{{Short description|English political and ideological debate}} The '''Standing Army Controversy''' (1697–1699) was a major political and ideological debate in England following the Treaty of Ryswick that ended the Nine Years' War, concerning whether England should maintain a permanent army during peacetime.

==Background== Prior to the English Civil War, England lacked a permanent military force, relying instead on locally organized militia, noble levies and hired European mercenaries. Oliver Cromwell’s professional New Model Army of around 50,000 men were militarily effective but politically contentious, leading to its disbandment after the Restoration in 1660.{{sfn|Macaulay|1849|p = [https://archive.org/details/macaulayhistoryofengland01/page/174/mode/1up 174]}} Charles II established four regiments of guards, forming the basis of a permanent British Army. This force expanded under James II to 37,000 men in 1688. Although the Bill of Rights 1689 required parliamentary consent for a peacetime standing army, in 1694 under William III numbers increased to 94,000.{{sfn|Chandler|2003|pp=46–57}}{{sfn|Barnett|1970|pp=90–98, 110–25}}

Standing armies were also portrayed as an aid to other monarch's moves to absolutism as in Robert Molesworth's ''An Account of Denmark, as it was in the Year 1692''.{{sfn|Robbins|1959}}

==Protoganists== In 1697 John Trenchard and Walter Moyle wrote a pamphlet ''An Argument, Shewing that a Standing Army is Inconsistent with a Free Government''{{sfn|Schwoerer|1965|p=190}} which started the controversy. Other Radical Whigs such as Andrew Fletcher and John Toland argued through pamphlets that a standing army endangered England’s constitutional balance{{sfn|Schwoerer|1974|p=1}} through corruption,{{sfn|Pococock|1965|p=566}} royal absolutism and threats to civil liberty. There was probably coordination between the pamphlet authors.{{sfn|Robbins|1959|p=103}} There was also a Tory majority in Parliament determined to reduce costs who had in 1698 reduced the English army to 7,000 English born subjects.{{sfn|Schwoerer|1974|p=156}} Pro government Whigs like Daniel Defoe and the Lord Chancellor John Somers defended a limited peacetime force was necessary for national security{{sfn|Schwoerer|1965}} and that parliamentary control of taxation meant there would be parliamentary control over the army.{{sfn|Robbins|1959|p=103}}

==Aftermath== The army cuts undermined William's ability to negotiate on equal terms with France, and despite his intense mistrust, he co-operated with Louis XIV in unsuccessful attempts to agree a diplomatic solution to the Spanish succession.{{sfn|Falkner|2015|p=37}}

The controversy shaped enduring English and American Country Party{{sfn|Bailyn|2017|p=36}} and liberal distrust of standing armies, and helped to bring the naturally opposed Tories and Radical Whigs into a later alliance, the Country Party, against the Court Party of the Whig leadership.

==References== {{reflist}}

==Sources== * {{cite book|author-link=Correlli Barnett|first=Correlli |last=Barnett|title=Britain and Her Army, 1509–1970: A Military, Political and Social Survey|year=1970|url=https://archive.org/details/britainherarmy150000unse_u3t0}} * {{cite book |last1=Bailyn |first1=Bernard |author-link=Bernard Bailyn|title=The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution |date=2017 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |isbn=9780674975651 |edition=Fiftieth Anniversary}} * {{cite book|editor-link1=David G. Chandler|editor-first1=David G. |editor-last1=Chandler|title=The Oxford History of the British Army|year=2003}} * {{cite book|last1=Falkner|first1=James|title=The War of the Spanish Succession 1701–1714|date=2015|publisher=Pen and Sword Books|isbn=978-1473872905}} * {{cite book|last1=Gregg|first1=Edward|title=Queen Anne (Revised) (The English Monarchs Series)|date=1980|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0300090246|edition=2001}} * {{cite book|first1=Thomas Babington|last1=Macaulay|title=The History of England from the Accession of James the Second|volume=1|author-link1=Thomas Babington Macaulay| edition = 1st | location = London | publisher = Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans | year = 1849 | oclc = 1069526323}} * {{cite journal | last = Pocock | first = J. G. A. | title = The Standing-Army Controversy in England: 1697–1699 | journal = The William and Mary Quarterly | volume = 22 | issue = 4| pages = 549–583 | date = October 1965 | publisher = Institute of Early American History and Culture | doi = 10.2307/1922910 | jstor = 1922910 | url = https://www.jstor.org/stable/1922910|url-access=subscription|author-link=J. G. A. Pocock}} * {{cite book|last=Robbins|first=Caroline|author-link=Caroline Robbins|title=The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development and Circumstances of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge MA |year=1959}} * {{cite journal|first=Lois G. |last=Schwoerer|author-link=Lois G. Schwoerer|title=The Literature of the Standing Army Controversy|journal=Huntington Library Quarterly|volume=28 |year=1965|pages=189–212|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3816707|url-access=subscription}} * {{cite book|first=Lois G. |last=Schwoerer|author-link=Lois G. Schwoerer|title='No Standing Armies!' The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England|location=Baltimore and London|year=1974|publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/71702|isbn=978-0-8018-1563-8}}

Category:17th century in Great Britain

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