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In the latest in our series charting the contested reputations of key historical figures, Ronald Hutton and Mark Stoyle debate the life and legacy of statesman, politician and military leader Oliver Cromwell
In the latest in our series charting the contested reputations of key historical figures, Ronald Hutton and Mark Stoyle debate the life and legacy of statesman, politician and military leader Oliver Cromwell, exploring his religious zealotry, his campaign in Ireland, and more. Want to hear more? Browse more episodes in our Great Reputations podcast series
Roundheads and Cavaliers: where did the Civil War nicknames come from?
Professor Mark Stoyle explains the history behind two nicknames that came to represent the royalists (Cavaliers) and the Parliamentarians (Roundheads) during the Civil War…
The terms aren’t modern and actually first spring up – in the context of the Civil War – in London, in late 1642/early 1643. Certainly, in the propaganda of the time, you can see images of long-haired, foppish Cavaliers pitted against sober-looking, shorthaired parliamentarians. The word ‘Cavalier’ actually comes from the Spanish word ‘caballero’ (gentleman) and it had connotations of foreignness, of being a trooper or an armed horseman. And it was also tied up with images of gentility. So it became a very handy propagandist tool for the parliamentarians, because once you start to call people Cavaliers, you invoke the idea of snobbish aristocrats who are looking down on ordinary people. Browse | Expert articles, podcasts and video on the Civil War The word Cavalier also conjures up images of violent foreigners, particularly those associated with Spain, which was a country hated by Protestant men and women at the time and which was viewed as the heartland of European Catholicism. And, of course, there’s also the other meaning of the word cavalier: of being reckless, high-handed, swaggering, drinking and so on – the antithesis, if you like, of the stout Protestant English man or woman. The origin of the word ‘Roundhead’ is a little harder to trace and doesn’t have any obvious roots in other words. The classic explanation is that it reflected the short hair of the London apprentices who were very prominent in their support of Parliament at the beginning of the Civil War. Another possible explanation, which I’ve always been interested in, is that, before the Civil War, if you were seditious and opposed the government, particularly in religious terms, you could have your ears lopped off as a form of punishment. There is one rather gruesome example of a man who had already had his ears cut down once to the stumps, but then had the remaining stumps cut off for the same crime! Read more | 10 key battles of the Civil War I do sometimes wonder if the term Roundhead was almost created as a nasty joke – to invoke the image of seditious, Puritanical individuals who had had their ears cropped as a result of their hostility to the established church. You can listen to the full interview with Mark Stoyle on our Everything You Wanted To Know About podcast episode Did Roundheads and Cavaliers really dress so differently? In a word, no. The idea of gaily dressed Cavaliers in plumed hats doing battle with helmeted Roundheads is a Victorian misconception. Armies in the Civil War of 1642–51 were dressed in exactly the same way and any cavalryman, Roundhead or Cavalier, offered the opportunity of wearing a helmet, breastplate and thick leather coat would have jumped at the chance. Until the establishment of Parliament’s New Model Army whose soldiers were uniformly clothed in red, infantry regiments were clothed in whatever colour uniform their colonels chose for them. As a result there were regiments on both sides wearing the same colour coats – red, blue, green and white- and this could lead to considerable confusion on the battlefield. The armies tried to get round this in a variety of ways. Cavalrymen were given coloured scarves or sashes to wear. These were normally red for the Royalists, tawny orange for the Parliamentarians. An army might adopt a ‘field sign’ to distinguish its soldiers – maybe a bit of greenery stuck in the hat – and was usually given a ‘field word’ – a simple phrase to shout out as a kind of password. Obviously field words were hardly secret, field signs could be swiftly removed (the Parliamentarian general Sir Thomas Fairfax avoided capture by doing this at the battle of Marston Moor) and at the battle of Cheriton in 1644 both sides took to the field with something white in their hats as a field sign and shouting out ‘God with us’ as a field word!
Crown v Parliament: your guide to the Civil War of the 17th century
Professor Mark Stoyle speaks to BBC History Revealed editor Charlotte Hodgman about the Civil War of the 17th century, with the royalist forces of Charles I on one side and the parliamentarian 'Roundheads' led by Oliver Cromwell on the other
How popular was Charles I as monarch before the Civil War? Charles I certainly had his critics and I wouldn’t say that he was a particularly popular king before the Civil Wars. Charles came to the throne in 1625 and was almost immediately beset with problems – there were the issues with Parliament and MPs’ refusals to grant him money; a whole series of foreign policy disasters, including a new, costly war with France; there was the intense hatred that was felt towards his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham; and there was the suspicion directed against Charles’s Catholic wife, Henrietta Maria. Read more | Has history been unfair to Charles I? So I think in those early years, he certainly wasn’t a popular monarch and he faced quite a lot of hostility. During Charles’s Personal Rule – from 1629-40 – I think you could argue that things got a little better and that the level of hostility towards him receded to a certain extent. But then, of course, everything went wrong again, starting with his waging war with the Scots in 1639 and 1640. How did Charles’s style of kingship compare to that of his father, James VI and I? They were very different on the surface, but not so different underneath. James VI and I was very familiar in courtly life and he delighted in drinking, jokes, horseplay and bawdiness. His court was a bit of a free-for-all in a way. Charles was quite shocked by the laxness of his father’s court, and when he became king, he deliberately instituted a new regime. Read more | James VI and I: the king who hunted witches Charles I’s court was much more formal and dignified – the broad humour and practical jokes of his father’s reign went straight out the door. So on the surface, things looked very different. But underneath, Charles’s policies weren’t all that different from James’s and he, too, attempted to pursue a sort of middle-line policy within the church. I actually think a lot of what Charles did as monarch, he learnt at his father’s knee. As a second son, Charles was never meant to rule. What impact did the death of his brother, Prince Henry, have on him? One of Charles’s problems was that, as a boy, he was overshadowed by his older brother. Around six years older than Charles, Henry was tall, handsome and glamorous, and he was seen as a sort of Protestant hero. When Henry died, in 1612, the nearly 12-year-old Charles was suddenly pushed into the position of heir to the throne. He was much smaller and not nearly as physically robust as Henry, and he had a bad stutter. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/GettyImages51245105-26d4faa.png" width="620" height="413" alt="The future Charles I, as a young man, at a feast in the court of King James VI and I – a more relaxed court than his own would be (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="The future Charles I, as a young man, at a feast in the court of King James VI and I – a more relaxed court than his own would be (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> On the face of it, there would have seemed a big contrast between the two princes. I think one of the ways that Charles tried to impose himself in later life was through structures of order, dignity and formality, deliberately adopting a different personal style to that of his late brother and father. I think the type of controlled environment he favoured at court is probably connected to that. So, yes, I do think the loss of his brother did play a very big part in Charles’s life. He was really pushed into a role that he hadn’t been expecting, or probably wanted, to inherit. How successful was Charles’s marriage to Henrietta Maria? This is one of the things that’s very poignant about Charles. Initially the marriage, which took place by proxy just a month after he became king, was a disaster. That was partly because Charles had no experience, as far as we know, with girls before his marriage. He was quite shy and when he married Henrietta Maria, she was only 15. So, between them, they had no experience at all, really, with the opposite sex. There was a lot of external pressure on the pair as well; the marriage had been set up for diplomatic reasons and the French alliance then went horribly wrong. But what is really interesting, I think, is that when Charles was grieving the execution of his close friend and favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, it was Henrietta Maria who became his main source of comfort. From that point onwards, they had an incredibly happy marriage. Did you know? A mother’s love In 1644, Henrietta Maria gave birth to the royal couple’s last child, Henrietta Anne, as her husband’s enemies were closing in. Fifteen days later she was forced to leave her baby and flee to France. It would be two years before she saw her again. Charles never took mistresses and in the years before the Civil Wars they had nine children together. It always strikes me as sad that Charles’s marriage was probably the best and most successful thing in his life, but, from the point of view of his Protestant countrymen and women, it was this closeness to a Catholic princess that made people suspicious. It was widely suspected that it was Henrietta Maria who was actually calling the shots in the relationship and the country. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/GettyImages1055136916-af38ba0.png" width="620" height="414" alt="Charles, his wife Henrietta Maria and their children, feeding swans on the Thames, from a mid-19th century painting titled 'An Episode in the Happier Days of Charles I' (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="Charles, his wife Henrietta Maria and their children, feeding swans on the Thames, from a mid-19th century painting titled 'An Episode in the Happier Days of Charles I' (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> How did Charles feel about ruling with Parliament? I think Charles’s views of Parliament changed over the course of his reign. In 1624, Charles, his father, and the Duke of Buckingham were very keen to push for a war with Spain, and Parliament, which was then pretty xenophobic and certainly anti-Spanish, was delighted with this. So, just before Charles came to the throne, there seems to have been a sort of unity of purpose between the monarchy and MPs. But as soon as Charles became king and went to Parliament to ask for money to fight the Spanish, they were suddenly not so keen to give him large sums of money for a war. And I think he felt very betrayed by that. From Parliament’s perspective, MPs felt very suspicious of Charles because he had married a French Catholic princess, and they also refused to grant him certain monies. So instantly that created a tension between the king and his MPs, which worsened during the 1620s. What started as quite a happy relationship rapidly turned sour. In 1629, there was a famous episode where some MPs held the Speaker down in his chair and passed three resolutions against the king’s government. At that point, Charles became really quite frightened of Parliament and started to believe that Parliament was bent on seizing his power. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/GettyImages588379613-676b1b8.png" width="620" height="412" alt="Commons Speaker Sir John Finch is held down while resolutions against Charles I are read out in 1629; Charles would dissolve Parliament in favour of personal rule immediately afterwards (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="Commons Speaker Sir John Finch is held down while resolutions against Charles I are read out in 1629; Charles would dissolve Parliament in favour of personal rule immediately afterwards (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> He certainly thought that it would be a good idea to rule without Parliament for a while, which he did for 11 years. The difficult question to answer is how long Charles intended to rule alone – after all, James VI and I had also ruled without Parliament, for seven years. It may be that Charles would have called Parliament back eventually, even if he hadn’t needed them to grant him money, or he may have decided to rule alone indefinitely. It’s really hard to judge. What sort of man was Oliver Cromwell? Oliver Cromwell came from a gentry family in East Anglia, but we don’t know a great deal about his early life. There are hints that he may have had some sort of depression when he was young, possibly because he was worried about whether his soul would be saved or not, and eventually he became a very devout Protestant. On the podcast | Ronald Hutton discusses Oliver Cromwell’s early life and career, exploring the brilliance and cruelty of the future Lord Protector Cromwell was actually a pretty obscure MP at first and nothing close to a leader at the beginning of the Civil Wars. What really brought Cromwell to prominence was military affairs. As soon as war broke out, he threw himself into the parliamentary cause and raised a very strong cavalry unit, known after the 1644 battle of Marston Moor as Cromwell’s Ironsides. He became involved in a whole series of battles, engagements and skirmishes and gradually became more and more successful. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/GettyImages-534968533-copy-e4bed81.png" width="620" height="413" alt="Oliver Cromwell with members of his famous cavalry regiment after the 1644 battle of Marston Moor, seen in a 1909 painting by Ernest Crofts (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)" title="Oliver Cromwell with members of his famous cavalry regiment after the 1644 battle of Marston Moor, seen in a 1909 painting by Ernest Crofts (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)" /> I’d say the crucial turning point for Cromwell’s career was Marston Moor, where he was very successful and managed to spin his military achievements in letters and pamphlets, presenting himself as a key figure in the battle. But what really catapulted him to fame was Parliament’s New Model Army, which was set up in 1645. Cromwell eventually emerged as the lieutenant general of the army’s cavalry. Was Cromwell really the great military leader he’s often made out to be? Some of Cromwell’s enemies have argued that he was just lucky, but I think that’s probably a bit harsh. He was certainly determined and industrious, and utterly convinced that he was doing God’s work. Cromwell created a great spirit of camaraderie in the military units that he raised, and his men were obviously very attached to him. Read more | Oliver Cromwell: the secret of his military genius It has been pointed out that Cromwell was lucky in that the parliamentarian forces were so much better supplied than the royalist ones and so his troops were usually quite well paid – certainly much better paid than any of the king’s soldiers – due to the parliamentary hold on London, by far the biggest city in England, seat of trade and a huge source of wealth. As a result of that, Cromwell was able to raise a large cavalry force, which in turn helped him win various encounters. Timeline: key milestones in the Civil War 28 August 1640 After Charles I tries to impose a new prayer book on his Scottish subjects, they defeat his army at Newburn Ford and occupy Newcastle. In need of funds to pay them off, Charles recalls Parliament. 3 November 1640 The new parliament meets in London. Before voting to give Charles any money, it demands several major constitutional reforms, along with the execution of Strafford – the king’s hated first minister. 23 October 1641 A Catholic rebellion breaks out in Ireland. However, Parliament is unwilling to let the king exercise his traditional right to raise an army to put down the rebellion, fearing that he might also use it against his English subjects. 22 November 1641 The House of Commons narrowly passes its ‘Grand Remonstrance’, listing its numerous grievances with the king and calling for further restrictions on royal power and the authority of bishops. 4 January 1642 Charles further polarises opinion by marching into the Commons and attempting to arrest five prominent MPs. 22 August 1642 Charles raises his standard at Nottingham. Both the royalist and parliamentarian causes begin to assemble forces for battle. 23 September 1642 Royalist forces emerge victorious after a brief skirmish at Powick Bridge near Worcester. It is the opening engagement of the Civil Wars. 23 October 1642 The first major battle is fought at Edgehill in Warwickshire, which results in a draw. Charles heads to London but is unable to take the city. He retires to Oxford, which he makes his new capital. 26 July 1643 Royalist forces led by Charles's nephew, Prince Rupert, seize the port city of Bristol, which has been held by a parliamentary garrison for several months. 25 September 1643 Five days after the royalists lose a key battle at Newbury, Berkshire, Parliament signs the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ with the Scots. They agree to adopt the Presbyterian form of religion in England in exchange for vital Scottish military aid. 2 July 1644 Assisted by the Scots, Parliament inflicts defeat upon the royalists at the battle of Marston Moor near York. They soon gain control over most of the north of England. 2 September 1644 A disastrous invasion of royalist Cornwall forces the parliamentarians to surrender at the battle of Lostwithiel. 27 October 1644 The second battle of Newbury results in a draw. It is regarded as a disappointing failure by the parliamentarians, who set about reorganising their forces. February 1645 The New Model Army is formed, giving the parliamentarians a national and professional army capable of turning the tide of the war. 14 June 1645 The New Model Army crushes the royalists at Naseby, a few miles north of Northampton. 10 September 1645 Parliamentarian forces retake Bristol after a brief siege. 5 May 1646 Charles I surrenders to the Scots. The First Civil War soon ends. 11 November 1647 The king escapes captivity and manages to flee to the Isle of Wight. However, he is quickly recaptured and imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle where he makes plans for further royalist uprisings and a deal with the Scots. 8 July 1648 A Scottish army crosses the border and launches an invasion of England in support of the king. Meanwhile, several royalist risings elsewhere are quashed. 17-19 August 1648 Having made it as far south as Lancashire, the Scottish army is defeated at the battle of Preston. The short-lived Second Civil War is brought to a close. 6 December 1648 Some 186 MPs sympathetic to the king are refused entry to the House of Commons in what becomes known as 'Pride's Purge' – a further 45 are arrested and 86 others leave in protest. 30 January 1649 After having been found guilty of high treason and “other high crimes against the realm of England”, Charles is beheaded at Whitehall. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/GettyImages173303733-c2a9bf3.png" width="621" height="413" alt="A painting of the battle of Naseby, 1645, a decisive victory for Oliver Cromwell and his parliamentarian forces (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)" title="A painting of the battle of Naseby, 1645, a decisive victory for Oliver Cromwell and his parliamentarian forces (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)" /> At what point do you think the Civil Wars became inevitable? There are two extreme answers to that. The first is that civil war had become pretty much inevitable a century or so earlier, when Henry VIII pushed through his sort of half-cock reform of the Church in the 1530s; he had broken away from Rome, but he hadn’t set a full Protestant church in its place. You could say from then onwards, England had been destabilised in religious terms and that there was always likely to be a final reckoning between conservative and radical Protestants. Read more | What sparked the Civil Wars? The second more extreme view is that war wasn’t inevitable until literally the morning of the battle of Edgehill, in October 1642. It’s sometimes said that if Charles had suddenly died the night before the battle, both sides might still have been able to pull back from the brink of war at that point. Those are the extreme views. If you’re asking when did war become very likely, I would say it’s after Charles’s attempt to arrest five MPs in January 1642, after which he was forced to abandon London. At that point, you had the two opposing sides physically drawing apart. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/2AG0H5YALAMY-4685c32.png" width="620" height="413" alt="Charles I in Parliament in 1642, where he made an abortive attempt to arrest five MPs, from a 19th-century painting by Charles West Cope (Photo by The Print Collector/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Charles I in Parliament in 1642, where he made an abortive attempt to arrest five MPs, from a 19th-century painting by Charles West Cope (Photo by The Print Collector/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> How were the Civil Wars viewed at home and abroad? Like most wars, lots of people were horrified from the start and most didn’t want a war at all. There were some people, particularly young men, who were quite excited by the prospect of a war and at first, there were lots of volunteers for both king and Parliament; the armies both sides raised in 1642 were largely made up of volunteers. Read more | 10 great misconceptions of the Civil Wars I think that was a point where, much like in the First World War, everyone thought the war would be over by Christmas. But when it became clear after the first battle that the war was going to drag on, more and more men desperately tried to avoid fighting and both sides eventually had to conscript men to join them. In terms of how the conflict was viewed abroad, I think there was initially a feeling of amazement and shock at what was going on, because England had mostly seemed a stable polity. For many foreign powers it was obviously useful that England was engaged in a war within itself and that the English navy, which had been quite powerful in European waters, was suddenly inward looking again. But there was actually very little real foreign intervention in the Civil Wars. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/GettyImages902902222-45a190b.png" width="620" height="414" alt="Prince Maurice, who was, along with his elder brother Prince Rupert, son of Charles I’s elder sister Elizabeth and a leading figure in the royalist forces (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="Prince Maurice, who was, along with his elder brother Prince Rupert, son of Charles I’s elder sister Elizabeth and a leading figure in the royalist forces (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> This article was first published in the January 2021 issue of BBC History Revealed
The Prayer Book Rebellion: Mark Stoyle on how the 1549 rising almost changed Tudor history
The religious reforms of the Protestant Edward VI, inspired by the Reformation, were not welcomed by all in his kingdom. In 1549, thousands of people rose up in revolt in Devon and Cornwall. Although ultimately crushed with the help of mercenaries from Europe, and its leaders executed, historian Mark Stoyle asks whether this Prayer Book Rebellion could have toppled the Tudor state
Listen to a version of this article: On Whit Monday 1549, William Underhill and William Seagar – two respectable inhabitants of the little Devon village of Sampford Courtenay – got into an argument with their vicar at the parish church. They told him that they disliked the new Book of Common Prayer in English, which had recently been introduced by an act of parliament and which he had read in church the day before. They urged him to revert to the traditional service in Latin instead and, after some debate, he acceded to their request. Within hours, the church had become the centre of a popular demonstration against the Protestantising religious policies of King Edward VI, which sought to remove all vestiges of the traditional Catholic faith. Within days, that protest had spread to the surrounding country parishes, and within weeks it had engulfed the whole of Devon and Cornwall. On the podcast | Mark Stoyle charts the Prayer Book Rebellion and how the rising almost changed the course of Tudor history Self-appointed captains soon emerged to lead the protesters, prominent among them being Underhill and Seagar themselves. In July, they assembled an army of common people and laid siege to the regional capital, Exeter. From there, they sent a list of demands to the government in London, insisting that all further moves towards Protestantism should come to a halt, and that the Church of England should be restored to the position in which it had been left by the king’s father, Henry VIII, at the time of his death. The rising is widely remembered today as the “Prayer Book Rebellion”. This epithet perhaps suggests a somewhat softer episode – more like a theological debate – than the bloody reality. In truth, the strength of feeling among the “rebels” fuelled a rapid and violent response to enforcement of the Protestant Reformation. And new analysis shows that the rising wasn’t merely a minor, localised “stir”, but came close to succeeding in its goals in the West Country – and even in the very seat of government. What happened in the Prayer Book Rebellion? Lord Russell had been sent down from London to quell the disturbances. Vastly outnumbered by protesters and finding it almost impossible to raise local support, he was forced to dispatch a series of desperate pleas for help to the government. Only after Russell had been sent substantial reinforcements – including several bands of hardened mercenary soldiers from Italy, Burgundy and Albania – was he finally able to break through the besieging forces and advance, to relieve Exeter. Russell’s troubles were not yet over. His opponents had regrouped at Sampford Courtenay, from where they continued to defy him. Russell gathered still more reinforcements, and in mid-August he marched out from Exeter at the head of an army of 8,000 men. With this force he finally crushed the protesters, slaughtering them in a brutal, day-long battle fought out amid the fields and hedgerows surrounding the village where the trouble had initially begun. Scores of captured rebels were subsequently executed, with at least one local priest being hanged in chains from his own church tower. The civilian population also suffered. A contemporary writer noted that, in the wake of the rebels’ defeat, Russell’s troops “ravage[d] the land, as did the foreign horsemen… who did great destruction in the country… by taking goods, as well as by capturing people and forcing them to pay ransom like soldiers”. According to the best contemporary estimate, the insurrection resulted in the deaths of some 4,000 “rebels”. Bearing in mind how much smaller the population of the West Country was in the 16th century than it is today, this was an enormous figure. Indeed, it seems fair to suggest that the so called Western Rising of 1549 was the single most traumatic event in the region’s history between the Black Death of the 1340s and the Civil War of the mid-17th century. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/GettyImages-815208024-c3409c2.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The religious policies of King Edward VI, seen in a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, sparked protests (Photo by Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="The religious policies of King Edward VI, seen in a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, sparked protests (Photo by Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> Read more | Edward VI: why the forgotten Tudor king had the makings of a monster What sources are there for the rising? The insurrection was the most determined attempt to reverse the course of the Reformation, yet for centuries its importance has been overlooked by historians. This is partly because we know surprisingly little about it. And much of what we do know comes from a single writer, the antiquarian John Hooker. Born in Exeter, Hooker was still in his twenties when he helped to defend the city against the insurgents. This experience obviously had a profound effect upon him because he later wrote a series of increasingly detailed accounts of what he termed “the Commotion or Rebellion in the counties of Devon and Cornwall”. (“The Commotion” was the conveniently neutral term subsequently used by local people to refer to the rising.) Without Hooker’s accounts we would know almost nothing about how the protests began or what happened during the siege of Exeter. All of the subsequent histories of the insurrection have been based chiefly on his testimony. It is important to stress, though, that Hooker’s accounts, which were composed during the reign of the Protestant Elizabeth I, were written from a very particular standpoint. Hooker himself was both an ardent Protestant and a proud Exonian. He had no sympathy for the protesters, whom he dismissed as “Papists” (Catholics); his writings chiefly aimed to celebrate their defeat and to commemorate the role Exeter played in it. Moreover, because he had spent that summer confined to the city, Hooker was not as well informed as he might otherwise have been about the developments that had taken place elsewhere. His view of the insurrection is very much that of the man on the Exeter city walls, in other words. And because Hooker’s accounts were relied upon so heavily by later historians – including Frances Rose Troup, whose formidable book The Western Rebellion of 1549, first published in 1913, still remains the standard history of the rising – we continue to see the tragic events of that summer through a slightly distorted lens. Prayer Book Rebellion timeline 1547 Disquiet brews in Devon and Cornwall as proponents of the Reformation challenge religious conservatives. 21 January 1549 The Act of Uniformity establishes the new Book of Common Prayer as the only legal liturgy in England, replacing Latin missals. 10 June 1549 On Whit Monday, parishioners of Sampford Courtenay in mid-Devon decry the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer. Within days, the protests have spread across Devon and throughout Cornwall, with “captains” assembling an army of local men. c18 June 1549 Lord Russell, the former lord president of the Council of the West, is sent from London to quell the rising – initially with only a small band of troops. 2 July 1549 Protesters outside Exeter, bolstered by volunteer forces – thousands later arriving from Cornwall under the leadership of Humphrey Arundell – begin a siege of the city that lasts five weeks. c29 July 1549 Having penetrated no farther west than Honiton, Russell is confronted by a rebel advance and wins a pivotal battle at Fenny Bridges just west of the town. 6 August 1549 After finally receiving reinforcements, including foreign mercenaries, Russell’s army arrives in Exeter, where the siege is lifted. 17 August 1549 Having regrouped at Sampford Courteney, the protesters are routed by Russell’s 8,000-strong army in a bloody one-day clash. Hundreds of rebels die in the battle and subsequent repression. 27 January 1550 Leaders of the rising who had been imprisoned in the Tower, including Humphrey Arundell, are hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in London. The rising is comprehensively crushed. How much of a threat did the Prayer Book Rebellion pose? In my own recent study of the rebellion, A Murderous Midsummer, I have attempted to readjust the focus. By pulling together the many new fragments of evidence about the rising discovered during the century since Rose-Troup laid down her pen, I have sought to reduce our reliance upon Hooker and to produce a new history of the “Great Commotion” in the west. My new account not only challenges the traditional narrative in various respects, but suggests that the protesters posed a far more serious threat to the central regime than has generally been recognised. In fact, the roots of the rebellion stretched back some time before the outbreak of violence recognised as the Western Rising. Already, two years earlier, a doctrinal dispute had sprung up between a traditionalist Exeter Cathedral canon, Richard Crispin, and Philip Nicolles, a young Protestant firebrand. Crispin, who in 1547 had denounced reformed theology from the pulpit, had been challenged in print by Nicolles, and soon found himself imprisoned in the Tower of London. Read more | Europe's holy war: how the Reformation convulsed a continent For local religious conservatives, this was a clear sign of just how uncomfortable life was likely to be for them under the new, zealously Protestant regime. The resentment sparked by this affair may well have helped to pave the way for the later explosion of violence in 1549. The ire expressed by people in the West Country at the imposition of liturgy in English was particularly virulent in Cornwall. The year before the much larger rebellion that began at Sampford Courtenay, a short-lived popular rising dubbed the “Cornish Commotion” erupted in the far west of Cornwall. This revolt, which was perhaps triggered by the regime’s imposition of a new “order of communion” in English, reflected the fierce determination of local people to protect both traditional religious practices and Cornwall’s unique cultural identity. Having killed William Body, a royal commissioner who had attempted to implement the government’s religious changes in the district around Helston, the insurgents are said to have declared that: “Whosoever would defend Body, or follow such new fashions as he did, they would punish him likewise.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/2DYK36M-9498d1d.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="German Landesknechte (mercenaries), in a c1530 etching. Many foreign soldiers were recruited to help quell the rebellion (Photo by Svintage Archive / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="German Landesknechte (mercenaries), in a c1530 etching. Many foreign soldiers were recruited to help quell the rebellion (Photo by Svintage Archive / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> What was the course of events in 1549? Though Cornwall may not (as believed by Rose-Troup) have been where the disturbances of 1549 began, the speed with which its people responded to that event demonstrates the strength of feeling there. The protests that built to become the Western Rising began in Sampford Courtenay on 10 June, spreading to Cornwall in early July. Subsequently, in the space of just three weeks, Humphrey Arundell – a gentleman from near Bodmin – managed to raise a 6,000-strong army in Cornwall and march with it to Exeter. There they joined the Devonian forces in a siege of the city that continued for five long weeks before government forces were able to regroup and drive the rebels back to Sampford Courtenay. In other words, there was a rapid mobilisation of and advance by large numbers of Cornishmen. This would have made the combined forces of the rebellion far more dynamic, assertive and threatening than has previously been recognised. And from the government’s point of view, the rebels’ movements in July 1549 must have looked far more purposeful and menacing than traditional tellings of the rising would suggest. Conversely, the royal forces under Lord Russell’s command that were initially tasked with subduing the rebels were much weaker than has previously been appreciated. It is now clear that, right up until the end of July, Russell had remained extremely short of men – and, therefore, extremely vulnerable to attack. Read more | 9 places associated with the Prayer Book Rebellion On or around 29 July, just such an assault had seemed to be in the offing when the rebels advanced in force upon Russell’s camp at Honiton, forcing him to sally out to meet them. The resulting battle fought at Fenny Bridges proved to be a crucial turning point. Russell managed first to defeat the rebel forces that had already assembled at the bridge over the Otter west of Honiton, and also to disperse a “new supply” of 800 insurgents who had hurried up to reinforce them. Specifically described as “Cornish men”, these latecomers probably represented the advance guard of the main Cornish host. It had been a desperately close thing. If Arundell had managed to bring up more of his Cornishmen to east Devon just a day or two earlier, he might well have been able to force the king’s general into headlong flight. If that had happened, the inhabitants of the restive counties at Russell’s back might well have joined hands with the insurgents, opening the way for the rebellion to catch fire right across the south of England and Wales – and, potentially, for the regime of the Duke of Somerset (the man who led Edward’s government) to be toppled altogether. As it was, Russell himself was reinforced almost at once by the first of the mercenary soldiers for whom he had been pleading for so long, and was thus able to move onto the offensive at last. What followed was bloody defeat for the rebels on 17 August at Sampford Courtenay. Yet those protesters’ aims came close to being achieved during the factional struggle that then raged in the capital. “We the Cornishmen utterly refuse this new English” The Prayer Book Rebellion was an expression of cultural as well as religious defiance An intriguing point about the Western Rising is that it appears to have been partially fuelled by a desire to protect the distinctive Cornish culture. At the start of the 16th century, Cornish – a Brythonic language closely related to Welsh – was still widely spoken in western Cornwall. But the onset of the Reformation accelerated its retreat, and the reformers’ determination to ensure that English, rather than Latin, became the chief language of religious instruction meant that the Cornish found themselves increasingly obliged to learn it. In 1548, Edward VI’s government directed that a new “order of communion” in English should be incorporated within the traditional Latin mass. The fact that a popular insurrection broke out in west Cornwall within days of the new order of communion being introduced seems unlikely to be coincidence. And when, a year later, the regime replaced the Latin liturgy with the Book of Common Prayer, it provoked a powerful sense of Cornish “cultural defensiveness”. Among the demands sent to the government by the western rebels in 1549 was one declaring that: “We will not receive the new service… we the Cornishmen (whereof certain of us understand no English) utterly refuse this new English.” Tragically, the protesters’ defeat helped sound the death knell for the Cornish tongue. By making an issue of the language, they had inadvertently ensured that it would be tainted, in the eyes of the ruling classes, with the stain of sedition. As a result, the Cornish were denied the liturgy in their own tongue that was later granted to the Welsh, and – English having become the language of daily worship throughout Cornwall – the Cornish language went into steep decline. Within 150 years, it had all but disappeared. Read more | Top 10 historical Cornish words What was the legacy of the Prayer Book Rebellion? The West Country was by no means the only part of the kingdom to experience serious outbreaks of disorder in 1549. Another huge popular rising, known today as Kett’s Rebellion, was taking place in East Anglia at the same time, and lesser “stirs” occurred in a score of other counties. As a result, many powerful figures turned against the Duke of Somerset, believing that his policies had brought England to the brink of anarchy. In October, Somerset was brought down by an aristocratic coup in London – a coup in which Sir Thomas Arundell, a wealthy Cornish gentleman and cousin of the rebel Humphrey Arundell, played a leading role. For several months, it was then widely believed that a clique of religious conservatives resistant to the Reformation were on the point of taking power. They would make Edward’s adult half-sister, Mary – a devoted Catholic – the young king’s “governor”, halting the drive towards Protestantism. For Humphrey Arundell and the other captured rebel leaders, by now imprisoned in the Tower, it was a moment pregnant with hope. Alas for them, the moment passed all too soon. Sir Thomas Arundell and his conservative allies were outfoxed by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who seized power and set up a regime even more strongly Protestant than the one that had been led by Somerset. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/JECB5R-9a45999.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The round stone marking the location of the Tyburn Tree, the London gallows where rebel leaders were hanged, drawn and quartered (Photo by Ben Peter Catchpole / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="The round stone marking the location of the Tyburn Tree, the London gallows where rebel leaders were hanged, drawn and quartered (Photo by Ben Peter Catchpole / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> In January 1550, Humphrey and the other rebel captains in the Tower were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, thus bringing the bloody story of the Prayer Book Rebellion to an end. Yet this remarkable episode was never forgotten by those who had lived through it. Lord Grey, one of the royal commanders, subsequently remarked of the rebels that “such was the valour and stoutness of these men… that he never, in all the wars he had been in, did know the like”. Another loyalist similarly marvelled at the courage shown by the protesters in the face of Russell’s mercenaries, later recalling that “the archers of the rebels did so behave themselves with their volleys of arrows against divers… bands [of]… Arquebusiers, Italians and Spaniards, that they drove them from… banks, ditches, hedges and other advantages of ground, to the great mischief of many of those strangers.” Few of those who had taken part in the rising ever dared to speak of it openly after wards, for fear of harsh punishment. But at least one piece of evidence shows that the rebels’ courage and determination was remembered with pride by their children and grandchildren. In the early 17th century, the Devonian antiquarian Thomas Westcote wrote of the events of the rising that, if he should record what was still commonly said by the local people about “the strength, and force and resolution of these commons (the archers especially), you might, peradventure, take it with some doubt lest it increased somewhat by time or penning”. The protesters may have gone down to bloody defeat, but their martial exploits lived long in the memories of their descendants. Mark Stoyle is professor of history at Southampton University. His new book is A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549 (Yale University Press, 2022) This article was first published in the Christmas 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine
Did Oliver Cromwell ban Christmas? The Puritan assault on Christmas during the 1640s and 1650s
Mark Stoyle investigates popular resistance to the Puritan assault on Christmas during the 1640s and 1650s
As the year 1645 limped towards its weary close, a war-torn England shivered beneath a thick blanket of snow. A few months earlier, parliament’s New Model Army, led by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, had routed the forces of Charles I at the battle of Naseby. Although that defeat had struck the king’s cause a mortal blow, the royalists still refused to surrender, and the bloody Civil War which had divided the country ever since 1642 continued to rage. Under constant pressure from the armies of both sides to supply them with money, clothing and food, few Englishmen and women can have been anticipating a particularly merry Christmas. Yet, for those who lived in the extensive territories which were controlled by the king’s enemies, there was to be no Christmas this year at all – because the traditional festivities had been abolished by order of the two Houses of Parliament sitting at Westminster. Read more | The history of Christmas, plus 10 festive facts you might not know From Charles’s beleaguered wartime capital in Oxford, the royalist satirist John Taylor – by now in his mid-60s, but nevertheless one of the king’s most indefatigable literary champions – issued a cry of anguish at this assault on England’s time-honoured customs. All of the “harmless sports” with which people had long celebrated Christ’s nativity “are now extinct and put out of use… as if they had never been,” Taylor lamented in his pamphlet The Complaint of Christmas, and “thus are the merry lords of misrule suppressed by the mad lords of bad rule at Westminster”. Cromwell and Christmas: BBC History Revealed shares a brief guide to the 'ban' On June 1647 Parliament passed an Ordinance that abolished Christmas Day as a feast day and holiday. While Cromwell certainly supported the move, and subsequent laws imposing penalties for those who continued to enjoy Christmas, he does not seem to have played much of a role in leading the campaign. Throughout the medieval period, Christmas Day had been marked by special church services, and by magnificent feasts accompanied by heavy drinking. The subsequent 12 Days of Christmas saw more special services along with sports, games and more eating and drinking. By the early 17th Century Puritans and other firm Protestants were seeing the Christmas jollifications as unwelcome survivors of Catholicism as well as excuses for all manner of sins. There was a widespread, though minority view, that Christmas should be a fast day devoted to sober religious contemplation. The defeat of King Charles I in the Civil War put the more extreme Protestants into power and so Parliament passed a series of measures to enforce this campaign on others. The legislation was deeply unpopular and was enforced only sporadically. When King Charles II returned to power in 1660 one of his first acts was to repeal all the anti-Christmas legislation, helping foster his image as the "Merry Monarch". Why did parliamentarians wage war on Christmas? So why had the parliamentarians decided to wage war on Christmas – and how did those, like Taylor, who were determined to defend the traditional celebrations, fight back? The attack on the feast of Christmas had deep roots. Long before the Civil War began, many zealous Protestants, or ‘Puritans’, had been troubled both by the boisterous nature of the festivities which took place at Christmas and by the perceived association of those festivities with the old Catholic faith. During the early 1600s, most English Puritans had been prepared to tolerate Christmas. Following the rebellion of the Presbyterian Scots against Charles I in 1637, however, all this was to change. The Scottish Kirk, which was itself fiercely Protestant, had abolished Christmas as long ago as the 1560s and, although James I had managed tentatively to restore the feast in his northern kingdom in 1617, it was banned there once again after his son’s defeat by the Scots in 1640. From this time onwards, attitudes towards Christmas among English Puritans began to harden. And as political tensions between Charles I and his opponents in parliament rose during 1641 so a handful of Puritan extremists took it upon themselves to abandon the celebration of Christmas. Following the outbreak of full-scale Civil War between king and parliament in 1642, John Taylor became one of the first to allude in print to the radicals’ decision to dump Christmas. In a satirical pamphlet published in January 1643 – a pamphlet which was clearly intended to appeal to a wide popular audience – Taylor provided his readers with the text of A Tub Lecture, which, he claimed, had been preached by a godly joiner to a group of Puritans at Watford “on the 25 of December last, being Christmas day”. In this fictitious address, the ‘lecturer’ is shown assuring his audience that they should not “conceive of me to be so superstitious, as to make any conscience of… this day, because the Church hath ordained [it]” to be a holy feast. “No, God forbid I should be so profane,” the ‘lecturer’ goes on, “rather it is a detestation of their blindness that have brought me hither this day, to enlighten you… [and] I give you to understand that the very name of Christmas is idolatrous and profane, and so, verily, are the whole 12 days [of Christmas] wherein the wicked make daily… sacrifices to riot and sensuality”. Here, Taylor was hinting to his readers that the godly parliamentarians posed a potential threat to Christmas itself. Eight months later, that threat was to become all too real. Listen | Mark Stoyle responds to questions about the conflict between Royalists and Parliamentarians that wracked the British Isles in the middle of the 17th century Seizing the initiative One of the clauses of the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ which parliament signed with the Scots in September 1643 stated that, in exchange for Scottish military assistance against the king, MPs would ensure that further “reformation” of the Church of England took place. As Ronald Hutton has observed, this clause encouraged religious radicals on the ground to seize the initiative and to attack those aspects of the traditional ecclesiastical calendar which they disliked. Three months later, a number of Puritan tradesmen in London opened up their shops for business on 25 December in order to show that they regarded this day as no different from any other, while several London ministers kept their church doors firmly shut. Meanwhile, many MPs turned up to sit in the parliament house, thus making their own disdain for the customary Christmas holiday very clear. During the following year, moreover – when Christmas Day happened to coincide with one of the monthly fast days upon which parliament’s supporters were enjoined to pray for the success of their cause – MPs ordered, not only that the fast day should be “observed” instead of the traditional feast, but also that the fast should be kept “with the more solemn humiliation, because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this feast, pretending [to] the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights”. In January 1645 the final nail was hammered into Christmas’s coffin, when parliament issued its new Directory for the Public Worship of God, a radical alternative to the established Book of Common Prayer, which made no reference to Christmas at all. Thus the way was paved for the ‘anti-Christmas’ of 1645 – a day upon which, in Taylor’s words, a man might pass right through the parliamentary quarters, and “perceive no sign or token of any holy day”. The parliamentarians had abolished the high point of the English ritual year, and the cancellation of Christmas aroused huge popular resentment – not just in the royalist camp, but in the districts controlled by parliament, too. As early as December 1643, the apprentice boys of London rose up in violent protest against the shop-keepers who had opened on Christmas Day, and, in the words of a delighted royalist, “forced these money-changers to shut up their shops again”. There were further dark mutterings the next year. On 24 December 1644, the editor of a pro-parliamentarian news-pamphlet expressed his support for the MPs’ decision to favour the monthly fast over the traditional feast, but admitted that “the parliament is cried out on” by the common people as a result, with incredulous shouts of “What, not keep Christmas? Here’s a Reformation indeed!” Many ordinary Londoners continued to show a dogged determination to keep Christmas special during the following year, and John Taylor’s decision to rush into print at this time with his Complaint of Christmas – a work which bore the same title as a pamphlet urging the enthusiastic observance of the mid-winter feast, which he had published as long ago as 1631 – was clearly motivated by a desire to stir up popular resentment against the parliamentarian leadership, as well as to turn a quick profit for its poverty-stricken author. How far Taylor succeeded in these aims it is impossible to say, but his satire quickly provoked a parliamentarian counter-satire entitled The Arraignment, Conviction and Imprisoning of Christmas. Published in January 1646, this publication took great pleasure in conflating Taylor himself with the symbolic character of ‘old Christmas Day’ whose persona the royalist writer had assumed in his own previous pamphlets. In one passage, Taylor/‘old Christmas Day’ – here described as “an old, old, very old grey-bearded gentleman” – is portrayed sitting dejectedly in the midst of the king’s shrinking territories, while desperately urging “all you that ever think to see Christmas again, stick to me now close!” Any lingering hopes on the part of the royalists that popular anger at the abolition of Christmas might somehow transform their military fortunes were soon to be dispelled. During early 1646, Charles I’s remaining field forces melted away almost as fast as the winter snow and by April the game was clearly up for the king. In the closing verse of a contemporary ballad, a gloomy royalist writer suggested that the collapse of the king’s cause had sealed the fate of Christmas itself, remarking: “To conclude, I’ll tell you news that’s right, Christmas was killed at Naseby fight.” Yet matters were not so simple, for, even though the king’s armies had been beaten out of the field and he himself had fallen into the hands of his enemies, most Englishmen and women continued to cling to their traditional Christmas customs. So strong was the popular attachment to the old festivities, indeed, that during the postwar period a number of pro-Christmas riots occurred. In December 1646, for example, a group of young men at Bury St Edmunds threatened local tradesmen who had dared to open their shops on Christmas Day, and were only dispersed by the town magistrates after a bloody scuffle. Pro-Christmas riots Worse was to follow in 1647 – despite the fact that, on 10 June that year, parliament has passed an ordinance which declared the celebration of Christmas to be a punishable offence. On 25 December 1647, there was further trouble at Bury, while pro-Christmas riots also took place at Norwich and Ipswich. During the course of the Ipswich riot, a protestor named ‘Christmas’ was reported to have been slain – a fatality which could be regarded as richly symbolic, of course, of the way that parliament had ‘killed’ Christmas itself. In London, a crowd of apprentices assembled at Cornhill on Christmas Day, and there “in despite of authority, they set up Holly and Ivy” on the pinnacles of the public water conduit. When the lord mayor despatched some officers “to pull down these gawds,” the apprentices resisted them, forcing the mayor to rush to the scene with a party of soldiers and to break up the demonstration by force. The worst disturbances of all took place at Canterbury, where a crowd of protestors first smashed up the shops which had been opened on Christmas Day and then went on to seize control of the entire city. This riot helped to pave the way for a major insurrection in Kent in 1648 that itself formed part of the ‘Second Civil War’ – a scattered series of risings against the parliament and in favour of the king, which Fairfax and Cromwell only managed to suppress with great difficulty. Following parliament’s victory in the Second Civil War and the execution of Charles I in 1649, demonstrations in favour of Christmas became less common. There can be no doubt that many people continued to celebrate Christmas in private, and in his pamphlet The Vindication of Christmas (1652), the tireless John Taylor provided a lively portrait of how, he claimed, the old Christmas festivities were still being kept up by the farmers of Devon. Nevertheless, recent scholarship has shown that, as time went by, Christmas effectively ceased to be celebrated in the great majority of churches. It was ironic, to say the least, that while the godly had failed to suppress the secular Yuletide festivities which had vexed them for so long, they had succeeded in ending the religious observance of Christmas! Following Cromwell’s installation as lord protector in 1653, the celebration of Christmas continued to be proscribed. While he had not been personally responsible for ‘cancelling Christmas’ in the first place, it is evident that both Cromwell and the other senior members of his regime were behind the ban, frequently transacting government business on 25 December as if it were a day just like any other. Only with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 was ‘old Christmas Day’ finally brought back in from the cold, to widespread popular joy. John Taylor had died some years before, but if he could have foreseen that, two centuries later, Charles Dickens would be reprising the role which Taylor had made his own – that of the mouthpiece of the ‘true Christmas spirit’ – and that a century and a half later still, the celebration of Christmas would remain as ubiquitous in England and Wales as ever, he would doubtless have felt that his labours had been worthwhile. The defenders of Christmas had weathered the storm. This article was first published in the Christmas 2011 issue of BBC History Magazine