God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  John Taylor famously claimed that the world was being turned upside down and many of his readers may have believed him. We know that there were even some people who actually did want to see the world turned upside down. There is also little doubt about the practical disruption of the routines of local life: the absence of quarter sessions and assizes, the absence of established governors, the disruptions caused by tax demands and troop movements. In many ways, however, the routines of social life survived. In 1645 clubmen movements were to claim a voice for the rural middling sort, and even some of their poor neighbours, but in a respectable political idiom. The same was true of many of the women who emerged into public view, and may have been true of most men too. Established habits survived in a more profound sense too: in the persistence of familiar languages and metaphors of political life. Cheap print is full of the same stock of ideas which had served to make sense of the world before 1642: that no new languages had been found which could deal with the new circumstances was in fact an important part of the problem. Honour codes had emerged and survived, albeit under strain; order had been imposed, more or less, on the exaction of resources to support the war. We will never have any quantitative certainty about these things, but it seems likely that the fears were much worse than the reality.

  That is not the main, or only, point, however: anxieties were probably of more political significance than realities, and fuelled a desire to protect these fundamental values. Moreover, our difficulty in assessing how seriously to take the fears expressed in these pamphlets mirrors a widespread contemporary uncertainty about the trustworthiness of cheap print. Lack of certainty is no reassurance in the face of anxiety; and anxiety, however unjustified by actual conditions, is a potent political force.

  By 1645 there were no signs of a social revolution, despite contemporary fears and satirical attacks on upstart governors. Clearly, military, economic and governmental opportunities arose for relatively humble men and some women. Some eminent men lost their shirts, or their offices. The New Model Army officer corps included men of middling status, but continued to be leavened by the sons of the gentry and aristocracy,83 local government and Parliament were still peopled by the landed classes. There were mechanic preachers, of course, but they were heavily outnumbered by Oxbridge graduates in possession of church livings. Nonetheless there were clearly benefits as well as costs, and Self-Denial was not a confected political issue: fortunes were being made and opportunities taken up as others suffered dreadfully.

  15

  Remaking the Local Community

  The Politics of Parishes at War

  Speaking on 9 December 1644 about the previous summer’s campaigns, Oliver Cromwell had warned that ‘the people can bear the war no longer’. His point was that it was important to win the war before that point was reached, although others might well have drawn a different conclusion from the same observation.1 About the temper of the times, however, he seems to have been absolutely right. Nine days later, at Wem, in Shropshire, 1,200 clubmen gathered to defend their communities from the consequences of the war.2 In fact, at a number of points during 1645 the garrisons and field armies of both sides encountered local forces of this kind. Hereford had been besieged by 5,000 clubmen in March, while another group had effectively assisted the parliamentary army following Langport: capturing royalist horses, arms and fleeing soldiers, blocking the roads to Bristol and joining in the siege of Bridgewater. On other occasions in the western campaigns, however, Fairfax and Cromwell had met less friendly clubmen, particularly in Dorset, where the claimed neutrality of some clubmen was rightly suspected to be a cover for royalism.3

  Although they differed from locality to locality and over time (after September 1645 it was clear that Parliament was going to win, and so a neutralist stance had a different meaning), this was recognizably a general phenomenon. Such mobilizations have been identified in four broad groups: in Shropshire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire, between January and March; in Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset between May and September; in Berkshire, Hampshire and Sussex in September and October; and in south Wales and the border between August and November.4 In the end they posed little threat to the garrisons and field armies, and both royalists and parliamentarians asserted military control over them at different points, but fighting a war with such movements in train would clearly become complicated.

  Comparatively little is known about the clubmen. In Shropshire the movement seems to have been prompted by the ill-discipline and depredations of royalist troops under Vangerris. Elsewhere there was a similar relationship between the activities of a particular commander and the organization of resistance – in Herefordshire it was Barnabas Scudamore’s troops and in Somerset it was Goring’s.5 More generally, of course, it was in counties which saw the most active campaigning by field armies that the clubmen were located: the counties enumerated above were all prominent in the campaigns of the previous two and a half years. But there are some puzzles. There were no clubmen in the counties of the east Midlands, Cheshire or Lancashire, where there was a lot of military activity, and in Worcestershire the clubmen originated from the area of the county least affected by the fighting.6

  The initiative in Shropshire found echoes in meetings in Worcestershire in March 1645 at Woodbury Hill and Malvern, the same month that clubmen had laid siege to Hereford.7 By that time men were also being mobilized in Dorset and in May large numbers of men from Dorset and Wiltshire assembled at Gussage Corner, near Wimborne St Giles (Dorset). On 2 June there was another large meeting, at Castle Cary, Somerset.8 The Sussex movement arose from a meeting in September, but was over as an effective protest four days later.9 The numbers involved were impressive. In Berkshire it was claimed that 16,000 people had joined and in Wiltshire and Dorset it was claimed (and not denied) that 20,000 men could be raised within forty-eight hours.10 If remotely true, this compares favourably with the military mobilizations of the two field armies, which took much longer and did not reach numbers significantly beyond this.

  Some of the movements seem to have had identifiable preferences between the two sides – those in mid-Somerset were probably pro-parliamentarian, as were those in the cheese-producing country of Wiltshire, while those on the Dorset downlands and in Worcestershire were fairly clearly royalist.11 Information about how the movements were mobilized is patchy, and there were undoubtedly differences among them. But, despite these differences, there were some underlying similarities in the ways that these movements harnessed traditions of communal self-government and applied them creatively to the new conditions of massive military mobilization.

  In Somerset the clubmen were drawn from among the ranks of the yeomanry, and the most significant leader was of a status just below that of the gentry. Four leading figures in the Shropshire movement, who can be tentatively identified, were village notables and a minor clergyman. In Herefordshire the leadership seems to have come from among the ranks of the village worthies, too.12 In a number of other cases, however, gentlemen and clergy joined the movements, and that may have changed their aims. Nonetheless, the clubman associations bear testimony to the traditions of village self-government that remained very important during the 1640s. They expressed their politics in demonstrative forms which were also familiar from a longer tradition. The Somerset men wore ribbons calling for peace and truth, and everywhere they generated petitions, delegations and declarations. In the south-west they often convened at the sites of ancient hill forts, places used for other such communal gatherings.13 It may be, in fact, that the clubman associations took root most strongly where gentry influence was weak – in areas with extensive smallholdings and a correspondingly more limited gentry presence – since when a gentry leadership existed these energies were likely to be channelled in other directions.14 There is some evidence of mutual awareness – the Somerset clubmen clearly acted in the light of what had happened to their fellows in Dorset, for example; there were connections between the Herefordshire and Shropshire movements, a
nd between the events in Shropshire and rumours of a rising in Monmouthshire.15

  A central concern of the surviving manifestos seems to have been the regulation of soldiers” behaviour and of garrisons. In Herefordshire the intention was to ‘have the governor and soldiers out of [the garrison at Hereford]’ but in Wiltshire the demand was more limited: that each side reduce the number of garrisons, and that those which were really necessary be maintained at local charge and put into the hands of ‘the… county’, unless command was transferred by order of both King and Parliament.16 In fact the Herefordshire demands seem more anti-war than the more formal positions stated elsewhere, but it might be significant that they are often reported from a letter from a semi-hostile observer, Colonel Massey, the parliamentary governor of Gloucester. In fact, it might be that clubmen were strong where military command was weak – where there was no authority with which to negotiate the demands of war.17

  In Dorset and Sussex, where fairly full manifestos survive, clubmen do not seem to have been against formal taxation either.18 The Dorset association was mobilized to ‘preserve ourselves from plunder and all other unlawful violence’. This was to be done through local men of note: ‘the ablest men for wisdom, valour, and estate, inhabitants of the same’ were to be appointed for each town, tithing, parish and great hamlet. They would set watches, disarm soldiers caught ‘plundering or doing any other unlawful violence’. Searches would be undertaken only by local officeholders – the constables and tithingmen. In Sussex too a principal complaint, and motive for the movement, was that ‘by free quarter and plunder of soldiers our purses have been exhausted’. They also complained of

  insufferable, insolent, arbitrary power that hath been used amongst us, contrary to all our ancient known laws, or ordinances of parliament… by some particular persons stepped into authority who have delegated their power to men of sordid condition whose wills have been laws and commands over our bodies and estates.

  But this was not opposition to formal, warranted exactions. They distinguished between known ancient laws and ordinances, but the complaint was about completely unwarranted and arbitrary actions – they did not denounce constitutional innovation, but lawlessness, and they did not denounce the cost of the armies, but its unregulated impact. In Dorset the quid pro quo of local regulation of unlawful violence and plunder was that ‘the weekly contribution money and all other provision and necessary maintenance for armies, if it be demanded by a lawful warrant directed to an officer of the place, be not denied, but every man as he is able in some reasonable proportion forthwith to contribute’. Quarter would be provided if by Order Martial, ‘the soldier is to be friendly entertained, he behaving himself fairly’. In Sussex a catalogue of maladministration and illegality in the raising and spending of money was a prelude for a demand that ‘five or six gentlemen’ be appointed by the county’s MPs to take accounts there. Sequestration was not denounced, but those subject to sequestration were to be given a speedy and fair hearing according to the processes laid out, and those who had complied with royal authority during the time of its pre-eminence should not be punished. They also called for local participation in the division of the burden of taxation – again the point is to regularize the impact of the war.

  What we know of the Worcestershire movement confirms this impression. The Worcestershire Grand Jury in October 1644 had petitioned the Governor of Worcester that ‘whensoever any soldiers… shall commit any robbery or violence, the county may rise upon them and bring them to justice’, and petitioned in similar terms in January 1645.19 This disposition seems to have been reflected in the subsequent clubman movement, which has been characterized as anti-disorder, not anti-tax: the Woodbury league committed itself to support a royalist declaration laying down orders for the assessment; they did not denounce the tax in itself. The royalists gave commitments to submit the demands of the war to control by legitimate local officers – for example, Grand Jury approval had been sought for a new military association in the west. But it was in part the formation of this association which prompted the Shropshire movement, which sought to reassert the authority of local notables and established local institutions.20 These various local initiatives had in common a desire to regulate the war by the means local communities had traditionally used to deal with the demands of national government. In general they did not oppose taxation or garrisons per se, but plunder, free quarter and crime: these were movements for the better regulation of the war as much as for an immediate end to it.

  Implied in these manifestos is a sense that the war was something external to local life – like bad weather it was something to be dealt with rather than abolished. In Dorset, for example, those raising an outcry or assembly for or against either side would no longer enjoy the protection of the association and in Sussex their proposals were predicated on their own defence of the county’s frontiers.21 But there are clear signs that the national political debate that caused the war was not external to local discussions. The Wiltshire movement called for a settlement on the basis of the Protestation and the treaty of Uxbridge, demanding that once a negotiation was opened the King (not both sides) should enter a cessation.22 Many clubmen referred to the recent failure of the Uxbridge negotiations, suggesting that their patience was worn out by the failure of negotiations. In Shropshire, in fact, they may have been responding directly to a royal proclamation from the late summer of 1644, calling for the raising of provincial forces under commanders of their own choosing, to march on London and force Parliament to seek peace. Both the Somerset and Shropshire gentry had subsequently petitioned for peace.23 Like the clubmen in Wiltshire those in Somerset and Worcestershire echoed the language of the Protestation, while in Worcestershire their demands were also permeated by the language of moderate royalism. In Worcestershire, however, this moderate royalism was compounded with the virulent anti-popery more easily reconciled with the parliamentary cause. In Dorset, only Protestants, and those not in arms for either party, would enjoy the protection of the association.24 In a number of cases, too, attachment to the Prayer Book, as distinct from the Directory of Worship, seems to have played a significant part. In Sussex they complained of ‘the want of church government, whereby our churches are decayed, God’s ordinances neglected, orthodox ministers cast out without cause and never heard, mechanicks and unknown persons thrust in’.25

  These national arguments were refracted through the prism of local concerns for the regulation of religious and civil life. The clubmen were not anti-government, or apolitical, but they were focused on immediate local realities. They have been dismissed as apathetic and untouched by the great issues of the war, or celebrated as the moderating voice of the local community. In general, however, they were not turning their backs on the war and its practical needs, nor on the issues: they were clearly engaged with national politics at the same time that they sought local regulation of the demands of the war. Their demands were publicized in print, as were denunciations of them by their opponents. Their local campaigns were prompted by, and fed back into, developments in national politics.26

  These movements were a creative adaptation of traditions of self-government at the King’s command, an attempt to accommodate new realities, and pressing political concerns. They combined formal and informal aspects of village authority – patterns of government and of collective action. It is quite likely that they wanted an end to war, armies and taxes, but they did not say so: these local initiatives sought an accommodation with national politics, not immunity from them.

  Although there is hardly any evidence about the identity of individual clubmen, their habits and activities in Dorset and Wiltshire bore close resemblance to those of enclosure rioters. In April 1643 men from Mere in Wiltshire had issued a proclamation summoning the inhabitants to assemble at White Hill on market day. From there they were to march, with drums and muskets, to throw down enclosures in the forests. Over the next couple of months groups of up to 300 assembled to do this work – a forceful
, organized demonstration akin to the later clubman mobilization, rather than a spontaneous riot indiscriminate in its targets. Those rioters who can be identified in these years (not many of the total number involved) come from the ranks of artisans and smallholders, like those who can be identified among the clubmen.27 The connections were even closer in May 1645, when men from Gillingham and Motcombe, en route for a general rendezvous of clubmen near Shaftesbury, tore up hedges and other enclosures. On the way home they did the same, beating a servant of Thomas Brunker (agent to the Earl of Elgin, a major local encloser) and leaving him for dead. As with many other civil war mobilizations, then, the clubmen movement was probably a coalition, and it afforded opportunities to pursue other agendas. Brunker himself said as much: ‘The club army which I feared would put boldness into them concerning our forest business, hath brought them to this insolency, before they stood in some awe of commanders and soldiers, now they respect no man nor will give any obedience to any but contemn all superiors whatsoever and do what they please’.28 The clubman leaders, in fact, may have been rather unusual figures.29