‘Friends in Youth’ by Minoo Dinshaw review

Minoo Dinshaw’s Friends in Youth is an original take on the issues that divided friends and families in the opening stages of the English Civil Wars. The story unfolds around the formation and dissolution of the Great Tew Circle connected to the aristocrat and intellectual Lucius Cary. As a young man fresh out of university in the 1630s, Cary counted the jurist John Selden, the theologian William Chillingworth, and the poet Edmund Waller among his intimates, as well as many other luminaries including Ben Jonson.

The ever observant John Aubrey later described Cary’s home at Great Tew as ‘like a Colledge, full of Learned men’. The group that gathered there and in London was characterised by scepticism about religious dogma and toleration of differing political viewpoints. As Dinshaw demonstrates, they were to be divided by their Civil War allegiances, although they were united in their desire for peace and accommodation. As secretary of state, Cary represented the moderates in Charles I’s early war councils, but lost his life tragically (and vaingloriously) as a royalist volunteer at the first Battle of Newbury in 1643.

Cary’s death was mourned by many including both the royalist Edward Hyde and the parliamentarian Bulstrode Whitelocke. Hyde was one of Charles’ most trusted advisers and the author of The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1702-04). Whitelocke was ennobled during Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate and was the author of Memorials of the English Affairs (1681). Their books are among the most significant eyewitness accounts of the conflict, frequently cited in 18th-century disputes between the Whigs and the Tories.

By drawing on their publications and private papers, including letters between the two, Dinshaw charts Hyde and Whitelocke’s parallel legal and political careers, their connections to Cary and Great Tew, and the hard decisions which led them to take opposing sides. They both studied at Oxford University, but their paths first crossed at the Inns of Court where they soon became firm friends. Both were elected to the Long Parliament in 1640 and both opposed Charles’ ship money tax and the powers of the king’s prerogative courts in London and the provinces, but they disagreed about the constitutional role of the bishops. Hyde wanted to retain episcopal membership of the House of Lords, while Whitelocke was willing to remove these rights as an expedient measure.

Dinshaw characterises Hyde as a constitutional royalist intent on supporting a monarchy that conformed to traditional limitations. Early in 1642 he was recruited as Charles’ chancellor and ghost writer, and his hand can be seen in the propaganda war that was waged that summer from the king’s headquarters in York.

In contrast, Whitelocke’s position was more complex. In 1641 he helped to draft the charges of treason against the Earl of Strafford and supported Parliament’s Grand Remonstrance against Charles. As war approached, he was an active deputy-lieutenant in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, where he thwarted the movements of royalist recruits.

In response, Whitelocke’s Buckinghamshire house, Fawley Court, was trashed by the royalists at the start of the war. His estate was later plundered by parliamentarian troops for good measure. His political allegiance is interpreted here as principled, but also pragmatic since his property lay in an area controlled by Parliament.

After the indecisive Battle of Edge Hill in October 1642, Hyde and Whitelocke were both involved in the protracted negotiations between king and Parliament for a settlement. Dinshaw casts both men as moderates in seeking peace, at odds with the warmongers on their own sides. Yet each party wanted peace on their own terms and the discussions were unsuccessful.

The meetings between royalist and parliamentarian commissioners held at Uxbridge in 1645 are given the fullest treatment here and mark the end of this part of the story. Hyde and Whitelocke recorded the events in their memoirs. They renewed their friendship in private meetings, but were unable to reach an accommodation during the summits. This last-ditch effort for peace foundered on the issue of control of the county militias and, although Charles seemed willing to relinquish this royal prerogative for a number of years, his indecision and intransigence proved a barrier to peace.

In writing this dual biography, Dinshaw also treats the reader to the triumphs and disasters of the two men’s private lives, including the deaths of their much-loved first wives. Both remarried, but it is Whitelocke’s daring elopement with his second wife Frances Willoughby, daughter of Lord Willoughby of Parham, that stands out. Her family were eventually reconciled to the marriage, but only after Whitelocke had spirited Frances away in his coach for a clandestine wedding. Hyde played his part in smoothing over the affair with the bride’s brother and uncle.

Friends in Youth concludes with an account of the reckless action at the Battle of Newbury, which resulted in Cary’s death as he galloped through a narrow gap in a hedge only to be cut down by parliamentarian snipers. This coda addresses questions posed by contemporaries about whether Cary had deliberately put himself in harm’s way as a result of depression about either the war or, possibly, his love life.

Biographies of Hyde by Hugh Trevor Roper and of Whitelocke by Ruth Spalding were published in 1975, and Spalding’s edition of Whitelocke’s diaries appeared in 1990, yet the writings of both are little read today. This may well change as a result of Dinshaw’s fresh account of the first half of these men’s political careers. In ending the story in 1645 the way surely lies open for a sequel describing Hyde’s elevation and disgrace as Charles II’s premier minister and Whitelocke’s support for the Cromwellian regime followed by his retirement at the Restoration.

• Friends in Youth: Choosing Sides in the English Civil War
  Minoo Dinshaw
  Allen Lane, 544pp, £30
  Buy from bookshop.org (affiliate link)

Jackie Eales is President of the British Association for Local History and Professor of Early Modern History at Canterbury Christ Church University.