God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  8. Ian Gentles, ‘The Iconography of Revolution: England 1642–1649’, in Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (eds.), Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 91–132.

  9. Ian Gentles, ‘The Civil Wars in England’, in John Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1638–1660 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 103–55, at p. 114. Charles Carlton, Going to the Wars: The Experience of the English Civil Wars (London, 1992), pp. 86–7 (catechisms); for plunder see ibid., ch. 11, and the effects of royalist support, pp. 187–9, 268–9.

  10. The Kingdomes VVeekly Intelligencer, no. 111, 29 July–6 August 1645, p. 887: it was condemned as a ‘libellous, and scandalous pamphlet’, suggesting once again that book-burning was as much about civility of discourse as the contents: it was hardly unusual to suggest that Parliament’s cause was not in fact a godly one. For book-burnings see above, pp. 277–9. In this case the burning was associated with a concerted attempt to suppress the publication and dissemination of the pamphlet.

  11. Gentles, New Model Army, ch. 4.

  12. Anne Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains, 1642–1651 (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 49–57.

  13. Kishlansky, Rise, chs. 2–3; Gentles, ‘Civil Wars in England’, pp. 140–41.

  14. Malcolm Wanklyn and Frank Jones, A Military History of the English Civil War, 1642–1646: Strategy and Tactics (Harlow, 2005), pp. 229–33; Peter Young and Richard Holmes, The English Civil War: A Military History of the Three Civil Wars 1642–1651 (Ware, 2000), pp. 233-4. For the politics of the Committee of Both Kingdoms see John Adamson, ‘The Triumph of Oligarchy: The Management of War and the Committee of Both Kingdoms, 1644–1645’, in Chris R. Kyle and Jason Peacey (eds.), Parliament at Work: Parliamentary Committees, Political Power and Public Access in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 101–27.

  15. Wanklyn and Jones argue persuasively that it was not in and of itself a disastrous decision: Military History, pp. 233–5. See also Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 234–5.

  16. Wanklyn and Jones, Military History, pp. 235–6; Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 236–7. For Montrose see Gardiner, II, pp. 215–20; David Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scotland, 1644–1651 (London, 1977), pp. 28–9.

  17. Wanklyn and Jones, Military History, pp. 236–40; Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 236–8, quotation at p. 237; for the sack of Leicester See also Carlton, Going to the Wars, p. 177.

  18. Wanklyn and Jones, Military History, pp. 240–43, which revises the conventional wisdom about Goring’s behaviour.

  19. For the best brief account of the battle see Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 55–60. See also Malcolm Wanklyn, Decisive Battles of the English Civil War: Myth and Reality (Barnsley, 2006), chs. 14–15; Wanklyn and Jones, Military History, ch. 21; Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 239–250.

  20. For this atrocity see Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 249–50; C. V. Wedgwood, The King’s War 1641–1647 (London, 1958), p. 445. Mercurius Belgicus noted that ‘Above all the rebels’ cruelty was remarkable in killing upon cold blood at least 100 women, whereof some of quality, being commanders’ wives, and this done under the pretence they were Irish women’: Mercurius Belgicus (London, 1646), sig. E2v.

  21. Figures vary in some degree for the army sizes, casualties and numbers of prisoners; I have followed Gentles’s estimates here: New Model Army, p. 60.

  22. Gardiner, II, pp. 256–7.

  23. Thomas Edwards, The Second Part of Gangraena (London, 1646), p. 127.

  24. David Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985), p. 258.

  25. Gardiner, II, pp. 252–3.

  26. For Baillie’s mixed feelings about the victory see Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford, 2004), p. 323.

  27. Derek Hirst, ‘Reading the Royal Romance: Or, Intimacy in a King’s Cabinet’, Seventeenth Century, 18 (2003), 211–29, at pp. 212–13; R. E. Maddison, ‘“The King’s Cabinet opened”: A Case Study in Pamphlet History’, Notes and Queries, 211 (1966), 2–9; Joad Raymond, ‘Popular Representations of Charles I’, in Thomas N. Corns (ed.), The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 47–73, at pp. 56–60.

  28. The Kings Cabinet opened (London, 1645), sig. A3r. Mercurius Britanicus was less restrained, while taking essentially the same line: see Joad Raymond (ed.), Making the News: An Anthology of the Newsbooks of Revolutionary England 1641–1660 (Moreton-in-Marsh, 1993), pp. 339–49.

  29. The Kings Cabinet opened, sig. A3v. This is apparently the first use of the term in England: ‘Cajole’, OED, accessed online, 2 April 2007.

  30. Philip Withington, The Politics of Commonwealth: Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2005), p. 155.

  31. See, for example, Jason Peacey, ‘The Exploitation of Captured Correspondence and Anglo-Scottish Relations in the British Civil Wars’, Scottish Historical Review, 79 (2000), 213–32; Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003), p. 215. For the general phenomenon of unreliable news, and deliberate manipulation, see Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Revolution (Aldershot, 2004), esp. ch. 7.

  32. The Kings Cabinet opened, p. 17.

  33. Quoted in Gardiner, II, p. 258. For opposition of this kind to the Uxbridge treaty see [John Vicars], The danger of treaties with popish-spirits (London, 1645), Thomason date 4 January 1645, authorship attributed by Thomason.

  34. The Kings Cabinet opened, pp. 43–4.

  35. Ibid., p. 44.

  36. Ibid., pp. 46–7.

  37. Ibid., sig. A3v; Anon., Some observations upon occasion of the publishing their majesties letters (Oxford, 1645), pp. 1–2.

  38. Anon., A Key To the Kings cabinet (Oxford, 1645), pp. 3–4.

  39. Ibid., pp. 11–13.

  40. Ibid., p. 3.

  41. See, for example, Bruno Ryves, Mercurius Rusticus (London, 1685 edn), pp. 3, 10, 11, 14, 16, 66, 74, 78, 79–80, 105–6, 136–7, 181. In some of these cases the purpose was to destroy legal evidences – not just a breach of privacy but a threat to property rights.

  42. Raymond, ‘Popular Representations’, pp. 58–9.

  43. Gardiner, II, pp. 257–8.

  44. Carlton, Going to the Wars, p. 146.

  45. Wanklyn and Jones, Military History, pp. 255–6; Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 251–2; Gardiner, II, pp. 254–5, 259–67.

  46. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 61–3; Gardiner, II, pp. 185–6, 264–5. For the clubmen see above, pp. 286–7.

  47. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 67–9.

  48. Ibid., pp. 69–70; Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 254–8; Wanklyn and Jones, Military History, p. 259.

  49. Young and Holmes, English Civil War, p. 257.

  50. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 61–4, 70–72.

  51. Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 259–60; Gardiner, II, pp. 274–5.

  52. Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 251, 259–60; Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 29–35.

  53. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 72–6; Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 260–61; Gardiner, II, pp. 311–17. For the politics of the royalist command in these crucial months see Ian Roy, ‘George Digby, Royalist Intrigue and the Collapse of the Cause’, in Gentles, Morrill and Worden (eds.), Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen, pp. 68–90.

  54. Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 261–2; Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 35–42; Gardiner, II, pp. 346–7, 356.

  55. Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 263–4; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 76–8.

  56. Quoted in Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 263–4.

  57. Young and Holmes, English Civil War, pp. 264–7.

  14. Winners and Losers

  1. Richard Gough, The History of
Myddle, ed. David Hey (Harmondsworth, 1981), pp. 71–5; Charles Carlton, Going to the Wars: The Experience of the English Civil Wars, 1638–1651 (London, 1992), p. 202. The population in 1563 was around 340 rising to 612 in 1676. There is no sign of rapid population growth before the 1630s, so that the population may well have been much less than 600: David Hey, An English Rural Community: Myddle under the Tudors and Stuarts (Leicester, 1974), pp. 41, 42, 48. It has been authoritatively estimated that during the 1640s around 18 per cent of the population was between 15 and 24 and 42 per cent between 25 and 59: E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1989), p. 528. I have assumed a 1:1 sex ratio. Since the population of the village was growing during this period it may have been younger than average, but the total population is likely to be lower than the quoted figure.

  2. Derived from the figures in Carlton, Going to the Wars, p. 204. These estimates are to be treated with caution of course, since contemporary estimates were inconsistent and often inaccurate, sometimes intentionally so: ibid., p. 203; Barbara Donagan, ‘The Casualties of War: Treatment of the Dead and Wounded in the English Civil War’, in Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (eds.), Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 114–32, at pp. 128–9. Carlton’s estimates for population loss in England (3.7 per cent), Scotland (6 per cent) and Ireland (41 per cent) from battle and war-related disease suggest that the overall loss of life as a proportion of total population was greater than in the First World War (2.6 per cent, including deaths from Spanish influenza): Going to the Wars, p. 214. For the costs of Montrose’s campaigns See also David Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scotland, 1644–1651 (London, 1977), pp. 41–2. In 1670 the combined population of Norwich, Bristol, York and Newcastle was about 64,000: E. A. Wrigley, People, Cities and Wealth: The Transformation of Traditional Society (Oxford, 1987), table 7.1.

  3. Gough, Myddle, pp. 73–4. See also p. 134. Stories of such minor skirmishes abound in the papers in the Indemnity Committee (TNA, SP24).

  4. Carlton, Going to the Wars, p. 207.

  5. Peter Young and Richard Holmes, The English Civil War: A Military History of the Three Civil Wars 1642–1651 (Ware, 2000), pp. 130–31; for a similar story, with a similar moral, see BL Sloane MS 1457, fo. 45r-45v.

  6. Carlton, Going to the Wars, pp. 207–9.

  7. Richard Wiseman, Severall Chirurgicall Treatises (London, 1676 edn), p. 441.

  8. Ibid. For treatment more generally see Eric Gruber von Arni, Justice to the Maimed Soldier: Nursing, Medical Care and Welfare for Sick and Wounded Soldiers and Their Families during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum, 1642–1660 (Aldershot, 2001) (for Wiseman see esp. pp. 185–8, 251-3); Donagan, ‘Casualties’, pp. 115–27; See also Carlton, Going to the Wars, pp. 221–4.

  9. Donagan, ‘Casualties’, pp. 127–32, quotation at p. 129. For a gloomier view of the maintenance of decent treatment of the physical remains of the fallen see Carlton, Going to the Wars, pp. 218–21.

  10. Carlton, Going to the Wars, pp. 150, 206–7.

  11. Ronald Hutton and Wylie Reeves, ‘Sieges and Fortifications’, in John Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford, 1998), pp. 195–233, at pp. 195–201.

  12. Stephen Porter, Destruction in the English Civil Wars (Gloucester, 1994), ch. 2.

  13. Victor Smith and Peter Kelsey, ‘The Lines of Communication: The Civil War Defences of London’, in Stephen Porter (ed.), London and the Civil War (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 117–48. See also Keith Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 238, 409; Valerie Pearl, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution: City Government and National Politics 1625–1643 (Oxford, 1961), pp. 263–5; A&O, I, pp. 103–4. For Oxford’s fortifications, which seem to have been a less popular enterprise, see Ian Roy, ‘The City of Oxford 1640–1660’, in R. C. Richardson (ed.), Town and Countryside in the English Revolution (Manchester, 1992), pp. 130–68, at pp. 145–6.

  14. Martyn Bennett, The Civil Wars Experienced: Britain and Ireland, 1638–1661 (London, 2000), p. 103; Hutton and Reeves, ‘Sieges and Fortifications’, pp. 212–19. For Exeter see Mark Stoyle, ‘Whole Streets Converted to Ashes: Property Destruction in Exeter during the English Civil War’, reprinted in R. C. Richardson (ed.), The English Civil Wars: Local Aspects (Stroud, 1997), pp. 129–44; Mark Stoyle, From Deliverance to Destruction: Rebellion and Civil War in an English City (Exeter, 1996).

  15. Hutton and Reeves, ‘Sieges and Fortifications’, pp. 228–31.

  16. For these (cautious) estimates, see Porter, Destruction, pp. 65–6; the combined population of Norwich, Bristol and York in 1670 was around 52,000: Wrigley, People, table 7.1.

  17. Porter, Destruction, p. 77; M. D. Gordon, ‘The Collection of Ship Money in the Reign of Charles I’, TRHS, 3rd ser., IV (1910), 141–62, at p. 158.

  18. Porter, Destruction, pp. 77–8.

  19. Ibid., p. 79.

  20. Ibid., chs. 5–6.

  21. Stoyle, Deliverance to Destruction, pp. 90, 111–12. For Oxford see Roy, ‘Oxford’; for Plymouth see Carlton, Going to the Wars, p. 211. For epidemics in general, including the plague, during the civil war see Paul Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1985), esp. ch. 3; for crisis mortality see Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, appendix 10, tables A10.1 and A10.2, figure A10.11. For plague at Newark see Bennett, Civil Wars Experienced, p. 117. See also Ann Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire, 1620–1660 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 258.

  22. Carlton, Going to the Wars, p. 211.

  23. Joan Dils, ‘Epidemics, Mortality and the Civil War in Berkshire, 1642–6’, in Richardson (ed.), Local Aspects, pp. 145–55. For the figure of 100,000 see Carlton, Going to the Wars, pp. 210–11. Ian Gentles thinks it may be too low: ‘The Civil Wars in England’, in Kenyon and Ohlmeyer (eds.), Civil Wars, pp. 103–55, at pp. 106–7. For the national picture see Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, esp. table A10.2.

  24. See above, pp. 317–18, 332, 378. For Hopton Castle see Carlton, Going to the Wars, pp. 168–9, 225, 258; Barbara Donagan, ‘Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War’, AHR, 99 (1994), 1137–66, at p. 1152. See also Gardiner’s florid pen portrait of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, a man of honour in command at Abbotsbury, Dorset, where quarter was refused to a garrison that had refused to surrender: Gardiner, II, pp. 94–8; Carlton, Going to the Wars, pp. 172–3. For the fear of ‘turning Germany’ see Ian Roy, ‘England Turned Germany? The Aftermath of the Civil War in its European Context’, reprinted in Peter Gaunt (ed.), The English Civil War (Oxford, 2000), pp. 249–67.

  25. For the incidence of rape see Charles Carlton, ‘Civilians’, in Kenyon and Ohlmeyer (eds.), Civil Wars, pp. 272–305, at pp. 292–5; Bruno Ryves reported no rapes, and only one attempted rape, despite his consistent concern to emphasize women’s vulnerability to outrages: Mercurius Rusticus (London, 1685 edn), pp. 78–9 (See also pp. 97–8). For other examples see Ronan Bennett, ‘War and Disorder: Policing the Soldiery in Civil War Yorkshire’, in Mark Charles Fissel (ed.), War and Government in Britain, 1598–1650 (Manchester, 1991), pp. 248–73, at p. 255; and, for the Bishops” Wars, David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640–1642 (Oxford, 2006), p. 85 (where it is associated with fornication and crime committed by men in arms rather than a means of fighting the war). For the resilience of codes of conduct see Donagan, ‘Atrocity’; Barbara Donagan, ‘Codes and Conduct in the English Civil War’, PP, 118 (1988), 65–95; Barbara Donagan, ‘The Web of Honour: Soldiers, Christians, and Gentlemen in the English Civil War’, HJ, 44 (2001), 363–89.

  26. For the scale of change see Michael J. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation in Seventeenth-Century England: Local Administration and Response (Woodbridge, 1994), esp. intr., pp. 271–6; Michael J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the
English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester, 1996), chs. 1, 9. The structure of public finance makes all these comparisons very difficult, particularly since the 1640s saw the collapse of one system and the birth of another: for a brief discussion see Michael J. Braddick, ‘The Rise of the Fiscal State’, in Barry Coward, (ed.), A Companion to Stuart Britain (Oxford, 2003), pp. 69–87.

  27. Anthony Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600–1660 (London, 1975), pp. 336–8; Hughes, Warwickshire, pp. 260, 263–9. For other local studies of the financial impact see Ben Coates, The Impact of the English Civil War on the Economy of London, 1642–50 (Aldershot, 2004), chs. 2, 5; Simon Osborne, ‘The War, the People and the Absence of the Clubmen in the Midlands, 1642–1646’, reprinted in Gaunt (ed.), English Civil War, pp. 226–48. For an overview see Bennett, Civil Wars Experienced; John Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces: The People of England and the Tragedies of War 1630–1648, 2nd edn (Harlow, 1999), pp. 84–5.

  28. Donald Pennington, ‘The War and the People’, in John Morrill (ed.), Reactions to the English Civil War 1642–1649 (Basingstoke, 1982), pp. 115–35, esp. pp. 127–30; Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces, 2nd edn, pp. 120–21.

  29. John Morrill, Cheshire 1630–1660: County Government and Society during the English Revolution (Oxford, 1974), pp. 107–11; Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces, 2nd edn, pp. 120–21; See also Carlton, Going to the Wars, pp. 281–2; Peter Edwards, Dealing in Death: The Arms Trade and the British Civil Wars, 1638-52 (Stroud, 2000), pp. 63–4; A. R. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Gloucestershire 1640–1672 (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 71–4; Bennett, Civil Wars Experienced. Quarter was not unregulated, even if it was unpaid – it was distinct from plunder. For evidence of local agreements see TNA, SP24/47 petition of farmers of Surrey; SP24/57 petition of Joane Johnson. The costs of quarter outlasted the war: Mary Coate, Cornwall in the Great Civil War and Interregnum 1642–1660: A Social and Political Study (Oxford, 1933), pp. 223–4.

  30. Hughes, Warwickshire, p. 256. See also Martyn Bennett, ‘Contribution and Assessment: Financial Exactions and the English Civil War, 1642–1646’, War and Society, 4 (1986), I–II.