Self-denying Ordinance

The Self-denying Ordinance was passed by the Long Parliament of England on 3 April 1645. Under its terms all members of the Long Parliament who were also officers in the Parliamentary army or navy were to resign either their Parliamentary seat or their military commission. This ordinance was part of a set of reforms aimed at Parliament forces, which resulted in the New Model Army, which was a centralized national army that replaced parliamentary regional armies such as the Eastern Association. It was the second attempt to pass such a measure, the first bill having been moved on 9 December 1644, had failed to pass the House of Lords.

At the outset of the English Civil War, Parliament gave command of its main armies to members of the aristocracy. This was in accordance with well-established practices of the day, and generalships were accorded to the earls of Manchester and Essex among others. Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester, was given charge of the Eastern Association, where Cromwell served under him as a cavalry officer.

Parliament was soon hindered by dissension within this military leadership. These officers were not professional soldiers; their experience and skill at warfare varied. More significantly, a faction of them avoided engagements with the Cavalier forces, hoping that reconciliation with King Charles I was still possible. The Earl of Manchester, perhaps the most prominent of these, expressed his pessimism for the war as follows: "If we beat the King ninety and nine times yet he is king still, and so will his posterity be after him; but if the King beat us once, we shall be all hanged, and our posterity be made slaves".

As the war proceeded, it was clear that Essex and Manchester were at best half-hearted in pursuing the fight against the royalists, an attitude that became ever more apparent as the struggle became more radical. The growing rift between the Lords and the Commons finally came to a point of crisis when the fruits of the great victory at the Battle of Marston Moor were allowed to slip away at the disappointing Second Battle of Newbury. It was after this that the political tensions between Cromwell and Manchester could no longer be contained by the established forms of command.

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