The English Civil War: A People’s History (Text Only)

by Diane Purkiss

  Charles I has been the subject of innumerable works; the most readable biography is Charles Carlton, Charles I: The Personal Monarch, London: Routledge, 1983 which also brings a welcome freshness to considerations of his character. Pauline Gregg, Charles I, London, 1984, is solid and reliable on context. Richard Cust’s biography Charles I: A Political Life, is excellent and up-to-date. On the personal rule Kevin Sharpe, The personal rule of Charles I, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992, is indispensable, though not all of its conclusions have found general acceptance. Conrad Russell uses Charles’s own ideas to explain the war in the final chapter of The Causes of the English Civil War: the Ford Lectures delivered in the University of Oxford, 1987–1988, Oxford, 1990.

  On the personal rule and the Forced Loan and Ship Money, see Sharpe. above, and also Richard Cust, ‘Charles I, the Privy Council and the parliament of 1628’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 2 (1992), 25–50, and his The Forced Loan and English Politics 1626–1628, Oxford, 1987. On Ship Money a great deal of local history has carefully tracked returns. Some general works include Russell Conrad, ‘England in 1637’, in Todd, Margo (ed.), Reformation to revolution: politics and religion in early modern England, London and New York: Routledge, 1995, 116–41; Peter Lake, ‘The collection of ship money in Cheshire during the sixteen-thirties; a case study of relations between central and local government’, Northern History, 17, (1981), 44–71; Nelson P. Bard, ‘The ship money case and William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 50, 1977, 177–84. Some contemporary reactions survive in journals and in An humble remonstrance to his majesty against the tax of ship-money imposed, 1641; The arguments of Sir Richard Hutton … and Sir George Croke … upon a scire facias brought … in the court of exchequer against John Hampden esquire, 1641; Oliver St John, The speech … of Mr. St. John … 1640 … concerning ship-money, 1641. On the contemporary idea that Charles was the cause of the war, see Patricia Crawford, ‘Charles Stuart, That Man of Blood’, Journal of British Studies, 16,1977, 58. On Charles’s actual reactions to events, see the sources and studies mentioned earlier.

  On Charles’s trial and execution: among other sources, see The Articles and Charge of the Army exhibited in Parliament against the Kings Majesty, 1648; The Charge of the Army, and Counsel of War, against the King. With a brief Answer thereunto by some of the Loyall Party, 1648; Articles exhibited against the King, and the Charge of the Army against his Majesty; Drawn up by the Generall Councell of Officers, 1648; His Majesties Declaration concerning the Charge of the Army; And his Resolution to die like a Martyr, 1649; The manner of the Deposition of Charles Stewart, King of England, by the Parliament, and Generall Councell of the Armie, 1649; for Fairfax’s objection the British Library Thomason copy of A Remonstrance of his Excellency Thomas Lord Fairfax; King Charles His Speech made upon the Scaffold at Whitehall-Gate, Immediately before his Execution … published by special Authority, 1649; Eikon Basilike, 1649; Amos Tubb, ‘Mixed Messages: Royalist Newsbook Reports of Charles I’s Execution and of the Leveller Uprising’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 67:1, 2004, 59–74; Joad Raymond, ‘Popular representations of Charles I’, in Thomas N. Corns, ed., The royal image: representations of Charles I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 47–73; Jason Peacey, ed., The regicides and the execution of Charles I, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2001; Sean Kelsey, ‘The Trial of Charles I’, English Historical Review, 118, 2003, 583–616, and his ‘The Death of Charles I’, Historical Journal, 45, 2002, 727–54.

  OLIVER CROMWELL

  On the young Cromwell, there are a number of angry Restoration slanders, but fewer reliable sources; Cromwell’s own remarks can be found in The letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. Thomas Carlyle and S. C. Lomas, 3 vols, 1904 and in Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. Ivan Roots, 1989 there are also uncollected letters. Thomas Beard’s Theater of God’s Judgements, 1597, provides an insight into his world-view. On godly education in general, see John Morgan, Godly learning: Puritan attitudes towards reason, learning, and education, 1560–1640, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. We await the magisterial biography of Cromwell promised by Blair Worden; in the meantime, the best discussion is John Morrill, ‘The making of Oliver Cromwell’, in Oliver Cromwell and the English revolution, London: Longman, 1990. It is still worth reading two older studies, Thomas Carlyle’s introduction and notes to his edition of Cromwell’s writings, ably summarized and contextualized by Blair Worden in his Roundhead reputations, London: Allen Lane, 2001; and Christopher Hill’s God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English revolution, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970. See also Afterwards.

  LONDON

  On London, see Valerie Pearl, London and the outbreak of the Puritan revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961; Jeremy Boulton, Neighbourhood and society: a London suburb in the seventeenth century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; and Paul Griffiths, and Mark S. R. Jenner, eds, Londinopolis: essays in the cultural and social history of early modern London, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000, which is especially rewarding on food. Lindley, Keith, ‘London’s citizenry in the English revolution’, in Roger Charles Richardson, ed., Town and countryside in the English revolution, Manchester, 1992, 19–45. Weinstein in Porter, London and the Civil War. Bardsley, M. and Hamm, J., London’s Health; Key Facts and figures, 1995; M. Bardsley, and D. Morgan, Deprivation and Health in London, 1996; D. Gainster and P. Stamper, The Age of transition: the archaeology of English culture 1400–1600,1997; J. Landers, Death and the Metropolis, 1670–1830, 1993; anthropological research is summarized in London bodies: the changing shape of Londoners from prehistoric times to the present day, compiled by Alex Werner introduction by Roy Porter, London: Museum of London, 1998; on deserted Whitehall see A deep sigh breath’d through the lodgings at White-hall, deploring the absence of the court, and the miseries of the palace, 1642.

  LUCY HAY, COUNTESS OF CARLISLE

  On Lucy Hay Countess of Carlisle, see ‘Report on the manuscripts of Lord De L’sle and Dudley’, 6, HMC, 77, 1966; The letters of John Chamberlain, ed. N. E. McClure, 2, 1939. Ironically Lucy’s husband James has received his own biography: R. E. Schreiber, The first Carlisle: Sir James Hay, first earl of Carlisle as courtier, diplomat and entrepreneur, 1580–1636, 1984. Lucy’s follower Holland is discussed in Barbara Donagan, ‘A courtier’s progress: greed and consistency in the life of the earl of Holland’, Historical Journal, 19, 1976, 317–53.

  HENRIETTA MARIA

  Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria, including her private correspondence with Charles the First, ed. M. A. E. Green, London, 1857 [1856.] The Queens Majesties letter to the Parliament of England, concerning her dread soveraign lord the King, and her proposals and desires, touching his royall person. H. Ferrero, Lettres de Henriette-Marie de France … à so soeur Christine, Duchesse de Savoie [Letters of Henrietta Maria of France … to her sister, Christine, Duchess of Savoy], Turin, 1881. The memoir of Madame de Motteville, one of Henrietta’s ladies-in-waiting, is fascinating if used cautiously. The court and times of Charles the first; illustrated by letters, inch Memoirs of the mission in England of the Capuchin friars, by C. de Gamache, T. Birch. R. A. Beddard, ‘Six Unpublished Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria’, British Library Journal, 25, no. 2, Autumn 1999, 129–43; Susan Field Senneff, Some Neglected Writings on Contemplation by Walter Montagu (c. 1603–77), the English Recusant Chaplain to Queen Henrietta Maria; Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th–17th Centuries; Dorothy L. Latz, 1997. On the queen’s court, N. R. R. Fisher, ‘The queenes courte in her councell chamber at Westminster’, English Historical Review, 108, 1993, 314–37; on the court servants see Aylmer, Gerald Edward, The King’s servants: the civil service of Charles I, 1625–42, London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961. On women at court and on the queen, there have been numerous studies; a new biography of Henrietta Maria and assessment of her role wou
ld be welcome, but in the meantime there are biographies by Alison Plowden and Quentin Bone, the latter annoyingly sceptical and patronizing; more satisfying is Malcolm Smuts, ‘The puritan followers of Henrietta Maria in the 1630s’, English Historical Review, 93, 1978, 26–45. Court culture and the origins of a Royalist tradition in Early Stuart England, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987 and Erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, give the best idea of the atmosphere. On Artemisia Gentileschi in England, see Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991, and on her relationship with Nicholas Lanier, musician and art buyer, see Richard Symonds’s Diary, BL MS Harleian 991 f. 34. On Rubens see Fiona Donovan, Rubens and England, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. On Davenant, The shorter poems, ed. by A. M. Gibbs, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. On the royal palaces, Sir Geoffrey Callender, The Queen’s House, Greenwich: a short history, 1617–1937, National Maritime Museum, 1964; Susan Alexandra Sykes, ‘Henrietta Maria’s “house of delight”: French influence and iconography in the Queen’s House, Greenwich’, Apollo, 132, 1991, 332–6; An act for sale of the goods and personal estate of the late King, queen & prince, London, 1649; on struggles to overthrow her, Conrad Russell, ‘The first army plot of 1641’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 38,1988, 85–106. On the ongoing royal marriage see Charles I in 1646: letters of King Charles the first to Queen Henrietta Maria, ed. J. Bruce, Camden Society, 63, 1856.

  VERNEY FAMILY

  The principal source is Memoirs of the Verney family compiled from the letters and illustrated by the portraits at Claydon House, London: Longmans, Green, 1892–1899, in four volumes. Margaret Eure, letter to Ralph Verney, 4 August 1642 is from Memoirs of the Verney family, I, 258; John Broad, ‘The Verneys as Enclosing Landlords 1600–1800’, in English rural society, 1500–1800: essays in honour of loan Thirsk, edited by John Chartres and David Hey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and power in late-Stuart England: the cultural worlds of the Verneys 1660–1720, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999 is a superb analysis with relevance to the Verneys’ Civil War concerns.

  WOMEN

  The role of women is itself one of the biggest growth areas in Civil War studies: see also under the individual women here, and Matthew Hopkins and Levellers. See also S. L. Arnoult, ‘The sovereignties of body and soul: women’s political and religious actions in the English civil war’, in L. O. Fradenburg ed., Women and Sovereignty (Yearbook of the Traditional Cosmology Soc., 7), Edinburgh, 1992, 228–49; ; Keith Thomas, ‘Women and the Civil War sects’, Past & Present, 13,1958, 42–62; Georgia Wilder, ‘The weamen of Middlesex: faux female voices in the English Revolution,’ in Mark Crane, Richard Raiswell, and Margaret Reeves, (eds) Shell games: studies in scams, frauds, and deceits (1300–1650) (Essays and studies, Victoria University, Toronto, Ont.), Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004, 163–84; on camp-followers Griffin, Margaret, Regulating religion and morality in the King’s armies 1639–1646 (History of Warfare, 22), Leiden: Brill, 2003; on fighting women Katharine A. Walker, ‘The military activities of Charlotte de la Tremouille, Countess of Derby, during the Civil War and Interregnum’, Northern History, 38:1, 2001, 47–64; Annals of Bristol by John Latimer, Bath: Kingsmead Reprints, 1970, p. 179, for Dorothy Hazzard. Good general studies of women’s position include the readable The prospect before her: a history of women in Western Europe, by Olwen Hufton, London: HarperCollins, 1995; Women and religion in England 1500–1720, by Patricia Crawford, London: Routledge, 1993; and above all Domestic dangers: women, words, and sex in early modern London by Laura Gowing, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, which does away with the myth that Stuart women were silent and modest while accepting that their society was far from eager to acknowledge their power.

  PARLIAMENT

  Important sources include Parliamentarian diaries, such as that of Simonds D’Ewes and Judith D. Maltby, The Short Parliament (1640) diary of Sir Thomas Aston (Camden Society, 4th ser., 35), 1988, and Esther S. Cope ‘John Rushworth and the Short Parliament of 1640’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 51:123, 1978, 94–8; W. H. Coates, V. F. Snow, and A. S. Young (eds), Private journals of the Long Parliament, [1]: 3 January to 5 March 1642; [2]: 7 March to 1 June 1642; [3]: 2 June to 17 September 1642, 3+ vols, New Haven, CT, and London, 1982–. Other key documents have been recently edited in Maija Jansson, ed., Proceedings in the opening session of the Long Parliament: 1, House of Commons, 3 November–19 December 1640; 2, House of Commons, 21 December 1640–20 March 1641; 3, 21 March–17 April 1641; 4, 19 April–5 June 1641, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2000–2004, 4 vols. Crucial debates are analysed in Sheila Lambert, ‘The opening of the Long Parliament’, Historical Journal, 27, 1984, 265–87; David Cressy, ‘The Protestation protested, 1641 and 1642’, Historical Journal, 45:2, 2002, 251–79; Jack H. Hexter, ‘Power struggle, parliament and liberty in early Stuart England’, Journal of Modern History, 50, 1978, 1–50; and the crucial refutation in John Morrill, ‘The unweariableness of Mr Pym: influence and eloquence in the Long Parliament’, in Susan Dwyer Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky, eds, Political culture and cultural politics in early modern England: essays presented to David Underdown, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995, 19–54. Pennington, D. H., ‘Tuesday, November 16, 1641: a day in the life of the Long Parliament’, History Today, 3, 1953, 681–8. J. Forster, ed., The debates on the Grand Remonstrance (Nov.–Dec. 1641), with an introductory essay, 1860. On Henry Marten, A revolutionary rogue: Henry Marten and the English republic, by Sarah Barber, Thrupp, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2000; on the Long Parliament see Mary Frear Keeler, The Long Parliament, 1640–1641: a biographical study of its members, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1954. For a different view, see also Christopher Hill, ‘Parliament and people in seventeenth-century England’, Past & Present 92, 1981. On elections, The representative of the people?: voters and voting in England under the early Stuarts by Derek Hirst, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975 is in disagreement with Parliamentary selection: social and political choice in early modern England, by Mark A. Kishlansky, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; as often in such disputes, both have helpful things to say. On the eventual fate of the Long Parliament see David Underdown, Pride’s Purge: politics in the Puritan Revolution, Oxford, 1971.

  LAUD AND THE LAUDIAN REFORMS

  On Laud himself, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud, 1573–1645, 2nd edn, London: Macmillan, 1962; Charles Carlton, Archbishop William Laud, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987, and ‘The dream life of Archbishop Laud’, History Today, 36:12, 1986, 9–14, which draws on Prynne’s Breviate of the Life of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, extracted for the most part verbatim out of his diary, in 1644; Kevin Sharpe, ‘Archbishop Laud’, History Today, 33:8, 1983, 26–30. For his execution, The Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech: or his funerall sermon, preacht by himself on the scaffold on Tower-Hill, on Friday the 10. of January, 1644. Upon Hebrews 12. 1, 2. Also, the prayers which he used at the same time and place before his execution. All faithfully written by John Hinde, whom the Archbishop beseeched that he would not let any wrong be done him by any phrase in false copies, 1645, and A briefe relation of the death and sufferings of the most reverend and renowned prelate the L. Archbishop of Canterbury: with, a more perfect copy of his speech, and other passages on the scaffold, than hath beene hitherto imprinted, 1645.

  On the Laudian reforms, see above all The booke of common prayer, and administration of the sacraments. And other parts of divine service for the use of the Church of Scotland, 1637, which also gives clues about the English reforms. On Laud’s own reasons for the reforms, William Scott and James Bliss, The works of... William Laud, . . . Archbishop of Canterbury, 7 vols in 9, Oxford, 1847–60, IV, p. 283; but also Kenneth Fincham, ‘The restoration of altars in the 1630s’, Historical Journal, 44:4, 2001, 919–40; Peter
Lake, ‘The Laudian style: order, uniformity and the pursuit of the beauty of holiness in the 1630s’, in Kenneth Fincham, ed., The early Stuart Church, 1603–1642, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993, 161–85; John Walter, ‘Popular iconoclasm and the politics of the parish in eastern England, 1640–1642’, Historical Journal, 47:2, 2004, 261–90; David R. Como, ‘Predestination and political conflict in Laud’s London’, Historical Journal, 46:2, 2003, 263–94; Jacqueline Eales, ‘The rise of ideological politics in Kent, 1558–1640’, in Michael L. Zell, ed., Early modern Kent 1340–1640 (Kent History Project, 5), Woodbridge: Boydell and Kent County Council, 2000, 279–313; David R. Como and Peter Lake, ‘Puritans, Antinomians and Laudians in Caroline London: the strange case of Peter Shaw and its contexts’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 50:4, 1999, 684–715; David Cressy, ‘Conflict, consensus, and the willingness to wink: the erosion of community in Charles I’s England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 61:2 (2000 for 1998), 131–49; Peter Lake, ‘“A charitable Christian hatred”: the godly and their enemies in the 1630s’, in Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales, eds, The culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, 145–83.