The Clubmen were local associations of war-weary countrymen who took up arms and banded together in an attempt to resist both Royalists and Parliamentarians and to keep the war out of their regions. Clubman uprisings tended to occur in areas that had suffered badly from plundering, free quartering of troops and other depredations of the war.
Clubmen first appeared at Wem in Shropshire in December 1644 when 1,200 countrymen assembled to organise resistance to local Royalist garrisons. The movement spread through the counties on the Welsh border during the winter of 1644-5. In March 1645, 1,000 Clubmen gathered on Woodbury Hill in Worcestershire under the leadership of Charles Nott. They drew up a Declaration protesting at the violence of local Royalist soldiers and attempted to establish a league for mutual defence and protection. Despite their opposition to local troops, the Woodbury Clubmen professed loyalty to the King and recognised the Royalist High Sheriff as the legitimate legal authority in the county. In neighbouring Herefordshire, 12,000 Clubmen are said to have gathered at Hereford to protest at the tyranny of the Royalist governor Sir Barnabas Scudamore, some of them well-armed and mounted. Colonel Massey, the Parliamentarian governor of Worcester, supplied the Clubmen with weapons and tried to recruit them as an auxiliary force against the Royalists. His approaches were rejected, but Scudamore was sufficiently alarmed to agree to a number of their demands. When 2,000 Clubmen who remained dissatisfied with Scudamore's promises refused to disperse, Prince Rupert sent soldiers against them. While most of the Clubmen fled, around 200 stood firm at Ledbury and fired on the approaching troops. They were quickly disarmed and arrested; a number of ringleaders were hanged. In May 1645, Rupert made an abortive attempt to negotiate with Clubmen at Tenbury in Worcestershire. When this failed, he ordered all Clubman associations to disband.
During May and June 1645, Clubman uprisings spread to Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset. Royalist fugitives from the battle of Langport were hunted down and killed by Somerset Clubmen in revenge for the depredations they had inflicted on the region. The victorious General Fairfax met Humphrey Willis and other leaders of the Clubmen in July; they agreed not to help the Royalists on condition that the New Model Army would pay for all supplies and provisions and would commit no offences against the local population. The Clubmen of Dorset proved less conciliatory. During the siege of Sherborne Castle, Fairfax ordered the arrest of Clubman leaders meeting at Shaftesbury. On 4 August, Cromwell led a cavalry detachment to Hambledon Hill where several thousand Clubmen had gathered. The soldiers killed about a dozen and scattered the rest; 500 were rounded up and held overnight in a local church before being lectured by Cromwell then sent back to their farms and villages.
In November 1645, with the Royalist cause clearly faltering, 3,000 Clubmen met on Bredon Hill near Evesham in Worcestershire and openly declared for Parliament. A rash attempt to attack Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice on their way to Oxford in December 1645 was easily brushed aside, but during 1646 the Clubmen actively supported the New Model Army as an unofficial militia by blockading Royalist garrisons to deny them supplies and provisions.
In a separate context, Clubmen was also the name given to the lightly-armed, irregular troops that augmented the Fairfaxes' Parliamentarian army during their campaign against the Yorkshire Royalists in 1643.