POLITICAL HISTORY for fighting purposes had become utterly demoralized by peace. Charles at first tried to raise soldiers by commissions of array, and, this failing, by dis- arming the train-bands and giving their weapons to his volunteers. Parliament also made the same attempt to use the train-bands and failed. 871 As the train- bands had proved unreliable both sides began the war by voluntary enlist- ment, appealing for subscriptions of men and horses, and this was succeeded by issuing commissions to officers authorizing them to raise regiments, an infantry regiment consisting of 1,200 and a cavalry regiment of 500 men. The regiments raised for the king, unlike those of the Parliament, seem to have been equipped at the expense of their officers, and were raised from the districts where the colonel's estates lay, Lord Paget's, for example, being raised in Staffordshire. The issue of the war was decided by two small minorities: ' The number of those who desired to sit still,' said Clarendon, ' was greater than of those who desired to engage in either party.' In Staffordshire, as in other counties, a neutral party was formed to oppose the entry of any armed party without the joint consent of king and Parliament, but these arrangements were short- lived. The Staffordshire Roman Catholics all fought for the king or remained neutral, as was inevitable ; but most of the Protestant landowners fought against him. Many, like Sir Edmund Verney in Buckinghamshire, believed the war was on behalf of the bishops, for whom they had no love, and a con- siderable number of landowners were neutral, the sequestrations after the war making many men out and out Royalists who would not have been so otherwise. A considerable amount of favour was, however, shown in these seques- trations, owing doubtless to bribery, the most signal instance of which was the case of Walter Astley of Patshull. He was stated to be a disaffected Papist, and had made his house a garrison for the king, for whom two of his sons had fought. An information was laid against him, but no proceedings taken, and he was eventually restored to the full possession of his estates. 2 " Summing up the position of Staffordshire landowers in the Civil War, sixteen Roman Catholics fought for the king, and seven remained neutral. Of the Protestants twelve fought for the king, twenty were neutral, and no less than forty were against him. Mr. Firth 27i) calculates that of the two Houses of Parliament thirty peers supported Parliament, eighty the king, and twenty were neutral ; of the Lower House 300 were for Parliament, 175 for the king, and as there were about 500 members, this would leave a score or so neutral. Comparing these sets of figures the country gentlemen of Staffordshire were more Puritan than the rest of England, for the House of Commons cer- tainly represented that class more than any other in the reign of Charles I, a period when its character and public spirit touched its highest level. Indeed, it was composed of the pick of the country gentlemen, uncontaminated by court life, and with no idea of office-seeking, 'who brought to the counsels of England a directness of intention and simplicity of mind, the inheritance of modest generations of active and hearty rural life, informed by Elizabethan 771 Trevelyan, Engl. under the Stuarts, 223 ; Firth, CromweWs Army, 16, 17. nl Coll. (Salt Arch. Soc. New Ser.), vi (2), 330. 171 CnmweWs Army, 69. i 257 33
