God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  Political will was failing, both in the Privy Council and out in the provinces, and in this tense political situation rumour and news assumed a crucial importance. The Lord General and commander of Charles’s army, the Earl of Northumberland, was dismayed by the attempt to pursue the war without parliamentary supply, not least because of the public knowledge of this financial weakness: ‘What will the world judge of us abroad, to see us enter into such an action as this, not knowing how to maintain it for one month’. The Earl of Northumberland confessed that ‘It grieves my soul to be involved in these counsels’,51 but if the newsletter writer John Castle is to be believed he was soon to be in an even more uncomfortable position. In May, Castle wrote to Bridgewater that at a Privy Council meeting the King had complained of ‘the liberty the people took to discourse of his action intended for the North, as if he had not means to make a war, but was calling back his troops’. He bade his councillors to ‘publish the contrary’.52

  This was one battle that the King was certain to lose: there was a lively and unstoppable appetite for news and rumour. The speeches by Pym and Rous on 17 April had been delivered from scripts, which may have reflected an intention to circulate them outside the walls of the chamber. It was a practice that was frowned upon, but became increasingly common. Certainly these two speeches circulated widely and Pym’s speech of 17 April was circulated in manuscript by Edward Rossingham, the newsletter writer, as an account of the grievances of Parliament.53

  In fact, the buzz of rumour and news made life difficult for a newsletter writer. Castle was always eager to name and weigh his sources when reporting to Bridgewater: ‘This relation, because it comes from Mr Kellaway, one that waits very near him [Charles], I have thought fit to advertise your lordship of it, as a matter that is likely to be true’; ‘I was told by an inward confident of his [Secretary Coke]’; ‘This morning, meeting with a friend of mine who dined yesterday with my Lord Keeper, I was confidently assured by him, that he had heard the news there’. Similarly, he distinguished between the varieties of news, rumour and gossip that he heard: ‘On Tuesday last there went a rumour very current both here and at court’; ‘here hath been a rumour somewhat constantly maintained for these 5 or 6 days’; ‘there come every day such contradictory reports from out of the north, that I know not how to advertise any thing that may deserve to be believed’. This left even a prominent nobleman oversupplied with information, in want of certainty while away from the centre of events: ‘I confess the various reports of the news of this time be such that no great credit be to be given to the rumours spread abroad, yet I shall be willing (at this distance) to hear of the several occurrences as they be divulged, or talked of; some use I may make thereof though I do not purpose to make them all to be part of my creed’.54

  As the summer progressed there were further disorders in London, which seem to have been fuelled by religious fears arising from Charles’s use of Convocation.55 The capital was intimately connected to the provinces by networks of trade, kinship and power; news and rumour travelled alongside these things. In Shelley, Essex, a villager regaled his neighbour with an account of the attack on Lambeth Palace and claimed that the soldiers of the militia, far from suppressing the rioters, would instead ‘fall upon’ those that were on the side of the bishops. He also predicted imminent risings against Laud’s favourites and supporters of the Bishops on the grounds that ‘there was not laws now’.56

  Further out, on the evening of 25 July at about 5 p.m., William Hawley overtook Thomas Webb, a clothier from Devizes, on the road just outside Wantage. Friendly greetings and discussion of wool prices were interlaced with more painful topics. Webb had asked if there had been soldiers on the move in the area, this being the period of the buildup to the second Bishops” War, and this may have prompted Hawley into some unguarded political comment. Hauled before a local magistrate the next day, he had to answer to charges that he had said the apprentices had risen against Laud and that it would be a pitiful time, that Laud was the cause of the raising of the armies and that the King was ‘ruled’ by him. He had also attributed the riots to rumours that Laud had turned papist and indeed that it was well known that he was in fact a papist. Much of this was denied, of course, but so seriously was this taken that a report of the examination ended up on the desk of the Secretary of State, Francis Windebank.57

  Mobilization in England in 1640 was even more reluctant than in the previous year. In many parts of the country the collection of ship money, which had slowed down in advance of the parliament, now seems to have collapsed entirely. This was selective inaction – it seems clear that other aspects of local government continued to operate.58 Financial difficulties led to disastrous expedients – the seizure of Spanish bullion in the Tower, the threat to issue brass money and the seizure of pepper belonging to London merchants for sale at about 30 per cent below its market value. These manoeuvres cost the crown friends abroad and in the City, although the brass money plan was so obviously bad for the economy that it may have been a threat to the City, intended to encourage the provision of a loan which would prevent the need for this drastic measure.59

  Given the crown’s dependence on officeholders, the lack of consensus made mobilization very difficult, and morale was low. John Castle’s letters from court are filled with bad news – the reluctance of the City to lend money, and the attempts to bully it, the supply of ‘stinking’ victuals, the impossibility of setting an expedition out to sea, all combine with a sense of foreboding. The difficulties of raising troops were at least as bad as in the previous year because the Trained Bands were if anything more reluctant to serve and the substitution clause was more widely invoked.60 Shortly after the end of the parliament it was rumoured that ‘the people’ in Norfolk ‘like the sea will surely rise upon the first wind that blows upon them’. The same ‘ill news’ came from the west, where the clothiers had been laying off workers because they could not sell the cloth. ‘The ball of wildfire that is kindled here above will fly and burn (it is feared) a great way off, where there will not be so good means to quench it as here under the King’s window where his person strikes more terror than the Trained Band with their arms’. Sir Jacob Astley was assembling a force of some 6,000 at Blackheath from among the Trained Bands of Kent, Surrey, Essex and Middlesex. Ostensibly for service against the Covenanters, it was said that this force was secretly intended to be available ‘as the occasion may arise to suppress any insurrection?.61

  This climate proved unfavourable to raising troops. In late June there were reports of men refusing to serve in Norfolk and the Lord Chamberlain went to Wiltshire in person to quell disturbances there. Troops imprisoned for refusing to pay coat and conduct money had been freed from gaol by some of their colleagues and it was said that the men raised there would not march unless the King came in person. Similar stirs were reported in Huntingdon, Warwickshire and Cambridge.62 Men raised in Essex were reported to have slain some of their officers and beaten a deputy lieutenant, those in Norfolk to be refusing to embark and those in Cambridge to have beaten their officers at Newmarket.63 The Earl of Northumberland was sure that the army would be under-strength given what he knew of the restiveness in London, Kent, Surrey, Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire while in Lincolnshire the deputy lieutenants threatened to resign their positions in the face of the rebelliousness of the pressed men.64

  Some of this was motivated by resentments over pay and conditions,65 but it seems that much of this restiveness was related to religious feelings. Francis Windebank, son of the Secretary of State and a man of fairly Romish sensibilities, was responsible for raising men in Devon. On first meeting his men he was told that ‘if they found we were papists they would soon despatch us’. In order to counteract this threat, on the first day’s march ‘I desired them all to kneel down and sing psalms, and made one of my officers to read prayers, which pleased them not a little’. He had also plied them with drink and tobacco, with the result that ‘they all now swear the
y will never leave me so long as they live, and, indeed, I have not had one man run from me yet in this nine days” march’. Other captains of similar bands were in fear of their men, who were very threatening. Behind all this lay ‘the Puritan rascals of this country [who have] strongly possessed the soldiers that all the commanders of our regiment were papists’. Credulous popular anti-popery may well have lain behind many of the discipline problems, fuelled by rumours about the papistical purposes and leadership of the army. This anti-popery was centrally concerned with ritual forms: ‘I was forced for two or three days to sing psalms all the day I marched, for all their religion lies in a psalm’. Soldiers in Warminster (Wilts.) insisted that their commanders take communion with them before setting out.66 In Daventry (Northants.) troopers said that they would not fight against the gospel and would not be commanded by papists.67

  We know for certain that two officers were murdered on the grounds that they were papists: William Mohun suffered a terrible beating and eventual death in Farringdon at the hands of soldiers raised in Dorset; and Compton Evers was killed three weeks later by men raised in Devon. An illustration of the spread of rumour, but also of its potential unreliability, is Castle’s report on the death of Mohun, to whom he gave the rank of captain rather than lieutenant. He said that Mohun had been hanged; in fact he was forced out of the window of his lodgings, from where he fell to the ground. He was severely beaten, dragged by his hair through the town and left in a ditch for dead. Regaining consciousness he made it to a nearby house, where medical care was interrupted by the arrival of soldiers. Cornered, he pulled a knife, which was dashed from his hands with a cudgel. His brains were then knocked out, the job completed this time, and the corpse was placed in the pillory.68

  Some of the soldiers heading north engaged in informed acts of iconoclasm. On 15 August soldiers calling themselves ‘London Prentices’ arrived in Marsworth, Buckinghamshire, on their way to Aylesbury and indulged in some unofficial reformation. They demanded the key to the church from the parish clerk and ‘broke down the rails at the upper end of the Chancel where formerly the Communion Table stood, and beat down all the painted glass in the windows’. They then went to the minister’s house, in search of the service book and surplice, telling him ‘that if he did not deliver them to them, they would pull down his house over his head’. Told that the minister did not have them they went back to the church, and ‘finding them there, first tore the two Service books all to pieces, scattering some of the leaves about the streets, and carrying the rest away upon the points of their swords’. Afterwards ‘one of them took the Surplice and put it on him, as the Minister useth to do, and so marched away to Aylesbury triumphing in contempt and derision?.69

  English soldiers purging churches on their way north in 1640

  Their targets were clearly not indiscriminate, and they were not unique to these men: reports of similar attacks on altar rails, communion tables, stained glass and vestments recur in other parts of the country. These items were often ritually degraded, not simply destroyed. Some of these acts aped official ritual practice – like poor Mohun, objects taken from churches were displayed in pillories, for example. Others were tried in ‘court’ or burned. Church services were disrupted too, but at critical moments – such as immediately after the sermon. This may suggest a tenderness about disrupting the preaching of the Word among those intent on attacking idolatry. These acts were informed by a popular anti-popery, in which the dangers of corruption were attached to specific aspects of the physical environment, and particular moments in religious ritual: they were not apolitical or irreligious, since they shared the vocabulary of state and church. The dates of these acts seem also to have had some ritual significance – incidents were reported on 5 November, Plough Monday and Candalmas, all of them important dates in the ritual calendar. The humour of the participants (their ‘triumphing in contempt and derision’) again suggests a political intent rather than an inchoate violence. Rough music parodied the sacred music of Laudian ritual and the mock courts and trials of offenders were clearly occasions of raucous humour. Iconoclasts relished their temporary power.70 Elsewhere soldiers did ‘justice’ on secular issues – in helping to break down enclosures, breaking open prisons to release debtors and deserters or smashing windows and tools in a House of Correction in Wakefield (an institution in which the able-bodied but unemployed poor were incarcerated and set to work).71 These were overturning times, when poor men could do justice on their oppressors – enclosers, creditors and Poor Law officers – and purify churches.

  To say that soldiers were doing this is in some degree misleading for, of course, prior to their muster these were not soldiers at all, but simply men of low status. Evidence is difficult to come by, but there is enough to suggest that these attacks by soldiers sometimes enjoyed the support of the local godly, and might be related to previous disputes and local preferences. In Radwinter, Essex, for example, Richard Drake had been in conflict with a section of his congregation since his arrival in 1638. He favoured relatively high ceremonial, and that had led to a running battle with the local godly. He had raised the chancel, railed the altar and refused to church women (that is, ritually receive them back into the congregation after childbirth) unless they came up to the rails. Similarly, he would not administer communion at Easter and Christmas to those who did not come up to the rails. One hundred of his parishioners had been excluded from communion at Easter 1640, and this had led to a direct confrontation with the godly. The godly had their moment later in the summer, however, when fifty men who had assembled at Saffron Walden passed through the village on their way to war. On a fast day in early July they pulled down the altar rails and some images erected by Drake. The images were tied to a tree and scourged, before being taken back to Saffron Walden, where they were used as fuel to roast the soldiers” meat. En route they were taunted: ‘if ye be Gods deliver yourselves’.72 Clearly, in this case as presumably in many others, it makes little sense to separate the violence of the soldiers from a broader culture of anti-popery, and from a local history of conflict over ceremonial forms.

  Certainly Essex was alive with this popular anti-popery. On 26 May, Colchester had erupted in panic when two young girls reported having seen two men, both strangers, acting suspiciously the previous night. According to one of the girls, who had been playing in the street, one of the men had been pushing rags through the window of a house into which he was peering. The mayor, informed of this, put the town in a state of defence, on suspicion that the men were trying to fire it. Seventeenth-century towns were built largely of flammable materials and full of open fires: fire was a constant threat and, in an age before insurance, a total disaster. Reports of attempts to fire a town touched on real sensitivities. The following morning, the danger became widely associated with another great fear of Stuart England – plotting Catholics. It was rumoured that a large number of papists had gathered at Berechurch (the house of a prominent recusant, Lady Audley), planning to bring the Queen Mother, William Laud and the Bishop of Ely there. The details were disputed – which bishop and whether it was to Berechurch or Monkwick. The following afternoon a drum was beaten through the town summoning apprentices to go to Berechurch and Monkwick ‘to see what company was there’.73 In a locality where men would try to beat a drum to the house of local recusants on information as flimsy as this, it is easy to understand why following the drum to the Scottish borders was regarded with a critical eye.

  To the extent that Charles’s problems arose from an attempt to connect and harmonize practices in his three churches we can presume that this opposition to Laudianism, popery and the influence of French papists was also, potentially, connected. This all impinged on the royal family: in late September the Queen Mother’s carriage was pelted with carrots by women while passing through Kingston, Surrey. Abuse was also thrown, and one ‘rude fellow’ struck one of her guards.74 Among the soldiers heading north, it seems, were armed men likely to sympathize with their enemy rather th
an their king. Not only were these soldiers not hurrying to fight the Covenanters, they were taking the opportunity to make their own protests against royal ecclesiastical policy.

  The point is not that Charles was facing two armies, of course, since a large English force was successfully mustered near the border. At the Green Dragon, in Bishopsgate Street in London, two clothiers from Dedham, in the same godly corner of Essex, fell into conversation with two officers about to go to fight the Covenanters. When they revealed their hostility to the enterprise the officers called them Puritans, to which they responded, in the style of Francis Rous, by asking what a Puritan was. This so enraged one of the officers that he threw his meal at the clothier and hit him on the head with the flat of his sword. Other soldiers had to be restrained from attacking Lord Loudon on no other grounds than that he was Scottish. This is evidence of division in an integrated and informed political society, rather than fickleness among ‘soldiers’.75 Charles’s English army was not opposed to him, but the evidence suggests that the English mobilization was hesitant and compromised, and that this reflected a wider polarization of English opinion.