Cromwell, Our Chief Of Men by Fraser Antonia

Author:Fraser, Antonia [Fraser, Antonia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781780220697
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-06-15T23:00:00+00:00

I find this pardon pardons not …

In a country so recently torn by war, there was of course a crying need for a new kind of social policy, or indeed any kind of social policy at all which would take into account the rising problem of vagrants, coupled with the inevitable problems raised by the war such as disbanded and wounded soldiers. In theory the Puritans had always concerned themselves very seriously with the quality of the lives of ordinary people, although their early ideas on legislation were scarcely in keeping with the views of the majority of the populace. An Act of 1650 made adultery and incest punishable by death, although the reluctance of juries to convict meant that it fell into virtual desuetude; fornication received three months’ imprisonment; prostitutes were to be whipped, branded with B (for Bawd) and to serve in a house of correction for their first offence, put to death for their second. The Act of Oblivion also specifically excluded from pardon not only Royalists but those guilty of ‘the Detestable and abominable vice of Buggery with Mankind or Beast’ as well as ‘the carnal ravishment of women’ and bigamy. Drunkenness was taken extremely seriously as an offence, and unlike adultery much punished. Although a law that forbade the painting of faces, the wearing of patches and immodest dresses was not read a second time, carefully graded fines for swearing were enacted, in which the advantage for profanity went to women and the lowborn: whereas it cost a lord 30s. to swear, for a gentleman the fine sank to 6s. 8d., and below that 3s. 4d.; husbands were responsible for their wives’ oaths and fathers for their daughters’.

These provisions, whether or not they achieved a more clean-living or at least clean-tongued population (which is doubtful), had little to do with the kind of real problems that were facing ordinary people at the time. The increase of enclosures obviously put up the numbers of the out-of-work, and that in turn led to an increase in vagrancy. Ordinary people also found that their lot was often worsened with the change of ownership in the land consequent upon the confiscations, because the new owners were noticeably less humane than the established proprietors to whom the local inhabitants and their troubles were familiar of old. Gerard Winstanley the Leveller referred to ‘the new (more covetous) gentry’. A man like Richard Baxter felt justifiable anxiety for the dispossessed peasant ‘of public consequence and of spiritual and everlasting concernment’.11

It was an atmosphere in which Parliament was ever watchful of the rights of ownership and as such disinclined for example to protect the copyholders – those who held their land by immemorial usage but not outright – against the enclosers; it was no wonder that the more radical doctrines of the Levellers towards property flourished. The public mood was uneasy and disturbed, demonstrated by the expectant fearful attitude towards an impending eclipse of the sun in March 1652. The day itself was

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