God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

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  Given the cultural attractions of monarchy, the beliefs of this particular king and his negotiating habits, the best way forward in securing a settlement was probably for a single English party to achieve primacy. This would enable it to deal effectively with Charles, and force him to recognize that it was his only plausible option. From February onwards a Presbyterian party in Parliament, with allies in the City of London, sought exactly this, although probably driven more by a fear of the alternative.

  Through the autumn the prospects of toleration around a Presbyterian settlement had receded, but the position of the New Model had remained strong. The abolition of the bishops was accepted by the Lords on 9 October – and the sale of their lands provided an important resource with which to pay off the Covenanters. While strides were made towards settling a Presbyterian church in England, steps were also taken to rein in more radical reformation: on 2 September an ordinance against blasphemy and heresy was proposed, including the death penalty for denial of the Trinity or incarnation. Against this, the political influence of Independents was still plain. The blasphemy ordinance did not make it onto the statute book, and when a measure was passed in February 1647 it did not inflict physical punishments for false belief but called instead for a day of public humiliation ‘for that great reproach and contempt which hath been cast upon his name and saving truths’. What those truths were, and what the falsehoods were, was not defined. Meanwhile, on 10 October, Cromwell was granted his pension from the estate of the Marquess of Winchester – a very public and generous reward for a leading Independent. At the same time, the surrender of fortresses and the departure of the Covenanters meant that the continued need for an army was questionable, but it was the forces of the Presbyterian-sympathizer Edward Massey that were disbanded, a couple of weeks after the life of the New Model had been extended for six months (a vote passed without division). The disbanded soldiers – Reformadoes – were subsequently very visible on the streets of London, petitioning for relief, a symbol of what many Presbyterians regarded as a disreputable Independent manoeuvre.39

  With these tensions in the background Parliament had, in the autumn of 1646, indulged in some political theatre of its own. On 14 September the Earl of Essex died, four days after suffering a stroke while out hunting. He was buried with full chivalric honours, in a ceremony modelled on that of Charles I’s elder brother, Prince Henry. Henry’s death in 1612, at the age of eighteen, had been the occasion of massive public mourning. On this occasion £5,000 was voted by Parliament ‘towards the discharging of his debts and defraying the expenses of his funeral’: a statement of the debt owed in return for his service to the parliamentary cause. The route from Essex House, just downriver from Somerset House, was lined by five regiments of the Trained Bands. Ahead of the main procession rode the marshal of the City of London and twenty others dressed in black cassocks. The procession itself was led by sixty-eight poor men, then servants of the gentry, four regiments of the Trained Bands, the pikemen trailing their pikes. They marched from Covent Garden, via Essex House, where they were joined by fifemen, drummers and trumpeters, all wearing the Devereux arms. Five chaplains followed, then more musicians, officers of the Trained Bands, and musicians with other heraldic arms to which the earl had claim. A riderless horse, led by a groom, and an effigy of the earl preceded the coffin, which was borne by prominent Presbyterians. There followed eminent mourners, then members of both Houses, the Recorder and Aldermen of London, the Assembly of Divines and fifty or sixty cavalrymen. In all, over 1,000 processed, and up to 10,000 soldiers had either processed or guarded the route. As a result there was a problem of fitting everyone into Westminster Abbey, even though the Lords had ordered that the multitude and all women ‘of whatsoever quality’ were barred (chivalric funerals were in any case, by custom, all-male affairs). An eloquent sermon by Richard Vines was heard by those fortunate enough to cram in, before they processed back to Essex House for a funeral banquet. That evening, five hours after the procession had begun, the bell at St Margaret’s, Westminster, tolled twice. A signal was then given to the Stone Fort at Southwark to fire its great cannon, and each of the forts around the eleven-mile defences fired its great cannon in turn. This was done three times.40

  But this was a more ambiguous affair than this ritual suggested. Controversially, it had been ordered that those who had been in arms for the King should not attend and almost all the chief mourners were prominent Presbyterians: Fairfax, Cromwell and Ireton were all absent. The effigy, which had become an important site for those wishing to reflect on the contribution of Essex to a noble cause, was attacked on the night of 26/27 November. John White, using an axe acquired from a Ludgate ironmonger, wrecked the elaborate catafalque erected in the abbey in the earl’s honour, hacked the head off the effigy, with seven or eight blows, ripped off the buff coat the earl had worn at Edgehill, slashed his breeches and boots, and stole his golden sword. In his excitement he also took the nose off an image of Sir William Camden, a relatively blameless antiquarian, whose tomb was nearby. White claimed that an angel had directed him ‘to cut all the said image, hearse and all that was about it in pieces, and to beat down the rest of the images in the said church’. In his defence he said it was a dishonour to Christ to introduce the effigy of a man into a sacred building. The repaired image was placed behind glass, and lasted to the Restoration, when the effigy was destroyed at the command of Charles II, although the corpse was left undisturbed.41

  Dubbed by the press a disaffected Cavalier, White expressed a line of argument that might not have been so far from that of some members of the parliamentary coalition – there were those on Essex’s side, after all, who had smashed funerary monuments and supported his replacement at the head of the parliamentary army. Even if they would not have desecrated this particular tomb, the point can hardly have been lost on contemporaries. This appeal to a grand chivalric tradition appears elegiac – the Self-Denying Ordinance, which had ended Essex’s martial career, had also diluted the importance of baronial and aristocratic images in the promotion of the parliamentary cause; the unity it proclaimed, if it had ever existed, belonged more to the beginning than the end of Essex’s career. Certainly, if Cavaliers could turn the language of reformation against the images of parliamentary virtue then this was a more contested vision than that of Charles healing the sick.

  While the politicians wrangled there had been no peace dividend and, on the evidence of the Newcastle negotiations, military victory had not produced a political breakthrough. Worse, there had been numerous disorders in the provincial armies. Anti-war and anti-army feelings were of prime political importance during 1647: to those who wanted to reduce taxation, re-establish legal and constitutional forms of politics and to set clear limits to further reformation, it seemed obvious that the armies had to be disbanded.42 At the same time, it became increasingly clear to radicals that the pursuit of their aims depended on the continued influence of the New Model and, by the same token, that if the New Model was to receive just treatment, it should seek the protection of radically minded politicians.

  These intersecting political and religious concerns came together in a Presbyterian ‘counter-revolution’ as partisans on the parliamentary side battled for control of the sources of political power – the streets of London, Parliament, the City and the New Model. Those that had little hope of bringing the New Model along with them sought to abolish it as an obstacle to their will and a burden on the people which cost them support. In resisting these moves the New Model became an independent political actor, resisting elements of the Protestant coalition in Parliament and the City in defence of its own interests.

  Crowds, particularly in London, came to play a key role in the complex politics of 1647, just as they had in 1640–42. At Holmby, Charles was playing to the gallery and thereby discomfiting his captors, who came jokingly to refer to him as ‘the stroker’. The funeral of the Earl of Essex attempted a moment of public unity celebrating a hero
of the parliamentary cause, identifying it with a Presbyterian church settlement. As in 1641 there was also a battle for the control of the political and administrative institutions of the City, and the future of English and Scottish politics were once more closely entwined. But these battles were now within the parliamentary coalition, rather than between emergent royalist and parliamentary parties – the King was a (presumably rather gratified) spectator in all this. In the end it was to be an alliance between Independents and the New Model that established control of London’s streets, and of Parliament, but as this battle was fought out it is easy to see why the King’s position might appear to be strengthening.

  In the autumn, a priority at Westminster was to begin to reduce public expenses. For the Presbyterians this came to focus on the New Model, which was both the largest force and one that was regarded as politically suspect. There had been previous Presbyterian campaigns which had seemed to identify enemies within as much as outside the parliamentary coalition – starting in November 1644, then in 1645 and as the war ended in 1646. But that which opened in December 1646 was the most concerted and the most confrontational. Thomas Edwards had been critical of the New Model in the first two parts of Gangraena, but the third part, published as part of this Presbyterian campaign in the City and at Westminster, devoted much of its energy to a denunciation of its role in promoting heresy. Presbyterians around Sion College co-operated with Covenanters and members of the Westminster Assembly to achieve dominance in the City and Parliament. Their aim was a Presbyterian church settlement and a rapid peace, which led them to contemplate pretty easy terms on many secular issues. Following the death of the Earl of Essex these views were championed in Parliament by the old peace-party man Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton.43

  In December 1646 a petition circulated in London which called for a high-Presbyterian settlement and the disbandment of the army since it was an encouragement to heresy. The Lords took the opportunity to command Fairfax to impose the Solemn League and Covenant on all the men under his command. The petition was sufficiently inflammatory for the Commons to have the three promoters arrested, but the City accepted the petition. At Common Council elections on 21 December a large Presbyterian majority was returned, and the petition had been something of a manifesto for them. Those who resisted the petition were, on the whole, unsuccessful. Alongside a strict Presbyterian settlement the new Common Council called for disbandment of the New Model Army, elections to a free parliament, reform of county committees and dissolution of the committee of Haberdashers” Hall.44

  These aims were pursued pretty consistently through 1647, on the basis of the influence of Holles and Stapleton in the Commons, and of their allies in the City. On the key issues before the King they were willing to concede a settlement that established presbytery for only three years, and control of the militia only for ten. This did not produce a breakthrough, of course, and in February more confrontational measures were taken – communion plate from the royal chapel was melted down to make a dinner service for Charles, and his household was disestablished until he came to terms with Parliament.45 Although the negotiation with Charles appeared unpromising, many MPs now swung against the Independents, more concerned with order and peace than with the more relaxed religious settlement they offered.

  Pressure on Parliament in the last week of December coincided with the resurgence of crowds around the Houses, and the crowd on 31 December was particularly menacing. Street politics were not easy to control or subsume, however. If the crowds at Holmby in February reflected a resurgent royalism, this was a natural ally of those seeking to restore central elements of the pre-civil war world. These were not necessarily the Presbyterians. For example, there is evidence of increasing hostility to the new Puritan calendar. From September 1641 onwards there were measures designed to secure more godly observation of the Sabbath – a reaction against the Caroline Book of Sports and its associated indulgences. But this became connected to a more fundamental assault on the ritual calendar – Easter, Whitsun, ‘Christ’s birthday’ and saints” days – a campaign associated particularly with the Solemn League and Covenant. This had culminated in the issue of the Directory of Worship in January 1645. The Directory banned holy days, reinforcing earlier measures against May Day, and contained explicit injunctions against Shrove Tuesday rituals of misrule. In place of this ritual year stood fast days on the last Wednesday of every month, and other days of national thanksgiving from time to time. In 1644, when the monthly fast fell on Christmas Day, an ordinance had called for ‘the more solemn humiliation’ on the fast, since Christmas celebrations had turned into a ‘liberty to carnal and sensual delights’. Christmas too was abolished, and the unpopularity of that measure was evident during 1646.46

  These rituals had a more than religious significance – they were moments at which local differences were submerged in a celebration of shared faith, or identity, or in which tensions were released in rituals of misrule and inversion. On the other hand, it was precisely because they had a more than religious significance that Puritans were opposed to them and favoured instead celebrations of national triumph or delivery – such as 5 November, for example.47 In this they were not necessarily in tune with the streets.

  On 9 February, London apprentices petitioned Parliament for a monthly ‘playday’ to replace the lost saints” days. It may not be coincidence that this came one day after the Lords had voted that anyone not taking the Covenant should be barred from office, a measure taken in response to Presbyterian pressure from the City. Shrove Tuesday (9 March), a day traditionally associated with apprentice disorder, seems to have passed without incident, but apprentices gathered again on 20 April. This was two days after Easter and three days before St George’s Day, both important dates in the now defunct ritual year. The crowd waited patiently until 5 p.m. but eventually dispersed peacefully, without receiving an answer. On St George’s Day itself, 23 April, crowds pressed round the Houses again, awaiting a reply. This campaign, although one with resonances on the streets of London, clearly held little appeal for Presbyterians: perhaps they shared the view of the Moderate Intelligencer, that it was unwise to give scholars and apprentices too much leisure.48

  Agitation against the excise also revealed a limit to Presbyterian populism. For the relatively poor, particularly in London, the early months of 1647 were very hard. The 1646 harvest was poor, signalling the start of what may have been the worst run of bad harvests between the early seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth.49 This pushed up the price of food grains while at the same time depressing activity in the economy, so that wage earners were doubly squeezed – steep inflation in the costs of necessities and declining opportunities to find work. Towns and industrial districts had high concentrations of wage-earners and were dependent on the market for food supplies, and so were particularly vulnerable to dearth and disorder. Grain riots in such places were not spontaneous and randomly violent responses to hunger, or the weather – they were targeted against human agents of hardship, such as profiteers or governors who failed to intervene to protect the needy. Hard times often triggered responses from governors aimed at ameliorating the difficulties – prompted no doubt by a mixture of concern for the welfare of the poor, and concern for social order. In London, in January 1647, a number of such measures were visible – a petition from the City to Parliament for relief of the poor and punishment of vagabonds, and measures to prevent the consumption of meat, exports of fish, the slaughter of calves and lambs, and the use of food grains in brewing. In February there was great relief when ‘many ships… laden with corn in great abundance’ arrived.50

  High levels of taxation and, in particular, the excise did not help. The excises on meat and salt put an inflationary pressure on staple food items and served as a focus for hostility to the burdens of war, and the officials who administered them. The excise probably produced less money than the assessment, but it was more regressive (since payment was made by everyone who used sa
lt and meat, or drank beer, regardless of their income), was not time-limited, and was in the hands of professional collectors rather than local officeholders. In November and December there were serious disorders in Norwich, Beccles (where rioters were said to have been encouraged by the failure to punish the Norwich rioters) and Worcester.51 As with the disturbance at Derby in 1645, and grain riots, these were identifiably political demonstrations, led by butchers (those best placed to understand the burdens of the excise on meat) and joined by brewers in late December. There is some suggestion that the Presbyterians who dominated Norwich at that point were in sympathy with the rioters – the excise was, after all, a principal support of the New Model Army.52 There was also a wider reaction against the burdens of war and the abuses of power associated with committee government, although what counted as an abuse was a political question – what the situation demanded appeared differently to people of different political opinions. Excise disturbances were the popular edge of what could seem a wider phenomenon and for that reason may have enjoyed some sympathy from partisan local governors.53

  A week after the initial demonstration in favour of recreation days, London saw its only major excise disorder, at Smithfield. In late January the Commons heard a report dealing with ‘obstructions’ to the excise and in the first week of February this seems to have been high on the agenda. The author of London’s Account, an indictment of the entire financial edifice erected by Parliament which compared the whole lot unfavourably with ship money, was brought to the bar of the House, and the commissioners for the excise appeared in person with a petition for help in facing the difficulties of collection. When the issue was finally discussed, on 8 February, the House was unsympathetic to opponents of the excise. It ordered that an exemplary declaration should be prepared, and that abuses by minor officials and the impact on trade should be investigated. On the whole, however, the intention was, thought the Weekly Account, to ‘manifest that the House intend to continue the [excise] for a time longer for the satisfying of the public debts of the kingdom’.54