God's Fury, England's Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars by Michael Braddick

Author:Michael Braddick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: History, European History, British History, Amazon.com
ISBN: 9780141008974
Publisher: Penguin Global
Published: 2009-01-01T15:00:00+00:00

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

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