God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  13. Ashton, Counter-Revolution, pp. 455–68.

  14. Andrew Coleby, Central Government and the Localities: Hampshire 1649–1689 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 13. See, in general, Ashton’s account of the insurgents’ aims: Counter-Revolution, pp. 12–13.

  15. Gardiner, IV, p. 123.

  16. For these militias see Sarah Barber, ‘“A bastard kind of militia”, Localism, and Tactics in the Second Civil War’, in Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (eds.), Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 133–50.

  17. For the paralysis these considerations might cause see Gentles, ‘Struggle for London’. For other examples see Clive Holmes, Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1980), pp. 200–203; Anthony Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600–1660 (London, 1975), pp. 291–2; Evans, Norwich, pp. 172–82. Numerous local studies demonstrate the presence of these grievances without support for Charles as a necessary corollary, and not always as a source of anti-army feeling. See, for example, John Morrill, Cheshire 1630–1660: County Government and Society during the English Revolution (Oxford, 1974), ch. 5; Stephen K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County: Devon Local Administration 1646–70 (Exeter, 1985), pp. 5–13; A. R. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Gloucestershire 1640–1672 (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 146–55.

  18. Gardiner, IV, pp. 83–6, 99–101; Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 103–5.

  19. Ashton, Counter-Revolution, pp. 422–38.

  20. John Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces: The English People and the Tragedies of War 1630–1648, 2nd edn (Harlow, 1999), pp. 174–6, 205–8.

  21. Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, p. 407; Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces, 2nd edn, p. 176; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 242–3.

  22. Gardiner, IV, pp. 125–6; Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, pp. 407–8, quotation at p. 407; Austin Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen: The General Council of the Army and Its Debates, 1647–1648 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 330–35; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 257–8.

  23. Gardiner, IV, pp. 132, 145, 154–5, 167.

  24. Ibid., pp. 125, 127–8; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 97–8.

  25. Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, pp. 330–35; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 96–7.

  26. Everitt, Kent, pp. 235–40.

  27. Ibid., pp. 240–59. For the naval revolt see Bernard Capp, Cromwell’s Navy: The Fleet and the English Revolution, 1648–1660 (Oxford, 1989), ch. 2; Ashton, Counter-Revolution, pp. 438–48.

  28. Everitt, Kent, pp. 259–60; Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, pp. 20–22.

  29. Everitt, Kent, esp. pp. 251–4.

  30. Ibid., pp. 258–65; Gardiner, IV, pp. 133–42; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 247–9.

  31. Gardiner, IV, pp. 146–9; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 249, 251–3.

  32. Gardiner, IV, pp. 149–54; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 253–5.

  33. Gardiner, IV, p. 145; Gentles, New Model Army, p. 242; Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces, 2nd edn, pp. 171–3. See, in general, Ashton, Counter-Revolution, chs. 10, 12.

  34. Gardiner, IV, pp. 156–62.

  35. Ibid., pp. 145–6, 173–4.

  36. Ibid., pp. 145–6.

  37. Ibid., pp. 164–6, 170–73, 194–5, 210–11.

  38. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 258–60; Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, p. 415. For the difficulties of recruitment in Scotland see Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 105–11.

  39. Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, pp. 415–16; Gentles, New Model Army, p. 260. For the following See also Malcolm Wanklyn, Decisive Battles of the English Civil War: Myth and Reality (Barnsley, 2006), chs. 16–17.

  40. For varying estimates of the size of the armies see Gentles, New Model Army, p. 261; Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, pp. 416–17; Wanklyn, Decisive Battles, p. 191.

  41. Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, pp. 416–18; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 261–4; Wanklyn, Decisive Battles, pp. 194–9.

  42. CJ, vi, 5.

  43. Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, pp. 417–18; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 261–4; Gardiner, IV, pp. 210–11.

  44. Barbara Donagan, ‘Myth, Memory and Martyrdom: Colchester 1648’, Essex Archaeology and History, 34 (2004), 172–80, quotations at p. 173. For accounts of the siege See also Gardiner, IV, pp. 197–208; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 256–7; Ashton, Counter-Revolution, pp. 473–5.

  45. When Magdeburg was stormed on 20 May 1631 there was slaughter among the civilian population and the city was torched. As with the Irish risings of 1641, estimates of the extent of the devastation vary, partly because the events were immediately interpreted in the light of the larger confessional battle. For the memorialization and propaganda impact of this catastrophe see Hans Medick, ‘Historical Event and Contemporary Experience: The Capture and Destruction of Magdeburg in 1631’, trans. Pamela Selwyn, History Workshop Journal, 52 (2001), 23–48. Commonly cited estimates of population loss vary from two thirds of its population of 30,000 (Thomas Munck, Seventeenth-Century Europe, 2nd edn (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 18) to 96 per cent (Richard Bonney, The European Dynastic States 1494–1660 (Oxford, 1991), p. 203).

  46. Donagan, ‘Myth’, pp. 173–4. For the laws of war See also Barbara Donagan, ‘Codes and Conduct in the English Civil War’, PP, 118 (1988), 65–95; Barbara Donagan, ‘Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War’, AHR, 99 (1994), 1137–66.

  47. Donagan, ‘Myth’, p. 174.

  48. Ibid., pp. 174–5.

  49. Ibid., pp. 175–6; Fairfax quoted from Gardiner, IV, p. 205.

  50. Donagan, ‘Myth’, pp. 176–9.

  51. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 270–72. This account is to be preferred to that of Gardiner, IV, p. 232, and those that followed it. For the initial reporting of the incident as an atrocity, and as direct revenge for the deaths of Lucas and Lisle, see A full and exact relation of the Horrid murder committed on the body of Col Rainsborough (London, 1648), Thomason date 3 November 1648, esp. pp. 2–3, 4. Details varied: The Moderate (31 October-7 November 1648), pp. [7-8]; Packets of letters from Scotland, and the North parts of England (London, 1648), Thomason date 8 November 1648, p. 1. See also Ian Gentles, ‘Political Funerals during the English Revolution’, in Stephen Porter (ed.), London and the Civil War (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 205–24, at pp. 217–18.

  52. Gardiner, IV, pp. 125–6; Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, pp. 407–9; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, pp. 330–35, quotation at p. 334.

  53. Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, pp. 325–8.

  20. The Occasioner, Author, and Continuer…

  1. David Underdown, Pride’s Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1971), p. 97; Gardiner, IV, pp. 116, 122–4; CJ, v, pp. 551–2, quotation at p. 552; LJ, x, 247.

  2. Gardiner, IV, pp. 168–9, 172.

  3. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 100–105.

  4. Robert Ashton, Counter-Revolution: The Second Civil War and Its Origins, 1646–1648 (New Haven, Conn., 1994), pp. 139–57; David Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 229–32; David Underdown,’ “Honest” Radicals in the Counties, 1642–1649’, in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds.), Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-Century History Presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford, 1978), pp. 186–205, esp. pp. 199–203.

  5. For a sympathetic view see Richard Cust, Charles 1: A Political Life (Harlow, 2005), pp. 437–42.

  6. Gardiner, IV, pp. 209–10; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 100–105.

  7. David Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scotland, 1644–1651 (London, 1977), pp. 115–22.

  8. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, p. 109; Gardiner, IV, p. 213.

  9. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, p. 108. The source for this story is Ludlow’s memoirs, which may not be reliable – they were later recollections and subject also to some massaging for publication in rather different times: Blair Worden, Roundhead Rep
utations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity (Harmondsworth, 2001), esp. ch. 2. I am grateful to Ann Hughes for pointing this out to me.

  10. Gardiner, IV, pp. 212–13; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, p. 110. For the local political context of the Somerset petition see Underdown, Somerset in the Civil War and Interregnum (Newton Abbot, 1973), ch. 8, esp. p. 151.

  11. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, p. 112.

  12. Gardiner, IV, pp. 214–22; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 111–15; David L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 138–40; Cust, Charles I, pp. 442–8.

  13. Gardiner, IV, pp. 222–6; Cust, Charles I, pp. 444–5.

  14. David Scott, Politics and War in the Three Stuart Kingdoms, 1637–49 (Basingstoke, 2004), p. 185.

  15. For the importance of fears about a renewal of war in England on the basis of a peace in Ireland, and their impact on English politics, see J. S. A. Adamson, ‘The Frighted Junto: Perceptions of Ireland, and the Last Attempts at Settlement with Charles I’, in Jason Peacey (ed.), The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 36–70.

  16. For discussions of the text see Ian Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–1653 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 274–6; Gardiner, IV, pp. 233–6; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 115–17, 123–7; Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625–1660 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 423–4, quotation at p. 424. Extracts are reprinted in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647–9) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents, 2nd edn (London, 1974), pp. 456–65. In general, calls for justice did not necessarily imply the killing of the King: Sean Kelsey, ‘The Death of Charles I’, HJ, 45 (2002), 727–54, esp. pp. 729–33. Kelsey also suggests that the passage quoted from the Remonstrance might be ambiguous: ‘The Ordinance for the Trial of Charles I’, Historical Research, 76 (2003), 310–31, at p. 313.

  17. A remonstrance of his excellency Thomas Lord Fairfax, Lord Generall of the Parliaments forces and of the Generall Councell of officers (London, 1648), p. 24.

  18. For the importance of this argument see Patricia Crawford, ‘Charles Stuart, That Man of Blood’, reprinted in Peter Gaunt (ed.), The English Civil War (Oxford, 2000), pp. 303–23.

  19. Quoted from Gentles, New Model Army, p. 275.

  20. A remonstrance of his excellency, p. 16. This clause follows directly from that quoted by Gentles, who sees a clearer intent behind the calls for justice to be exacted from the King.

  21. Ibid., pp. 47–51, quotation at p. 47.

  22. This may relate to the classical republican view that popular sovereignty was equivalent to reason, which should restrain interest (the equivalent of passion or will): Blair Worden, ‘Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution’, in Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Valerie Pearl and Blair Worden (eds.), History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper (London, 1981), pp. 182–200, esp. pp. 193–4.

  23. A remonstrance of his excellency, p. 36.

  24. A remonstrance or declaration of the army (London, 1648).

  25. A remonstrance of his excellency, p. 64.

  26. For example, John Vernon, The Swords Abuse Asserted (1648); [Clement Walker], Animadversions upon the armies remonstrance (Huntington Library copy dated 4 January 1648, authorship attribution EEBO), refutes the historical account, makes a good case against the lawfulness of regicide (p. 15) and makes Gentles’s point about who ‘the people’ defended by the army are (p. 22) (see Gentles, New Model Army, p. 276); The recoyle of ill-cast and ill-charged ordinances (1648); [Nedham], A plea for the king, and kingdome (1648), engages with the detail but highlights the principle – his defence of the King was not intended to save Charles’s life, but was a defence against the threat to government posed by this version of salus populi. On the other side of the argument, The humble ansvver of the general councel of the Officers of the army (1648) justified the purge of Parliament, not in terms of justice on the King, but of a purging of interests in order to secure a settlement which defended the public good.

  27. Gardiner, IV, pp. 236–45; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 118–23, 129.

  28. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 126–7; Gentles, New Model Army, p. 274.

  29. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 130–32.

  30. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 276–8, 280; Charles Carlton, Charles I: The Personal Monarch (London, 1983), pp. 339–42.

  31. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 131, 133–40.

  32. Ibid., pp. 140–42; Gentles, New Model Army, p. 281.

  33. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 143–8, 152, 208–20; Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 23, 387–92.

  34. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 283–5.

  35. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 150–63; Gardiner, IV, p. 275. For the mixed political profile of the purged parliament see Worden, Rump, ch. 2. For the triumph of radicals in London see Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 533–47.

  36. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 178–82; Underdown, Somerset, pp. 146–50; Anthony Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600–1660 (London, 1975), pp. 292–3.

  37. Adamson, ‘Frighted Junto’, pp. 43–5. In fact the Confederate alliance was by this time unravelling under the weight of its own contradictions: Micheàl Ó Siochrú’, Confederate Ireland, 1642–1649: A Constitutional and Political Analysis (Dublin, 1999), ch. 6.

  38. Adamson, ‘Frighted Junto’, esp. pp. 40–52; Sean Kelsey, ‘The Trial of Charles I’, EHR, 118, 477 (2003), 583–616, esp. pp. 587–8. For the navy see Bernard Capp, Cromwell’s Navy: The Fleet and the English Revolution, 1648–1660 (Oxford, 1989), esp. pp. 43–6.

  39. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, p. 168; Adamson, ‘Frighted Junto’, pp. 46–7, 58, 60, 61.

  40. Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 593; Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 740–42.

  41. Gardiner, IV, pp. 281–5; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 285–94. Extracts are reprinted in Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty.

  42. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 166–72; Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 294–300.

  43. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 292–3, 300; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 164–5.

  44. Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley, Calif., 1992), esp. pp. 78–9; Manfred Brod, ‘Politics and Prophecy in Seventeenth Century England: The Case of Elizabeth Poole’, Albion, 31 (1999), 395–413; Manfred Brod, ‘Poole, Elizabeth (bap. 1622?, d. in or after 1668)’, ODNB, 44, p. 837. For women and prophecy see above, pp. 409–11.

  45. Brod, ‘Politics and Prophecy’, esp. pp. 411–12.

  46. Clarke Papers, II, pp. 150–54, quotations at pp. 150, 151, 152, 154. The vision was later published: Elizabeth Poole, A vision (London, 1648).

  47. Clarke Papers, II, pp. 163–70, quotations at pp. 164, 165; Poole, A vision, p. 6.

  48. Crawford, ‘Charles Stuart’.

  49. For the diversity of opinion on these issues see Underdown, Pride’s Purge, ch. 7; Worden, Rump, esp. chs. 1–3; David Scott, ‘Motives for King-Killing’, in Peacey (ed.), Regicides, pp. 138–60; John Morrill and Philip Baker, ‘Oliver Cromwell, the Regicide and the Sons of Zeruiah’, in ibid., pp. 14–35.

  50. Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 300–302, quotation at p. 302.

  51. Gardiner, IV, pp. 288–91, quotation at p. 290; CJ, vi, 110–11.

  52. Gardiner, CD, pp. 357–8; Kelsey, ‘Trial’, pp. 588–94; Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 743–4. For a full discussion of the tensions over the purpose and meaning of the enabling legislation see Kelsey, ‘Ordinance’.

  53. Kelsey, ‘Trial’, pp. 595–8; Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 733–4; C. V. Wedgwood, The Trial of Charles I (London, 1964), esp. pp. 123–7. For the full range of motives in allowing reporting of the trial see Jason Peacey, ‘Reporting a Revolution: A Failed Propaganda Campaign’, in Peacey (ed.), Regici
des, pp. 161–80. For a sample of reports see Joad Raymond (ed.), Making the News: An Anthology of the Newsbooks of Revolutionary England, 1641–1660 (Moreton-in-Marsh, 1993), ch. 5.

  54. The charges are reprinted in Kelsey, ‘Trial’, pp. 598–601; Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 734–5; Gardiner, CD, pp. 371–4, quotation at pp. 373–4.

  55. ‘he has been the author and continuer of a most unjust war, and is consequently guilty of all the treason it contains and of all the innocent blood, rapine, spoil, and mischief to the kingdom acted or occasioned thereby’: A remonstrance of his excellency, p. 24; for the phrase quoted in the text see p. 23.

  56. Kelsey, ‘Trial’, pp. 598–602; Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 734–5. For detailed accounts of the proceedings See also Wedgwood, Trial, chs. 6–8 and Gardiner, IV, chs. 70–71.

  57. Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 616.

  58. Ibid., pp. 602–10; Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 743–5.

  59. Kelsey, ‘Trial’, pp. 607–10; for the text of the King’s reasons see Gardiner, CD, pp. 374–6.

  60. Kelsey, ‘Trial’, pp. 610–12; Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 745–9.

  61. Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 614; Gardiner, IV, pp. 311–13.

  62. Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 749–51.

  63. Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 750–51; Gardiner, IV, pp. 316–18; for the element of negotiation in court, including the possibility of pardon, see Cynthia Herrup, The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987), ch. 6; for the exercise of discretion as an aspect of power in legal contexts see Krista J. Kesselring, Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge, 2003): in this case to pardon Charles would have been further to subject him to a higher authority.

  64. Gardiner, IV, pp. 278–80; Ian Gentles, ‘Harrison, Thomas (bap. 1616, d. 1690)’, ODNB, 25, pp. 529–33.

  65. Perfect Occurrences (22–30 December 1648), p. 778 (I am grateful to Keith Lindley for this reference); Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 731–2; Clarendon, IV, pp. 479, 483, 485.