David Underdown's review of Clive Holmes's first book on the Eastern Association

 Looking through some old files a few days ago I came across the late David Underdown's review of Clive Holmes's Book, The Eastern Association in the English Civil War, in the Journal of Modern History (Volume 48 (1976), Pp.324-326). It was generally complimentary about Clive Holmes's scholarship in analysing the economic and social as well as the political fabric of the six counties that formed the Association after the start of the English Civil War. Holmes had brought out the differences between them very effectively. But there was one striking feature in his review: Underdown recognised the influence of the 2nd Earl of Warwick in the county of Essex but thought the Earl and his gentry allies had reinforced rather than created the widespread sympathy for the Long Parliament's cause. There was a danger that support for Parliament at lower levels of society might not be fully appreciated and that the civil war might be seen as a sort of aristocratic fronde in which Parliament's victory might be explained by its possession of superior military force. A couple of obvious points spring to mind. Warwick and his gentry allies like Sir Thomas Barrington, Sir William Masham, Sir Harbottle Grimston and his son, Sir Thomas Cheeke and others were the leaders of the county of Essex, its heads rather than its figureheads. Secondly, the Long Parliament's victory was achieved on the battlefield as Austin Woolrych pointed out. If the forces of Charles I had been successful at Marston Moor in 1644 and Naseby in 1645, then the defeat of the Long Parliament would have been ascribed to its critical lack of support. Underdown was caught in the determinist interpretative schemes of Tawney, Hill, Manning and Stone.

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