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2 Mark Stoyle Remembering the English Civil Wars Over 350 years after the Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century finally came to an end, they continue to exert a tenacious grip on the English historical imagination. Charles I standing on the scaffold; Charles II hiding in an oak tree; sombre-looking men interrogating uncomfortable-looking children as to the whereabouts of their fathers: such images form part of the collective subconscious of the English. 1 Why should the memory of this particular conflict have stayed so green, when that of scores of others
For women writers, the decades of the English Civil War were of special importance. This book presents a complex and rewarding poetic culture that is both uniquely women-centred and integrally connected to the male canonical poetry. It brings together extensive selections of poetry by the five most prolific and prominent women poets of the English Civil War: Anne Bradstreet, Hester Pulter, Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips, and Lucy Hutchinson. All these five women were attracting new and concerted attention as poets by seventeenth-century women. Bradstreet's poems first appeared in The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America, and the later volume of Several Poemsincluded revised texts of those poems and several new ones. Each version of the poems spoke more directly on the context of the English Civil War. Pulter's poems construe Broadfield as a place of unwelcome isolation: she describes herself as 'shut up in a country grange', 'tied to one habitation', and 'buried, thus, alive'. Philips's poetry was first printed in 1664, her state-political poems, on members of the royal family and events of the Civil War, Interregnum, and Restoration, suggest Philips as a poet writing on matters of political significance. Cavendish's two major editions of Poems and Fancies in 1653 and 1664 each have strongly competing claims both to textual authority and to the more resonant political moment. Across poetry and prose, print and manuscript, Hutchinson's writing bears the marks of her fervent hostility to corrupt rulers and her remarkably broad education, adventurous reading habits, and energetic intellect.
: the English Civil War and the “resolution” of Henrietta Maria and Charles I’, Past & Present , 206 (2010), 43–79 provides an overview (and critique) of these arguments; Michelle White, ‘“She is the man, and raignes”: popular representations of Henrietta Maria during the English Civil Wars’, in Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz (eds), Queens and Power in Medieval and Early Modern England (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), pp. 205–23 ; The King’s Cabinet Opened, Or Certain Packets of Secret Letters & Papers (London, 1645); Frances Dolan, Whores of
C H R O N O L O G Y A N D C O M M E R C E 83 4 The English Civil War and the politics of economic statecraft The relationship between historical writing and the political and religious conflicts of the 1640s was a complex one.1 Historians of the period generally emphasised that their loyalty was to the ‘truth’ rather than to any particular faction or party. Hamon L’Estrange, for example, used the frontispiece to his The Reign of King Charles (1655) to claim that this was a work ‘Faithfully and Impartially delivered’.2 Similarly, in the preface to his
Chapter 6 . The impact of the English Civil War on society: a world turned upside-down? I F or many contemporaries, the social impact of the 1640s could be captured in the image of the world turned upside-down. The decade began with elections to Parliament in which, it was complained, ‘fellows without shirts, challenge as good a voice as [gentlemen]’. As the decade progressed, Parliament’s destruction of the structures of Charles I’s authoritarian government was paralleled by popular destruction of enclosures and challenges to the authority of the landed
Battlefields, burials and the English Civil Wars Chapter 1 Battlefields, burials and the English Civil Wars Ian Atherton T he idea that ‘military care’ extends beyond death to the treatment of the war dead is not new, though the forms it has taken have varied over time. Roger Boyle’s 1677 military treatise advised a victorious general to look after the wounded and prisoners, and see ‘his Dead honourably buried’. Similar ideas can be found in a number of sixteenth-century military manuals, and can be traced back at least as far as the Graeco-Roman world.1
Chapter 14 The English Civil War (1642-6) The increasing involvement of the public in both politics and warfare since the Reformation partly reflected and partly caused the growth of propaganda. In England in the 1640s it exploded into full scale civil war, or the Great Rebellion as it was known. Professor Kamen again: The situation had to be faced: revolutionary propaganda was more than an exercise in persuasion; it frequently reflected genuine popular attitudes, it was committed not to the support of established parties but to the questioning of all authority
Gerard’s Herball and the treatment of war-wounds Chapter 6 Gerard’s Herball and the treatment of war-wounds and contagion during the English Civil War Richard Jones O n 14 September 1644, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Johnson, a royalist field officer at Basing House, sustained a gunshot to his shoulder while coming to the aid of Captain Fletcher’s musketeers. Charged with protecting carts bringing provisions from the town to the besieged garrison, Fletcher’s men had been routed by a parliamentarian force of mounted and foot soldiers. Johnson’s rearguard action
This book aims to revisit the county study as a way into understanding the dynamics of the English civil war during the 1640s. It explores gentry culture and the extent to which early Stuart Cheshire could be said to be a ‘county community’. It investigates the responses of the county’s governing elite and puritan religious establishment to highly polarising interventions by the central government and Laudian ecclesiastical authorities during Charles I’s Personal Rule. The second half of the book provides a rich and detailed analysis of the petitioning movements and side-taking in Cheshire during 1641-42. This important contribution to understanding the local origins and outbreak of civil war in England will be of interest to all students and scholars studying the English Revolution.
This book is about the transformation of England’s trade and government finances in the mid-seventeenth century, a revolution that destroyed Ireland. During the English Civil War a small group of merchants quickly achieved an iron grip over England’s trade, dictated key policies for Ireland and the colonies, and financed parliament’s war against Charles I. These merchants were the Adventurers for Irish land, who, in 1642, raised £250,000 to send a conquering army to Ireland but sent it instead to fight for parliament in England. The Adventurers elected a committee to represent their interests that met in secret at Grocers’ Hall in London, 1642–60. During that time, while amassing enormous wealth and power, the Adventurers laid the foundations for England’s empire and modern fiscal state. Although they supported Cromwell’s military campaigns, the leading Adventurers rejected his Protectorate in a dispute over their Irish land entitlements and eventually helped to restore the monarchy. Charles II rewarded the Adventurers with one million confiscated Irish acres, despite their role in deposing his father. This book explains this great paradox in Irish history for the first time and examines the background and relentless rise of the Adventurers, the remarkable scope of their trading empires and their profound political influence. It is the first book to recognise the centrality of Ireland to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.