God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  41. Clive Holmes, The Eastern Association in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 33–62. For Norfolk See also R. W. Ketton-Cremer, Norfolk in the Civil War: A Portrait of a Society in Conflict (London, 1969), ch. 8.

  42. Hutton, Royalist War Effort, esp. pp. 3–4. In Herefordshire partisanship erupted from January 1642, prompted by the departure of the King from Parliament and the use of ordinances in his absence, producing a battle between commitment to godly reformation and to constitutional royalism: Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990), ch. 6.

  43. Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 324–9.

  44. Malcolm, ‘A King in Search of Soldiers’, pp. 259–71; Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 329–33; Andrew Hopper, ‘“The popish army of the north”: Anti-Catholicism and Parliamentarian Allegiance in Civil War Yorkshire, 1642–46’, Recusant History, 25:1 (2000), 12–28. For a judicious overview of the involvement of Catholics 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. For the disarming of the Trained Bands See also C. H. Firth, Cromwell’s Army: A History of the English Soldier during the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Protectorate (London, 1967 edn), pp. 16–17.

  45. Fletcher, Outbreak, pp. 334–40.

  46. Malcolm, ‘A King in Search of Soldiers’, p. 263; Astley quoted in Wanklyn and Jones, English Civil War, p. 43.

  47. Roy, ‘Royalist Army’, ch. 1.

  48. See, for example, Coleby’s discussion of the Hampshire Grand Jury petition for accommodation in the summer of 1642: Andrew Coleby, Central Government and the Localities: Hampshire 1649–1689 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 6–7.

  49. Barbara Donagan, ‘Troubled Consciences: Choice and Allegiance in the English Civil War’ (unpublished paper), pp. 22–6; See also Barbara Donagan, ‘Casuistry and Allegiance in the English Civil War’, in Derek Hirst and Richard Strier (eds.), Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 89–111. For background on godly choice, and other examples, see Barbara Donagan, ‘Godly Choice: Puritan Decision-Making in Seventeenth-Century England’, Harvard Theological Review, 76 (1983), 307–34; Barbara Donagan, ‘Understanding Providence: The Difficulties of Sir William and Lady Waller’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 39:3 (1988), 433–44; Barbara Donagan, ‘Providence, Chance and Explanation’, Journal of Religious History, 11 (1981), 385–403.

  50. Donagan, ‘Troubled Consciences’, p. 27.

  51. Gardiner, I, p. 168.

  52. Ibid., pp. 15–16.

  53. David L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge, 1994), chs. 3–4. For Colepeper’s speech see above, p. 119; for the Kentish petition see above, p. 205.

  54. Roy, ‘Royalist Army’, pp. 80–83; Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (Harlow, 2005), pp. 327–31, 360–26. On Digby see Ian Roy, ‘George Digby, Royalist Intrigue and the Collapse of the Cause’, in Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (eds.), Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 68–90; Adamson, Noble Revolt, esp. p. 312. For overviews of the range of royalist opinion See also Ronald Hutton, ‘The Structure of the Royalist Party, 1642–1646’, HJ, 24 (1981), 553–69; James Daly, ‘The Implications of Royalist Politics 1642–1646’, HJ, 27 (1984), 745–55.

  55. Ian Roy, ‘Rupert, Prince and Count Palatine of the Rhine and Duke of Cumberland (1619–1682)’, ODNB, 48, pp. 141–54.

  56. Sheils, ‘English Catholics’, p. 141.

  57. John Morrill (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Harlow, 1990); Barry Coward, Oliver Cromwell (Harlow, 1991), intr. and ch. 1; Blair Worden, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Sin of Achan’, in Derek Beales and Geoffrey Best (eds.), History, Society and the Churches: Essays in Honour of Owen Chadwick (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 125–45.

  58. Holmes, Eastern Association, pp. 54–5.

  59. Walter, Understanding Popular Violence.

  60. For Somerset see above, pp. 215–16; Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, pp. 39–40.

  61. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, p. 143.

  62. Morrill, Cheshire, pp. 78–9. Brian Manning, The English People and the English Revolution (Harmondsworth, 1976), chs. 7–8, argues for an independent middling sort parliamentarianism lined up against an aristocratic loyalism supported by deferential tenants. While valuable in emphasizing the potential of political commitments below the level of the gentry he is surely too dismissive of the possibility of a genuine popular royalism: see his position in Aristocrats, Plebeians and Revolution in England, 1640–1660 (London, 1996), esp. pp. 56–8. This line is also detected by many commentators in Underdown, Somerset, and David Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985). For a review and rebuttal see Buchanan Sharp, ‘Rural Discontents and the English Revolution’, in Richardson (ed.), Town and Countryside, pp. 251–72. On deference and independence more generally, see C. B. Phillips, ‘Landlord-Tenant Relationships 1642–1660’, in Richardson (ed.), Town and Countryside, esp. pp. 226–33; Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces, 2nd edn, pp. 185–9.

  63. Hughes, Warwickshire, pp. 142–65; Warmington, Gloucestershire, pp. 33–7.

  64. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion is the pioneering work of this kind, followed by Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, see esp. here, ch. 7. For some searching but respectful criticism of Underdown see John Morrill, ‘The Ecology of Allegiance’, reprinted in John Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (Harlow, 1993), pp. 224–41. See also David Underdown, ‘A Reply to John Morrill’, JBS, 26 (1987), 468–79 and Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces, 2nd edn, pp. 186–7.

  65. A case made very powerfully by Holmes, Eastern Association, ch. 3.

  66. See David Underdown, ‘The Problem of Popular Allegiance in the English Civil War’, TRHS, 5th ser., 31 (1981), 69–94, at pp. 92–3 for some suggestive comments along these lines.

  67. Andy Wood, ‘Beyond Post-Revisionism?: The Civil War Allegiances of the Miners of the Derbyshire “Peak Country”’, HJ, 40 (1997), 23–40.

  68. An argument put most pungently by Manning, Aristocrats, Plebeians and Revolution, ch. 8.

  69. Keith Lindley, Fenland Riots and the English Revolution (London, 1982); Clive Holmes, ‘Drainers and Fenmen: The Problem of Popular Political Consciousness in the Seventeenth Century’, in Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson (eds.), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 166–95, esp. pp. 168–9.

  70. See above, p. 123.

  71. Daniel C. Beaver, ‘Sacrifice, Venison and the Social Order in Waltham Forest, 1608–1642’ (unpublished paper). These disputes are discussed more fully in ch. 15.

  72. Daniel C. Beaver, ‘The Great Deer Massacre: Animals, Honor, and Communication in Early Modern England’, JBS, 38 (1999), 187–216; See also Daniel C. Beaver, ‘“Bragging and daring words”: Honour, Property and the Symbolism of the Hunt in Stowe, 1590–1642’, in Braddick and Walter (eds.), Negotiating Power, pp. 149–65. Purkiss surely misrepresents these events in assimilating them to the effects of hunger (the animals were for the most part not eaten) on soldiers enduring long, hard service (they were not soldiers and there was as yet no war): Diane Purkiss, The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlemen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain (New York, 2006), ch. 18.

  73. For the dispute see Heather Falvey, ‘Crown Policy and Local Economic Context in the Berkhamsted Common Enclosure Dispute, 1618–42’, Rural History, 12 (2001), 123–58. For Edlyn’s contribution see TNA, E. 179/248/19; Andrew Hopper, ‘The Wortley Park Poachers and the Outbreak of the English Civil War’ (forthcoming).

  74. See above, pp. 184–5. For a sensitive discussion of the issues see John Walter, ‘The English People and the English Revolution Revisited’, History Workshop Journal, 61 (2006), 171–182. For the ability of merchant networks to tak
e advantage of the times see Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Cambridge, 1993), esp. pt 3. This is my gloss on his argument; he emphasizes the potential of this analysis to support a broader interpretation of the conflict as grounded in class interests.

  75. Walter, Understanding Popular Violence: John Morrill and John Walter, ‘Order and Disorder in the English Revolution’, in Fletcher and Stevenson (ed.), Order and Disorder, pp. 137–65; Fletcher, Outbreak, ch. 12. Manning put this fear of disorder at the heart of royalism: English People, chs. 3, 7, 8. See also Lady Sydenham above, pp. 227–8. For an overview of theories of allegiance see Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, ch. 1.

  76. Ann Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War, 2nd edn (Basingstoke, 1998), p. 168.

  8. Armed Negotiation

  1. Details of this and all military encounters are hard to agree and are much written about. For a general account of the difficulties see Malcolm Wanklyn, Decisive Battles of the English Civil War: Myth and Reality (Barnsley, 2006), chs. 1–2. Here and elsewhere I have relied upon Peter Young and Richard Holmes, The English Civil War: A Military History of the Three Civil Wars, 1642–1651 (Ware, 2000 edn), pp. 69–71; Malcolm Wanklyn and Frank Jones, A Military History of the English Civil War, 1642–1646: Strategy and Tactics (Harlow, 2005), pp. 44–5. Austin Woolrych’s fine political narrative Britain in Revolution 1625–1660 (Oxford, 2002) is also informative about military matters: Woolrych wrote a number of important military histories. For the battle and subsequent desecration of the cathedral see Gardiner, I, pp. 30, 66.

  2. Wanklyn and Jones, Military History, pp. 46–8; Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 71–3. The King’s infantry complement at Edgehill was probably larger than at any point later in the war, but was not at all well armed: Ian Roy, ‘The Royalist Army in the First Civil War’, unpublished D.Phil. thesis, Oxford (1963), pp. 50, 160–63.

  3. M. C. Fissel, English Warfare, 1511–1642 (London, 2001), offers a very good overview.

  4. For the role of Scottish ‘soldiers of fortune’ see Mark Stoyle, Soldiers and Strangers: An Ethnic History of the English Civil War (New Haven, Conn., 2005), esp. pp. 77–9: being in pay is not always the same as being a mercenary in the more general sense, of course: see his index entry for ‘mercenary’ for the conflation.

  5. David Trim, ‘Calvinist Internationalism and the English Officer Corps, 1562–1642’, History Compass, 4/6 (2006), 1024–48, at pp. 1024–5.

  6. Barbara Donagan, ‘Halcyon Days and the Literature of War: England’s Military Education before 1642’, PP, 147 (1995), 65–100. For the muster masters See also Lindsey O. Boynton, The Elizabethan Militia, 1558-1638 (London, 1967), esp. pp. 224–7, 287–91; Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, Conn., 1992), pp. 28–30, 487–500.

  7. Donagan, ‘Halcyon Days’. For the importance of the Trained Bands, and their stores of arms, see above, p. 223.

  8. For this and the following two paragraphs I have relied on Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 73–81, updated in the light of the account in Wanklyn and Jones, Military History, pp. 50–55. For a detailed account of the sources and the ambiguities of any narrative based on them see Wanklyn, Decisive Battles, chs. 4–5.

  9. Charles Carlton, Going to the Wars: The Experience of the English Civil Wars, 1638–1651 (London, 1992), pp. 134, 137–9.

  10. Richard Wiseman, Severall Chirurgicall Treatises (London, 1676), pp. 348–9.

  11. Oliver Lawson Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (Harmondsworth, 1972 edn) p. 287. For the stripping of corpses, see Carlton, Going to the Wars, p. 146.

  12. Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, pp. 286–7.

  13. Carlton, Going to the Wars, pp. 146–7, 227.

  14. John Kenyon, The Civil Wars of England (London, 1989 edn), p. 57. Kenyon’s is another political narrative firmly grounded in a knowledge of military affairs.

  15. Wanklyn and Jones, Military History, p. 56; Young and Holmes, English Civil War, p. 80.

  16. Young and Holmes, English Civil War, p. 79; Carlton, Going to the Wars, p. 50. For Verney’s commitment to the royalist cause see above, p. 226.

  17. Wanklyn and Jones suggest that Essex withdrew northwards expecting the King, who had suffered heavy losses of infantry, to retreat towards Wales. They also argue that the suggestion of a rapid advance on London by the royalists was probably not made until four days after the battle, when it had more chance of success, rather than the morning after, as is often maintained. In any case, they suggest, it probably had less hope of success than is often argued: Military History, pp. 56–60. For the likely strategic effect of the taking of London see Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, p. 242.

  18. Carlton, Going to the Wars, pp. 230–31; See also Wanklyn, Decisive Battles, chs. 1–2.

  19. Gardiner, I, pp. 53–7. For Brentford see The humble petition of the inhabitants of the town of Old Braintford (London, 27 November 1642). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘the word was much used in Germany during the Thirty Years War, in reference to which it was current in England from c. 1630; here word and thing became familiar on the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, being especially associated with the proceedings of the forces under Prince Rupert’ (accessed online 7 March 2006: http://dictionary.oed.com/). This may be to accept parliamentarian propaganda at face value. The word was also used prior to active hostilities in relation to parliamentarian crowds or mustering soldiers: it was applied retrospectively to the Stour Valley rioters by Bruno Ryves (writing in 1643), but also appears in a document describing the fears of Lady Goring: EL 7795. The document is undated, but clearly comes from mid-August 1642.

  20. Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 82–3. Wanklyn and Jones cast doubt on the usual claim that Skippon, a man of military experience, added to the parliamentarian advantage by taking better advantage of the ground: Military History, pp. 60–61.

  21. For good examples see A. R. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Gloucestershire 1640–1672 (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 43–50; John T. Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich: Politics, Religion and Government, 1620–1690 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 119–28. In Lincolnshire, as in many other counties, a ‘snarling modus vivendi’ had survived up until the eve of Edgehill: Clive Holmes, Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1980), p. 159. The Staffordshire neutrality pact was agreed after Edgehill, and parties crystallized slowly thereafter: D. H. Pennington and I. A. Roots (eds.), The Committee at Stafford, 1643–1645: The Order Book of the Staffordshire County Committee, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 4th ser., 1 (Manchester, 1957), pp. xx-xxi.

  22. Gardiner, I, pp. 13–14; David L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 109–10.

  23. Gardiner, I, pp. 15–18.

  24. Smith, Constitutional Royalism, pp. 110–11. For a general account of royalist politics see Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (Harlow, 2005), ch. 6. Ronald Hutton’s brief account has been very influential: ‘The Structure of the Royalist Party, 1642–1646’, HJ, 24 (1981), 553–69. For some revision see James Daly, ‘The Implications of Royalist Politics, 1642–1646’, HJ, 27 (1984), 745–55.

  25. Gardiner, I, p. 18.

  26. Smith, Constitutional Royalism, pp. 111–12.

  27. For the proposal see Gardiner, I, p. 39.

  28. Gardiner, I, p. 20. He took this issue seriously. For example, having accepted that he did not have this combination of powers, he refused to negotiate without parliamentary authority at Lostwithiel in 1644: Gardiner, II, p. 11. Essex’s powers may have been recognized by contemporaries to have been more extensive: J. S. A. Adamson, ‘The Baronial Context of the English Civil War’, TRHS, 5th ser., 40 (1990), 93–120, esp. pp. 105–19. This is based on a closer analysis of protocol and ceremonial than of the practice of politics.

  29. Gardiner, I, pp. 19, 37, 39, 64, 71–2.

  30. Young and Holmes
, English Civil War, pp. 89–90.

  31. Ibid., pp. 100–102.

  32. Ibid., pp. 83, 115; Gardiner, I, pp. 71–2.

  33. Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, pp. 243–5.

  34. Gardiner, I, p. 73.

  35. John Morrill, ‘Holles, Denzil, First Baron Holles (1598–1680)’, ODNB, 27, pp. 708–14. See also Patricia Crawford, Denzil Holles, 1598–1680: A Study of His Political Career (London, 1979).

  36. Conrad Russell, ‘Pym, John (1584–1643)’, ODNB, 45, pp. 624–40; Gardiner, I, p. 62.

  37. Michael J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester, 1996), pp. 95–9.

  38. CJ, ii, p. 865, 26 Nov. 1642: ‘Mr. Pym, Sir H. Vane senior, Mr. Pierrepointe, Sir H. Vane junior, Mr Holles, Mr Rous, Mr Whitlock, are appointed to consider of some propositions to be presented to this House, for the entering into a strict league with the States of the United Provinces: And are to meet when and where they please’.

  39. Gardiner, I, p. 77. For the history of the Eastern Association see Clive Holmes, The Eastern Association in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1974).

  40. Gardiner, I, p. 63.

  41. Keith Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 236–55, 337–48; Gardiner, I, pp. 74–5; for the Committee of Both Houses for the Advance of Money see Gerald Aylmer, The State’s Servants: The Civil Service of the English Republic 1649–1660 (London, 1973), esp. p. 13.

  42. For the measures see Gardiner, I, pp. 14–15, 75. Anon., The actors remonstrance (London, 24 January 1643), complained that the theatres had been closed but that bear-baiting continued.

  43. Lindley, Popular Politics, pp. 344–5.

  44. The New Yeares wonder being a most cernaine [sic] and true Relation of the disturbed inhabitants of Kenton: And other neighbouring villages neere unto Edge-Hil (London, 1643), printed for Robert Ellit, Thomason date 27 January 1643, quotations from title page, pp. 6, 7–8; A great vvonder in Heaven: shewing the late Apparitions and prodigious noyses of War and Battels, seen on Edge-Hill neere Keinton in Northamptonshire (London, 1643), printed for Thomas Jackson, pub. date 23 January 1643.