In February 1642, the people of Surrey presented a petition to Parliament. They expressed loyalty to King Charles but distrust of his ministers and of popish influences in the Church.
Tension between the royal court and many of the people it ruled had been growing for many years and was coming to a head.
Surrey looked to Parliament to resist the arbitrary rule of the court. This conflict between court and country also explains why Surrey was strongly Royalist in 1648. By then Parliament had become a more demanding central government than Charles had ever been.
There was very little fighting in Surrey and none around Guildford.
Throughout the wars sir Richard Onslow of Clandon kept Chilworth, and its large-scale gunpowder mill, firmly under Parliamentarian control. Sir Richard was an important man in the area. He was one of the two MPs for the County and was a former Deputy Lieutenant with control of the militia. For militia purposes Surrey was divided into three Divisions, each of which was meant to have a deputy lieutenant in charge. However, when war broke out in the summer of 1642 all three deputies, Nicholas Stoughton of Stoughton, Sir Poynings More of Loseley House and Sir Robert Parkhurst of Pyrford were all Guildford Puritans and friends of Sir Richard.
Having been appointed Colonel of the Surrey militia, Onslow moved rapidly to stamp out any Royalist stirrings. His men disarmed the company of foot that Peter Quennel of Compton had been trying to raise for the King at Haslemere. At the beginning of August he arrested Justice Mallet before he could read a proclamation against Parliament.
Surrey was one of the most parliamentarian of counties and both Guildford's MPs continued to sit in the Long Parliament rather than join the King at Oxford. George Champion, who had been Town Clerk of Guildford since 1629, was dismissed because of his royalist sympathies. He had to wait twenty years, until after the Restoration, to get his job back.
Onslow dominated the committees set up to govern Surrey for Parliament. They occasionally sat at the Red Lion, the largest inn in Guildford, now the site of 'River Island' in the High Street.
One of these committees vetted the parish clergy. In 1645 it sacked Dr Andrews, rector of St Nicolas and Thomas Wall of Holy Trinity for errors of doctrine, scandalous living and drink. Onslow was ably seconded by Nicholas Stoughton, who commanded a regiment of Surrey dragoons from February 1643.
His friendship with Onslow was further cemented in 1647 when his daughter Rose married Sir Richard's son Arthur. Both the middle and the eastern divisions of Surrey contained many gentlemen of royalist sympathies but Onslow prevented them from making direct contact with Sir Ralph Hopton's cavaliers in Hampshire.
The autumn of 1643 brought the military threat closer. Some royalist troops passed through Guildford on 15 September and in October, Sir John Eliot heard rumours that Guildford was going to be burnt by the cavaliers.
When Hopton's army advanced on Farnham in November it was turned back by the Parliamentarian general Sir William Waller. It was a close run thing, and 400 Kentish horsemen had to gallop from Guildford along the Hog's Back to support him. Waller used Farnham Castle as his base and Guildford as a rallying point for reinforcements. Thousands of troops were billeted in and around the town. It was this 'quartering', more than anything else, that turned the local people against Parliament after the war had ended.
In the meantime, Samuel Cordwell continued to make and despatch barrel after barrel of gunpowder from his mills at Chilworth for the use of Parliament. He supplied both the Army, and perhaps more significantly, the Navy. Operating from Portsmouth, the Navy was doing much to defeat the Royalists by cutting off any reinforcements from Ireland and the Continent.
The Surrey militia fought as part of Sir William Waller's army and in June 1644 they mustered at Guildford to besiege Basing House.
The assault on Basing House failed but shows that the Surrey militia was an effective force.
In theory, one man in ten in Guildford would have been fully armed and trained by the time the war broke out. The pikeman would have his 18-foot pike and his armour, and the musketeer his heavy matchlock musket, supplied with powder, match, and bullets from the Western Division's magazine over the Market House in front of Holy Trinity Church. Horsemen posed great problems of organisation and the High Constable of Godalming recorded how hard it was to obtain horses for Stoughton's dragoons.
After the threat of a Royalist invasion of Surrey had evaporated the burden of the war began to be greatly resented. The disruption of trade, combined with poor harvest and outbreaks of plague in Guildford in the summer of 1643 and 1644, led to an economic crisis in the area.
In 1644, the large sum of £50 was granted to unemployed weavers, whose trade was already in decline before the wars began. In July, a Guildford gentleman lamented that the war had damaged trade and this, combined with the high taxes that had been levied there were 'swarms' of poor people. The burden of supporting the armies was increasingly felt to be intolerable. It is clear that much, probably most, of these demands were met but when they continued long after the fighting ended in 1645, Surrey began to wish for the king again.
With the king defeated, the New Model Army turned its attention to political discussion. Early in October 1647, Guildford saw the gathering of 'agitators from five cavalry regiments, including Cromwell's own 'Ironsides'.
They issued a pamphlet, The Case of the Army Truly Stated, in which they demanded that every man over 21 should have the vote. It was more than two hundred years before this actually happened. In December 1647, the farmers of Surrey petitioned Parliament against the quartering of troops, which made it difficult to pay their rents.
In May 1648, a meeting at the White Hart in Guildford supported a county petition urging that the king be restored to his throne and that an end be put to quartering.
A plot by some people in Surrey to restore the King broke out in July when the Earl of Holland led a party of horsemen from Hounslow Heath to Reigate.
However, the professional soldiers of Parliament quickly pursued and destroyed this force near Surbiton. The people of Surrey were unwilling to revive the dying embers of civil war, particularly as one of their major grievances, quartering, had been removed as a result of the petition.
Guildford Museum
Castle Arch
Guildford
Surrey
GU1 3SX
Tel: 01483 444750
Email: museum@guildford.gov.uk