pym, Holles, Sir Henry Vane II and others in preparing heads for a conference on reports that Digby was making military preparations in Denmark.173CJ ii. 484a. Internal unrest was also a concern. On 14 January Erle reported rumours that troops under the notorious Colonel Lunsford were to march to Portsmouth.174PJ, i. 67, 71. On 25 January he was involved in investigating a petition from Hertfordshire, and on the same day he was appointed to a committee to enquire into conspiracies against Parliament (this committee would be joined with the Committee for Examinations on 18 February).175Supra, ‘Committee for Examinations’; CJ ii. 393a, 396a, 439b. On 29 January Erle prepared a letter with Sir Edward Ayscoghe urging the Lincolnshire justices of the peace to disarm local papists.176PJ, i. 217. Allied to these security concerns was the need to push through religious measures. On 8 February Erle was named to a committee to urge the king to approve the bill removing ministers from temporal positions, and later in the month was nominated to another committee for the suppression of innovation and the enforcement of general observation of the sabbath.177CJ ii. 419b, 437b. During March, Erle was added to the committee on the bishops’ bill, and named to a committee for the maintenance of godly ministers.178CJ ii. 467b, 496b. These were measures of immediate security, guarding against sedition encouraged from the pulpit, as well as of doctrinal reform.

Erle also played an important part in securing the armed forces. On 13 January he was ordered to bring in a list of ordnance and other military stores, and over the next few days liaised with Philip Skippon* over the threat that Lunsford’s forces posed to the capital.179PJ, i. 57, 67, 71, 86. On 17 January Erle was added to the committee to consider putting the kingdom into a posture of defence, established at Oliver Cromwell’s motion three days before, and he was also nominated to a committee to consider the safety of the country during a brief adjournment of the Commons.180CJ ii. 383b, 385a. Erle helped to organise the trained bands and garrisons, and on 8 February acted as messenger to the Lords, with a bill for impressment of soldiers and a request for a conference concerning the forts and militia.181CJ ii. 390b, 421a, 421b, 457a; LJ iv. 570a. It was the king’s refusal to countenance the latter which hastened the Militia Ordinance, which, as a bill, passed both Houses during February, and after the refusal of the royal assent became an ordinance on 5 March. Erle acted as messenger to the Lords in this last stage, desiring their assent, bringing in amendments, and reporting their assent.182CJ ii. 465b; LJ iv. 623b. He was also added to the committee set up to justify the ordinance, with its assertion of Parliament’s right to raise forces, on 14 March.183CJ ii. 478b.

Underlying both the fear of plotting and the need to secure the armed forces in England was the worsening situation in Ireland. Erle was heavily involved in the raising of money and supplies for the Protestant cause in Ireland. During January he was named to three committees for raising private contributions from his fellow MPs, for removing obstacles to the sending of aid, and advancing the transportation of supplies by merchants, and he continued to press for money to support the regime in Dublin during February.184CJ ii. 381b, 391a, 391b; PJ, i. 284, 303. One proposition that Erle may have advocated was a joint venture with the Scots, as on 27 January he was named to a committee to consider the king’s reply to the Scottish plans concerning the Carrickfergus Castle in co. Antrim.185CJ ii. 400a. Erle was also a prime mover behind the Irish propositions, which became the basis for the Irish Adventurers’ scheme, on 16 and 17 February 1642: he reported from the sub-committee of the committee for Irish affairs, was named to a committee to draft the propositions, and acted as messenger for the conference itself.186CJ ii. 435a, 435b, 437a, 438b; LJ iv. 593a. Later in the month he was appointed commissioner for speeding the Irish business, and reported from the committee to consider the propositions and the king’s answer to the plan.187CJ ii. 453b, 456a, 456b; LJ iv. 613a; PJ, i. 397, 468. On 28 February Erle, Pym and Robert Reynolds were appointed to prepare an order to implement the Irish propositions, and on Erle’s motion letters from the Speaker were ordered to be sent to all counties to effect this.188CJ ii. 461a; PJ, i. 484. He also drafted an order allowing four commissioners to receive subscriptions on 5 March.189CJ ii. 467b. Erle made a personal contribution to the reconquest of Ireland, by promising £600, and eventually investing £300, in the Adventurers’ scheme.190Bottigheimer, English Money and Irish Land, 181; J.P. Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (1875), 405. The discrepancy suggests that his commitment to the Adventurers was greater than his pocket could stand.

During March, Erle continued his involvement in Irish business in the Commons. On 5 March he was added to the committee on the bill for reducing the Irish rebels, on 23 March he was named to a committee to examine certain clauses in the same legislation, and on 28 March he carried the same bill to the Lords, with amendments.191CJ ii. 468b, 493b, 500a, 500b, 501a; LJ iv. 675a. Alongside this process, Erle was involved in various initiatives to speed help to the Irish Protestants. On 8 March he was named to a committee to consider licensing people to go over to Ireland, and he was added to the committee to consider the king’s reply to this measure on 14 March.192CJ ii. 472a, 478a. On the same day Erle was confirmed in his appointment as a Commissioner for Irish Affairs, and later in the month he was appointed to peruse the draft commission itself.193LJ iv. 644b; LJ v. 15b; CJ ii. 489a; PJ, ii. 62. A further mark of Erle’s commitment to the recovery of Ireland is the consistency of his attendance on this commission from April to the end of July 1642.194PJ, ii. 469; iii. 438. He continued to be named to parliamentary committees on Ireland in May, June and July, but as the political crisis in England deepened, he seems to have become distracted, and his involvement in suppressing the rebellion began to tail off.195CJ ii. 560b, 561a, 640b, 689a; LJ v. 45b, 234b.

Prelude to civil war: spring and summer 1642

From the beginning of April 1642, as the crisis in England deepened, Erle played an even greater part in parliamentary affairs. During April and May he was heavily involved in religious reform, and the imposition of Presbyterian forms upon the church. On 4 April he was named to a committee to vindicate reforms made so far, consult with clergy on further moves and establish a preaching ministry.196CJ ii. 510b. On 7 April Erle, Holles and others were added to the commission for scandalous ministers in Dorset.197CJ ii. 516a. In the five days following Erle was named to two committees for restructuring the church and one for a bill to secure certain papists in custody.198CJ ii. 517a, 519b, 523b. Erle was evidently acting in support of the more radical MPs, who pushed for far-reaching reforms. On 23 April, he joined Henry Marten as teller against the appointment of a suspected Arminian, Matthew Levett, to the Westminster Assembly of Divines.199CJ ii. 539a. At the beginning of May, Erle acted as messenger and manager with two sympathisers with Presbyterian church forms, Edmund Prideaux I and Sir Robert Harley, for the bill of pluralities.200CJ ii. 555a; LJ v. 40b.

As with the suppression of the rebellion in Ireland, Parliament’s plans for reform of church were continually being interrupted by the need to address a series of political crises. After the passing of the Militia Ordinance in March, the king and the Parliament became engaged in a trial of strength. On 13 April the king summoned the 1st earl of Holland and the 3rd earl of Essex to York, and the Commons considered a suitable reply in a committee led by Pym and Holles, to which Erle was also named.201CJ ii. 525b. Three days later, a committee was created to justify the removal of the magazine from Hull to London, and therefore away from the king’s base at York.202CJ ii. 531a. The stalemate was eventually broken on 23 April, when Charles demanded that Hull should open its gates to his men, and the governor, Sir John Hotham*, refused. Erle was involved in the reaction to this in Westminster, managing a conference for the securing of similar magazines at Poole and Monmouth on 29 April.203CJ ii. 548b. On the same day he was named to a committee to give an answer to the king concerning Hull, and on 30 April he was appointed to another committee to consider the implications of Hotham’s actions.204CJ ii. 548b, 550b.

During April and May other cases had arisen which soon gained a wider significance. One of these was the impeachment of Sir Edward Dering*, who had incurred Parliament’s displeasure for his support of episcopacy: Erle had pressed for a full investigation in the previous February, and acted as messenger to the Lords when the initial conference was requested on 21 April.205PJ, i. 261, 268; CJ ii. 536b, 537a; LJ v. 9a. Parliament remained concerned at the risk from Irish plots, and Erle instigated a ‘search for a priest and papers concerning Ireland’ on 23 April.206PJ, ii. 210, 224. He was also involved in the trial of a Colonel Beeling, who was intercepted as he tried to join the Irish rebels. Erle presented Parliament’s thanks to the mayors of Pembroke and Haverfordwest for Beeling’s capture, and acted as messenger in all stages of the proceedings throughout April and May, until the suspect was committed to the Tower.207CJ ii. 505b, 539b, 558a, 576b, 605b; LJ v. 45b; PJ, ii. 277. Similarly, Erle acted as messenger and reporter in the investigations into the escape from prison of the Irish courtier, Daniel O’Neill, in May.208CJ ii. 560b, 561a, 571a, 576a; PJ, ii. 314, 331-2. At the end of the same month, Erle became directly involved in military preparations. On 27 May he was named to the committee of both Houses to consider the defence of the kingdom, and on the following day was first-named to a committee to prevent the transporting of arms and ammunition to York.209CJ ii. 589a, 590b. It was at this time that he first became involved in matters of logistics. On 28 May he was to liaise with the company of saddlers, armourers and gunsmiths, to establish their manufacturing capacity, and to encourage them not to supply the king.210CJ ii. 590b, 592a.

The passing of the Nineteen Propositions on 1 June 1642 hastened the split with the king, and forced Parliament to produce its own forms of government and finance. Erle was involved in this in various ways. On 3 June he was named to a standing committee to raise money from the merchant strangers’ company, the College of Physicians and other bodies, and on 4 June was first-named to a committee to raise a loan of £100,000 from the London companies.211CJ ii. 601b, 605a. On the same day Erle was first-named to a committee to consider how public orders and votes of the Commons were to be put into practice throughout the country.212CJ ii. 604b. There is no doubt that Erle was whole-heartedly committed to the raising of an army by Parliament at this stage. On 6 June he was named to committees to consider the best ways to recruit the army ‘for defence of the king, kingdom and Parliament’, and to consider the king’s reply to the parliamentary commissioners at York.213CJ ii. 608b, 609b. On 13 June he was appointed to a committee to encourage MPs to bring in money or horses for the defence of Parliament, and he later pledged to provide four horses for himself and his son, Thomas.214PJ, iii. 70, 473. On 14 June he was named to a committee to procure a loan from the Merchant Taylors’ company, and on 18 June he was sent to the City corporation to persuade them not to accede to the king’s demand that they cease subscriptions for raising troops.215CJ ii. 623b, 632b; PJ, iii. 98. Erle continued to act for Parliament after the appointment of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex as lord general and following the first skirmishes in the middle of July: on 19 July he was teller against the modification of the treaty with Scotland, and five days later took a message to the Lords for bringing troops to the south of Ireland from Ulster.216CJ ii. 680b, 689a.

Another job which Erle readily assumed was that of intelligence gatherer. On 30 May he was named to a committee to make a declaration concerning reports that the king had decided to pawn the crown jewels to raise funds for his army, and he took an active part in investigating the truth behind the rumours.217CJ ii. 594b; PJ, iii. 6, 41, 63-4. On 11 June the committee reported its findings – that the proceeds of the deal were indeed to go towards buying arms and ammunition in Holland – and Erle was named to a committee to enquire further into the matter.218CJ ii. 619a, 619b. On the same day, he was appointed to manage a conference concerning letters intercepted from Holland, and on 16 June he was named to the committee to peruse the same, and reported the mundanity of their contents.219CJ ii. 620b, 626b, 627b; PJ, iii. 85. At the beginning of July, Erle briefly returned to Dorset to assess the situation there, and forwarded information concerning the muster of troops by the royalist Digbys at Sherborne, and told the House of his fears that the county magazine at Dorchester was under threat.220CJ ii. 648a, 675a, 676a; PJ, iii. 215, 221. On 28 July the Commons appointed Erle, Holles, John Browne I* and Sir Thomas Trenchard* as commissioners for putting the Militia Ordinance into execution in Dorset; and before his departure, on 3 and 4 August, Erle was messenger to the Lords for the indemnity of those who defended the magazine at Dorchester against the royalist forces, and brought their concurrence.221CJ ii. 694b, 701b, 702b; LJ v. 262b.

The outbreak of civil war in Dorset, Aug.-Dec. 1642

Erle returned to Dorset in the first week of August 1642, and immediately became involved in arranging the defence of the county against the marquess of Hertford’s military operations in the south west. He joined Sir Thomas Trenchard in putting the Militia Ordinance into operation at Weymouth, where they were fired on by the town clerk for their pains.222CJ ii. 742b. On 10 August 1642 Erle stood bound with Trenchard, Browne I, John Hill and Richard Burie for a £2,600 bond securing £1,300 borrowed for the defence of the country from John Fitzjames*, and on the following day he was bound for £1,000 for a further £500 borrowed from John Mitchell.223Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 82. Both of these sums were for the payment of troops under William Russell*, 5th earl of Bedford, who was besieging Hertford’s men in Sherborne Castle. Erle accompanied Bedford on this expedition, and his efforts in raising local support for the enterprise attracted the opprobrium of the royalist John Poulett†, 1st Baron Poulett, one of the defenders of the castle, who blamed Erle for fomenting disorder, and branded him as ‘the wickedest rogue of all, and one of the devil’s limbs’.224Bayley, Dorset, 46-8. The 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde*) later concurred with Poulett, describing Erle and Holles as the ‘ephori’ whose support for Bedford was vital in encouraging locals to join the siege of Sherborne.225Clarendon, Hist. ii. 299.

With the presence of marauding royalists barely ten miles away at Sherborne, the fortification of the county town of Dorchester was a particular priority, as Erle told Speaker Lenthall on 13 August. He requested that money paid by the inhabitants of Dorchester for the defence of Parliament might now be returned, for the safety of the whole county depended on the defence of the town.226HMC 5th Rep. 42-3. His pleas had some effect. On 15 August the Commons ordered that money paid from Dorchester, and Dorset more generally, should be sent back to Erle and Holles, and this was confirmed by the Lords, and order given for £800 to be sent from the treasurers of London on 27 August.227CJ ii. 720b, 740b; LJ v. 293b. In the meantime, Erle was reimbursed by the county treasurer for sums spent in August and September 1642 on payments to James Gould’s* foot company and to the town gunners of Dorchester.228Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 91, 98. At the beginning of September 1642 Erle raised his own troop of horse, which operated in his absence under the command of Thomas Sacheverell.229SP28/128/30.

Erle had returned to Parliament by the beginning of October 1642. He took the covenant to adhere to the earl of Essex in the common cause on 10 October, and was named to a committee of three MPs (the others being Sir Henry Vane II and Sir William Armyne) to put forward names for a commission to preserve the peace with the Scots.230CJ ii. 802b, 803b; Add. 18777, f. 26. Erle’s first priority was Dorset. On 10 October he warned the House that matters in the county ‘were not so well settled… but that new stirs might still break forth if not timely prevented’ as there was considerable support for the king in the county.231Harl. 164, f. 10v. Two days later the House was informed that Erle had been approached by Sir Gerard Naper*, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, Sir John Strangways and other local royalists in the hope that he might be persuaded to cooperate with the marquess of Hertford.232Add. 18777, f. 27. Erle acted as messenger to the Lords on the same day, with a proposal to augment the deputy lieutenants of Dorset and provide for the defence of Exeter, and he was ordered to continue his role in suppressing the ‘rebellion’ of Hertford in the west.233CJ ii. 805a, 805b; LJ v. 397b. In response to the last order, Erle had returned to Dorset by 21 November, and soon became involved in the parliamentarian war effort across the south west. He travelled into Somerset at the end of December, was ordered to raise money with the deputy lieutenants of Devon for the defence of Lyme Regis on 31 December, and on 4 January 1643 he was paid for his troop of horse ‘when he marched into Devonshire’.234Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 83v, 101v; Add. 18777, f. 110v.

Treaty of Oxford and war in Dorset, Jan.-Aug. 1643

On his return to Westminster in January 1643, Erle resumed his position as a senior statesman. As such, he was deeply involved with the negotiations and decisions made during and after the abortive treaty at Oxford throughout February, March and April.235CJ ii. 975a, 978a, 978b, 999a; iii. 34a, 50b, 58a; LJ v. 712a. At this time Erle was allied to the more extreme elements in the Commons in opposing a lenient treaty: on 18 February he was teller with Hampden against setting a time for the disbandment of the two armies, and in this opposed his local associate, Denzil Holles, siding instead with what D’Ewes called ‘the fiery spirits’.236CJ ii. 970b; Harl. 164, f. 302-v. Erle continued to support preparations for the continuation of the war: on 18 February he was named to the committee to negotiate a new loan from the City of London, on 7 March reported from the committee to allow London to fortify itself, and on 9 March was named to the committee to raise money for the army’s new campaign.237CJ ii. 970b, 992a, 995b. During this period he was twice included in committees to attend the earl of Essex about the details of the peace negotiations.238Harl. 164, ff. 305v, 316v; Add. 31116, p. 54. Some of Erle’s activities were distinctly provocative. He was teller against the bailing of the queen’s friend Sir Kenelm Digby; named to a committee to prosecute Henry Bourchier, 5th earl of Bath; and on 25 March was teller with Strode (again in opposition to Holles) against attempts by the Lords to reverse an earlier order banning the firing of a salute from the Tower on the king’s birthday.239CJ ii. 979a; iii. 18a, 20b. This last matter saw Erle once again aligned with the ‘hot spirits’ in the Commons, although his objection was apparently a procedural one, for ‘if we should reverse this order we seem tacitly to give the Lords power to dispose of our powder’.240Harl. 164, ff. 342-3.

Apart from his belligerent stance over the Oxford treaty, Erle’s main concern in the spring of 1643 continued to be the fate of Dorset. On 6 February he urged MPs to discount intelligence that Sir Ralph Hopton* had abandoned the siege of Plymouth, saying that he had better information: ‘that he continued still with his main army near or about Plymouth, where they began to raise works to batter the town’.241Harl. 164, f. 289v. Soon afterwards, Erle was alarmed by the rise of neutralism in the south west, and moves towards a non-aggression pact between the moderates of both sides which coincided with the negotiations at Oxford. Erle’s colleagues in Dorset, notably Sir Thomas Trenchard, John Browne I and John Fitzjames, were all involved in local peace talks at Exeter; on 11 March, Erle was named to a committee, led by Pym and Strode, to order the parliamentarian commanders not to participate in this initiative; and on 18 March he was named to a further committee to consider the treaty between Devon and Cornwall which had just been signed.242CJ ii. 998b; iii. 8a. Perhaps as a result of the wavering allegiances of some of Erle’s Dorset colleagues, there was a delay in Parliament’s measures to repay the loans raised locally to assist the earl of Bedford at Sherborne in 1642. This was of obvious concern to Erle and Holles, who, as sureties, stood to lose large sums. On 5 April, however, Erle was named to the committee (with Holles and John Trenchard) for repayment, and the ordinance to implement this was passed three days later.243CJ iii. 30b, 36a. The reversal of this issue was perhaps a measure of the influence that Erle now commanded in the House.

At the end of April 1643, Erle was put in command of Parliament’s forces in Dorset. This move was presumably encouraged by his unrivalled local knowledge rather than his military prowess. On 10 April, for example, he had revealed to the Commons the king’s attempt to encourage Weymouth to defect, but advised that the corporation was in fact divided and as ‘the mayor of Weymouth was faithful to the House’ he should receive encouragement.244Harl. 164, f. 362. When the ordinance was brought in, by Erle himself, on 28 April, it stipulated that he would be given authority ‘to levy forces in Dorsetshire and command them in the place and office of sergeant-major-general over all the forces in that county’. This raised eyebrows in the House, and although D’Ewes asserted ‘that no man would be against trusting of this gentleman, whose integrity we all know’ he added that the exalted rank ‘may be omitted because it will ask great pay’.245Harl. 164, f. 381. The ordinance was re-committed, to be read and agreed – with Erle serving as ‘colonel of certain forces in Dorsetshire’ – on 1 May; and Essex was asked to provide a commission on the same day.246Harl. 164, f. 381-v; CJ iii. 63a, 65b, 66a-b. The appointment was approved by the Lords on 2 May.247CJ iii. 67a, 67b; LJ vi. 25b, 26b, 29a, 30a; HMC de Lisle, vi. 83. This hasty promotion was probably in response to the successes of Hopton and Prince Maurice in the west, and it was followed by specific appointments which reflect this urgency. On 2 May Erle was named to a committee to consider a riot in Dorset, on the following day he was appointed commissioner for the weekly assessment in the county, and he also came under the order of the Commons for the deputy lieutenants of the western counties to prevent general disorders.248CJ iii. 67b; LJ vi. 29a, 30a. Erle left for Dorset, to take up his new responsibilities, shortly afterwards.

Erle’s career as commander of the Dorset forces was brief and inglorious, cruelly exposing his lack of military experience. In 1641 Erle had described himself as a sword-man rather than a gown-man, no doubt considering his volunteering in the Low Countries as giving him a measure of expertise; and although he was involved in the militia before the civil war, and had a role in the raising of troops and money for Parliament in 1642, his military knowledge was more theoretical than practical. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper – a close friend of Sir Walter’s son, Thomas – pictured him as a positively Shandean character:

Sir Walter had been a Low Country soldier, valued himself upon the sieges and service he had been in; his garden was cut into redoubts and works representing these places, his house hung with the maps of those sieges and fights [that] had been most famous in those parts.249Christie, Shaftesbury, i, appx i. p. x.

An amateur military historian was not the ideal commander for Dorset, but Erle’s appointment was more a symptom than a cause of the subsequent collapse of Parliament’s war in the south west, which was still reliant on local gentlemen rather than professional soldiers.

Erle had arrived in Dorset by mid-May, and wrote to Speaker Lenthall brimming with confidence that ‘the business of settling the affairs of this county goes cheerfully on ... and men’s affection to the king and Parliament more discovering themselves than was conceived’.250Bodl. Nalson XI, f. 184. A subsequent letter from Erle and Browne I, read in the Commons on 23 May, was also upbeat, informing the House that the renegade Sir Gerard Naper was now ready to serve the parliamentarian cause.251CJ iii. 105b. By the beginning of June the danger of the situation was becoming more apparent. The royalists at Salisbury and Prince Maurice’s troops at Sherborne menaced Dorset from the north, as Hertford with Hopton and the Cornish army approached the county from the west. Erle had hoped to be relieved by the forces under Sir William Waller*, but Parliament had other ideas, much to Erle’s exasperation: ‘I know not how, some other direction and command intervening, he went a quite contrary way, and sat down before Worcester’, he complained to Lenthall.252Bodl. Nalson XI, ff. 189-91; HMC Portland, i. 710-2.

Erle’s sense of isolation soon increased. He complained that his fellow deputy lieutenants for Dorset had shut themselves up in the well-defended town of Poole, and, later in June, he was indignant at the repeated demands of Waller and the earl of Warwick for troops, arguing that ‘such commands are laid upon us as, if they be obeyed, will in all likelihood utterly ruin us’.253Bodl., Nalson XI, ff. 191, 201-3. Erle’s resistance to such requests was then attacked by the parliamentarian rather than by royalist pamphleteers, as he complained to Lenthall on 11 July: he had been accused ‘first, that if I had the earl of Essex’s armies, I would not think it enough to defend Dorchester, and second, that I was besieging Corfe Castle three miles off’.254Bodl., Nalson XI, f. 214. If Erle’s stubbornness had led to the first allegation, his conduct at Corfe more than substantiated the second, for his operations against Lady Bankes were already bordering on the farcical. In June Erle had set up his headquarters at Wareham, two miles from the castle, as the town of Corfe was vulnerable from sniping and sallies by the royalist garrison. Perhaps mindful of his experience in Flanders, Erle tried a variety of stratagems to take the castle. His first attempt involved two siege-engines, the ‘sow’ and the ‘boar’, which were quickly discovered not to be musket-proof. In desperation, Erle’s next attack involved Dutch courage and scaling ladders: it was repelled with 100 casualties.255Bayley, Dorset, 83-7.

Erle’s fears of the royalist advance on Dorset were realised in early August 1643. Bristol fell to the king on 26 July, and Erle sent a panicky letter to Westminster warning that ‘this country will become a prey’ without immediate support.256Add. 18778, f. 9. On 2 August Dorchester surrendered to Lord Carnarvon, and on hearing the news, Erle immediately abandoned the siege of Corfe and retired to Poole, whence he took ship for Southampton. Weymouth was captured without a fight. The defence of Dorset had collapsed in a matter of hours.257Bayley, Dorset, 100-5. Recriminations followed. Erle wrote to Lenthall from Southampton on 6 August, in an attempt to counter his critics at Westminster: ‘as touching the business of Corfe Castle, I shall give you such an account of my proceedings in it, as that I shall not deserve any such censure as by some hath been laid upon me’.258Bodl. Nalson XI, ff. 236-8. The letter was read to the Commons, and the business of the fall of Dorset was referred to a committee including Browne I, Holles and Denis Bond on the following day.259CJ iii. 196b; Add. 31116, p. 136. The royalist pamphleteers had a field-day, and Clarendon wryly commented that Erle had made ‘more haste to convey himself to London than generals use to do who have care and charge of others’.260Mercurius Aulicus 31 (5 Aug. 1643), 420-1 (E.65.13); Clarendon, Hist. iii. 158.

Westminster politics, Aug.-Dec. 1643

Erle had returned to Westminster by 18 August 1643, to find Parliament in disarray over the handling of the war, and eager for reformation of the military, and in particular to promote regional commanders as an alternative to the indecisive earl of Essex. He acted as messenger to the Lords for a conference on instructions for a committee to attend Essex on 19 August.261LJ vi. 191a; CJ iii. 211b. Although he had been let down by him before, Erle saw Sir William Waller as the best hope for recapturing the west country, and this brought some frostiness with Essex and his supporters. On 26 August Erle joined Pym and Sir Gilbert Gerard on a committee to examine Sir John Evelyn of Surrey*, suspected of opposing the appointment of Waller to a new independent command; and shortly afterwards Essex complained to the House that a troop under Erle’s son-in-law, Richard Norton*, had been allocated to Waller rather than to him.262Harl. 165, ff. 153, 158, 179v. Other alternatives were available. Erle was evidently in favour of the Solemn League and Covenant which paved the way for the Scottish army to intervene in the civil war: he was added to a committee to defend the same against hostile petitions, and was one of the first MPs to take the oath on 22 September.263CJ iii. 245b; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 480. On 20 September Erle was also named to a committee to liaise with the London militia for doubling the guard on the City outworks, and at the end of the month he was engaged in securing regular money supplies for the war effort generally.264CJ iii. 249b, 257b. The urgency of such measures was reduced by Essex’s success in relieving Gloucester on 8 September and gaining a winning draw against the king at Newbury on 20 September. Three days after Newbury, Erle was named to a committee to urge the common council of London to hold a day of thanksgiving for the lord general’s victories.265CJ iii. 253b. Erle’s own reputation also began to recover at about the same time. Although he had lost his command at the end of August 1643, on 8 September provision was made for the payment of a tenth of the arrears of Erle’s troop, along with two other Dorset units.266CJ iii. 221b, 224b, 233b. The face-saving measures continued on 20 September, when Parliament ordered that the remnant of Erle’s troop would be restored to him ‘if he returns to the county’.267CJ iii. 249b.

The final months of 1643 saw Parliament’s position undermined. Erle acted as messenger to the Lords and leading committees to consider the serious implications of the Cessation of Arms between the Irish royalists and Catholic confederates, news of which reached Parliament on 19 October.268CJ iii. 282b, 286a. Events in Ireland heightened Erle’s concerns about the parliamentarians in the west of England, where the royalists had recovered and were, if anything, more powerful than before Newbury.269Gardiner, Great Civil War, i. 238. Meanwhile the threat from the marquess of Newcastle in Lincolnshire was countered by the appointment of Edward Montagu†, 2nd earl of Manchester as commander of the Eastern Association, and Erle was named to a committee to consider the funding of his army on 2 October.270CJ iii. 260b. On 12 October Erle was also named to Pym’s committee to ensure funds for Essex’s army, but it was becoming clear that more than money was required to exploit the successes of the Gloucester campaign.271CJ iii. 274a. On 27 October Erle was named to the Committee of the West, in company with Edmund Prideaux I, Denis Bond and other Dorset MPs, and three days later he was appointed to a committee to consider information concerning Anthony Nicoll* and the defence of Exeter.272CJ iii. 291b, 294b. During these months, impatience with the conduct of the war once again raised doubts about Essex as a commander. The Committee of the West formed the focus for opposition to Essex at this time, with the vote on whether to demand the appointment of Waller as governor of Portsmouth on 30 October giving the ‘western men’ a chance to flex their muscles. Interestingly, Erle was teller against this move, but over the next few weeks he increasingly sided with Essex’s enemies.273Harl. 165, f. 199. On 2 November Erle was named to a committee to acquaint the lord general with the dangerous condition of Waller’s army, and urge him to send aid to his fellow general.274CJ iii. 299b; Add. 31116, p. 177. On 7 November Erle was named to a committee with Prideaux I and Robert Reynolds to interrogate Essex’s cousin and ally, the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†) who had returned shamefacedly to Westminster after his brief defection to the king in the summer of 1643.275CJ iii. 304a. Erle was certainly suspicious of royalist intrigue, on 20 November telling the Commons that ‘whereas there hath been at Oxford propositions for peace, so there hath been for war’, and produced captured letters to prove it.276Add. 18779, f. 8. His eagerness to pursue the war effort later in November, whether in Dorset, Ireland or London, also suggests dissatisfaction with the status quo.277CJ iii. 305b, 320a, 323a. On 5 December he was messenger to the Lords for a payment of £1,000 from the excise to Waller; he was named to committees to consider the business of other regional commanders, Lord Wharton and Lord Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*; 7 Dec.); and when on the same day proposals were made to raise £30,000 for Essex to field 6,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, Erle was quick to revise down these estimates, saying ‘it will maintain but 5,000 foot and 1,500 horse’.278LJ vi. 324b; CJ iii. 324b, 333a; Add. 18779, f. 23.

Lieutenant of the Ordnance, Dec. 1643-Apr. 1645

John Pym’s death on 8 December gave Erle an opportunity to re-establish himself in military circles, as on 11 December John Glynne proposed, and the Commons resolved, that he should take over Pym’s office as lieutenant of the ordnance, ‘with the same terms as that of John Pym’.279CJ iii. 337a; Add. 18779, f. 28. This was seen by some as just compensation for Erle, ‘who had all he hath taken from him’ when Dorset fell to the royalists, but it was not universally popular.280Add. 31116, p. 198. When the resolution was taken to the upper House the Lords declined to accept it, replying that they would send their own messengers.281CJ iii. 339a; LJ vi. 338b. There followed a delay of many weeks. On 12 February 1644 the Commons desired the Lords to expedite the order appointing Erle as lieutenant.282LJ vi. 422b. By 22 February the resolution had still not been ratified, and a conference on the matter was requested, with Holles as reporter to the Commons.283CJ iii. 404a, 404b; LJ vi. 437a. At the conference it became clear that the Lords desired an alternative candidate, Colonel William Davies*, but the Commons were insistent, and the Lords eventually concurred with the appointment of Erle, the ordinance being passed on the same day.284LJ vi. 437a, 439a; CJ iii. 405a.

The Lords’ reluctance to countenance Erle’s appointment may have been prompted by his antipathy towards Essex in the closing months of 1643. He was not prepared to go as far as some of his colleagues, however. On 1 January 1644, when Sir Arthur Hesilrige* nearly came to blows with Sir Philip Stapilton over the granting a wider commission to Waller by Essex, Erle tried to calm the protagonists. According to D’Ewes, Erle ‘did very wisely and seasonably settle this business’, telling MPs that they should ask the earl to grant the commission, ‘and that he did make no question but when the lord general did understand the sense of the House he would send a new commission’, but that it was vital to avoid ‘further division and disunion’ in the parliamentarian ranks.285Harl. 165, f. 266v. Another incident a few days later reveals the range of Erle’s associates at this time. On 6 January the House investigated the case of Colonel Read, a royalist whose escape from prison had been engineered ‘because he was able to do some service and make some discovery which could not be made except he had his liberty’. The prime mover in this was the Antrim planter, Sir John Clotworthy*, but Erle was also implicated when the plan misfired.286Add. 31116, pp. 211-2; Add. 18779, ff. 43, 46.

Despite such factional ambiguities, from the beginning of 1644 Erle once again struggled to control his dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war. Although the situation in Dorset remained desperate, with Prince Maurice now besieging Lyme Regis, Erle seems to have been reluctant to reinforce Essex’s army as it prepared to march into the west.287CJ iii. 344b, 351b, 352a. On 20 January he was messenger to the Lords, carrying the ordinance for recruiting and funding the forces of the Eastern Association under the earl of Manchester, and ten days later was named to a committee for raising money for the four associated counties commanded by Waller.288CJ iii. 371a, 383b; LJ vi. 385a. During February, Erle received several appointments which suggest that he was in favour of the formation of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, which would replace the Committee of Safety, and he acted as messenger on the ordinance which established the new body on 25 February.289CJ iii. 387b, 396a, 396b; LJ vi. 421a. Erle’s eventual appointment to the lieutenancy of the ordnance at the end of February should therefore be seen as something of a victory for the opponents of the lord general. Erle’s lieutenancy was not an honorary office, moreover. He was granted effective control of the supply of ordnance to the armies in a Commons order of 21 March 1644, which stipulated that all indentures for delivery should be between the lieutenant and the recipient alone.290CJ iii. 433b. Three days later, the Commons recognised Erle’s practical control when they ordered him and Sir John Meyrick* to decide how to disburse £1,500 for the artillery train; and at the beginning of April, Erle was exercising a similar control over supplies of ammunition for the navy.291CJ iii. 439b, 448b. On 4 May the customs controllers of London required all ordnance on merchantmen to be warranted by Erle personally.292Add. 32426, f. 5. By the summer of 1644 Erle thus had control of all aspects of the ordnance office, working in conjunction with the Committee of Both Kingdoms, which issued him with instructions for the supply of ammunition to specific garrisons, and for the certification of stores.293CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 45-517.

The extent to which Erle went on to use his position to undermine Essex is not clear. Some of the evidence of his involvement in parliamentary business certainly seems to point that way. On 27 February Erle was named with Prideaux I, Bond and other stalwarts of the Committee of the West to a committee to consider the funding of Waller’s new army, which was to take over the offensive from Essex.294CJ iii. 409b. On 29 February Erle was messenger to the Lords with a proposal to send a mere £1,000 to pay Essex’s soldiers, which the Lords countered by giving their consent for £2,000.295LJ vi. 445a; CJ iii. 411a. In March Erle was named to the committee, chaired by Robert Scawen, to consider a new establishment for the armies.296CJ iii. 437a. On the other hand, when on 21 March it was proposed that Manchester be promoted, Erle ‘moved very honestly to know if this were in the order by which the committee was to be directed’ and persuaded the House not to interfere.297Harl. 166, f. 36v. On 17 April, when the loss of Wareham was reported to the Commons, Erle was critical of Waller for abandoning such towns to their fate, ‘taking away 150 horse from them but taking no course to secure them’.298Harl. 166, f. 49v. The aftermath of Waller’s defeat of Hopton at Cheriton at the end of March may have changed Erle’s mind. In early April, Erle was named to a committee to ask the London militia committee to send out troops to reinforce Waller after his victory.299LJ vi. 504b; CJ iii. 451a. Later in April, favouritism can perhaps be detected when Erle acted as messenger to the Lords for their agreement with a grant of £8,000 from the sequestration revenue to Fairfax, while only £500 was allowed for Essex’s artillery train.300LJ vi. 523b. But in May Erle was impatient at what he saw as inaction by all the armies. On 3 May he said that 100 barrels of powder were ready for despatch to Waller, ready for his return to the west, and three days later he used bad news from Lyme Regis to warn that ‘if some speedy help were not sent, [Prince Maurice] would take it’.301Harl. 166, ff. 54v, 56v. Nor had Erle given up, in any decisive way, on Essex. On 9 May he was named to a committee to make a new establishment for Portsmouth and other strongholds under Essex’s command, and on the same day the Commons ordered that the Committee for Advance of Money should make provision for ammunition for Essex’s army, under Erle’s instructions.302CJ iii. 486a, 487b. On 18 May he presented letters from Essex to the House, and promised that powder and other supplies would be sent to the earl to allow his army to advance.303Harl. 166, f. 63v.

Erle’s priority throughout this period was for either Waller or Essex – or preferably both – to recover the west, rather than advancement of narrow factional interests at Westminster. His support for the Scottish alliance may also have been practical rather than party-political. As early as January 1644, Erle was involved in the discovery of a London plot against the Scots.304Add. 18779, f. 43. In March he was named to committees to ensure the Solemn League and Covenant was signed by English subjects abroad.305CJ iii. 433b. In April £2,300 was awarded to Scottish and English reformado officers, to be administered by Erle as treasurer of the fund.306CJ iii. 465a. When the ordinance which gave the Committee of Both Kingdoms its extensive powers expired in May, Erle was involved in efforts to establish the committee on a permanent basis, against the opposition of Essex’s group.307LJ vi. 542b. Erle was a messenger to the Lords in the complicated transactions between the Houses that resulted on 23 May in the renewal of the Committee on terms that favoured the earl of Essex's opponents in both Houses.308CJ iii. 503b; LJ vi. 563b.

During the summer of 1644, Erle played less of a role in parliamentary politics as he was hard at work reforming the ordnance office. Various attempts were made at this time to bring in a more reliable system of funding: the sequestration of delinquent estates released small amounts of money during the early summer, and Erle was named to committees to discuss alternative sources, but more regular funding was crucial for providing a professional artillery train.309CJ iii. 516b, 518a, 520b, 531b, 536b; LJ vi. 582a. Deliberations continued until the ordnance office was brought under a new scheme for the excise in July, which gave it a regular income of £3,000 every two months, for provision of ammunition for the stores.310CJ iii. 553a, 553b, 554a; LJ vi. 618b, 620b. Erle was not entirely content with these reforms, however, and on 5 August presented a petition to the Commons for setting up a new establishment for supplying the stores in future.311CJ iii. 580b; Harl. 166, f. 104v. This became an ordinance for the commissioners of the excise to pay the increased monthly sum of £2,000 to the ordnance office.312CJ iii. 606b, 613a; LJ vi. 689a. The effectiveness of such moves was undermined by the inability of the military commanders to work together. Erle was particularly bitter that Waller had not lived up to expectations. On 17 July Sir Henry Vane II urged the Commons to give Waller more time to recruit his army before marching in support of Essex, but ‘Holles, Sir Walter Erle and some others spoke very freely that this was to lose the west and to expose the earl of Essex’s army to unnecessary danger’. Crucially, Vane II was backed up by Strode, Bond and ‘other western men’, suggesting that Erle was not tied to their interest.313Harl. 166, f. 98v. On 24 July Holles and Erle again spoke ‘vehemently against Sir William Waller, showing that this delay of his would ruin the west’.314Harl. 166, f. 100v.

With the defeat of Essex at Lostwithiel on 1 September 1644 the military situation became urgent. Erle was involved in emergency measures to resurrect the main field army. On 16 September he was ordered to arrange for 12 new cannon to be cast for the lord general, and on 3 October £9,000 collected for the maintenance of the army was diverted to furnish a new artillery train for Essex, the message being taken to the Lords by his Dorset colleague, Giles Grene.315CSP Dom. 1644, p. 508; 1644-5, p. 10; CJ iii. 650b; LJ vii. 10a. On 12 October Erle was given charge of making 62 new flags for Essex’s regiments.316CJ iii. 661a. By order of both Houses of 18 October the excise commissioners were ordered to pay £11,000 arrears to the ordnance office.317LJ vii. 28b. By this time wide-ranging reform was already being considered. On 19 October Erle was named to a committee to advise the parliamentary Committee of Accounts in taking stock of all arrears due to army officers.318CJ iii. 670a. On 25 October Erle was named to a committee to consider the fortifications around London and Westminster, which remained vulnerable to a royalist advance.319CJ iii. 676a. The second battle of Newbury on 27 October, although indecisive, at least eased the immediate pressure on the capital, and encouraged both sides to consider a peace agreement. Erle had been appointed to a committee to receive the king’s letter to Westminster on 16 September, and on 16 December he was named to another committee to consider the reply from Oxford to peace propositions tabled by Parliament – the initial moves towards what would become the Uxbridge negotiations.320CJ iii. 629a, 725b. In the meantime, Essex’s enemies had begun to organise. There had been calls for wide-ranging reforms to the military system since Lostwithiel, and Erle was drawn into the debate. On 23 October he had reported to the House ‘some differences betwixt him and the other officers touching his authority’ and asked for a committee to be appointed to investigate.321Harl. 166, f. 154v. On 14 November he was named to a committee to consider the value of offices and places bestowed by Parliament, and to examine Members’ interests.322CJ iii. 695b. On 4 December he was named to a committee to consider Holles’s attack on Cromwell, in defence of Manchester over the Donnington Castle fiasco the previous October.323CJ iii. 714a.

During the controversy that surrounded moves to new model the army in the early months of 1645, Erle seems to have been broadly supportive of reform. On 24 and 31 January he was named to committees to examine the petitions of Bedfordshire and Kent against outrages of the soldiery: an issue which was used to put pressure on the Lords to accept changes to the army.324CJ iv. 28b, 38a. By 5 February 1645, the New Model legislation was in the open, and on that day Erle was named to a committee to consider the first proviso for raising a new army under Sir Thomas Fairfax*.325CJ iv. 42b. The New Model ordinance was passed on 17 February, and immediate steps were taken to recruit and re-equip a new army against the king; a day later Erle was added to the committee to take care of recruiting Fairfax’s forces, and on 1 March the Parliament passed an ordinance to raise a loan for the ordnance office.326CJ iv. 52a, 65a, 66a; LJ vii. 258b-69a. Erle’s importance at this time is suggested by other appointments: on 4 March he was named to the committee to give thanks to the Scots for their part in the Uxbridge negotiations with the king, and on the following day he acted as messenger to the Lords for a public fast.327CJ iv. 69b. On 14 March he was first-named to a committee to contract arms for the service of Parliament’s armies.328CJ iv. 78a.

Factional shifts, Apr.-Dec. 1645

Although Erle lost his office as lieutenant of the ordnance under the Self-Denying Ordinance (passed on 3 April 1645), he was compensated by new appointments to commissions. Erle was involved in the new arrangements for the navy: on 10 April he was reporter of a conference concerning the need for the earl of Warwick to relinquish his admiralty commission, on 15 April he was named to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports*, and this order was ratified by the Lords four days later.329CJ iv. 106a, 111b, 112a; LJ vii. 327a. Thereafter, Erle became one of the most frequent attenders at the Admiralty Committee’s meetings, working with his old friends Giles Grene and John Rolle.330Supra, ‘Cttee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports’. Erle continued to play a role in the ordnance office even after losing the lieutenancy. He remained active in supplying ordnance to the navy until mid-May; organised the supply of ammunition and equipment to the New Model during April, May and June; and something of his importance is revealed by the fact that he was still routinely addressed as ‘lieutenant of the ordnance’ by the Derby House and Army Committees and the army’s commissaries.331Add. 32426, f. 68; WO47/1, ff. 115v-143v; SP28/30/2. This state of limbo was resolved on 18 June, when Erle was named to what would become the committee for powder, match and bullet, giving him the opportunity to continue as lieutenant in all but name, contracting for ammunition, replenishing the stores, arranging the payment of money owed to suppliers and sending powder and shot to garrisons and the army itself.332CJ iv. 178b, 196a, 207a, 214b, 217a, 217b, 307b, 321a, 323b, 336a, 351a, 352a, 353a, 387b, 390a, 398a, 418b, 424a-b, 480a, 481a, 500b; LJ vii. 468a, 507a, 508a, 663a; viii. 134a, 222a; CSP Dom. 1644-5, passim. He was also compensated financially, being included in the list of MPs to receive a weekly allowance, and he was granted his pay arrears as lieutenant of the ordnance by warrants of the Committee for Revenue.333CJ iv. 161a; SC6/CHAS I/1662, mm. 6d, 10.

Erle’s activities in the early months of 1645 suggest that he was on good terms with the emergent Independent party, which dominated the Committee of Both Kingdoms as well as the Revenue Committee, perhaps through the good office of his old friend, Viscount Saye. This is also suggested by the events of 10 June, when he acted as teller in favour of the lucrative clerkship of the court of wards being awarded to Saye’s client, Gabriel Becke*.334CJ iv. 169b. The supremacy of the Independent group associated with Saye had shortly before been boosted with the proof of the New Model’s worth in the field, at the decisive battle of Naseby on 14 June 1645. Yet after the frenzied activity of mid-1645, Erle’s involvement in the administration of the ordnance quickly fell off, and he ceased to appear in debenture-books after December 1645.335WO49/82, f. 79ff. This was the first sign that Erle was starting to drift away from Saye and his friends; another indicator was his growing dissatisfaction over religious policy. Erle had not played a major role in religious affairs since the outbreak of civil war, although in 1644 he had been named to committees on ordinances for observing the Lord’s Day (29 Mar.) and for removing ‘ill-affected’ ministers in Hampshire (5 Aug.), and to a committee on admission to communion under the Directory of Public Worship (26 Nov.).336CJ iii. 440b, 579b, 705b. He had also acted as messenger to the Lords with the vote to include Sir William Masham* in the Westminster Assembly (6 Dec. 1644).337CJ iii. 717a; LJ vii. 89b. During the spring and summer of 1645, Erle began to take a greater part in religious issues in the Commons. He was named to committees on ordinances for maintaining ministers in the north (3 Apr.), for regulating Cambridge University (14 June), and on 7 July he was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers.338CJ iv. 97b, 174a, 199a. In the months following he was named to committees on excluding people from the communion (8 Oct.), on maintaining ‘godly preaching’ at Cambridge University (17 Oct.), and on a scandalous remonstrance against the Westminster Assembly (11 Dec.).339CJ iv. 300b, 312a, 373a. These appointments imply that Erle was a supporter of Presbyterian forms in church government, and this impression is reinforced by two incidents. In the first, Erle and his old colleague, Denzil Holles, were ordered on 24 September 1645 to enlist Mr Taylor and Mr Strickland as preachers for the next fast day (and on 29 October Erle and others were sent to present the thanks of the House to the two men).340CJ iv. 284a, 326a. Secondly, in November and December 1645, Erle was added to the committee for the notoriously Presbyterian city of Gloucester, and then named to a committee for maintaining preaching ministers within the city.341CJ iv. 351b, 381b.

If religion was the primary cause of Erle’s uneasiness with the Independent party, his friendliness towards the Presbyterian Scots was perhaps a contributing factor. After Naseby, Independent supporters of the New Model had become increasing hostile to the Scottish army, but Erle did not share their views. On 5 July 1645 he was named to a joint committee with the Lords to prepare instructions for commissioners from Parliament to the Scots; this committee was led by the notable political Presbyterians, John Glynne and John Maynard.342CJ iv. 198a. At the end of the month Erle was named with Holles to another committee to examine information of the Scots commissioners in London against Richard Barwis*.343CJ iv. 226a. On 21 August, when recruiter elections were proposed for Southwark, Erle objected, and ‘would have us debate whether it be now tempus belli’, and thus inappropriate for such important matters: ‘what time is fittest for the summoning of a Parliament is the fittest time of elections’.344Add. 18780, f. 104. On 12 September, Erle was named to a committee to receive the Scots commissioners, and in the new year of 1646 he was appointed to draw up a reply to letters of the Scots commissioners, and to treat with them concerning the vote on the propositions.345CJ iv. 273a, 422a, 491a.

There are other signs that Erle had now turned his back on the Independents. On 1 July he was named to the new Presbyterian-dominated Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs with Holles and Clotworthy, and three days later was named to a committee to consider Lord Savile’s charges against Holles and Bulstrode Whitelocke*.346CJ iv. 191a, 195a. In September Erle again backed Holles when he managed the conference to consider the bailing of Savile, and joined Clotworthy as reporter to the Commons of the reasons that bail should be refused.347CJ iv. 292a, 293a. Despite the impact of religion, the Scots and the Irish situation on Erle’s attitudes at this time, it must be emphasized that his move towards the Presbyterian interest was only gradual, and he did not always toe the party line. He failed to attend the new Irish committee in its first few months, and in November he was a teller against Holles, Stapilton and Clotworthy in votes on laying aside the declaration on church government and continuing the assessment for the relief of Munster.348CJ iv. 336a, 345b. Erle’s position was no less complex in the summer of 1646: in the first three weeks of May, he acted as teller with Hesilrige against Holles on a motion opposing Fairfax, and he was named to a committee against papists led by Scawen and Fiennes; he was teller with Holles against Hesilrige and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire about deciphering papers on 8 May, and was named to a committee for the collection of arrears for the dissolved court of wards, no doubt for the benefit of its former master, Viscount Saye, on 20 May.349CJ iv. 529b, 531b, 540a, 551b.

Political Presbyterian, 1646-7

In the early months of 1646 it seems that Erle was trying to keep on good terms with both factions at Westminster, but such a position soon became untenable. In May 1646, the king abandoned Oxford and threw himself on the mercy of the Scots at Newark, a move which polarised opinion in England and greatly encouraged hopes of a Presbyterian settlement. It also pushed Erle into open association with the Presbyterians at Westminster. An indication of this is his complete absence from all ordnance matters in Parliament from May 1646 onwards, which contrasts strongly with his ubiquity in such matters earlier in the year. His new allegiances were soon apparent in the Commons: in July he joined the Presbyterian attack on the arch-sectary John Lilburne, who had attacked the earl of Manchester in his pamphlet The Freeman’s Freedom Vindicated. Erle was teller with Holles in two votes for committing the business of Lilburne’s petition to the committee of privileges, and was then added to the same committee, to aid the Lords’ prosecution which led to imprisonment in the Tower.350CJ iv. 601a-b. Erle also supported the Presbyterians in their dealings with the Scots, and with the captive king. As early as 9 June he was named to a committee to examine reports of the Scots commissioners, who were trying to persuade Charles to accept a Presbyterian church settlement, and at the end of the month was named to another committee to examine the message of the marquess of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*), who urged Parliament to accept the peace proposals including a commitment to Presbyterianism.351CJ iv. 570b, 586b; Gardiner, Great Civil War, iii. 117. In early July Erle was appointed as one of the MPs to take the peace propositions to the king.352CJ iv. 604a. Four commoners – Erle, Sir John Hippisley*, Robert Goodwin* and Luke Robinson* -- were to accompany the 4th earl of Pembroke and the 2nd earl of Salisbury on this mission.353CJ iv. 606b; LJ viii. 423a. This group left London for Newcastle on 13 July, carrying a series of demands for Presbyterian government of church and state, parliamentary control of the armed forces, and a joint expedition with the Scots against the Irish rebels.354Gardiner, Great Civil War, iii. 127. There can be little doubt that Erle endorsed these propositions: they directly addressed the fears and desires which he himself had entertained since before 1640. The king’s utter refusal even to countenance the propositions must have come as bitter personal blow. On the return of the commissioners, on 12 August, Erle reported the proceedings to the Commons, and the delegates received the thanks of the House for their efforts.355CJ iv. 642a, 643a; Harington’s Diary, 31.

In the aftermath of Charles’s rejection of the Newcastle Propositions, the Scots offered to withdraw their forces from England if Parliament would pay their expenses, and opened negotiations on the fate of the king. Erle was involved in the Scottish disbandment. On 14 August he was teller with Holles against Hesilrige and Evelyn of Wiltshire on a motion to suppress inflammatory attacks on the Scots, and on 5 September he was named to a committee to arrange a loan of £200,000 from the City of London to pay the Scots’ arrears.356CJ iv. 644b, 663a. Erle continued to support moves to bring in Presbyterian religious forms. He acted as messenger on a measure of 22 September to establish the Presbyterian classis in Lancashire, and in October and November he was named to committees to ensure ministers were maintained in particular parishes, and that the churches themselves were kept in good repair.357CJ iv. 689a, 714b, 719b. The Independents retaliated in December with a motion to examine (and condemn) the high Presbyterian Scottish tract Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiatici, and Erle joined Sir William Lewis as teller against this.358CJ v. 11a. Erle and Holles opposed Hesilrige and Evelyn of Wiltshire over the Scottish treaty on 14 December.359CJ v. 12a. Erle also joined Sir Anthony Irby as a teller against lay preachers on 31 December, and was named with Holles to a committee to defend this measure immediately afterwards.360CJ v. 34b, 35a.

Erle’s principal role in January and February 1647 was as a member of the commission which sought the king’s agreement to the revised Newcastle Propositions. He was one of the MPs sent north by both Houses on 6 January to receive the person of the king from the Scots, and was involved in the face-to-face negotiations with Charles at Holdenby in early February.361CJ v. 43a, 44a; LJ viii. 648b, 715a. Erle’s return from this mission, prompted because he had been ‘bruised with a fall’ (or, according to one source, ‘being ill at ease’), was agreed on 22 February, a few days after the Presbyterian-dominated Commons voted to disband the New Model.362CJ v. 92b, 94b-95b; LJ ix. 30b, 31b; HMC 6th Rep. 159; Add. 31116, p. 604. This was no mere coincidence: in the growing crisis the Presbyterian party needed the support of veteran MPs, and other brought back at this time included John Crewe. On his journey south, Erle carried information to Parliament from the remaining commissioners, and later in the spring he sent letters to Holdenby from the Parliament, and joined the Scots commissioners in presenting the final propositions for peace to the king on 21 April.363CJ v. 101a, 137b, 149b; Add. 31116, p. 606. As well as promoting peace with the king, from the beginning of March 1647 Erle was at the forefront of Presbyterian attempts to reduce the power of the New Model army. On 5 March he was narrowly defeated as teller with Lewis against the continuation of Fairfax’s command, and on 27 March, two days before Holles’s ‘Declaration of Dislike’ against the army, Erle was named to a committee to consider a petition to Fairfax as general.364CJ v. 107a, 127b. At the beginning of April he was involved in promoting the ordinance reforming the City of London militia, in order to remove it from Independent control, and on 13 April he joined a committee of four to examine the direct threat posed to Parliament by the New Model.365CJ v. 132b, 140a. Erle was messenger to the Lords on 30 April to inform them of the intention of the Commons to sit on the sabbath to plan a reaction to the Vindication and the Apologie presented to Parliament on the same day.366CJ v. 158a; LJ ix. 163b.

In May Erle was involved in attempts to conciliate the army, but at the same time supported measures to ease its disbandment. He was named to committees to allow indemnity to the army, and to settle £5,000 per annum on Fairfax; he was also involved in efforts to raise money from the City to send units of the New Model to Ireland.367CJ v. 159a, 166a, 167a, 168b. The crunch came at the end of the month. On 20 May Erle and Holles were tellers on a successful motion to condemn the Leveller Petition of Many Thousands.368CJ v. 179b. On the same day, a petition was sent to the Commons from the London mob, attacking Erle, Holles, Stapilton, Glynne and other leading Presbyterians.369Add. 31116, p. 619. On 25 May, the very day the Commons voted the final disbandment of the New Model, an order was passed restoring Erle to his office as lieutenant of the ordnance.370CJ v. 182a; HMC 6th Rep. 178. The vote was taken to the Lords by the leading Presbyterian, Sir William Lewis.371CJ v. 186b, 187a-88b; LJ ix. 207b, 208b.

The tables were quickly turned by the army, however. On 3 June the king was seized by Cornet Joyce, and taken into army custody. Five days later, the impeachment of the Eleven Members – the leaders of the Presbyterian faction, including Erle’s associates, Holles, Stapilton, Clotworthy and Lewis – was demanded by the army; and Parliament, fearful of a military coup, desperately tried to defuse the tension. Erle was not accused with his allies, possibly because of his standing in the House or his family connections with Viscount Saye. Erle reacted to the threat of military intervention with a mixture of conciliation and direct opposition to the New Model. He joined efforts to reduce the immediate threat from the New Model during June, preparing letters to the army commissioners, and acting as messenger for the addition of Independent commissioners to the army.372CJ v. 208b, 209a; LJ ix. 261a. At the same time, he was sent as messenger to the Lords with a vote to require the removal of the army from the environs of London, and on 28 June, the day after the flight of the Eleven Members, he joined Giles Grene as teller against the motion preventing officers and soldiers from leaving their regiments without licence: a measure designed to strengthen Fairfax’s authority.373CJ v. 215b, 226a; LJ ix. 273a.

The brief respite afforded Parliament by Fairfax’s decision to withdraw to Reading was ended with the presentation of the Heads of Proposals by the army on 17 July. This, and calls by the army radicals for a march on London, produced panic at Westminster, and on 19 July Erle was granted leave of absence, one day before the Eleven Members were themselves excused.374CJ v. 250a. The situation in London was also getting out of hand. The vote of 22 July returning the militia to Independent control caused unrest among the reformado officers, and on the same day Erle was named to a committee to examine the disturbances.375CJ v. 254a. Discontent erupted into an assault on the Commons on 26 July, and Erle at first lay low. He had emerged on 30 July, when he was named to the committee to desire the attendance of the Speaker in the Commons; on 2 August he was added to the Presbyterian-dominated ‘committee of safety’, which had been established in June to mobilise London against the army; and he was named to a committee to condemn Fairfax’s arrest of the old Essex client, Sir Samuel Luke*.376CJ v. 259b, 265a; LJ ix. 370b. The Presbyterian counter-revolution was short-lived, however. On 5 August the New Model marched on London and over-awed the Houses of Parliament.

Opposing the Independents, Aug. 1647-Dec. 1648

In the aftermath of the counter-revolution, Erle did his best to hinder the passage of legislation favourable to the Independents through the Commons. On 6 August he joined John Ashe as teller against a clause in the order making Fairfax constable of the Tower.377CJ v. 269a. On 18 August he acted as teller against the ordinance for the reversal of acts passed during the Presbyterian coup being sent to a conference, and, after a show of force had forced the Commons’ hand, he told in favour of the last-ditch attempt to bring amendments to this ordinance on 20 August, in opposition to Evelyn of Wiltshire and Hesilrige.378CJ v. 278a, 280a. The following day, the remaining Eleven Members withdrew, and the Independents again took control of the House.

Erle continued to push for a peace settlement, and he was again sent to the king as a commissioner on 6 September.379CJ v. 293a; LJ ix. 424b. He had returned to Parliament by 30 September, when he was named to a committee to consider the religious propositions, but by this time the king had declared a preference for the Heads, and the propositions were effectively dead.380CJ v. 321b. This was confirmed by the demise of a committee of 6 October, to which Erle was named, to consider the accommodation of tender consciences under a Presbyterian system, and which never reported.381CJ v. 327b.

During October, Erle continued to oppose the army Independents in the Commons, on a range of issues. These included opposition to Independent attempts to wrest control of the navy from the Presbyterians: Erle was teller with Arthur Annesley against the appointment of Captain Mildmay, presumably a relative of the Independent Sir Henry Mildmay, to a naval command.382CJ v. 328a. On 13 October Erle told three times against Cromwell, Evelyn of Wiltshire and Henry Lawrence I in motions to promote toleration within the church.383CJ v. 332a. Three days later he was a teller in a division on the manner of addressing the king with the revised propositions.384CJ v. 335b. Despite his continuing efforts to obstruct the machinations of the Independents, Erle was evidently treated with great leniency by his political opponents. He was allowed to keep his office as lieutenant of the ordnance, and was brought back into administrative duties as early as 14 August 1647.385CJ v. 274b. He was named to army and ordnance-related committees throughout October, and on 6 October was nominated by the Commons to the Committee for Indemnity (although the Lords did not consent to his addition to this committee until January 1648).386CJ v. 322a, 327b, 332b, 337b, 340a; LJ ix. 669a. Erle was also useful as an experienced negotiator. During the week from 30 October, he was named to two committees to draft Parliament’s revised peace terms, including one to consider Nathaniel Fiennes I’s amendment on the compulsory nature of royal assent to bills, although on 6 November he opposed putting to the vote a clause in the preamble requiring the king to assent to the propositions.387CJ v. 346b, 351b, 352b.

The king’s escape from Hampton Court threw the peace process into disarray. On 12 November Erle was named to the committee to consider the king’s escape, but on the following day told against motions to declare as traitors those harbouring or concealing the monarch.388CJ v. 357a, 358a-b. On 15 November, when it had become clear that Charles had crossed to the Isle of Wight, Erle was named to a committee of both Houses to secure the king, and instruct the island’s governor, his son-in-law, Robert Hammond, how to proceed.389CJ v. 359a. On the following day, Erle was messenger to the Lords desiring concurrence for measures to ensure the king’s safety at Carisbrooke.390CJ v. 360a, 360b, 361b; LJ ix. 526b. Charles’s flight had been precipitated by his fear of the growing influence of the army radicals, and Erle shared these concerns. On 16 November he led a committee to enquire into disturbances caused by Levellers in London, and two days later he led another committee to examine the London agents blamed for sedition in the army.391CJ v. 360a, 363a. On 20 November Erle was named to a committee to tell the City authorities of the dangers if the arrears of assessments were not paid to the army.392CJ v. 365a. At the end of November Erle was again pushing for peace with the king, and he attended the Lords as a messenger with an order requiring the Committee of Both Kingdoms to get the Scots to join with Parliament in presenting the revised propositions to the king.393CJ v. 366a; LJ ix. 537b.

During the winter of 1647-8 Erle was involved in military affairs, raising money to disband regiments in the north, garrisons and disruptive elements within the New Model: after initial moves in November and early December.394LJ ix. 537b, 570b; CJ v. 379b. Erle acted as messenger between the Commons and Lords with ordinances for the customs, navy and tonnage and poundage, from 15-22 December.395CJ v. 385a, 388a, 397b; LJ ix. 576a. These activities were followed by appointments to other committees for army pay in the new year of 1648, which culminated on 16 February, when Erle was messenger to the Lords with an ordinance for the new establishment of Fairfax’s army.396CJ v. 465b; LJ x. 44b. Erle’s involvement in military affairs continued during the second civil war. On 3 March he was messenger to the Lords with an ordinance to declare Poyer and his allies traitors, and he carried messages from the Commons to the Lords concerning Pembroke at the end of the month.397CJ v. 478a, 506b; LJ x. 88b. From the beginning of April he resumed activities at the ordnance office, and on 15 April was rewarded by the return of the lieutenant of the ordnance’s official residence in the Minories.398CJ v. 528a, 532b. His activities in connection with the ordnance continued in May, June, July and August.399CJ v. 566b, 591a, 601b, 620a, 648b, 693a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 200, 202. Erle was also drawn into the organisation of the militia at this time. On 4 May he was named to the committee to settle the militia of the kingdom, he supported the vote giving power to the Derby House Committee to raise forces in the emergency, and was involved in settling the militia forces in various localities throughout the summer.400CJ v. 550b, 573b, 576b, 597b. He also had a role in the raising of money for the army, whether in demands that the City pay its arrears of assessment in May, or on a committee to account for the payment to listed officers in June.401CJ v. 558a, 599a. He was named to the committee for the abolition of cathedral chapter lands, and their immediate sale – another way to raise funds in the crisis.402CJ v. 602a.

Despite his importance in the military administration, there are signs that Erle was moving closer to the Presbyterian faction as it grew in confidence in the early months of 1648. On 24 February he was teller against Evelyn of Wiltshire and Hesilrige in favour of a paper from Scotland, and on 1 March he was messenger for orders including one for settling Presbyterian church government.403CJ v. 471b, 475a; LJ x. 82b. Three days later Erle was unequivocal in his attack on Fairfax and the Independents, acting as teller against considering the approbation of the pro-army ‘engagement’ of 4 August 1647; and he was opposed in this by Hesilrige and Evelyn of Wiltshire.404CJ v. 479a. On 9 March Erle was teller against further two motions approving subscription to the engagement.405CJ v. 489a-b. On 17 March Erle was teller in favour of accepting the articles presented from the Presbyterian Westminster Assembly as a ‘confession of faith’, and managed the subsequent conference on their content.406CJ v. 502a-b. On 31 March, Erle was named to the committee stage of an ordinance for the strict observation of the sabbath and fast days, a committee led by the leading Presbyterian, Nathaniel Stephens.407CJ v. 522a. As well as supporting the Presbyterian interest, Erle seems to have supported a degree of leniency towards royalists. He was teller against the imprisonment of the son of Lord Inchiquin, the Irish Presbyterian commander who had recently defected to the royalists in Ireland.408CJ v. 529b. Similarly, on 21 April, Erle told in favour of amendments on a bill for the disarming of delinquents, and against the inclusion of a clause to inflict sequestration as a punishment.409CJ v. 539b. On 29 April Erle was ordered to acquaint his old Dorset friend, Sir John Strangways, of the decision to allow him to compound for royalism.410LJ x. 236b. In May, though preoccupied with measures to fight the war, Erle again supported the Presbyterian government of the church, ‘until the king, Lords and Commons shall alter it’.411CJ v. 574a.

Tolerance of royalism and hard-line religious Presbyterianism, combined with fears of radicals in the army, may have influenced Erle to support moves for new peace negotiations during the summer of 1648. The first indication of this was on 10 June, when he was named to a committee to prepare a declaration on the attempts at peace pursued by the Commons, a move designed to win Presbyterian support against the 1st duke of Hamilton and his adherents.412CJ v. 593a. On 27 June Erle was named to a committee to meet with the Lords to consider new proposals, and on 3 July revealed his reluctance to bind the king when he told against a motion that an act should reinforce the king’s signature on any agreement.413CJ v. 622a. Two days later, Erle was named to a committee to confer with the City authorities to ensure the safety of Parliament and the king during the treaty: presumably fearing army intervention.414CJ v. 624a. Erle was also involved in preparations for a treaty with the king and the Scots during July, acting as messenger to the Lords, carrying peace propositions.415CJ v. 626a, 639a; LJ x. 383b. On 20 July he attended the Lords, desiring a conference on the Scottish army now in England, and he was named to a committee to investigate who ‘invited’ Hamilton to march south.416LJ x. 386a; CJ v. 640b. The upshot of this was Erle’s appointment to a committee to prepare a declaration in favour of the union between England and Scotland: a measure guaranteed to infuriate the New Model.417CJ v. 643b. At the end of July, Erle was teller in favour of amendments to the provisions of the treaty before they were presented to the king, and on 3 August he was named to a committee of five MPs to instruct those who were attend the king with the treaty.418CJ v. 650a, 659b.

By the time of Hamilton’s defeat at Preston at the end of August 1648, Erle was solid in his opposition to the New Model. His role in the ordnance office began to peter out at this time, and his attention turned to threats to Parliament itself. On 17 August he was named to a committee to go into London to examine a rumoured design against Parliament, and in the following week, he was involved in committees to enlist troops within the City and Surrey.419CJ v. 678a, 681b. During September Erle was active in maintaining and recruiting the militia in Dorset, with the support of Parliament, and on 9 October he was named to a committee on an ordinance raising £5,000 to maintain the horse guard on the Houses themselves.420CJ vi. 3b, 8b, 47a; LJ x. 491a. Such forces owed allegiance to Parliament, not to the New Model. Erle also supported the Newport negotiations with the king, which had begun on 18 September. By the end of October, Parliament was hopeful of concluding a treaty, and began to make concessions. On 20 October, Erle was teller in favour of leniency to condemned delinquents, proposing that only seven should be executed.421CJ vi. 57b. Eight days later, Erle and Alexander Rigby I were given special care of reducing the propositions discussed by the standing committees into bills to be set before the king.422CJ vi. 63b. On 1 November he was teller with Clotworthy in favour of accepting the king’s answers to these propositions as satisfactory: a vote that was passed by 82 to 55.423CJ vi. 67b.

Parliament’s eagerness for peace worsened relations with the army further. Erle was named to a committee to attend the City council, complaining that the guard at Westminster was of hired men, not citizens, a situation which made Parliament vulnerable.424CJ vi. 69b. He also became an active member of the Committee for Indemnity in this period, and attended meetings of the Committee of Navy and Customs.425SP24/3; SP16/518/143, 148-9, 164. During November, Parliament tried to further the peace process through leniency to delinquents, and Erle acted in conjunction with Arthur Annesley and others as teller on motions for pardons, and to extend Walter Montagu’s bail.426CJ vi. 70b, 72b, 82b. Parliament also sought to justify its own position, and on 17 November Erle was named to a committee for a bill upholding the proceedings during the war, against oaths, declarations and proclamations.427CJ vi. 79a. Parliament’s worst fears were realised when the king was seized by the army on 1 December, and on 4 December Erle was teller with Robert Jenner protesting that the removal was without the consent or knowledge of the Houses.428CJ vi. 93a. Two days later, Parliament was purged by the military, and Erle was secluded from the Commons and imprisoned.429A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 25 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 147; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1355.

Commonwealth and protectorate

Erle was released from prison only on 29 December 1648.430Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1369. He was stripped of the lieutenancy of the ordnance by 19 January 1649, and despite being ‘snapped at by others’, the post was then put into commission.431Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 498. There followed a period of financial hardship for Erle. The Committee of Accounts pursued him for his unsettled accounts as lieutenant of the ordnance from 1649.432SP28/253/A, i. f. 73; SP28/253/A, ii. f. 194v. In 1650 he was ordered to surrender funds which he had notionally been granted, and money due to him as lieutenant was diverted to the navy.433CJ vi. 351a, 436b, 482b. Erle petitioned Lord Howard of Escrick (Edward Howard*), chairman of the Committee for Advance of Money, on 19 February 1650, begging for arrears of £1,500, and added: ‘I fear the consequence of delay, as some creditors hold their hands, expecting these moneys to come in’.434CCAM 81. To make matters worse, Erle, Browne I and other Dorset parliamentarians were still owed for the 1642 loan to the earl of Bedford, and Browne at least was in danger of being sued.435CCAM 1321.

Erle still had friends, however. In 1652, Sir James Harington noted that while in Somerset he met Erle, Sir Gilbert Gerard and the government supporter, Denis Bond.436Harington’s Diary, 78. Probably on the strength of his continuing popularity in Dorset, Erle was elected to sit for the county in the first protectorate Parliament, with William Sydenham, John Bingham, John Fitzjames, John Trenchard and Henry Henley.437C219/44/1, unfol. As befitted a veteran parliamentarian, Erle was named to the committee of privileges on 5 September 1654, but apparently played no further part in this Parliament.438CJ vii. 366b. Despite his inconspicuous role in the House, Erle’s return for the county in 1654 was part of a wider political rehabilitation. On 28 August 1654 he had been made a commissioner for scandalous ministers in Dorset and Poole, his first such appointment since the purge of December 1648.439A. and O. In February 1655 he was brought back onto the commission of the peace, and other local appointments soon followed.440C231/6, p. 305; C181/6, ff. 95, 377-8; A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 282. When the elections for the second protectorate Parliament were held in 1656, Erle was active in arranging consensus candidates for the Dorset seats, backed by a range of influential gentlemen including Sydenham, Fitzjames and Ashley Cooper.441Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 94v. Erle’s failure to secure election for himself perhaps indicates the divisions within the wider county community at this time. Despite this set-back, Erle was clearly a man of considerable local influence at this time, and was included in a list of magistrates identified as Quaker hate-figures in 1657, being roundly condemned as one of the ‘priest-ridden [Presbyterian] men’.442SP18/130, f. 46.

Uncertainties in England caused by the death of Oliver Cromwell in September 1658 were worsened in Dorset by the death of its most prominent Cromwellian, Denis Bond. The subsequent breakdown of consensus in the Dorset was fuelled by the disputed county election for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, which had reverted to just two seats under the Humble Petition and Advice.443Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 54v. Erle stood for election with the pro-Cromwellian John Bingham*, against Fitzjames and Richard Coker*, who were allies of the crypto-royalist Ashley Cooper. Fitzjames soon realised the threat was serious, and on 22 December moaned to Coker of how ‘Sir Walter Erle and Bingham sit close in counsel at Dorchester, where I am confident... there are monstrous plots in agitation against you and myself’.444Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 88. Erle was in collusion with the sheriff of Dorset, John Strode, who was the brother of Sir Richard Strode, Erle’s brother-in-law. The sheriff apparently delayed the writ of election, and withheld information from Fitzjames to Erle’s advantage.445Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 54r, 55r, 59v. Fitzjames hoped for support from Catstock and other areas, but ‘I am credibly informed that Sir Richard Strode had procured them all for Sir Walter Erle and Colonel Bingham’.446Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 64v. Through such tactics, Erle and Bingham were elected knights for the county, and, in Fitzjames’s words, ‘Colonel Coker and myself were buried alive this day’.447Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 65.

The dispute went deeper than the election. Once in Parliament, Erle continued to harass Fitzjames, who had been returned for the borough of Poole after Ashley Cooper had relinquished the seat in order to sit for the county of Wiltshire. Erle was named to the committee of elections and privileges on 28 January.448CJ vii. 594b. Shortly afterwards he used his position to question the Poole election, prompting Fitzjames to complain of ‘how malice do still persecute me’.449Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 72v, 73. Once again, Erle got the better of his rival, as the report of the committee of privileges and elections of 22 March declared Fitzjames’s return void, and a new writ had to be issued.450CJ vii. 616b. Aside from this local feud, Erle’s main role in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament was that of elder statesman. He helped to nominate and install Chaloner Chute I as Speaker at the beginning of the session, and performed the same duty for the new Speaker, Thomas Bampfylde, after Chute’s death.451Burton’s Diary, iii. 3-4; iv. 92; CJ vii. 640a. He moved the call of the House on 27 January, concerned that electoral rules had been infringed, with ‘one borough that had the right to choose but one burgess had returned two’, challenged the right of Lewis Audley to sit on 7 February, and advised on rules governing several elections disputes as well as the thorny question of whether the Scottish and Irish MPs should sit.452Burton’s Diary, iii. 5, 85, 348, 435, 509; iv. 42, 154, 194, 205, 211-2, 214; CJ vii. 622b. Erle was also on hand to correct his juniors on matters of procedure, Members’ privileges, the records and orders of the House, how to receive petitions and conduct impeachment proceedings.453Burton’s Diary, iii. 155, 199, 248; iv. 3, 104, 108, 172, 358, 411-2; CJ vii. 608b, 610a. On 21 March another veteran MP, Robert Reynolds, had had enough of his interruptions, complaining that ‘some gentlemen (meaning Sir Walter Erle) took a liberty to stand up twenty times a day’; but in early April MPs acknowledged Erle’s expertise when they appointed him chairman of the committee of ceremonies, which considered how the Commons should communicate with the Other House.454Burton’s Dary, iv. 216.

As the Fitzjames case suggests, Erle’s role in this Parliament was far from impartial. In religious affairs, he remained deeply conservative. On 28 January 1659 he championed the precedence of Edmund Calamy against the Independent Dr John Owen* when it came to the choice of preachers for a fast day, and on 5 February supported moves to include the north of England in the scheme for the maintenance of ministers in Wales.455Burton’s Diary, iii. 12, 83. On 14 February he opposed the suggestion that the London petition, framed by Baptists, should receive the thanks of the House, and on 6 April he was near-apoplectic in his response to a Quaker petition, objecting to the use of the title ‘Friends’ and even to their status as ‘petitioners’.456Burton’s Diary, iii. 289; iv. 440, 445. When it came to the Other House, Erle was eager to see it adopt as traditional a form as possible. On 22 February he spoke in favour of the rights of the ancient peerage:

We are bound to maintain their rights. If you lay that aside, you lay aside their inheritance. You bring them into a worse condition than the poorest cottager in England if you take away what is their inheritance.457Burton’s Diary, iii. 420; Schilling thesis, 166.

He returned to the same point on 4 March.458Schilling thesis, 158. On other occasions Erle could be scornful of the membership of the Other House, telling the Commons on 28 February that he knew very few of them, and singled out ‘one that is gone’ – Thomas Pride*, at whose hands he had suffered in December 1648: ‘I should have been sorry to have given my vote that he should have been a Member of that House that had so highly broken the privilege of Parliament’.459Burton’s Diary, iii. 509. On 6 April he was named to the committee to consider transacting with the Other House, and he reported its findings two days later.460CJ vii. 627a, 632a-b.

The status of the Other House had an influence on the validity of the Humble Petition and the authority of the protector. Erle was not uncritical of the new constitutional arrangements, supporting moves in February to ‘take into consideration the business of the Petition of Right, Magna Carta, etc.’ to see whether they were compatible with the Humble Petition, and when it came to the ‘recognition’ of the protector, he joined John Maynard in counselling that ‘a vote does not oblige the Parliament’.461Burton’s Diary, iii. 286, 316. Erle remained sceptical in March, when the distribution of Scottish seats was queried:

I would clear what arises out of the Petition and Advice. His highness is to rule according to the Petition and Advice in all things, and in other things according to the law. I would have it considered if this distribution be according to law.462Burton’s Diary, iv. 123; Schilling thesis, 203.

Yet, as tensions between Parliament and the army grew, Erle came to see the protector and the constitution as a safeguard to Parliament rather than a threat. On 5 April, when a declaration for a new fast day saw the withdrawal of the commonwealthsmen from the chamber, Erle warned of ‘increasing endeavours of some to break us’.463Burton’s Diary, iv. 345; Derbs. RO, D258/10/9/2, f. 21. A day later he joined Major Beake in defending the Speaker against allegations by the leading commonwealthsman, Sir Arthur Hesilrige, that he had flouted convention by attending ‘at court’.464Burton’s Diary, iv. 346. On 12 April Erle was among those who supported the impeachment of the former major-general, William Boteler*, and was named to the committee to draw up the indictment.465Burton’s Diary, iv. 411-2; CJ vii. 637a. Erle was given leave to go out of the House on 18 April, but he was in attendance on 21 April when he condemned the council of officers for assuming the rights of both protector and Parliament: ‘some abroad seem to arrogate the militia to themselves. It is time to look about us. I own the Petition and Advice’.466CJ vii. 641b; Burton’s Diary, iv. 473. Later in the same debate he emphasised the need to bring the officers under control: ‘first determine whether all [military] commissions are void by the death of the protector; and then consider where to place your militia’.467Burton’s Diary, iv. 481. The army dissolved Parliament the next day.

Erle returned to the Commons when the secluded Members were re-admitted in February 1660. He was named to five committees in early March, including those on bills for the approbation of ministers (2 Mar.) and the settling of the London militia (10 Mar.), and he was also appointed to the committee to report to the Commons on the re-establishment of the House of Lords (13 Mar.).468CJ vii. 856b, 857a, 858a, 868b, 872b. Erle was re-elected for Poole in April, and continued to fight for religion and parliamentary privilege, but, as an unrepentant Presbyterian, he was increasingly isolated in a House dominated by returned royalists, and he did not seek re-election in 1661.469HP Commons 1660-90, ii. 270-1. Locally, Erle retained his seat on the local commissions of the peace in the early 1660s, but in retirement he came into conflict with Sir Ralph Bankes*, who demanded compensation for materials looted from Corfe Castle, and added bitterly, ‘if you did well to be instrumental in destroying the castle, you should not have rewarded your good service out of the ruins of it’.470Dorset Hearth Tax, 115-7; G. Bankes, Story of Corfe Castle (1853), 256. Erle seems to have retained a good deal of his family’s wealth, despite his variable fortunes in the previous twenty years, and in his will he was able to grant a portion of £1,000 to his granddaughter, Susanna, while the bulk of the estate went to his grandson, Thomas Erle†.471PROB11/322/328. Sir Walter was buried at Charborough on 1 September 1665.472Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 502-3.

Conclusion

Sir Walter Erle was a veteran opponent of Charles I who established himself, even as early as the Short Parliament, as an expert in parliamentary privilege, procedural matters and election disputes. Perhaps as a result of the respect he enjoyed in the House, he was able to survive severe political set-backs: he lost Dorset for Parliament in 1643 yet was made lieutenant of the ordnance early in 1644; he supported the creation of the New Model in 1645 but was welcomed by the Presbyterian faction by the end of the year; although a fierce opponent of the New Model in 1647 he was not included in the Eleven Members impeached in June; and he was rehabilitated by the Independents in 1648 and by the Cromwellians in the later 1650s. Erle was not, however, a trimmer. His desire to win the first civil war was real enough, and led him to support Sir William Waller and the New Model. When the war was over he pursued a deal with the king and to resist the blandishments of the army and its supporters, even though this ultimately led to his imprisonment at Pride’s Purge in 1648. During the 1659 Parliament Erle continued his policy of supporting a Presbyterian church settlement while fighting for Parliament’s independence from the army, even if that meant lending (qualified) support to the protectorate. Throughout his career, Erle’s objectives remained fairly consistent, even as the political landscape around him changed.