God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  27. Buchanan Sharp, In Contempt of All Authority: Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586–1660 (Berkeley, Calif., 1980), pp. 224–5, 240; Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, pp. 160–62.

  28. Quoted in Sharp, In Contempt, p. 248.

  29. Hutton, Royalist War Effort, p. 170.

  30. Sharp, In Contempt, pp. 226–37.

  31. Ibid., p. 250; See also Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, pp. 159–60. For Waltham and Windsor, see above, pp. 234–5.

  32. Keith Lindley, Fenland Riots and the English Revolution (London, 1982), pp. 148–60, quotation at p. 149; See also 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.

  33. Quoted in Sharp, In Contempt, p. 249.

  34. The title page noted that the manifesto had been read by a lawyer to a crowd of 4,000 ‘armed with clubs, swords, bills, pitchforks and other several weapons’: The Desires and Resolutions, title page.

  35. Sharp, In Contempt, p. 226.

  36. Sharp’s brief catalogue of violence makes surprisingly frequent reference to the presence of firearms: ibid., p. 226. This may have been true in any number of local communities. In April 1644 a nameless ‘stout fellow’ arrived in the Suffolk village of Walberswick to keep commoners’ cattle off the marshland claimed by his employer, Sir Robert Brooke. He started a fight in which he received mortal wounds and indirectly gave a name to ‘Bloody Marsh’. It reopened a particularly violent round of dispute in a long-running contest over access to the lands, reflecting the dislocation of the legal system which had previously regulated and decided the issue: Peter Warner, Bloody Marsh: A Seventeenth-Century Village in Crisis (Bollington, 2000), esp. ch. 9.

  37. Quoted in Morrill, Revolt of the Provinces, 1st edn, p. 196.

  38. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, p. 157.

  39. Quoted in Morrill, Revolt of the Provinces, 1st edn, p. 196.

  40. For the New Model see Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 61–6; for the fate of the Herefordshire movement see Hutton, Royalist War Effort, pp. 170–71; Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces, 2nd edn, pp. 148–51.

  41. Michael J. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation in Seventeenth-Century England: Local Administration and Response (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 177–92, 285–6; Michael J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester, 1996), pp. 168–9, 170–74.

  42. Peter Edwards, Dealing in Death: The Arms Trade and the British Civil Wars, 1638-52 (Stroud, 2000), p. 63.

  43. There was a second disturbance on 4 July, another market day, which prompted the collector to make the complaint on which this account is based: reprinted in Braddick, Nerves of State, pp. 222–4. The second disturbance arose from a renewed attempt to collect the excise, prompted by a visit from the London commissioners: there is little doubt that the riots were connected with consideration of the problems through the formal channels.

  44. Keith Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 5–6; see above, p. 418.

  45. For Haverford West see Morrill, Revolt of the Provinces, 1st edn, pp. 182–3; for women and grain riots see John Walter, ‘Grain Riots and Popular Attitudes to the Law: Malden and the Crisis of 1629’, reprinted in John Walter, Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2006), pp. 27–66, at pp. 40–41.

  46. Braddick, Nerves of State, pp. 223–4.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, esp. p. 182. It was also true in the 1660s: ibid., pp. 211–20, 252–66; See also Braddick, Nerves of State, pp. 169–74, 221–6.

  49. For the uneasy relationship between Leveller and army politics with regard to the excise see Michael J. Braddick, ‘Popular Politics and Public Policy: The Excise Riot at Smithfield in February 1647 and Its Aftermath’, HJ, 34 (1991), 597–626, at pp. 618–21. For a sensitive consideration of the possibilities for developing local connections between soldiers and civilians see Daniel C. Beaver, Parish Communities and Religious Conflict in the Vale of Gloucester 1590–1690 (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), pp. 204–11.

  50. Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces, 2nd edn, pp. 160–61, 164–6.

  51. Ibid., pp. 166–9.

  52. For Willis, see Underdown, Somerset, pp. 118, 133–7; Ann Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire, 1620–1660 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 251–2 for the use of print. For the interaction of local and national politics in disputes like this see Clive Holmes, ‘Colonel King and Lincolnshire Politics, 1642–6’, HJ, 16 (1973), 451–84.

  53. Hughes, Warwickshire, ch. 6, esp. pp. 238–54, John Bryan quoted at p. 219.

  54. William Cliftlands, ‘The “Well-Affected” and the “Country”: Politics and Religion in English Provincial Society, c. 1640–1654’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Essex (1987), p. 261. For other examples see Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, pp. 152–4.

  55. A. R. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Gloucestershire 1640–1672 (Woodbridge, 1997), esp. pp. 71–4; Fletcher, Sussex, pp. 333–6. For an overview of the histories of these committees, which emphasizes ‘private battles’ and bureaucratic and jurisdictional rivalries, see D. H. Pennington, ‘The Accounts of the Kingdom, 1642-49’, in F. J. Fisher (ed.), Essays in the Economic and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 182–203; for the politics of accounts at Westminster see Jason Peacey, ‘Politics, Accounts and Propaganda in the Long Parliament’, 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. 59–78.

  56. There is a huge literature on these issues. I have made this argument at greater length in Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c.1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), esp. pts 2–3. For a complementary account see Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c.1550–1640 (Basingstoke, 2000). Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580-1680 (London, 1982) is of seminal importance. See also Keith Wrightson and David Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1525–1700, rev. edn (Oxford, 1995); Keith Wrightson, ‘The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England’, in Paul Griffiths, Adam Fox and Steve Hindle (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 10–46, and many of the other essays in that collection. An unusually clear statement of the values of village governors is reprinted in Steve Hindle, ‘Hierarchy and Community in the Elizabethan Parish: The Swallowfield Articles of 1596’, HJ, 42 (1999), 835–51. The treatment of the poor reveals these calculations with particular clarity. On that see, in particular, Steve Hindle, On the Parish?: The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England, c.1550–1750 (Oxford, 2004). For an important collection dealing with questions of community see Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (eds.), Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric (Manchester, 2000): for urban communities see Phil Withington, The Politics of Commonwealth: Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2005), esp. pt 3. For Puritan fellowship see John Spurr, English Puritanism 1603–1689 (Basingstoke, 1998), ch. 12. Beaver, Parish Communities, is particularly important in its emphasis on the role of ritual in the formation of parish communities, and offers a methodological complement to the works cited here.

  57. TNA SP24/57 petition of Thomas Jenkins. Many of these disputes revolved around rights to tithe income: Ann Hughes, ‘Parliamentary Tyranny? Indemnity Proceedings and the Impact of the Civil War: A Case Study from Warwickshire’, Midland History, 11 (1986), 49–78, at pp. 61–2.

  58. Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces, 2nd edn, pp. 156–9. See also Judith Maltby, ‘Suffering and Surviving: The Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Formation of “Anglicanism”, 1642–60’, in Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby (eds.), Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester, 2006)
, pp. 158–80, and the works cited there.

  59. Martin Ingram, ‘Puritans and the Church Courts’, in Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales (eds.), The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700 (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 58–91.

  60. Alan Everitt’s position in, Suffolk and the Great Rebellion, 1640–60, Suffolk Records Society, 3 (1960), is more subtle than is usually suggested. For Suffolk See also Clive Holmes (ed.), The Suffolk Committee for Scandalous Ministers 1644–1646, Suffolk Records Society, 13 (1970); Trevor Cooper (ed.), The Journal of William Dowsing: Iconoclasm in East Anglia during the English Civil War (Woodbridge, 2001). For Dowsing, see above, pp. 313–14.

  61. James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 1550–1750 (London, 1996), pp. 128–9; the Essex trials are discussed in Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study (London, 1970), ch. 9; the fullest treatment is Malcolm Gaskill, Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy (London, 2005).

  62. Charles Carlton, Going to the Wars: The Experience of the English Civil Wars, 1638–1651 (London, 1992), p. 385.

  63. The classic statements are Macfarlane, Witchcraft, chs. 10–16; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (Harmondsworth, 1991 edn), ch. 17. For subsequent revision see Sharpe, Instruments, chs. 6-7; Malcolm Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2000), esp. ch. 2; Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (London, 1996), esp. ch. 4; Clive Holmes, ‘Women: Witnesses and Witches’, PP, 140 (1993), 45–78; Peter Rushton, ‘Women, Witchcraft and Slander in Early Modern England: Cases from the Church Courts in Durham, 1560–1675’, Northern History, 18 (1982), 116–32. For the general view outlined here, and further references, see Braddick, State Formation, esp. pp. 146–50.

  64. Sharpe, Instruments, pp. 131–4.

  65. Ibid., pp. 140–44.

  66. Ibid., pp. 142–4; Macfarlane, Witchcraft, pp. 135–7.

  67. Sharpe, Instruments, pp. 144–6; Macfarlane, Witchcraft, pp. 135–7.

  68. Malcolm Gaskill, ‘Witches and Witchcraft Prosecutions, 1560–1660’, in M. Zell (ed.), Early Modern Kent 1540–1640 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 245–77, at pp. 263–5.

  69. Sharpe, Instruments, pp. 146–7.

  70. Ibid., pp. 144–5.

  71. Diane Purkiss, ‘Desire and Its Deformities: Fantasies of Witchcraft in the English Civil War’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (1997), 103–32, at pp. 103–4.

  72. Signes and wonders from Heaven (London, 1645), Thomason date 4 August 1645, pp. 54–5. For Pharsalia see above, pp. 54–5.

  73. Sharpe, Instruments, pp. 134–7. He differs on this point from Macfarlane, Witchcraft, p. 139.

  74. James Sharpe, ‘Scandalous and Malignant Priests in Essex: The Impact of Grassroots Puritanism’, in Colin Jones, Malyn Newitt and Stephen K. Roberts (eds.), Politics and People in Revolutionary England: Essays in Honour of Ivan Roots (Oxford, 1986), pp. 253–73; John Walter, ‘Confessional Politics in pre-Civil War Essex: Prayer Books, Profanations, and Petitions’, HJ, 44 (2001), 677–701; John Walter, ‘“Abolishing superstition with sedition”?: The Politics of Popular Iconoclasm in England 1640–1642’, PP, 183 (2004), 79–123; John Walter, ‘Popular Iconoclasm and the Politics of the Parish in Eastern England, 1640–1642’, HJ, 47 (2004), 261–90; John Walter, ‘“Affronts & insolencies”: The Voices of Radwinter and Popular Opposition to Laudianism’, EHR, 122 (2007), 35–60; Cooper (ed.), Journal of William Dowsing.

  75. Signes and wonders, p. 4. Two witches, in different locations, were said to have used witchcraft against parish officials who had tried to conscript their sons: Sharpe, Instruments, p. 133.

  76. Gaskill, Witchfinders, p. 149; Carlton, Going to the Wars, p. 189; Purkiss, ‘Desire and Its Deformities’, p. 108; for Rupert as an incubus or devil see Anon., The interpreter (Oxford, 1643). There is a manuscript copy in HEH, EL 7801. For Rupert and responsibility for the war see above, p. 347.

  77. Strafford’s words as reported in William Lilly, A collection of ancient and moderne prophesies (1645), Thomason date 20 November 1645, p. 50; Perkins quoted in Genevieve Guenther, ‘Why Devils Came When Faustus Called Them’ (unpublished paper); Nathan Johnstone, The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2006), ch. 7. Wallington collected numerous stories of Cavaliers drinking to the health of the Devil, or reports of their being in league with the Devil: BL Sloane MS 1457, fos. 21r-29r.

  78. Purkiss, ‘Desire and Its Deformities’, pp. 106–9, quotation at p. 109.

  79. Quoted in Purkiss, ‘Desire and Its Deformities’, pp. 111–12, quotation at p. 112; for martial language see p. 115.

  80. For the atrocity at Naseby see above, p. 378.

  81. This explains, perhaps, the dramatic peak in witchcraft prosecutions in Devon during the 1650s: thirty-five of the known formal accusations (51 per cent of the total) came in that decade: Janet A. Thompson, Wives, Widows, Witches and Bitches: Women in Seventeenth-Century Devon (New York, 1993), ch. 4, esp. pp. 101–4. Other western counties also saw a peak in accusations after the war. Thompson suggests that this reflects the ‘homogenising’ effect of the war, drawing the peripheries closer to the political and cultural concerns of the centre: p. 107.

  82. Johnstone, Devil, esp. pp. 253–65.

  83. For the relationship between witchcraft and anxieties about patriarchal order see Purkiss, Witch in History; Sharpe, Instruments, ch. 7.

  84. For a study paying close attention to the role of ritual in the formation of community and resolution of conflict see Beaver, Parish Communities. See also the other works cited in n. 56 above.

  85. For the survival of local administration see Anthony Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (New Haven, Conn., 1986), esp. pp. 11–14, 96–7, 186–7, 243–5, 250–51, 257–60, 357; implementation of the Poor Law may have required more prompting from below than in previous years, in the absence of Privy Council oversight: Hindle, On the Parish?, pp. 253–6; Steve Hindle, ‘Dearth and the English Revolution: The Harvest Crisis of 1647–50 Revisited’, EcHR (forthcoming).

  16. Post-War Politics

  1. Harrison quoted from Ian Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–1653 (Oxford, 1992), p. 68; Cromwell quoted from Barry Coward, Oliver Cromwell (Harlow, 1991), pp. 34, 40.

  2. Barbara Taft, ‘Walwyn, William (bap. 1600, d. 1681)’, ODNB, 33, pp. 773–83; Joseph Frank, The Levellers: A History of the Writings of Three Seventeenth-Century Social Democrats: John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), pp. 29–39; H. N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution (London, 1961), ch. 5. For a selection of his writings see J. R. McMichael and Barbara Taft (eds.), The Writings of William Walwyn (Athens, Ga, 1989).

  3. Sharp, ‘Lilburne’; Brailsford, Levellers, ch. 6; Frank, Levellers, ch. 2.

  4. Taft, ‘Walwyn’; Sharp, ‘Lilburne, p. 776; B. J. Gibbons, ‘Overton, Richard (fl. 1640–1663)’, ODNB, 42, pp. 166–71; Brailsford, Levellers, ch. 4; Frank, Levellers, pp. 39–44. For Overton and illegal printing in the early 1640s See also David Como, ‘Secret printing, the Crisis of 1640, and the Origins of Civil War Radicalism’, PP, 196 (forthcoming).

  5. Frank, Levellers, pp. 45–55; Pauline Gregg, Free-Born John: The Biography of John Lilburne (London, 1961), ch. 9. A Helpe and The Araignement are reprinted in William Haller (ed.), Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution 1638–1647, 3 vols. (New York, 1934), III, pp. 189–256; A Helpe is also reprinted in McMichael and Taft, Writings of Walwyn, pp. 131–42. For ‘functional radicalization’ see G. E. Aylmer (ed.), The Levellers and the English Revolution (London, 1975), pp. 13–14; the introduction contains a good brief outline of the history of the Leveller movement. See also Brailsford, Levellers; Frank, Levellers. For their political throught see Andrew Sharp, The English Levellers (Cambridge, 1998); David Wootton, ‘Le
veller Democracy and the Puritan Revolution’, in J. H. Burns, with Mark Goldie (eds.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 412–42.

  6. Frank, Levellers, pp. 54–5.

  7. Frank, Levellers, pp. 55–65; Gregg, Free-Born John, chs. 10–11. These pamphlets are reprinted in Aylmer, Levellers, pp. 56–67, and Haller, Tracts, III, pp. 257–307; England’s Lamentable Slaverie is reprinted in McMichael and Taft, Writings of Walwyn, pp. 143–53.

  8. J. C. Davis, ‘The Levellers and Christianity’, reprinted in Peter Gaunt (ed.), The English Civil War (Oxford, 2000), pp. 279–302; Rachel Foxley, ‘Citizenship and the English Nation in Leveller Thought, 1642–1653’, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Cambridge (2001), ch. 2; Rachel Foxley, ‘John Lilburne and the Citizenship of “free-born Englishmen”’, HJ, 47 (2004), 849–74.

  9. Brailsford, Levellers, p. xi; Frank, Levellers, pp. 51–2.

  10. Brailsford, Levellers, p. xi. It is presumed in Gregg, Free-Born John, chs. 13–21.

  11. Frank, Levellers, pp. 53–4; Brailsford, Levellers, pp. 53–4.

  12. For a more cautious account of their relationship with democratic ideas see Wootton, ‘Leveller Democracy’. For their relationship with the New Model Army see above, pp. 486–90, 508–9.