God’s FURY, England’s FIRE
Page 47
These incidents, and the loss of life, were reported in a confused and partisan way, and newsletters did not locate them in a larger strategic context. This makes the statistics unreliable in detail, although the larger picture is probably reasonably accurate. Contemporaries, of course, confronted the same problem: the war was reported day by day, as it happened, with all the chance and contingency that such coverage applies. ‘The war is like a football play, where one side doth give the other a kind of overthrow, and strikes up another’s heels, but presently they rise up and give the other as great a blow again’, reported Mercurius Cambro-Britannicus.19 Newsletter readers were left to make sense of this as best they could, and it is clear that it was the fortunes of individual commanders that were easiest to follow, not the overall condition of the war. It seems likely that the political mood changed quickly, as a run of victories or defeats was reported, but the overall direction of the war would have been difficult to divine. Accompanying these uncertainties was an increasingly fractious public dispute among parliamentarians about the purpose of the war. What was it for, what did it mean and how would it end?
Such uncertainties were opportunities, of course, for people with a message to sell, metaphorically or literally. On 3 April 1644 ‘Sir R’ had a consultation with the astrologer William Lilly in order to ask ‘whether best to adhere to King or Parliament’.20 This was one of a rapidly growing flow of clients, which soon reached a peak near 2,000 per annum.21 From the brief note it is not clear what Sir R meant by ‘best’, but many of Lilly’s clients were concerned about personal and material well-being – illnesses, love, business ventures, fears of bewitchment or of evil spirits. These perennial concerns were regularly interspersed with enquiries about military affairs: ‘if good for son to go to war, and if return safe’; ‘A commander of his success into North Wales’; ‘the success between Sir William Waller and Hopton being then supposed to be in fight’; or ‘When will Essex advance on Oxford?’22
Lilly made precise observations of the heavens at the precise date, time and place of meetings in the course of the Uxbridge negotiations, and much of the business brought by his clients was topical: ‘by what death [Laud] should die, and when?’; ‘if any design to massacre parliament/if take effect/if near maturity’.23 But the personal and the military intertwined. A question about the outcome of the siege of Pontefract, for example, seems to have been connected to concern about rents due from lands in the area.24 A woman asked ‘if her husband was alive in the wars’; Mrs Poole if ‘her husband be dead or no?’ Other questions were less fraught: Lady Holborne asked ‘if best her husband come to parliament’, an anonymous client ‘if he should obtain what he desired of the committee?’25
Wartime uncertainties impinged on many areas of personal life, and Lilly was clearly meeting a significant demand. His real triumph was in print, however. In Supernaturall sights… seen in London, written the week after Marston Moor and published in August 1644, he made some bold predictions. Called into Somerset Yard, in London, he observed in the sky above London ‘a long yellowish apparition in form and shape almost like to be a serpent’. It appeared over south-west Kent and north-east Surrey and lasted much of the night, in which time it had moved past London and into the Midland counties: that is, probably, to Oxford. Unlike other reports of supernatural phenomena during the 1640s, Lilly’s pamphlet made a claim to a science (actually more an art) of interpretation. Based on precise observation of the location Lilly was able, as with his personal clients, to offer some firm opinions about the trend of events. In this case he claimed that this was a sign of a dissolution of a mischievous plot against the state and commonwealth, ‘A renting in pieces or mutinous disturbance of some Monarchy near at hand’.26 If this rather hedged his bets a predicted eclipse on 21 August foretold of Prince Rupert’s death or ruin. This was, in fact, the first year of the most successful publishing career of the decade.
Lilly’s art was an elaborate but imprecise one. Seventeenth-century astronomy was capable of discerning movement in seven celestial bodies, the sun, the moon and a number of planets of the solar system. These seven bodies seemed to move against an unchanging backdrop, which was divided into the twelve signs of the zodiac. The heavenly bodies, with their predictable movements, were thought to exercise an influence over the much more mutable and unpredictable ‘sublunary’ world, where change and decay were permanent features of existence. Astrology was the science by which these effects could be understood, and the art by which they could, perhaps, be predicted. All sublunary bodies were composed of combinations of the four elements – earth, air, fire and water – and these elements were emitted in different ways by the celestial bodies, effecting changes in the observable natural world. This reflects a common habit of thought in seventeenth-century Europe – seeking out the correspondences and sympathies which linked the various levels of the physical world together.27
Judicial astrology sought to make predictions about these influences – on the health of particular human bodies, on the weather and the fate of nations. There were four main areas of such predictions. General predictions, based on the movements of the heavens, related to effects on whole nations – the weather, the state of the crops, mortality and epidemics, war and politics. More immediate and personal predictions were possible in a number of ways. Nativities might enable predictions about the fate of individuals, based on a map of the heavens at the time of their birth. Elections offered advice about when best to undertake a particular project or action, in the light of the state of the heavens. Finally, astrologers might answer a particular question based on the exact time at which it was put to them – horary questions. This final category was very appealing to individuals, of course, and in dealing with horary questions astrologers gave advice about health, love and misfortune, including the likely identity of thieves and so forth. Its claims were considerable: ‘Astrology is more certain than physic, for it reasons from the cause to the effect’.28
Although astrology was a practice of very long standing, with an impressive technical literature and complex procedures, it was inevitably imprecise. Even if the heavens were mapped very precisely for any particular prediction, each planet and each sign had many different qualities. In interpreting the effects of the heavens on any particular sublunary body or enterprise, the astrologer had resort to elaborate rules of interpretation and accumulated practice, but in the last resort every reading depended on judgement, with the result that the more precise the prediction ‘the less likely it was to command unanimous assent’.29 The result was that astrologers in general, and some in particular, acquired a reputation for quackery, and they were armed with a battery of excuses, but they amounted to the same thing: as John Booker put it, ‘I confess that many superstitious and gross absurdities are practiced by the ignorant under colour of this most excellent art but this must not be charged on the art, but the artist’.30
Lilly was accused of quackery by many contemporaries, and he himself said that he had trained in seven weeks and that his move to London had been made for commercial reasons. Sceptical modern historians have also pointed to the commercially significant marriages that Lilly made. But Lilly also claimed that he worked for twelve, fifteen or eighteen hours a day, and his notebooks suggest that this may have been true.31 If the role of individual judgement invited accusations of quackery, it also made for the development of particular reputations: Lilly, for example, was clearly the parliamentary astrologer. We know that he had been sympathetic to the London crowds in 1640–42.32 He was persistently supportive of the parliamentary cause, during the 1640s, but was also a monarchist sceptical perhaps of Charles I as a king, sympathetic to him as an individual and very willing to predict the downfall of Prince Rupert. Part of his phenomenal success depended on what appeared to be an accurate prediction of the great parliamentary victory at Naseby in 1645.33 This was an immediate contrast with George Wharton, who had emerged as the royalist competition but made a notoriously inaccurate prediction ab
out the same royal march in 1645. He was ridiculed by Booker for his poor Latin and his partial prediction, advising Wharton to get his ‘fellow liar Aulicus to English it [translate it] and then give your judgement upon another march’.34 Even as it offered certainties, astrology was politicized and its authority undermined.
Lilly did not normally make his own observations, and Supernaturall sights is in that sense unusual. Much of his published work took the form of almanacs, making general predictions for the year. But in publishing with as much success as he did, Lilly changed the market for astrology. These were English astrology’s halcyon days.35 The long tradition in which Lilly stood had enjoyed currency in aristocratic and royal circles since the fifteenth century at least. What was really remarkable about Lilly was his commercial success and the related claim that he democratized astrology. Earlier in 1644 he had published the first of a phenomenally successful series, Merlinus Anglicus Junior. It sold out in a week and the print runs in subsequent years were phenomenal: 13,500 in 1646, 17,000 in 1647 and 18,500 in 1648. His success was sustained throughout the following decade and in 1659, it was said, he was selling 30,000 copies. This was very big business, even at 2d per copy for cheap editions, and in a population of 5 million, with a relatively low literacy rate, this represents an amazing market penetration.36
Political astrology: George Wharton’s notoriously inaccurate prediction in May 1645
Although Lilly was the most successful astrologer of the 1640s, he was by no means alone. He and Wharton enjoyed good sales and their contemporary, John Booker, while less successful in print, had around 1,000 private consultations per year from 1648 to 1665.37 Lilly led the way in making astrology available to a wider market and was the most successful of a golden generation of astrologers. He also made another very distinctive contribution. In 1647 he published the methods of judicial astrology, in the first substantial English language text book, Christian astrology. It has been in use ever since. According to Lilly, the stars are divine signs, not physical causes, a position which allowed him to square astrology with Christianity, and explain failures: ‘we predict nothing but with this limitation, the hand of the Almighty God considered or not impediting or preventing nature, for in his alone breast is all learning, science, knowledge, power and dominion’.38
Lilly also published prophecies, which offered similar reassurances; indeed, many of his early titles gesture towards prophecy, or Merlin. A prophecy of Merlin had circulated with approval among Covenanting soldiers in 1640, and it is not hard to see the attraction of prophecy in wartime. Prophecy was potentially subversive since it was so obviously political, and in more normal times was regarded with considerable suspicion, but in the 1640s the brakes were off. Mother Shipton was said to be a contemporary of Cardinal Wolsey’s and her prophecies date from long before the war, but her career took off in 1641. It was then that her prophecies were first published, and they were published at least nineteen more times by 1700.39 There was a minor publishing war, with escalating numbers of ancient prophecies set out for the public. Lilly also dealt with Supernaturall sights and apparitions, and these too continued to get aired in print. But astrology offered a more consistent set of observations, with stricter rules of interpretation – it was continuous and more systematic about interpretation, and, crucially, offered predictions, for both individuals and nations.
Lilly’s success bears testimony both to the power of print and to the anxieties which the political crisis had fostered. Almanac sales, the flood of private consultations and the appetite to understand the method speak of a massive public appetite for certainty; some firm basis on which to judge what the future might hold. In Merlinus Anglicus Junior (1644) Lilly had gestured at this source of appeal in his predictions: Mercury ‘the father of lies and untruths, and scandalous pamphlets’ would be in a common sign during the coming year, ‘as if he intended all this whole year to vex us with flying reports, continual fears, false alarums, untoward speeches, contradictory news, lying messengers, and cozening Accomptants, Receivers, Treasurers, and the like’.40 But judicial astrology was an inexact and (in the 1640s, at least) partisan science. Uncertainty arose not just from the complexity of current events, but from the morass of conflicting claims in print about what it all meant, and that was an invitation to others to go to press with their certainties. But that was a source of further uncertainty. Print was a symptom, a cause and an opportunity; and it fed off itself.
Anxiety may have produced paralysis, but also creativity and activism. Lilly, Edwards, Williams and Milton all spoke to this uncertainty in creative ways. Many more were silent – undecided, passive or immobilized by doubt or circumstance. Efforts to convince and mobilize that silent body of opinion not only pedalled particular views, but made claims about authenticity. Expert, detailed witnessing helped to establish what had happened, as in the published autopsy of John Pym; on that basis it was possible also to try to establish a clear interpretation of the meaning and direction of events. Lilly did it with a science, Laud with a martyr’s death. The meaning of all the deaths was central to understanding the meaning of the war; and it created both anxiety and creativity.
13
Naseby and the End of the War
The Triumph of the New Model Army
Uncertainties about what the war was for were reflected in the politics surrounding the formation of the New Model. Negotiations over the enabling legislation had been fraught, but also pragmatic. The army was created in response to a crisis in Parliament’s southern forces – the surrender at Lostwithiel, dissensions within the Eastern Association and problems of supply and mobility in Waller’s army. Tense parliamentary consideration of reform had been closely connected with the future of Essex’s command, and the increasingly open religious conflict within the Eastern Association army. But these were not the reasons, or at least not the only reasons, for the creation of the army – although Essex, moderates and Presbyterians had the worst of the exchanges everyone had recognized the need for reform of the southern army. The New Model was not the armed wing of Independency, either in its original inception or in its actual formation.1
Pragmatism and statesmanship, as well as partisan struggle, were also evident in putting together the new army. Wherever possible, existing regiments were kept intact and some care was taken to balance commands between men of differing religious and political views. Nonetheless, there was an exodus of Scottish officers, which had an effect on the complexion of the army. The tense to-ing and fro-ing between the Houses over the officer list looks like House of Lords intervention against known radicals and in favour of a continuing role for the peers in overseeing the war effort.2
Sensitivities concerning these issues had re-emerged over the question of Fairfax’s commission and Oliver Cromwell’s eventual exemption from the Self-Denying Ordinance. There had been immediate difficulties in naming commanders for the new army since nearly all of the experienced and successful parliamentary commanders then in the field were excluded. Candidates for the overall command were therefore in short supply. Massey and Skippon were eligible since they were not MPs, but Massey’s allegiance was not completely certain. He had been a royalist in 1642 and in 1643 had been rumoured to be ready to hand Gloucester over to the King. The choice eventually fell on Sir Thomas Fairfax, only thirty-two years old but with a dashing military reputation and unaffected by Self-Denial. His appointment as Lord-General had been one way of achieving Self-Denial without getting the measure passed – simply to form a new army which did not include the existing command. It was, therefore, a not-so-oblique approach to the difficulty of displacing Essex. Fairfax was later known as a moderate Presbyterian, but he was also known to favour vigorous prosecution of the war in order to force the King to reasonable terms. A measure of the political charge these decisions carried is that the vote was passed only by 101 to 69, and that the tellers for Fairfax were Cromwell and Sir Henry Vane (a rising star who favoured vigorous prosecution of the war and liberty for the s
ects), those against Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton (who were to lead attempts to achieve a Presbyterian settlement in 1647).3
Such political difficulties had slowed down the formation of the new army. The New Model Ordinance had passed on 15 February and a new Self-Denying Ordinance was prepared on 25 February; the list of officers was not finally agreed until 18 March, and not without considerable to-ing and fro-ing between the Houses. Some of the consequent wounds were reopened when Fairfax’s commission was considered on 24 March. It gave him more power than Essex had enjoyed: he was to have control not just of his army but over all forts, castles, towns and garrisons within territory he controlled. More importantly, it did not commission him to preserve the safety of the King’s person, as all previous parliamentary commanders had been commissioned. This caused more resistance in the Lords, but was justified on the grounds that it would serve as too much of a military limitation and that the King was not defending ‘the true protestant religion’. The Solemn Vow and Covenant had not bound those taking it to preserve the King’s safety, but this change in the terms of service for the Lord General still amounted to a formal change in war aims. The failure of the Uxbridge treaty and the imminence of a new campaign created pressure to fall in with the more militant prosecution of the war, but these measures caused considerable unease.4