The Attempt on the Seven Londoners

Abstract

Abstract Historians of the English Revolution are well aware of the infamous events of 4 January 1642, when Charles I tried to arrest one peer and five Members of Parliament on charges of treason. The failed plan, later known as ‘the attempt on the Five Members’, led to an uproar in both Houses of Parliament and days of rioting in London that drove the king and his family to flee for their safety under the cover of night. Scholars are, however, less aware—perhaps even entirely unaware—of the events of January 1643, exactly one year later, when the king made a fateful attempt to arrest seven politically active Londoners for treason: Isaac Pennington, John Fowke, John Venn, Randall Mainwaring, Richard Browne, Edmund Harvey and Robert Tichborne. This article looks closely at the politics surrounding the king’s ‘second mistake’, and the ways in which City militants and the war party in Parliament manipulated events surrounding the affair in order to escalate the conflict. Much more than simply suggesting that Charles I was at best incorrigible, a king incapable of learning from his mistakes, the attempt on the seven Londoners reveals the significance of the struggle for popular mobilisation in the war-torn metropolis, and indeed the degree to which London had, by early 1643, become a cornerstone of Parliament’s war effort.