God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  33. Cromwell’s reported views tended in this direction: Gardiner, II, p. 24. In fact this does not appear to have been a significant factor in Cromwell’s hostility to Manchester’s command: Holmes, Eastern Association, pp. 199–205.

  34. Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford, 2004), pp. 34–7; for the accord and larger context See also Elliot Curt Vernon, ‘The Sion College Conclave and London Presbyterianism during the English Revolution’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge (1999), esp. pp. 48–68.

  35. Quoted in M. R. Watts, The Dissenters, vol. 1: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1978), p. 83.

  36. For these debates and the longer context see John Coffey, ‘The Toleration Controversy during the English Revolution’, in Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby (eds.), Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester, 2006), pp. 42–68; John Spurr, English Puritanism 1603–1689 (Basingstoke, 1998), ch. 12; Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester, 2006).

  37. Hughes, Gangraena, pp. 42–9; Vernon, ‘Sion College’, ch. 2; See also P. R. S. Baker, ‘Edwards, Thomas (c.1599–1648)’, ODNB, 17, pp. 965–8.

  38. Reprinted in William Haller (ed.), Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, 1638–1647, 3 vols. (New York, 1934), II, pp. 305–39; for Herle see p. 305.

  39. Ibid., p. 306.

  40. Watts, Dissenters, pp. 99–100.

  41. Hughes, Gangraena, pp. 30, 42–54, 131–7; Baker, ‘Edwards’.

  42. Watts, Dissenters, pp. 103–5, quotation at p. 104; See also Francis J. Bremer, ‘Williams, Roger (c. 1606–1683)’, ODNB, 59, pp. 293–7.

  43. Ann Hughes, ‘The Meanings of Religious Polemic’, in Francis J. Bremer (ed.), Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith (Boston, Mass., 1993), pp. 201–29.

  44. For Williams and Milton’s publisher, see Bremer, ‘Williams’, p. 295.

  45. The literature on Milton is vast. For the broad outline given here see Gardiner, II, pp. 69–72; Gordon Campbell, ‘Milton, John (1608–1674)’, ODNB, 38, pp. 333–49; David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 109–18; Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 263–75.

  46. Norbrook, Writing the English Republic, pp. 118–39; Campbell, ‘Milton’, p. 339.

  47. Gardiner, II, pp. 108–9.

  48. For his characterization of Milton on divorce see Gardiner, II, p. 72. William Prynne, Truth triumphing over falshood, antiquity over novelty. Or, The first part of a just and seasonable vindication of the undoubted ecclesiasticall iurisdiction, right, legislative, coercive power of Christian emperors, kings, magistrates, parliaments, in all matters of religion, church-government, discipline, ceremonies, manners: summoning of, presiding, moderating in councells, synods; and ratifying their canons, determinations, decrees: as likewise of lay-mens right both to sit and vote in councells;… In refutation of Mr. Iohn Goodwins Innocencies Triumph: my deare brother Burtons Vindication of churches, commonly called Independent: and of all anti-monarchicall, anti-Parliamentall, anti-synodicall, and anarchicall paradoxes of papists, prelates, Anabaptists, Arminians, Socinians, Brownists, or Independents: whose old and new objections to the contrary, are here fully answered (London, 1645); John Lilburne, A copie of a letter, written by John Lilburne Leut. Collonell. To Mr. William Prinne Esq. (Upon the coming out of his last booke, intituled Truth triumphing over falshood, antiquity over novelty) in which he laies down five propositions, which he desires to discusse with the said Mr. Prinne (London, 1645).

  49. Culpeper Letters, pp. 137–50, quotations at pp. 144–5.

  50. See above, pp. 10–12.

  51. The standard work on these congregations is Murray Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints: The Separate Churches of London 1616–1649 (Cambridge, 1977). There is much useful additional material in Keith Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 281–303. The classic evocation of the atmosphere of religious experimentation in this period is Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (Harmondsworth, 1975).

  52. Tolmie, Triumph, pp. 111–16.

  53. Ibid., p. 71.

  54. Clive Holmes, Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1980), pp. 41–6, 198–9; Mary Coate, Cornwall in the Great Civil War and Interregnum 1642–1660: A Social and Political Study (Oxford, 1933), ch. 15; David Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985), p. 247 (Baptists in the West Country from 1645 onwards); for Baptists see Mark Bell, ‘Freedom to Form: The Development of Baptist Movements during the English Revolution’, in Durston and Maltby (eds.), Religion, pp. 181–201; for a county study see Jacqueline Eales, ‘“So many sects and schisms”: Religious Diversity in Revolutionary Kent, 1640–60’, in ibid., pp. 226–48.

  55. For transgressions of baptismal rites See also David Cressy, Agnes Bowker’s Cat: Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 2000), ch. 11; for soldiers in cathedrals see Julie Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm during the English Civil War (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 203–12.

  56. John T. Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich: Politics, Religion and Government, 1620–1690 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 131, 151–5; Holmes, Eastern Association, p. 204, for Baillie and Cromwell; Hughes, Gangraena, pp. 42–3, for Edwards and Baillie.

  57. Holmes, Eastern Association, p. 195; Gardiner, II, pp. 25–6, 35–41.

  58. Holmes, Eastern Association, pp. 195–205. See also Gardiner, II, ch. 20.

  59. David L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 117–20, quotation at p. 120.

  60. Quoted from Gardiner, II, pp. 114–15.

  61. For Glamorgan and Henrietta Maria see ibid., pp. 164–73.

  62. Cust, Charles I, pp. 393–6; James Daly, ‘The Implications of Royalist Politics 1642–1646’, HJ, 27 (1984), 745–55, at p. 749. Hutton argued that this was a key period in the achievement of dominance by hardliners: Ronald Hutton, ‘The Structure of the Royalist Party, 1642–1646’, HJ, 24 (1981), 553–69, esp. pp. 563–4.

  63. Summarized in Smith, Constitutional Royalism, pp. 120–21. For the proposals see Gardiner, CD, pp. 275–86. For the Scots and these proposals See also Lotte Glow, ‘Peace Negotiations, Politics and the Committee of Both Kingdoms, 1644–1646’, HJ, 12 (1969), 3–22, at pp. 9–13.

  64. For the intersection of plans of reform with religious politics see Holmes, Eastern Association, pp. 206–10. See also Gardiner, II, p. 83; Mark A. Kishlansky, The Rise of the New Model Army (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 28–9; Ian Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–1653 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 4–5.

  65. Gentles, New Model Army, p. 5; Gardiner, II, pp. 86–7.

  66. Gentles, New Model Army, p. 5; Gardiner, II, p. 88.

  67. Kishlansky, Rise, pp. 28–9, quotation at p. 29; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 6–7, quotations at p. 6; Holmes, Eastern Association, pp. 210–12.

  68. Gardiner, II, p. 5.

  69. Kishlansky, Rise, pp. 35–6.

  70. Ibid., pp. 26–7.

  71. For Essex, see J. S. A. Adamson, ‘The Baronial Context of the English Civil War’, TRHS, 5th ser., 40 (1990), 93–120, esp. p. 113; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 4–5, 8–9, 23–4; Kishlansky, Rise, pp. 40–41.

  72. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 10–25; Kishlansky, Rise, pp. 35–48.

  73. Smith, Constitutional Royalism, pp. 121–4.

  74. Quoted in Gardiner, II, p. 125.

  75. Smith, Constitutional Royalism, pp. 123–4; Gardiner, II, p. 132.

  76. Cust, Charles I, pp. 393–4, 396–7; Hutton, ‘Structure of the Royalist Party’, pp. 563–4.

  77. A&O, I, pp. 614–26, 664–5.

  12. A Man Not Famous But Notorious

  1. Mercurius Aulicus, [week ending] 9 D
ecember 1643, p. 703; OED, ‘Herodian disease’. For the death of Lord Brooke see above, pp. 265-6, and for Hampden, pp. 287–8.

  2. See above, p. 207.

  3. See above, pp. 201–3.

  4. Remarkeable Passages, 8–15 December 1643, A2v; The Parliament Scout, 8–15 December 1643, p. 214; The Weekly Account, 13 December 1643, pp. 5–6; An Answer to Mercurius Aulicus, week ending 9 December 1643, p. 7.

  5. A narrative of the disease and Death Of that Noble Gentleman John Pym (London, 1643), quotations at pp. 2–3. For Mayerne, see Hugh Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician: The Various Life of Sir Theodore de Mayerne (New Haven, Conn., 2006).

  6. An Answer to Mercurius Aulicus, week ending 9 December 1643, p. 7; Mercurius Britanicus, 7–14 December 1643, pp. 126, 127, 128; Remarkeable Passages, 8–15 December 1643, sig. A2v; Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, 5–13 December 1643, pp. 273–4. Three elegies were published separately and acquired by Thomason on 10, 15 and 18 December (TT: 669.f.8[40, 42, 43]); See also John Hammond, A Short View of the life and actions of John Pim (London, 1643).

  7. Bruno Ryves, Mercurius Rusticus (London, 1685 edn), pp. 155–6; Conrad Russell, ‘Pym, John (1584–1643)’, ODNB, 45, pp. 624–40, at pp. 639–40, for the burial and disinterment.

  8. A Perfect Diurnall, 11–18 December 1643, p. 161. He had also stopped publishing for a while, given the flood of news available, but had been persuaded to resume ‘at the instigation of some friends’.

  9. Following the judgements of Anthony Milton, ‘Laud, William (1573–1645)’, ODNB, 32, pp. 655–70.

  10. Gardiner, II, pp. 99–106; Keith Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 323–4.

  11. J. A. Sharpe, ‘“Last dying speeches”: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England’, PP, 107 (1985), 144–67; Peter Lake and Michael C. Questier, ‘Agency, Appropriation and Rhetoric under the Gallows: Puritans, Romanists and the State in Early Modern England’, PP, 153 (1996), 64–107; Andrea McKenzie, ‘Martyrs in Low Life? Dying “Game” in Augustan England’, JBS, 42:2 (2003), 167–205; for Strafford see above, p. 138.

  12. John Hinde, The Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech (London, 1644), quotations at pp. 6, 10; Peter Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 527, quoted in Gardiner, II, p. 107.

  13. Hinde, Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech, quotations at pp. 11, 14; Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 527, quoted in Gardiner, II, p. 107. A ‘Corrected’ version of the speech was published in Oxford, claiming that Hinde’s text had been doctored to please the censors in the City: A briefe relation of the death and sufferings of the most Reverend and renowned prelate the L. Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford, 1644), p. 23. It included a history of Laud’s life. The passage quoted here about the popular clamour for Laud’s execution contains an additional phrase: ‘the Magistrates standing still and suffering them openly to proceed from Parish to Parish without check’.

  14. For a flavour see William Starbuck, A Briefe exposition, paraphrase or interpretation upon the Lord of Canterburies sermon (London, 1645); Anon., A Full and Satisfactorie ansvvere to the ArchBishop of Canterbvries speeh [sic] (London, 1645); Anon., The Life and Death of William Lawd, late Archbishop of Canterburie (London, 1645). The last offers a history of the betrayal of the Reformation. J.B., A Relation Of the Troubles Of the three forraign Churches in Kent (London, 1645), does the same on the basis of the history of a particular policy.

  15. David Scott, ‘Hotham, Sir John, First Baronet (1589–1645)’, ODNB, 28, pp. 257–9; David Scott, ‘Hotham, John (1610–1645)’, ODNB, 28, pp. 259–61; Stephen Wright, ‘Carew, Sir Alexander, Second Baronet (1609–1644)’, ODNB, 10, pp. 40–41.

  16. Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625–1660 (Oxford, 2002), p. 288. The dubious honour of the largest battle on English soil is also claimed for the battle of Towton in 1461, on the basis of the claims in contemporary chronicles about numbers engaged.

  17. Charles Carlton, Going to the Wars: The Experience of the English Civil Wars, 1638–1651 (London, 1992), p. 204.

  18. Gardiner, II, p. 113.

  19. Mercurius Cambro-Britannicus, 27 November-5 December 1643, pp. 3–4.

  20. Bod. L, Ashmolean MS 184, fo. 3r. For Lilly See also Patrick Curry, ‘Lilly, William (1602–1681)’, ODNB, 33, pp. 794–8. For astrology more generally see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (Harmondsworth, 1991 edn), chs. 10–12; Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (Princeton, NJ, 1989), esp. chs. 1–2; Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs 1500–1800 (London, 1979). For a close understanding of Lilly and his art see Ann Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth-Century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars (Manchester, 1995).

  21. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 364.

  22. Bod. L, Ashmolean MS 184, fos. 1r-2v, ‘Quando Essex eius iterus ad Oxonium’. For other examples see fos. 83v, 102v, 160r; Ashmolean MS 178, fo. 63v.

  23. Ashmolean MS 184, fos. 46v, 69v–70v; Ashmolean MS 178, fo. 174r.

  24. Ashmolean MS 184, fo. 62v.

  25. Ibid., fo. 36r (See also fos. 64r, 67r, 67v, 98v); Ashmolean MS 178, fo. 24r; Ashmolean MS 184, fo. 44r (See also Ashmolean MS 178, fos 16r, 63r).

  26. Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth-Century Mind, pp. 81–3.

  27. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 337–8.

  28. Ibid., pp. 338-9; John Booker, Mercurius Coelicus (London, 1645), quotation at p. 33.

  29. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 340.

  30. Booker, Mercurius Coelicus, p. 34.

  31. Capp, Astrology, pp. 57–9; Curry, ‘Lilly, William’.

  32. Lindley, Popular Politics, p. 138.

  33. William Lilly, The starry messenger (London, 1645): ‘George, a stickling prophet,… pipes out nothing but victory for his Majesty: be it granted, that the storming of Leicester hath in part verified some part of his prediction, (and a little treason besides) yet I deny it was signified by this posture, or that the rest of this mans words shall have like success; Nay, by position of Mars, Lord of the fourth, in the twelve, his Majesty shall not keep that Town long, or any else that he may take in this prophetic march, without infinite loss on his party: Venus in her house, doth assuredly tell us we shall keep Evesham taken by plain valour, and were it not for that accursed Cauda in Aquarius we should seldom be losers, but be gainers, but Division and Treason have got an habit and live with us, and are your friends, yea your only friends. The figure doth at the beginning promise success, but the end of this march will be unlucky, and foreshow some wilful obstinate Commanders on his Majesty’s side will afford us an absolute victory over you’. ‘Keep Leicester if you can, July may give it to us again’: postscript (unpaginated). Lilly reported this success with pride: A collection of prophecies (London, 1645), p. 55.

  34. John Booker, Mercurius Coelicus (London, 1646), unpaginated, ‘Of Harvest’.

  35. Curry, Prophecy and Power, pp. 5–8, ch. 2.

  36. Figures for sales and prices from Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, ch. 10; for Lilly’s sales see p. 348; for the price, p. 349; and for the income of leading astrologers, pp. 380–82. Curry, ‘Lilly, William’; Curry, Prophecy and Power, ch. 2.

  37. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 364.

  38. William Lilly, Merlinus Anglicus Junior (London, 1644), sig. A2v. Curry characterizes Lilly’s astrology as ‘democratic’: Prophecy and Power, pp. 28–31. For the relationship with Christian orthodoxy see Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, ch. 12. See also C. Scott Dixon, ‘Popular Astrology and Lutheran Propaganda in Reformation Germany’, History (1999), 403–18.

  39. See above, p. 110; Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 465 and n, 487. There is some useful material in Harry Rusche, ‘Merlini Anglici: Astrology and Propaganda from 1644 to 1651’, EHR, 80 (1965), 322–33; and Harry Rusche, ‘Propheci
es and Propaganda, 1641 to 1651’, EHR, 84 (1969), 752–70.

  40. Lilly, Merlinus Anglicus Junior, p. 4.

  13. Naseby and the End of the War

  1. Mark A. Kishlansky, The Rise of the New Model Army (Cambridge, 1979), ch. 2; Ian Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–1653 (Oxford, 1992), ch. 1; J. S. A. Adamson, ‘The Baronial Context of the English Civil War’, TRHS, 5th ser., 40 (1990), 93–120, esp. pp. 112–16.

  2. Kishlansky, Rise, pp. 42–6; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 10–16; Adamson, ‘Baronial Context’, pp. 113–19. I have followed Gentles, who differs from Kishlansky over the extent of political partisanship he discerns in the arguments over the officer list, but not over the revision of the view that it was an army of Independents, or that its origin was marked by political compromise.

  3. Kishlansky, Rise, pp. 37–8; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 11–12. Fairfax was not simply a cipher in these manoeuvres: Andrew Hopper, ‘Black Tom’: Sir Thomas Fairfax and the English Revolution (Manchester, 2007), pp. 54–66.

  4. Kishlansky, Rise, pp. 46–8; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 21–4; Adamson, ‘Baronial Context’, pp. 117–18. For the Vow and Covenant, see above, p. 293.

  5. For Lilburne and the Covenant see Edward Vallance, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation, 1553–1682 (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 154–5; David Martin Jones, Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth Century England: The Political Significance of Oaths and Engagements (Woodbridge, 1999), esp. pp. 140–41.

  6. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 24–7; Gardiner, II, p. 195.

  7. Gentles, New Model Army, ch. 2.