I. Peace Negotiations, Politics and the Committee of Both Kingdoms, 1644–1646

Extract

Early in 1644, the more active and radical men in the House of Commons decided that if the war against the king was to achieve anything, firm action was needed to defeat him. Parliament needed a centralized executive to run the war effort efficiently. When Scotland became Parliament's ally, this executive had to be a joint body, representing the Scottish Estates as well as both English Houses of Parliament. The result was the Committee of both Kingdoms, planned earlier by the Commons' moderate leader John Pym, who had begun to see, towards the end of 1643, that peace negotiations were getting nowhere and that Parliament would have to defeat the king in order to gain the concessions for which it had begun the war.1