God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  Despite the scale of the operations, and these horrors, England did not endure the horrors of the Thirty Years War and ‘turn Germany’: codes of conduct on the battlefield and in sieges were adhered to, and atrocities were limited. There were, of course, well-attested exceptions – at Barthomley Church, Milford Haven, Naseby and Lostwithiel, for example. Once again, it was not necessarily the engagements of greatest national significance which bred the most shocking behaviour. At Hopton Castle a parliamentary force which had recently taken control was summoned to surrender by a party of royalists early in 1644. The summons was refused and an assault was repulsed, as was another two weeks later, but on 13 March a mine destroyed much of the walls and made the castle indefensible. The defenders now offered to surrender, on condition that they could march away with their arms and ammunition. This was rejected and they asked for quarter, which was also refused. When the castle was taken all the defenders except the governor and his second-in-command were stripped and hog-tied back to back before having their throats cut. Their bodies were thrown into a ditch. Two maidservants were forced to watch this murder before they too were beaten. An old man of eighty, emerging from the cellars after the slaughter of the others, was tied to a chair before his throat too was slashed and his corpse tossed into the ditch with the others. One of the maidservants was said to have lost her wits as a result of this trauma. This fell within the codes of conduct, since the defenders had initially refused a summons and so were expected to pay the price, but it was an unusually brutal interpretation of the rules of war. Elsewhere, it seems, the codes kept behaviour within the bounds of recognized decency, although it was sometimes touch and go.24 Rape, for example, does not seem to have been used systematically as a means of fighting the war, and when terms of surrender were granted they were almost always honoured. England did not turn Germany, but it saw plenty of horrors, and restraint was not always secure.25

  Levels of formal taxation were by pre-war standards extraordinarily high. The proportion of national wealth taxed and spent by the government seems to have doubled. Many of the means by which governments had tapped wealth before the war had now gone, or went uncollected (wardship, monopolies, forest fines, impositions, ship money and so on), and so formal taxation loomed particularly large. By the late 1620s one subsidy produced about £55,000. The parliamentary assessment reached that as a monthly figure.26 In particular counties, towns and villages this transformation was dramatic. Sussex paid a total of about £16,000 for parliamentary subsidies during the 1620s, and ship money had come to about £4,600 per annum for six years. The county seems to have paid £36,000 per annum for seventeen years, for the assessment alone: seven times as much as for ship money and vastly more than had been paid in the 1620s. To that burden would have to be added the excise and, for some people, sequestration (£9,500 was raised in Chichester rape in 1643 alone). John Everenden, a minor gentleman who had paid £3 for five subsidies in 1628, had to stump up £163 between 1643 and 1652. The 308 taxpayers in Rye in 1644 included all but the poorest. Formal national taxation was hugely more significant than in the years before 1640.27

  Where military control was weak the picture might be even worse. Taxes might be claimed by both sides. Where a garrison could not feed itself from formal taxation soldiers might be forced, or choose, to live off the land, plundering or claiming free quarter from the local population. In the Midlands, an area with a patchwork of garrisons, and field armies regularly passing through, these problems of double taxation and informal exaction were very pronounced.28 In Cheshire, a county which saw constant military activity and insecure control over territory, plunder and free quarter imposed greater costs than taxation. Chits given in return for free quarter could only be redeemed from victors, of course, and frequently went unpaid. Certainly there is ample qualitative evidence of the incidence of both plunder and free quarter.29 In Warwickshire quarter and plunder was rarely less than half the level of formal taxation.30 These experiences varied over time as well as between regions. South Warwickshire saw the battle of Edgehill, grave pits and horrors, but this gave way to more routine irritations – horse theft, quarter, taxation, the demands of garrisons or of royalist convoys moving through on their way to the west.31

  For those on the receiving end these were terrible costs, but there were clear incentives for armies to be restrained. John Fettiplace, acting for the parliamentary garrison at Cirencester in 1642, where the soldiers ‘were driven to exceeding straits, and ready to mutiny for want of pay’, seems to have secured contributions by negotiation, albeit through agreements that broke down subsequently. Such disputes could be pursued at law several years later.32 In general royalist armies subsisted, and were not defeated because they were less well-fed or less well-supplied, but they do seem to have resorted more often to informal exactions. Those with a bad record of payment could hope for little voluntary help. Goring’s cavalry troops were active throughout the winter of 1644–5 because they were well-fed, but it was at the expense of ruthless plunder and widespread resentment, for which they paid a considerable price the following year. Certainly, the reputation of Prince Rupert as ‘Prince Robber’ did the royalist cause no good at all.33

  Of course, these costs of the war borne by many were certainly benefits to some others. All the money being raised was spent in the country: the war machine was also a customer, not simply a burden. Supplying the material to the army – weapons, gunpowder, horses, clothing and food – provided opportunities, as did the need for transport. Large contractors could make huge fortunes, particularly if their services or political connections were good enough to secure payment in full, and for craftsmen in key trades the war was a source of steady demand.

  When the war broke out the arms trade in England was small, and inadequate to supply the armies, but by the end of the decade, when huge expeditions were mounted to Scotland and Ireland, almost all the supplies were domestically produced. Weapons were made by skilled craftsmen working in small shops, and production could not be rapidly expanded. The long peace from the mid-1620s onwards had led to the further atrophy of an already limited industry. Massive orders to consortia of tradesmen stimulated development – blacksmiths, gun-smiths, turners and edgesmiths all did excellent business if they were able to adapt their skills to produce these goods. By the middle of the war the royalists had effectively created an arms industry in Oxford and, after it was taken in late 1643, Bristol. Parliament had the advantage of building on the existing trade in London, but stimulated a massive expansion, as well as the development of trades in Manchester and Birmingham. When the New Model Army was supplied in 1645 it was almost all done from domestic suppliers.34

  This could provide steady work for large numbers of craftsmen. Partial data for London reveal that between August 1642 and September 1651 at least 30,000 pikes, 102,000 swords and 111,000 firearms were produced there. Two cutlers had received an order for 22,503 swords for the Bishops” Wars. Such contractors clearly flourished, but so too might the craftsmen who did the work. In Nottingham a gunsmith could earn between 1s and 1s 6d per day, a pike header 1s 2d.35 The meaning of a wage in seventeenth-century England is difficult to determine: a figure might include costs of materials or subcontractors, and might omit payments in kind. It is equally difficult to know how many days” work any individual could get – clearly relevant to the value of a wage. Skilled craftsmen in these trades, however, were likely to be getting steady work. If they were keeping most of this wage for themselves, then they were not doing too badly.36 Given the stories of accidents and mishaps, it is unlikely that many soldiers would want to cut costs or corners in these matters.

  A similar story can be told of the development of heavy ordnance production. Although it was necessarily a much more capital-intensive business in the hands of fewer producers, both sides were able to find domestic sources of heavy ordnance. The demand for gunpowder led to the establishment of mills, to supply the parliamentary armies, in the lower Lea Valley on the edge of Londo
n, Manchester, Gloucester, Leicester, Nottingham, Stafford and Coventry; and to supply the royalists in Oxford, Chester, Shrewsbury, Worcester and Bristol.37 The importance of these trades to the war effort further reinforced the strategic significance of garrison towns, of course.

  Clothing and equipment was ordered from prominent merchants – haberdashers, woollen merchants, tailors, shoemakers – and provided employment for large numbers of craftsmen in urban and rural areas. In 1646, for example, 8,000 pairs of shoes were ordered from thirteen shoemakers.38 The demand for horses stimulated an interest in breeding which was of long-term significance and speeded the decline of local horse markets and fairs. Smithfield prospered, since it was immune from attack and an established national market, but even it was increasingly dominated by a small group of dealers acting on contracts from the army. Elsewhere it was increasingly common to buy through dealers rather than at fairs.39

  Carrying trades were also in high demand. Parliamentary control of the navy was significant, but the navy was too small to protect all parliamentary shipping or to stop all royalist shipments. Where possible, supplies were moved by sea, therefore, and when the royalists lost their western ports in 1645 it was a serious blow to their war effort. Carters and carriers also did very well though, since land transport had to be used eventually. In May 1643 Charles had 122 carts in his artillery train and at Newbury, later in the summer, had 400 draught horses and oxen. Thomas Bateman, a master wheelwright, did a very good business with the parliamentary armies throughout the 1640s: he supplied 10 wagons to the Earl of Essex early in the war, and was one of twenty-one artificers contracted to supply 120 wagons, one cart, 20 carriages for boats, 20 pontoon boats, 46 grapnells for the boats and 20 harnesses. In the spring of 1645 he was paid £13 each for 21 closed wagons for the New Model, £12 each for 6 open wagons and £5 each for a further 5. We do not know about his margins, of course, but this was big money for a craftsman – an order for £370, which would count as a pretty respectable annual income for a gentleman. He continued this work into the late 1640s and also made gun carriages. Carters were employed for particular purposes too, sometimes in lieu of tax payments, but sometimes for cash: a carter, cart and horse were charged at 2s 6d per day per horse, higher early in the war when supply was short.40

  Armies waxed and waned in size, but it has been estimated that up to one in ten adult men were in arms during the 1640s.41 The economic effects of this were likely to have been considerable, although very little is known about it. A brief consideration of some of the known facts is suggestive, however. Numbers in the New Model in the last two years of the war ranged from 24,800 in late May 1645 to a low of 13,400 in January of 1646. The number of horse remained fairly constant, around 5,000 to 6,500, so that the number of infantry in the New Model during this period ranged from perhaps 18,000 down to 7,000. The New Model was only about half of the total parliamentary strength, and the royalists had similar numbers in service in 1645, so that it may be that the total number of infantry ranged from 30,000 to 55,000 in these years.42 The former is equivalent to the second largest city in the country, the latter is the equivalent of the three largest cities in the country, London excepted.

  The infantry were recruited primarily from the lower orders, with labourers predominating. Their wages were continually in arrears, but not necessarily derisory. And no soldiers starved. Between April 1645 and June 1647 the New Model infantry received 76 per cent of their wage. Put the other way, they received 8d per day, as a minimum, 76 per cent of the time, in addition to being clothed and equipped.43 Agricultural labourers had a better daily wage, but probably fewer days of employment, and are unlikely to have been clothed. Not only did soldiers” wages, even with this level of arrears, make these men more likely to be consumers than recipients of poor relief, but they also made them consumers rather than producers. The other armies were less reliably paid (in fact the New Model drew deserters seeking better conditions), but they add considerably to these figures. Conscription was a less reliable means of filling the armies than pay.44

  In all this represents a considerable redistribution of wealth. The New Model wage bill was expected to be about £45,000 per month, much of that on the more expensive higher ranks, but much of it was actually paid, and much of it to men of low social status. This was £540,000 per year, in addition to clothing, and to that we would have to add the wages of the other armies. A ‘cautious minimum figure’ of the total yield of poor relief in 1650 puts it at £100,000: formal taxation paid to labouring men in the army was almost certainly a more significant economic transfer than poor relief, and free quarter would have to be added to that as well. Some of these men, and their dependants, would in more normal times have formed part of the harvest-sensitive population – those whose subsistence was threatened by rising prices and falling wages during a harvest failure. This may be one factor in an explanation for the absence of recorded famine deaths in the later 1640s: the first years of sustained dearth in which England had slipped the shadow of famine.45 That and, of course, the huge death toll of the years immediately preceding it.

  This demand for men must have affected the labour market as a whole. Given that the armies were drawn disproportionately from the labouring population, this is likely to have pushed wages up more generally by withdrawing a measurable proportion of the labouring population from the labour market. In September 1645, for example, there were 18,600 men in the New Model; following the harvest 2,000 men, mainly infantry, were recruited to an army whose overall size we do not know, although in December it contained 14,000 men. The New Model at 14,000 men represented 3 per cent of the male population between 15 and 24, and a little more than 1 per cent of the male population between 16 and 64.46 To these figures for the New Model in 1645 would have to be added about the same number of parliamentary soldiers in other armies, and similar numbers serving in the royalist armies: in May of that year Charles had 40,000 men in arms, about half of them in garrisons.47 After the war, the military establishments were more stable, paid more regularly and less exposed to traumatic loss. In May 1647 there were 21,480 in the army, 14,000 of them infantry. Infantry numbers then rose to 16,000 in February 1648, 20,200 in May 1649 and 24,000 the following spring. These infantry figures represent between 3 and 5 per cent of the male population aged 15–24, 1 and 1.5 per cent of the male population between 15 and 59.48 The effects of this must have been particularly felt at harvest-time, pushing wages up and augmenting the market for food by increasing the non-agricultural population. At Myddle Hill, in Shropshire, in September 1642, Sir Paul Harris was offering a very generous 4s 4d per week to soldiers, with likely consequences for the supply of harvest labour.49

  Again this might be relevant to the dearth of the late 1640s since, it seems, most famine in this period arose not from an absolute failure of food supply, but from a failure of exchange entitlements:50 soldiers and agricultural labourers may have had better exchange entitlements as a result of a significant transfer of wealth via national taxation, with benefits to their dependants, resulting in a smaller harvest-sensitive population.

  As we have seen, construction work on fortifications was not always achieved by forced or voluntary labour. Men from Upton, Nottinghamshire, seem to have been paid both to construct the massive earthworks at Newark in 1644 and, two years later, to take them down. In the spring of 1644 they were paid 8d per day, comparable with the pay of a foot soldier or for a day mowing hay in Lincolnshire during the 1620s.51 Thomas Catrowe seems to have had employment as a carpenter in the ‘service of the commonwealth’ for at least eleven years after 1643, employing ‘under him several workmen’, particularly in the maintenance of Tilbury Fort. Quarter, as distinct from free quarter, might have been a useful income, another transfer from the taxpayer to the relatively poor. Joane Johnson quartered Col. Thomas Lanes for ‘a long time’ around 1644 and his case for payment of arrears of pay rested in part on what he owed to her: on this argument he secured £16 of the £20 owing to him (altho
ugh he subsequently sued her to recover the money for his own use).52

  The Queen’s Sconce, part of the civil war defences of Newark

  Wounded soldiers were often quartered, and the burden and difficulty of dealing with severely wounded men was regarded with alarm. Soldiers” pay was supposed to cover these costs, but of course that was not reliable. Nonetheless, caring for the wounded was also a significant source of income for poor women – the records of the parliamentary army in East Anglia are full of fairly small payments to people of humble means. Cleaning, clothing, repairs, laundry and food provision all provided employments associated with care for the wounded.53 It goes without saying that many of these people would surely have swapped these steady little earners for peace, but it is important to remember that the war brought benefits alongside the appalling costs. Taxes were raised and spent in the country, and the flow must have been a source of employment for many people. War was not simply a burden.

  Some contractors in arms and clothing industries clearly did well, and the benefits of this business seem to have spread to craftsmen in those industries. There were also men of very modest means who signed up, whose pay was usually in arrears, but who were employed, fed and clothed; and there were other employments associated with servicing this massive military effort. But the real money lay in the world of public finance. There is some evidence from earlier in the century that men with liquid capital were particularly attractive as tax collectors, since they could advance sums to the government while recouping it in the localities (in return for a ‘poundage’ or cut of the proceeds). They could also transfer money using their own personal credit rather than hauling sacks of cash around. Certainly, later in the century, control of the flow of tax money was a source of profit – allowing men to use the balances to underwrite their own business, or even to act as bankers. More lucrative, potentially at least, was to contract for revenue collection – to farm taxes. Some men were able to build significant commercial careers because they were in a position to advance credit to the regime. Governments sold the right to collect customs, and, in the 1650s, the excise, to individual merchants who had the expertise to ensure collection. In return for a guaranteed income, paid on a particular date, the government gave up a slice of the pie. Men like Martin Noell and Thomas Povey grew rich in this way during the 1650s, diversifying into the emerging colonial trades.54