Cavaliers and Roundheads. Christopher Hibbert

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СКАЧАТЬ Major G[eneral] Skippon directed Phyllis Court to be made a Garryson, & it was regularly fortefyed and strong, & well manned because Greenland [at Hambleden] hard by it was a Garryson for the King, & betwixt these two stood Fawley Court, miserably torn and plundered by each of them.’

      General as pillaging became, it was, however, felt that Prince Rupert’s activities were peculiarly unacceptable as those of a foreign interloper, and characteristic of a man who cockily demonstrated his marksmanship in Stafford by shooting the weather-vane off the steeple of St Mary’s Church. In Leicester he threatened to plunder the town unless the inhabitants gave him £2,000, to ‘teach them that it was safer to obey than refuse the King’s commands’. They collected £500 and fearfully presented it to him. The King disavowed his nephew’s conduct; but he kept the money all the same.

      Yet, if the depredations of the Royalists were reprehensible, those of the Parliamentarians were quite as bad, if not worse. Sir Philip Warwick recalled that when a Puritan praised the sanctity of the Roundhead army and condemned the faults of the Cavaliers, a friend of his replied: ‘Faith, thou sayest true; for in our army we have the sins of men (drinking and wenching) but in yours you have those of devils, spiritual pride and rebellion.’

      The vandalism of the Parliamentarians was not as indiscriminate as Royalist propaganda later suggested. The west window, stone angels and ironwork of Edward IV’s tomb in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, for example, were spared, even though the castle was a Roundhead garrison; and the stained glass in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, was also untouched, though the chapel itself was used as a drill hall. Yet in Canterbury, Parliamentary troops shot at the crucifix on the South Gate leading to the cathedral, rampaged about the aisles and transepts, jabbed pikes into the tapestries and tore the illuminated pages from the service books. Norwich Cathedral might have suffered in the same way had not a force of five hundred armed men poured into the building to help the members of the choir protect the organ from a mob which had succeeded in tearing out the altar rails. In Rochester Cathedral Parliamentary troops smashed glass and statues, and kicked the precious library across the floor. In many other churches effigies upon tombs were hacked about and inscriptions in Latin, ‘the Language of the Beast’, defaced. In Colchester, where the vicar of Holy Trinity narrowly escaped hanging, the house of the Lucas family was invaded, their chapel ransacked, its glass destroyed and the bones from the family tombs thrown from wall to wall. The house of their friend Lady Rivers was similarly attacked and pillaged and robbed of property worth £40,000.

      Letters written by Nehemiah Wharton, an officer in Parliament’s army, give numerous examples of similar depredations committed by his troops as well as of the countless sermons the men attended before and after their pillaging expeditions:

      Tuesday [9 August 1642] early in the morninge, several of our soldiers inhabitinge the out parts of the town [Acton] sallied out unto the house of one Penruddock and…entred his house and pillaged him to the purpose. This day also the souldiers got into the church, defaced the auntient glased picturs and burned the railes. Wensday: Mr. Love gave us a famous sermon…also the souldiers brought the holy railes from Chissick and burned them…At Hillingdon, one mile from Uxbridge, the railes beinge gone, we got the surplesses to make us handecherchers…Mr. Hardinge gave us a worthy sermon…We came to Wendever where wee refreshed ourselves, burnt the railes and one of Captain Francis his men, forgettinge he was charged with a bullet, shot a maide through the head and she immediately died…sabbath day morning Mr. Marshall, that worthy champion of Christ, preached unto us…Every day our souldiers by stealth doe visit papists’ houses and constraine from them both meate and money…They triumphantly carry away greate [loaves] and [cheeses] upon the points of their swords…Saturday I departed hence and gathered a compliete file of my owne men and marched to Sir Alexander Denton’s parke, who is a malignant fellow, and killed a fat buck and fastened his head upon my halbert, and commaunded two of my pickes to bring the body after me to Buckingham…Thursday, August 26th, our soildiers pillaged a malignant fellowes house in [Coventry]…Friday several of our soildiers, both horse and foote, sallyed out of the City unto the Lord Dunsmore’s parke, and brought from thence great store of venison, which is as good as ever I tasted, and ever since they make it their dayly practise so that venison is as common with us as beef with you…Sunday morne the Lord of Essex his chaplaine, Mr. Kemme, the cooper’s son, preached unto us…This day a whore, which had followed our campe from London, was taken by the soildiers, and first led about the city, then set in the pillory, after in the cage, then duckt in the river…Wensday wee kept the Fast and heard two sermons…Our soldiers pillaged the parson of this town [Northampton] and brought him away prisoner, with his surplice and other relics…This morninge our soildiers sallyed out about the countrey and returned in state clothes with surplisse and cap, representing the Bishop of Canterbury…Saturday morning Mr. John Sedgwick gave us a famous sermon…

      Not content with plundering civilians, the soldiers plundered each other:

      This morning [7 September 1642] our regiment being drawne into the fields to exercise, many of them…demanded five shillings a man which, they say, was promised to them…or they would surrender their armes. Whereupon Colonell Hamden, and other commanders, laboured to appease them but could not. So…we feare a great faction amongst us. There is also great desention betweene our troopers and foot companies, for the footmen are much abused and sometimes pillaged and wounded. I myselfe have lately found it, for they took from me about the worth of three pounds…A troope of horse belonging unto Colonel Foynes met me, pillaged me of all, and robbed mee of my very sword, for which cause I told them I would [either] have my sword or dye in the field and I commaunded my men to charge with bullet, and by devisions fire upon them, which made them with shame return my sword, and it being towards night I returned to Northampton, threetninge revenge upon the base troopers.

      Of all the towns which Wharton passed through during his military service few suffered more severely at the hands of plunderers than Worcester. He thought the county of Worcestershire a ‘very pleasaunt, fruitfull and rich countrey, aboundinge in come, woods, pastures, hills and valleys, every hedge and heigh way beset with fruits, but especially with peares, whereof they make that pleasant drinke called perry w^ch they sell for a penny a quart, though better than ever you tasted in London’. But the town of Worcester, though ‘pleasantly seated, exceedingly populous, and doubtless very rich…more large than any city’ he had seen since leaving London, was ‘so vile…so bare, so papisticall and abominable, that it resembles Sodom and is the very emblem of Gomorrah, and doubtless worse’. It was more sinful even than Hereford whose people Wharton later discovered to be ‘totally ignorant in the waies of God, and much addicted to drunkenness and other vices, principally unto swearing, so that the children that have scarce learned to speake doe universally sweare stoutlye’. Worcester, indeed, was ‘worse than either Algiers or Malta, a very den of thieves, and refuge for all the hel-hounds in the countrey, I should have said in the land’.

      It was certainly treated as such. The cathedral, conceded by Wharton to be a ‘very stately cathedrell with many stately monuments’, was ransacked, the organ pulled to pieces, images and windows smashed, books burned, vestments trampled underfoot and kicked about the nave or put on by Roundhead soldiers who pranced in them about the streets. The aisles and choir were used as latrines; campfires were lit; horses were tethered in the nave and cloisters where the traces of rings and staples can still be seen.

      In parish churches in Worcester the clergy were required to give their pulpits over to Puritan army chaplains – who harangued soldiers and civilians alike – and were presented with demands to pay money to have their churches spared the punishment inflicted on the cathedral. An entry in the accounts of St Michael’s church reads: ‘Given to Captain and Soldiers for preserving our church goods and writings, 1os. 4d.’

      Valuable goods from private houses were seized and sent to London as booty; the Mayor and one of the Aldermen were also despatched to London as prisoners; and some lesser citizens were hanged in the market place as suspected spies.

      Outside the town, in the СКАЧАТЬ