POLITICS, SOCIETY and CIVIL WAR in WARWICKSHIRE, 162.0-1660 Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History

Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History POLITICS, SOCIETY AND CIVIL WAR IN WARWICKSHIRE, 162.0-1660 Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History Series editors ANTHONY FLETCHER Professor of History, University of Durham JOHN GUY Reader in British History, University of Bristol and JOHN MORRILL Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow and Tutor of Selwyn College This is a new series of monographs and studies covering many aspects of the history of the British Isles between the late fifteenth century and the early eighteenth century. It will include the work of established scholars and pioneering work by a new generation of scholars. It will include both reviews and revisions of major topics and books which open up new historical terrain or which reveal startling new perspectives on familiar subjects. It is envisaged that all the volumes will set detailed research into broader perspectives and the books are intended for the use of students as well as of their teachers. Titles in the series The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England CYNTHIA B. HERRUP Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire, 1620—1660 ANN HUGHES London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration to the Exclusion Crisis TIM HARRIS Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the Reign of Charles I KEVIN SHARPE Central Government and the Localities: Hampshire 1649-1689 ANDREW COLEBY POLITICS, SOCIETY AND CIVIL WAR IN WARWICKSHIRE, i620-1660 ANN HUGHES Lecturer in History, University of Manchester The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge London New York New Rochelle Melbourne Sydney PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1987 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1987 First paperback edition 2002 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Hughes, Ann. Politics, society and Civil War in Warwickshire, 1620-1660. (Cambridge studies in early modern British history). Bibliography. Includes index. 1. Great Britain - History - Civil War, 1642-49. 2. Great Britain - Politics and government - 1603-1714. 3. Warwickshire - History. I. Title. II. Series. DA415.H84 1987 942.4'8062 86-34329 ISBN 0 52133252 4 hardback ISBN 0 52152015 0 paperback For my mother and my sister and in memory of my father CONTENTS List of maps and plan page viii List of tables ix Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii Abbreviations and notes xv 1 The social context i 2 Peers and gentlemen before the Civil War 21 3 Public affairs 1620-1639 51 4 The coming of the Civil War 1639—1642 114 5 Military rule 1642—1649 169 6 Militancy and localism in Warwickshire politics 1643-1649 220 7 The impact of the Civil War 255 8 Politics and religion 1649-1662 291 Appendix 1 Local governors 1620-1660 344 Appendix 2 Active county committeemen 1643-1647 360 Bibliography of manuscript and printed sources 365 Index 3J7 MAPS 1 The river Avon and farming regions page 3 2 Towns, administrative divisions and main roads 19 3 Civil War garrisons 209 4 Parishes claiming contributions to royalist forces 211 5 Parishes whose losses are discussed in the text 261 PLAN 'Wastage' in Colonel Castle's company 1643-6 201 TABLES 1 'Open villages' by hundred Page 7 2 The origins of the Warwickshire gentry 29 3 The wealth of the Warwickshire gentry 31 4 Marriage connections of 1640 heads of families 39 5 The educational experience of 1640 heads of families 44 6a Thomas Basnet's receipts and payments 1642-50 185 6b Receipts from proposition money 185 6c Money received from sequestrations 186 7a The Coventry Subcommittee of Accounts 240 7b The Warwick Subcommittee of Accounts 241 8 Numbers of taxpayers 1628-64 260 9 Civil War losses 262 10 Orders and indictments concerning alehouses 1625-65 287 PREFACE Many different motives, intellectual and personal, can inspire research and writing on local history.1 Much work from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries has been based on an affection for a native area and its people, or on the desire to trace the impact of dramatic 'outside events' such as the Civil War on a particular locality. Since the Second World War, local history has often served as a laboratory in which general historical theories could be tested. The county has been a logical unit for assessing the various theories about the fortunes of landed elites, summed up as the 'gentry controversy'.2 Village studies have been used to assess demographic patterns or processes of social and cultural differentiation.3 This present work is influenced, distantly it may sometimes seem, by the approach of Alan Everitt, who developed the concept of the 'county community', and who, like others of the 'Leicester school' of local historians has emphasised the importance of seeing local communities of all types as entities with their own character and integrity, not simply as arenas for 'national events' or collections of manageable sources for the testing of general theories.4 In the course of the over-long gestation of this study of Warwickshire, I have become more self-conscious or critical about the use of such phrases as the 'local' or the 'county community'. The complacent use of these 1 For a cogent recent discussion: Stephen K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County. Devon Local Administration 1646-16JO (Exeter, 1985), Introduction. 2 J.T. Cliffe, The Yorkshire Gentry From the Reformation to the Civil War (1969); B.G. Blackwood, The Lancashire Gentry and the Great Rebellion 1640-1660 (Chetham Society, 3rd series, 25,1978). 3 Margaret Spufford, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1974); Keith Wrightson and David Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525-iyoo (New York, 1979). 4 See especially Alan Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion (Leicester, 1966); Alan Everitt, The Local Community and the Great Rebellion (Historical Association Pamphlet, 1969). Two wide-ranging studies which broadly, although not uncritically, follow Everitt are J.S. Morrill, Cheshire 1630-1660: County Government and Society during the 'English Revolution' (Oxford, 1974) and Anthony Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600-1660 (London, 1975)- xii Preface terms has too often meant the existence of a community is assumed rather than demonstrated or analysed.5 I have tried, therefore, to isolate the various elements - economic, social, religious, administrative and political - which created a variety of overlapping local communities in Warwickshire, involving both the county gentry's relationships with each other, and their relationships with different social groups. 'Communities' are seen not as naturally existing, but as created and developing in specific and concrete ways. Two further considerations have been important in this work. Firstly, I have examined the links between the county and the national polity from the 1620s to the early 1660s, and in the process I have become sceptical about notions of a sharp contradiction between local and general concerns. In the second place I have, immodestly, undertaken this study in the belief that particular analyses can illuminate general problems. Although I hope something of the specific character of Warwickshire in the first half of the seventeenth century is here revealed, I would not wish to justify another county study on the basis of the unique nature of this particular county. In part, and sometimes over-polemically, I have attempted in my work on Warwickshire to demonstrate how certain ideas about the 'county community' and about relationships between the centre and the localities have been closely linked with a particular interpretation or approach to the origins and nature of the Civil War.6 More discursively, and perhaps more subtly I have tried to unravel the complex interactions of social, religious and political developments in the coming, impact and aftermath of the Civil War in Warwickshire. I hope the discussion that follows will contribute in some measure to the general understanding of the political and religious history of England in its social context from the 1620s to the 1660s. 5 Cf. Clive Holmes, 'The County Community in Stuart Historiography', J.B.S., vol. 19 (1980); Ann Hughes, 'Warwickshire on the Eve of the Civil War: A "County Community"?', Midland History, vol. 7 (1982). 6 Hughes, 'County Community'. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book began life more years ago than I care to admit as a doctoral thesis. I owe a great debt to my supervisor Dr Brian Quintrell for his meticulous criticism, extensive knowledge of the sources and, above all, for never seeming to doubt that I would finish. During my years of research in London I enjoyed the friendship of many others working on early modern England; I would like to thank in particular Teri Moores, Patricia Croot, Trish Crawford, Stephen Roberts, David Hebb, Rod Martin, Terry Smith and Jacky Levy. I am grateful to Gerald Aylmer, Anthony Fletcher, Clive Holmes, Mark Kishlansky, Peter Lake, John Morrill, Ian Roy and Conrad Russell for comments on all or part of my thesis, and to Christopher Hill for much encouragement and advice.

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