God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  34. See Lindley, ‘Impact of the 1641 Rebellion’; for the general influence of pamphlet representations of Catholicism see Clifton, ‘Popular Fear of Catholics’, pp. 37–8.

  35. Raymond, Invention, chs. 1–2, esp. pp. 20–21, 101, 104–5; for the manuscript circulation of news see Ian Atherton, ‘“The itch grown a disease”: Manuscript Transmission of News in the Seventeenth Century’, in Joad Raymond (ed.), News, Newspapers and Society in Early Modern Britain (London, 1999), pp. 39–65.

  36. Raymond, Invention, ch. 2; Cressy, England on Edge, pp. 298–302. Numbers of titles calculated from G. K. Fortescue (ed.), Catalogue of the Pamphlets, Books, Newspapers, and Manuscripts Relating to the Civil War, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, Collected by George Thomason, 1640–1661, 2 vols. (London, 1908).

  37. Raymond, Invention, pp. 20–36, 108–25. The pamphlet is The discovery Of a late and Bloody conspiracie At Edenburg, in Scotland (London, 1641).

  38. Title evidence derived from Fortescue, Catalogue. Newsbooks included material of this kind: Joad Raymond (ed.), Making the News: An Anthology of the Newsbooks of Revolutionary England 1641–1660 (Moreton-in-Marsh, 1993), ch. 4.

  39. Fees varied, as did the services offered or requested, but £20 is the annual charge made by John Pory to Viscount Scudamore: Atherton, ‘“The itch grown a disease”’, p. 41. See also figures in Raymond, Invention. Bridgewater paid £20 to Castle, although it is not clear what period of service this ‘token’ was intended to cover: see HEH, EL 7808, Bridgewater to Castle, 13 January 1640; EL 7816, Castle to Bridgewater, 14 January 1640. For a concise discussion of the growing literature on the widening market for news see Ian Atherton, ‘The Press and Popular Political Opinion’, in Barry Coward (ed.), A Companion to Stuart Britain (Oxford, 2003), pp. 88–110. For the cultural and political significance of the birth of the newsbook see Raymond, Invention; Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), ch. 7; Richard Cust, ‘News and Politics in Early-Seventeenth-Century England’, reprinted in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds.), The English Civil War (London, 1997), pp. 233–60.

  40. EL 7848, Bridgewater to Castle, 10 August 1640; see above p. 97. See also Cressy, England on Edge, pp. 297–8.

  41. I am grateful to Marcus Nevitt and Jason Peacey for discussing this material with me.

  42. The English Short Title Catalogue database covers the period 1475–1700. One twentieth of all titles containing the word ‘Plot’ come from 1641 and 1642 (91 out of 1,733), i.e. in two out of 225 years. For ‘conspiracy’ the figure is nearly 4 per cent (21 out of 578) and for the more time-dependent spelling ‘conspiracie’ the figure is 32 per cent (32 out of 100). It was a fairly precisely defined peak, too: taking the three terms together there are five pamphlets advertised in this way from 1640, rising to 75 in 1641, and 69 in 1642, falling back to 31 in 1643, 14 in 1644 and 3 in 1645. All figures calculated on simple searches on 15 December 2005. These are, of course, limited indicators of the market, and it should be noted that even in 1641 and 1642 these pamphlets are a small part of the total.

  43. Calculated from Fortescue, Catalogue.

  44. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘The Civil Wars in Ireland’, in John Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1638–1660 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 73–102, at p. 74.

  45. Derek Hirst, England in Conflict, 1603–1660: Kingdom, Community, Commonwealth (London, 1999), p. 183.

  46. R. M. Smuts, ‘Public Ceremony and Royal Charisma: The English Royal Entry in London, 1485–1642’, in A. L. Beier, David Cannadine and James M. Rosenheim (eds.),The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 65–93, at pp. 89–93; Lindley, Popular Politics, pp. 95–6; Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (Harlow, 2005), pp. 313–14.

  47. Howell quoted in Raymond, Invention, pp. 121–2.

  48. For the text see Gardiner, CD, pp. 233–6. The answer was published in several editions: much as he deplored it, the King had to engage with the world of print.

  49. Russell, Fall, p. 437; Gardiner, CD, pp. 232–3.

  50. Austin Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate (Oxford, 1982), p. 224.

  51. Clifton, ‘Popular Fear of Catholics’, p. 33.

  52. Raymond, Invention, p. 114; See also Elizabeth Skerpan, The Rhetoric of Politics in the English Revolution, 1642–1660 (London, 1992), pp. 60–80.

  53. Quoted in Manning, English People, p. 42.

  54. Lindley, Popular Politics, ch. 4; Valerie Pearl, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution: City Government and National Politics 1625–1643 (Oxford, 1961), pp. 131–9; Manning, English People, pp. 86–7. Robert Brenner identifies a group with distinct social and economic interests at the heart of this City revolution: Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Cambridge, 1993), esp. pp. 396–400.

  55. Clarendon also dates the emergence of these terms to this period: Raymond, Invention, p. 114. These tumultuous weeks are fully described and evoked by Lindley, Popular Politics, pp. 98–117; and Manning, English People, ch. 4. For their relationship to parliamentary politics see Russell, Fall, pp. 439–46.

  56. Russell, Fall, pp. 445–53.

  57. Gardiner, CD, pp. 236–7.

  58. BL, Add MS 21,935, fos. 159v–160r. These running heads do not appear at the relevant pages in R. Webb (ed.), Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in the Reign of Charles I by Nehemiah Wallington, 2 vols. (London, 1869), I, pp. 278–9. I am grateful to Peter Lake, who first pointed this juxtaposition out to me.

  59. See Russell, Fall, p. 448. For the ways in which Parliament men could ‘mould and guide’ opinion in the City see Pearl, London and the Outbreak, pp. 228–35. Russell’s verdict is measured: Russell, Fall, pp. 432–3. The authoritative account is Lindley, Popular Politics, which supplies little evidence of manipulation or orchestration from within Parliament. Crowds were helpful to Pym and others though, and that made the accusations plausible: they were made from within Parliament too: Lindley, Popular Politics, p. 97.

  60. Gardiner, CD, pp. 237–41, at p. 239. D’Ewes put the figure at 400 in his journal, correcting an initial estimate of 200, and made no mention of papists. The evocative passage is reprinted in Lindley, Civil War and Revolution, pp. 76–7. The whole episode is narrated from complementary perspectives by Lindley, Popular Politics, pp. 117–20; and Russell, Fall, pp. 445–53; See also Manning, English People, pp. 109–13.

  61. Lindley, Popular Politics, pp. 120–21, 123–5.

  62. Ibid., pp. 122, 125–6; Russell, Fall, p. 452; Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 184–5.

  63. Lindley, Popular Politics, p. 127.

  6. Paper Combats

  1. Many localities produced petitions for accommodation between King and Parliament, and the return of the King to Parliament was a common element of these petitions: Anthony Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (London, 1981), ch. 8. It was a repeated demand during the war, both by the King himself and ‘peace party’ lobbyists. The City petition of January 1643, for example, caused controversy with this demand: The humble petition of the major, aldermen, and commons of the City of London to His Majesty (London, 1643); Keith Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Alder-shot, 1997), pp. 345–7.

  2. Samuel R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War 1603–1642, 10 vols. (London, 1884), X, pp. 152–7. See also Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 457–8, 466; Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 185–6.

  3. Russell, Fall, p. 464. For the resultant promotion of the Protestation see above, pp. 200–201.

  4. Michael Mendle, ‘The Great Council of Parliament and the First Ordinances: The Constitutional Theory of the civil war’, JBS, 31:2 (1992), 133–62, esp. pp. 139–50; See also Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 76–7. For the longer history of the idea of the Great Council see David L. S
mith, The Stuart Parliaments 1603–1689 (London, 1999), pp. 43–8.

  5. Mendle, ‘Great Council’, p. 140. For the change represented by the Ten Propositions see Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 42–76.

  6. Russell, Fall, pp. 464, 467–8.

  7. Lindley, Popular Politics, pp. 130–37; Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 188–9, 223–4; John Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 256–9; Robin Clifton, ‘The Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution’, PP, 52 (1971), 23–55, at pp. 41–2; David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640–1642 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 56–9. For Pym’s use of the petitions see Russell, Fall, pp. 468–9.

  8. Lindley, Popular Politics, pp. 134–6; Patricia Higgins, ‘The Reactions of Women, with Special Reference to Women Petitioners’, in Brian Manning (ed.), Politics, Religion and the English Civil War (London, 1973), pp. 179–222, at pp. 184–5. For women in food riots see John Walter, ‘Grain Riots and Popular Attitudes to the Law: Maldon and the Crisis of 1629’, reprinted in John Walter, Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2006), pp. 27–66, esp. pp. 40–41. The image of a parliament of women was a common one in contemporary satire.

  9. Russell, Fall, pp. 457–8; Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 228–9.

  10. LJ, iv, pp. 523–4.

  11. Russell, Fall, pp. 458–9, 464–7.

  12. John Adamson, The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I (London, 2007), esp. ch. 16.

  13. For the exodus see Russell, Fall, pp. 470–71. Average numbers voting in Commons divisions fell from 276 in January to 159 in April: Smith, Stuart Parliaments, p. 128.

  14. Russell, Fall, pp. 470–76, 479. For the Militia Ordinance See also Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 244–6.

  15. Mendle, ‘Great Council’, pp. 155–6; Russell, Fall, pp. 476–7.

  16. Russell, Fall, pp. 478–87, for the metaphor of the matrimonial quarrel pp. 477–8; Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 230–31.

  17. Lewes quoted in William Cliftlands, ‘The “Well-Affected”: and the “Country”: Politics and Religion in English Provincial Society, c. 1640–1654’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Essex (1987), pp. 15–16. See Cressy, England on Edge, chs. 14–15 and pp. 405–8. For ballads see Angela McShane Jones, ‘“Rime and Reason”: The Political World of the English Broadside Ballad, 1640–1689’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Warwick (2004).

  18. Mendle, ‘Great Council’, pp. 152–9.

  19. For this gloss, see Russell, Fall, esp. p. 487.

  20. For this view of Pym’s importance in this period see Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 234–44.

  21. Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 231–2. For Hyde’s role as the King’s draughtsman see David L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 88–91; Russell, Fall, pp. 480–85; Paul Seaward, ‘Hyde, Edward, First Earl of Clarendon (1609–1674)’, ODNB, 29, pp. 120–38. Hyde was knighted in February 1643 and was created Earl of Clarendon in April 1661. For Henrietta Maria’s influence over policy from early 1642 See also Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (Harlow, 2005), pp. 327–58; Michelle Anne White, Henrietta Maria and the English Civil Wars (Aldershot, 2006), esp. ch. 3.

  22. Gardiner, History of England, X, pp. 191–3; Russell, Fall, pp. 503–4.

  23. Russell, Fall, pp. 505–6.

  24. See above, p. 182; Gardiner, History of England, X, pp. 154–6; Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 185–6.

  25. Bernard Capp, ‘Naval Operations’, in John Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland and Ireland 1638–1660 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 156–91, at pp. 157–8. Malcolm Wanklyn and Frank Jones are more sceptical about the significance of parliamentary control of the navy to the overall course of the war: A Military History of the English Civil War 1642–1646: Strategy and Tactics (Harlow, 2005), pp. 12–13.

  26. Russell, Fall, p. 505.

  27. Cited in Smith, Stuart Parliaments, pp. 46–7.

  28. Gardiner, CD, pp. 249–54. For an introduction to the controversy see David Wootton (ed.), Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writing in Stuart England (Harmondsworth, 1986), intr. and ch. 3; M. J. Mendle, ‘Politics and Political Thought 1640–1642’, in Conrad Russell (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War (London, 1973), pp. 219-45. The key work is Michael Mendle, Dangerous Positions: Mixed Government, the Estates of the Realm, and the Making of the Answer to the 19 Propositions (Tuscaloosa, 1985).

  29. Smith, Constitutional Royalism, pp. 90–91. See also Wootton, Divine Right, ch. 3.

  30. Following the summary in Mendle, ‘Great Council’, p. 160. See also Mendle, Dangerous Positions; Michael Mendle, Henry Parker and the English Civil War: The Political Thought of the Public’s ‘Privado’ (Cambridge, 1995); Michael Mendle, ‘Parliamentary Sovereignty: A Very English Absolutism’, in Nicholas T. Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (eds.), Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 97–119; Michael Mendle, ‘Henry Parker: The Public’s Privado’, in Gordon J. Schochet, P. E. Tatspaugh and Carol Brobeck (eds.), Religion, Resistance and Civil War: Papers Presented at the Folger Institute Seminar ‘Political Thought in Early Modern England, 1600–1660’ (Washington, DC, 1990), pp. 151–77; Michael Mendle, ‘The Ship Money Case, The case of shipmony, and the Development of Henry Parker’s Parliamentary Absolutism’, HJ, 32 (1989), 513–36; Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge, 1993), esp. pp. 221–33.

  31. Quentin Skinner, ‘Rethinking Political Liberty’, History Workshop Journal, 61:1 (2006), 156–70; see, more generally, Quentin Skinner, ‘Classical Liberty and the Coming of the English Civil War’, in Martin Van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (eds.), Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, vol. 2: The Values of Republicanism in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 9–28, esp. pp. 17–28.

  32. For the declarations see Skinner, ‘Rethinking Political Liberty’, pp. 165–8; for Parker and the Committee of Safety see Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 53–4.

  33. For Reasons, see Skinner, ‘Rethinking Political Liberty’, pp. 167–8. For the output of Bishop and White see Jason Peacey, ‘“Fiery Spirits” and Political Propaganda: Uncovering a Radical Press Campaign of 1642’, Publishing History, 55 (2004), pp. 5–36. I am grateful to John Morrill for discussing this material with me.

  34. For this general phenomenon see Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers.

  35. See above, p. 172.

  36. A. D. T. Cromartie, ‘The Printing of Parliamentary Speeches November 1640–July 1642’, HJ, 33 (1990), 23–44; John Morrill, ‘The Unweariableness of Mr Pym: Influence and Eloquence in the Long Parliament’, in Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky (eds.), Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to David Underdown (Manchester, 1995), pp. 19–54, esp. pp. 36–43.

  37. Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 255–6. His comment on the Grand Remonstrance is quoted from Russell, Fall, p. 427. For his defection see above, p. 147. See also Derek Hirst, ‘The Defection of Sir Edward Dering, 1640–1641’, reprinted in Peter Gaunt (ed.), The English Civil War (Oxford, 2000), pp. 207–25; S. P. Salt, ‘Dering, Sir Edward, First Baronet (1598–1644)’, ODNB, 15, pp. 874–80. Book-burning was as much a statement of anathema as of censorship, and it was frequently an expression of revulsion at the tone as much as the content of a publication: see above, pp. 277–81.

  38. A Seasonable Lecture, or A most learned Oration: Disburthened from Henry VValker, a most judicious Quondam Iron-monger, a late Pamphleteere and now (too late or too soone) a double diligent Preacher. As it might be delivered in Hatcham Barne the thirtieth day of March last, Stylo Novo. Taken in short writing by Thorny Ailo; and now printed in words at length, and not in figures (London, 1642). Taylor used this pseudonym on a number of occasions. For Taylor’s remarkable career see Bernard Capp, The World of John Taylor the Water-Poet 1578�
�1653 (Oxford, 1994).

  39. According to Fortescue, the lowest monthly total during 1642 was 117. Across the whole period 1640–1651 there were only twenty-seven months in which the total exceeded 100 titles. Sixteen of them were in a continuous run from January 1642 to April 1643: G. K. Fortescue (ed.), Catalogue of the Pamphlets, Books, Newspapers, and Manuscripts Relating to the Civil War, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, Collected by George Thomason, 1640–1661, 2 vols. (London, 1908).

  40. For characterizations of the motives of activists in these terms see Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 405–6; John Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces: The People of England and the Tragedies of war 1630–1648, 2nd edn (Harlow, 1999), pp. 68–9, and the reservations expressed at pp. 185–90.

  41. Figures quoted or calculated from Keith J. Lindley, ‘The Impact of the 1641 Rebellion upon England and Wales, 1641–5’, Irish Historical Studies, 18:70 (1972), 143–76, at p. 144; Anon., No pamphlet but a detestation Against all such pamphlets As are Printed, Concerning the Irish Rebellion, Plainely demonstrating the falshood of them (London, 1642), quoted in Lindley, ‘Impact’, at p. 146. For the influence of the Foxean tradition, and its rival, see Ethan Howard Shagan, ‘Constructing Discord: Ideology, Propaganda, and English Responses to the Irish Rebellion of 1641’, JBS 36:1 (1997), 4–34.

  42. Lindley, ‘Impact’, pp. 154–9. For the extent to which this fear of local Catholics was exaggerated see William Sheils, ‘English Catholics at War and Peace’, in Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby (eds.), Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester, 2006), pp. 137–57, at pp. 138–42. After the Restoration Catholics made up about 1 or 1.5 per cent of the population, with estimates for particular places varying from 0.4 to 2 per cent or more. Most studies emphasize their political loyalty: Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 324–30; for numbers see p. 325, n. 132.