Last time, we heard about the early years of the English Revolution, how the basic framework against which South Oxfordshire civil wars will be played. It lies between two cities – Oxford for the King and London for Parliament, and between them lies a screen of royalist fortresses through which parliament will make three attempts to break. It includes a crucial artery of trade and communication, the Thames control of which was critical for both sides.
In short, by 1643 South Oxfordshire is now frontier land, with raiding parties from Abingdon, Reading, Wallingford, Oxford likely to be seen at any time; the warden of Henley sent a warning to all his citizens, warning them of the danger of the
‘passing to and through our country of … disorderly trains of armed men’
There are numerous records of these that survive. A parliament newsbook trumpeted ‘the last famous Victory’ when a Scottish Captain Laine captured carts of provisions pillaged by a group from foragers of the Reading garrison. Later in January, there an extraordinary coup when Parliament’s Captain Ballard appeared in Henley. He had with him a High Sherrif Oxfordshire, who had been collecting assessments from towns and parish controlled by Oxford, and was taking his goodies back to the King when he was caught by Ballard’s raiding party. I hope it got he a promotion because when the sacks of coin were opened and counted, it amount to an enormous £12,000. Which might be worth about £1.5m in today’s money. The chaos continued; in May 1643, two roving troopers were reported having been seen and killed in Nettlebed.
A month before than In April 1643 after some chivvying, the rather reluctant parliamentarian general the Earl of Essex, who kept hoping a deal would be done, finally moved out of London, intending to break through the fortress screen and attack the King at Oxford. He started by besieging Reading. As things got desperate, Prince Rupert and the king tried to raise the siege; there are reports that the king held a court at Benson, on the River near Wallingford, which if so would have been the first time since the 8th century kings of the Gewisse. There’s also a tradition that he stayed the night at the White Hart Inn in Nettlebed. Who knows if these things are true – there are no till receipts, but if that’s what the White Hart tells us, I’m happy to go along with that.
Anyway despite their best efforts, Reading fell before the end of the month. And after dithering a bit, in June 1643, Essex decided that in order to attack Oxford, he must take control of Thame first, and set off on a march which took him from Mapledurham just north of Reading across the Thames, to Nettlebed, with detachments marching through Ewelme. Where apparently they tried to deface the beautiful church of St Mary’s which has a gorgeous chapel with the famous tomb of Alice Chaucer. But one of them was a local man – Lieutenant Colonel Francis Martyn. He was having none of that – and he stood at the door sword drawn refused anyone entrance, until it was safe. And we are all very grateful to him, because it is beautiful. vDuring the march of Essex and his 12,000 there were thousands of men in the surrounding countryside, materials and camp followers streaming towards the town of Thame.
No Thame’s life had been no easier than Henley’s. It was never fortified and was host to soldiers from both sides during the wars first one and then the other, though as mentioned, the locals probably favoured parliament. But it was within a day’s raid striking distance from Oxford, and so was constantly troubled. But it was from there that Essex began to explore the land towards Oxford., looking for an opening to besiege the city – but getting a bloody nose from Rupert’s forces at Islip and pegged back.
And that brings us to one Lord Nugent, if I may be permitted to bring forward a couple of hundred years to 1840 for just a moment.
George Grenville, Lord Nugent was from the Whig political tradition, and decided to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the Long Parliament at a get together, a knees-up, where the old Whig toast would no doubt have been heard in celebration of parliamentary freedom:
‘The cause for which Hampden bled on the field and Sidney and Russell on the scaffold’
That got him thinking – wouldn’t it be great in three year’s time, 1843, to build a memorial on Chalgrove field in memory of another bi centenary.
Of what, I hear you ask? Well. Going back now to June 1643, Rupert was doing everything possible to disrupt Essex’s campaign; and into his camp appeared a turncoat, a Scot, one John Urry, tired of the parliamentary cause, and with news of a great supply train heading towards Essex’s army at Thame – which carried not only provisions but £20,000 worth of coin to pay his army.
Well, that was too good an opportunity to miss. Despite the ring of parliamentary detachments around Oxford, one of them as close as Wheatley, out set Rupert from Oxford with 1,700 cavalry and Dragoons, and sneaked straight through them. The daring band rode post haste towards, Chinnor a village 15 miles away, arriving at 4 O’Clock in the morning. They caught the defenders completely by surprise, totally unprepared, and shot down as they tried to run or fight back; one group of officers managed gather together a return fire back from a cottage, Rupert set fire to the thatch roof, and as they fled the flames and smoke they were picked off by musket fire or captured. About 50 men were killed at Chinnor, and a hundred prisoners taken. But the treasure was nowhere to be found – possibly hauled off into the woods towards Watlington by the cautious cart drivers to hide where no one could find them. We’re not sure where it went, but there is a theory. About this time, a family in the little town of Watlington, suddenly seemed to fall on very, very good times. They started buying up property and all that. Very strange, they hadn’t been particularly rich. But all of a sudden, the Toovey family were cock of the hill. It’s a co-incidence, just saying.
Anyway, back to the action. John Hampden, for ‘twas he, had been with Essex at Reading and now at Thame with his Greencoats. He may have been sleeping at Watlington when the news of Rupert’s raid arrived. He dashed off a note to Essex, and set off to round up some troopers to try and drive Rupert off. As he pulled a force together, he began to come across stragglers from Rupert’s successful raiders, now on their way back to Oxford for a well-earned pint or 5.
It was a Sunday, bright and clear, 9 O’Clock on 18th June. According to historian John Adair, Rupert had seen Hampden coming and laid an ambush, lining a hedge with Dragoons while he apparently fled; but as Hampden and his men chased on their heels, though outnumbered 4 to 1, Rupert turned and counter charged. But through the melee, reinforcements from Thame were seen miles off, and so the Royalists resumed their retreat, back to Oxford.
John Hampden could not follow. Because he had been hit; he was seen riding from the field head down, hanging on to the neck of his horse. By tradition, he’s said to have headed for his father in Law’s place at Pyrton; but more likely he went straight to Thame. Where the wound in his shattered shoulder grew inflamed and infected, until by 24th June he was dead, and would be buried in Great Hampden church yard. He was terrible loss to the parliamentary cause. John Hampden had been a prime mover in the revolution, and was mourned on both sides, such was the magnitude of his reputation for integrity;
Never Kingdom received a greater loss in one subject, never a man a truer and more faithful friend
Said one. His reputation as the Great Patriot survived the civil wars and the subsequent attempt to consign the Revolution to Oblivion. And that brings us back to George Grenville, Lord Nugent, and the Chalgrove Memorial. I think Gore Vidal once rather meanly said of Truman Capote’s death that it was ‘a good career move’, and the same might be said of Hampden. He died before the increasingly radical demands of the Revolution, before the controversy of the Execution of Charles as a Traitor against the state, and so the relative purity of his reputation was preserved. Hence Thomas Gray’s famous poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, which talks of
“Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood…
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood
Essex withdrew eastwards to Aylesbury and the parliamentary garrison there, to be away from Rupert’s bite, and the attempt on Oxford was abandoned. And the war in South Oxfordshire settled into something more of a pattern, more settled, but scarcely less dangerous. The lack of fortifications at both Thame and Henley made them vulnerable to each side. Thame was within reach of the royalist garrison at Boarstall as well, and the future antiquarian Anthony Wood, then a pupil at Thame School, recorded news that
‘troopers from Boarstall…were upon the London road…to lie in wait for provisions or wine which came from London’
At Henley in February 1644 a royalist force under Charles Blount, the Catholic lord of Mapledurham turned up and based itself in Henley until moving on to Greenlands a little further up river. From there they could starve London of trade down the river, and direct Henley’s goods of wood and grain westwards to Oxford. Greenlands was the home of the family of the D’Oyley’s. In most history books, the head of the family John, and his wife are said to be a staunch royalists, hence why the garrison was established there. But I rather doubt that. It’s a bit confusing because his eldest son is also a John, but a John O’yley asks for, and is given, compensation by parliament for his losses in the war which would not have been given to a royalist. Those losses were caused by Charles Blount who had earlier stripped Greenlands of its provisions and sent them to the royalist garrison at Reading before it was taken. A John D’Oyley was also in the Long parliament until turned out by Henry Ireton’s coup in 1653 that created the Rump. And his son, Charles D’Oyley, would be a parliamentary commander of the future garrison at Henley. So; on balance, I think the D’Oyleys were probably moderate parliamentarians. But it needs more detailed research.
But the grip Greenlands held on river trade and Henley’s economy was about to be broken. James Harrington, from the Committee of Safety in London that directed the war, made the argument in the wider context of the Oxfordshire frontier land, that Henley should be fortified
‘in order to hinder the great trade …between Oxford and London, as also for the well-being of Reading and Abingdon, the great supplies of corn and wood for London and…[Henley’s] nearness to the enemy’
In March 1644 therefore, Major General Skippon took the project in hand – at the ultimate expense of Whitelocke. Poor Bulstrode was having an expensive war; first Fawley had been ransacked, and then parliamentary soldiers had already started a fire at his Bell Inn. And now his other home Phyllis Court was fortified at Henley, with the Thames diverted to make a moat around it. There is a picture of it that survives; a rather odd one, because all the soldiers are wearing 18th century uniforms, so who knows how accurate it is. This was not only bad news for Whitlocke in losing his home; it also meant Fawley, his main house, lay between two opposing garrisons. This was not a healthy location.
At Greenlands they read the runes, and increased the garrison size and strengthened the fortifications, but it did them no good. The tide of the war in 1644 was beginning to turn against Charles’ cause, and that was reflected in our patch, as the noose around Oxford began to tighten. In May, Abingdon fell to parliament, and for a while Oxford was besieged, until the attack was beaten off. Then in July parliamentary forces under Major General Brown attacked Greenlands – which was now a dangerously isolated outpost. He set up cannon across the river, and bombarded Greenlands, at one point hitting the magazine which exploded, until Greenlands was indefensible. The garrison was allowed to march away to Oxford without their weapons, and that chapter was over.
In 1645 a new chapter started, when Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell in particular lobbied for the establishment of the New Model Army, a professional, coherent, well organised Army; its uniform was red, and so the British Redcoat enters history. Essex was disbarred from command by the Self Denying ordinance, and the new Supreme General was Thomas Fairfax, the victor at Marston Moor in July 1644 in the battle which had effectively ended the royalist cause in the North. He would remain commander until 1650. In May 1645, Fairfax was able to besiege Oxford for second time, but then left to follow Rupert and his king. They had set out from Oxford on what would be their last and decisive campaign – which would end at Naseby in their defeat, on 14th June 1645.
Despite defeat at Naseby, South Oxfordshire was still contested territory until close to the very end; in September 1645, its governor launched yet another raid on poor old Thame; and despite meeting barricades and a company of Parliamentary cavalry, they overwhelmed the defences, charging all the way into the Market place where Parliamentary horse were drawn up in preparation; which might have been a suitable time to withdraw gracefully, honour satisfied, but not a bit of it; nothing daunted, as the staunchly royalist Anthony Wood wrote in his diary, they
Gave the rebels such a charge as made them fly out of the towne.
On 24th June 1646, Thame would see soldiers again – a lot of them. 3,000 royalist soldiers marched into the town on that day, with heads and their colours held high, drums beating. But it was a wet day, their colours stuck to their poles under the grey skies and mizzle. They had been walking all day and whey arrived in Thame, they laid down their arms and began to disperse and go back to whatever life awaited them. Because this was the Oxford garrison, which had been allowed by Fairfax to leave Oxford with all honours, after years of standing out for the king. Anthony Wood went to see them, distressed that as just a schoolboy he could not help them, but he talked to many of them that he recognised.
Because of course Oxford had surrendered, and the war was over. In April 1646, Charles had slipped out of Oxford disguised as a servant; he made his way to Nettlebed, in the woods near Henley, over to Hambledon, and then turned north to Stokenchurch.
The garrison at Boarstall had surrendered in early June; Anthony Wood and other schoolboys from the Grammar school were let out from school to join hundreds of others to go and watch them leave – and were strictly ordered not to touch any food or drink there, in case the Royalists had spiked them with poison. In June also, Katherine Chamberlain of Shirburn Castle petitioned for surrender; she claimed they’d never really taken any active part; which was demonstrably twaddle, since at one point parliamentary soldiers had been imprisoned there – but you know, don’t ask, don’t get. She didn’t get, but surrendered anyway. On 20th June, General Fairfax rode into Oxford, and signed her surrender treaty, and the war was over and the garrison set off for Thame.
Well then, it might be a good idea to take stock; what was the experience of ordinary people during the English Civil War? It is always very difficult to hear the voices of ordinary people at this time; and especially in rural villages and parishes, and even more so the voices of women. But we can make some guesses and there are some snippets.
The first obvious thing to think about is – how many people died because of the war? There used to be a traditional view that this was a gentlemanly war. A famous historiamn called Ian Roy rather challenged this ion an article called England turned Germany, but there certainly was something in the old view. There are no examples in England at least of atrocities on the scale of the Thirty Years war on the continent, probably because as the historian Blair Worden noted
‘ties of kinship and friendship that crossed party lines held back savagery
But we shouldn’t kid ourselves; the wars were brutal. Charles Carleton’s estimates have been accepted as the best guess; he reckoned on about 85,000 deaths in the military and 127,000 civilian deathsk, in England alone. This is close to 4% of England’s population at the time, and although comparisons are odious, that is a higher percentage than the two world wars of the 20th century. It means most peoples’ families would have been affected in some way.
Deaths will have come about from direct violence, but another of the biggest killers was disease. Marching armies and garrisons carried disease with them, ‘camp fever’ as it was called – almost certainly Typhus. South Oxfordshire provides an excellent example of this, in the records of Essex’s march in 1643 from Reading to Thame. A local historian called John Bell analysed all the parish records of deaths and burials – although in the chaos there is a gap in many parish records. But there is enough to see that there was a bonefide mortality crisis along the route of his march which shows up in several parishes. In Caversham and Mapledurham it was particularly severe, since both of those were caught up in the siege of Reading. Smaller out of the way places like Rotherfield Greys and Great Hazely were affected – and Chinnor, obviously. But where the army comes to rest, then there is real mayhem; Henley was home to several contingents of soldiers in 1643, and while in a bad year deaths might reach as high as 80 or 90, that year they were 229. It’s a shame the records break off in 1644, because it would have been interesting to see the impact of the garrison. Thame’s story is very similar; in a normal year, about 50 might die – that year they reached 189.
To set against that, it’s very interesting that in subsequent years there is little sign of consistently raised death rates across the region; but since our area was frontier land, there are specific exceptions. Warborough and Dorchester for example seems to have had quite a torrid time in 1643 and 4, probably from epidemics, maybe also direct deaths – Dorchester in particular was close to Oxford, and often used to billet soldiers. Unfortified settlements on major roads were in real danger – in Benson, for example, there are no specific skirmishes but deaths spiked in the first half of the 1640s, burials exceeding deaths for the first and last time. 5 members of the Alloway family died in 1645 which look like plague deaths.
Economic lives would have been badly affected for most. We’ve mentioned several times the importance of river traffic to Henley, where the job of Bargeman was the single largest employer, with Maltsters a distant second, and river traffic was impacted without doubt. Trade was all made worse by the lack of available coins, all sucked up into the war effort. Local traders did their best to get round it; the market at Thame kept going throughout the war, and traders often issued tokens to take the place of coins. The later 1640s also saw a series of poor harvests which would have added to the general economic gloom; that may just be co-incidence, or maybe partly a result of destruction, or labourers joining up for a soldier’s life and pay and all that, leaving the fields unworked. Though while we are on it, there was a strange lack of the normal grain riots, and so in an odd way, there was a drop in violence; maybe it seemed more trivial at a time of war, or that there was no one to appeal to, or maybe it seemed like a bad idea to make trouble when there were soldiers with guns around to enforce order.
More generally, any travelling around was just dangerous, especially on major roads, when you could meet groups of soldiers at any time. Thame depended on trade in cattle and sheep – and it must have been difficult to transport them – I am thinking of the garrison at Boarstall, less than 10 miles away, whose garrison was constantly watching the roads for supplies. Bridges became a real problem for road traffic; in April 1643, the Parliamentary scout master, Samuel Luke, who is a mine of local information, reported
Chistleton bridge is down, but a man may make shift to pass over with a horse
The Bridge at Caversham was slighted to prevent its use by the military; and at Wallingford and Henley tightly controlled by the garrison or Warden.
In addition to the damage to movement and trade, one of the great changes of the Revolutionary period was an explosion of taxation to pay for all the military; excise duty appears, there are county committees levying tax – to levels that made the Ship Money which started all of this, seem eminently reasonable! It is faintly ironic that the increase in state income would remain in place after the Restoration, which was hardly one of the objectives of the revolutionaries.
In addition, having a local garrison was a real and crushing burden. Soldiers’ pay was constantly in arrears – the garrison at Phyllis Court mutinied over that issue twice in 1645 and had to be suppressed by General Brown. That meant garrisons often operated their own little tyrannical state-lett, imposing local taxes like a sort of local protection racket, and simply taking what they needed when the devil drove – and there wasn’t a lot locals could do about it. In Henley’s case they were lucky to have a powerful member of parliament as an advocate. After a chorus of complaints from the townspeople, in January 1645 Whitelocke was able to persuade parliament to make him Governor of the Garrison, SO HE COULD IMPOSE DIRTECT CONTROL ON THE SOLDIERS, and he duly declared Martial law which he could use to keep everyone in check. There was a very similar situation at the royalist garrison at Wallingford, which hit local people hard, especially the nearby villages like Benson.
On the other hand, garrisons did have one advantage, that the locals had to deal with just one devil; if you were in a contested area like ours without walls to keep people out, you could end up being taxed by both sides as territory changed hands. That’s probably the case at Nuffield, which we know had special taxes laid on it and lies pretty much half way between Wallingford and Henley.
And as each side struggled to raise the money needed for victory, they didn’t always bear the well being of the locals in mind. Though the locals did their best to appeal to what ever authority they could find, to try and make themselves heard. Scoutmaster Samuel Luke’s news of November 1643 recorded that all over Oxfordshire
‘The country have presented divers petitions to his majesty concerning their inability to pay their weekly assessments except his Majesty will be pleased to take corn for it or else to let them have free trade to London to make the best of it, that they may be the better able to pay him.’
It’s a classic negotiating tactic – let us trade with the enemy, we’ll give you the kickback. Buit also, the plea to pay in kind might reflect the lack of coin, or their inability also to sell even the surplus grain they had, with trading activity so low. Even after the river to London was opened again in 1644, Henley was suffering – a petition in March 1645 protested
We are informed that a tax has been laid upon Henley, which town is now wholly out of trade
Protesting could be dangerous though, you had to pick your time and method. Which brings us to the particularly horrible story of one poor unnamed woman in Henley who objected so hard to taxes that she had her tongue, her tongue Ladies, gentlemen and non binary folks, nailed to a gate post. Nailed to a gate post. She was forced to stay in that position until 3 companies of men had walked past her. I mean, that is gross; a company could be anything between 50 and 100 men by the way. That would take a while, I would say, even at quickstep.
To add to all this was physical damage. It’s been estimated that something like 10,000 buildings were destroyed across England; and there is some of that in our area, though I have to say it’s nothing terribly dramatic. But wherever soldiers went there was damage; often, such as at Wallingford, to improve the defences – or in the same case, to slight the defences after the war, when her massive and historic medieval castle was largely levelled. Though every cloud and all of that, it left a nice park, with a pond my daughter fell in when she was a nipper. But that’s another story.
Bulstrode Whitlocke suffered heavily at Fawley and Phyllis court; but it can’t have been too terrible either, since he bought the ruined Greenlands from the D’Oyleys in the 1650s – the key point maybe being that he was on the winning side. The experience of the Catholic Stoners is rather differently – though again not terminal.
Though to be fair Soldiers didn’t always ask too closely or take much notice of what side you were on. Robert Knollys at Greys court stayed pretty quiet, but was probably a parliamentary supporter, giving £500 to the Parliamentarian County Committee. And yet even so, he claimed that when parliamentary soldiers came to set up a garrison in his house, they cut down wood to the value of £2,000. His successor William Knollys was almost certainly less well inclined to parliament – and was forced to pay a fine for absenting himself for 5 weeks. Which he claimed in his defence, was
owing to the violence of the soldiers.
Nice try – didn’t do him any good.
All in all, it’s unsurprising that daily life was hard during the civil wars, money was short, there were multiple intrusions, that extended beyond the towns where most actual fighting took place. But what might be just as important is what we have not said; we have not spoken on atrocities, there’s no sign of scorched earth tactics, mass evictions, house burnings and mass executions. Distribution of the Poor law continued in the main, church still met even if the form of worship might change, the Corporation of Henley and town councils continued to operate. For many, especially those in smaller parishes in the hills or away from main routes, the civil war might have seemed quite distant.
And now that we’ve arrived at the end of the war we might talk briefly about how allegiances worked. Do we have any idea how ordinary people felt, who they supported, and why. It is impossible really to know this for sure; because one conclusion every single historian actually agrees on, is that the best way of discovering your loyalties is to have a whopping great army or garrison of big hairy blokes with muskets and pikes imposed on you. Suddenly you find you suddenly believe passionately in their cause.
Outside of that, there are three positions I guess; allegiance to King, or to parliament – or a plague on both your houses, and let’s just try and get through this alive.
The impression is that both Henley and Thame were well disposed towards parliament rather than king. Generally though not always, the more Godly citizen, as they termed themselves rather than as puritans, tended to favour parliament and oppose Laud’s religious changes. Towns in our area had a long tradition of more radical Protestantism. Though the evidence is shadowy, there seems to have been some old connection with Lollardy in the 15th century. In Henley the Vicar Robert Rainsford was no extremist, but St Mary’s church did pay for a lectureship, which is a common sign of the puritan passion for analysis and debate around the bible, and the love of long sermons. Thame was even more radical; after the Restoration when Anglicanism was rigorously imposed on the country, a survey in 1676 nevertheless reported over 100 of what were called ‘utter dissenters’. The church may have had an impact on opinions, since through the pulpit, it had great influence over people – and Anthony Wood certainly thought Thame’s minister favoured parliament – and the Schoolmaster too.
But although Ministers were influential, they were not decisive. In Watlington, the minister Ralph Wells had been presented by the Catholic Stonor family, and was strongly for the king, but was hassled by his parishioners and ejected in 1653. In Warborough there was a strong puritan community which survived after the Restoration, since the more traditional minister complained of being
‘laughed at and jeered by the Phanatick brood’
And my impression is that the influence of landlord trumped church in this. The classic example is at Shirburn castle, where the Chamberlein family were strong royalists and Catholics; but whose minister James Crawford was a puritan. Chamberlein conducted a campaign of harassment against his minister, not paying his full tithes, and encouraging his tenants to do the same, which of course they duly enjoyed keeping for themselves. Chamberlain even wrote into the tenants contracts that they must fight for the king if asked. Wow. That would make an interesting rental agreement.
The evidence suggests that Ministers were quite vulnerable, and therefore may have been reluctant to make their views politically where they objected to the local landowner – though surely they’d have made their religious view clear. One of the things that happens is that ministers get removed during the whole revolutionary period; between 1642 and 1659 probably about 30% of ministers are removed. There were a few reasons for that; in our area, most is because they actively supported the king, were often removed from local complaints by their congregation. That’s also true for the 1650s where several are removed even though the fighting is over. Sometimes they were just harassed; the minister at Bix, William Newlin, was called in and questioned a couple of times, because he wrote to his royalist brother in Oxford; but he made it all the way through none the less.
Then at the Restoration the same process happens in reverse, when the cavalier parliament makes no attempt at reconciliation in religion, and passes a pretty hard series of legislation actively prosecuting dissent, and removes ministers who don’t knuckle down to a strict Anglican service. Across England and Wales, 20% of ministers are removed; in South Oxfordshire it’s much higher, closer to 40%. That again supports the story that puritanism and support for parliament was relatively strong in SOx.
So a parish’s leading landowners probably tended to define if a parish took any action for either side, and this was important for two of the major towns. In Henley we have Whitelocke of course and his puritan friend Bartholomew Hall of nearby Harpsden was also influential. Both of them were also lawyers, who tended to favour the primacy of law over unrestrained monarchical power. In Thame, Thomas Wenman of Thame Park was an MP in the Long parliament, and a moderate parliamentarian who supported the cause; whereas the Wray family of Rycote, who could have opposed them, were only lukewarm royalists and just tried to stay out of it.
But probably unsurprisingly there was always a range of opinion. So in Henley we hear of Margaret Booker, who had done such an enthusiastic job putting up parliamentary soldiers that Thomas Fairfax ordered she be given a grant. And it’s interesting that after the war Henley seems to retain an antipathy to the royalists. The inhabitants petition the government in 1655 to remove a warden foisted on them, called John Whistler, on the grounds that he’s untrustworthy and a Cavalier.
On the other hand there’s the story of Elizabeth Carey of Henley, who on the Restoration of Charles II was given a grant because she’d always remained loyal to parliament, and had been so vocal that she’d been condemned to be broken on the wheel. Broken on the wheel folks; that means she was due to have suffered the barbaric punishment – common in France in the period I am told – of being strapped to a big wheel, like St Katherine of Alexandria, who had a similar fate when she was martyred in the 4th century. I am told that she is the patron saint of wheelwrights; and somehow that feels all wrong to me. Up there is heaven she’d have been constantly remind by the p[prayers of wheelwrights about her hideous death – it seems insensitive. Also, there is a big inn at Henley, a ‘spoons as it happens, called the Catherine Wheel after said saint. Anyway, it doesn’t mean Elizabeth Carey actually had a broken back; she escaped as it happens. I hate to take a positive from these grim stories, but these snippets demonstrate that while they don’t appear at the head of armies or politics, women clearly had, and voiced, an opinion.
Elsewhere along the Chiltern hills, loyalties varied, but Whitelocke’s general impression was that there was no great passion for parliament in the hills
the gentlemen of the Chilterns were never guilty of any voluntary service to the parliament’
The gentlemen of the Chilterns and S Oxfordshire generally included a network of Catholic landowners. Catholicism was tiny in England and Wales; this census of 1676 gives us an idea; and even rounding up, it doesn’t get to 1%. But the gentry and nobility remained disproportionately to the religion of their forefathers, which dare I say encouraged traditional hierarchies in a way puritanism did not; and anyway, they could afford the fines for not attending the church of England.
So, there are is a group of Gentry families called the ‘Thameside string’ – the Blounts at Mapledurham, the Hildesleys at Little Stoke, the Plowdens at Shiplake. In the Chiltern Hills there are most famously the Stonors, and then on the Oxford plains are the Simeons at Britwell, the Fettiplaces at Swyncombe and the Chamberleins at Shirburn. While it is impossible to strictly define the characteristics the parliamentary support, one thing you can be sure of was that if a catholic was going to support anyone, it would not be a puritan parliament. So there is a scale top the reaction of our local Catholic families. At the top of the league vying for a place in Europe, is Charles Blount, who will fight passionately for his king, and destroy his family’s wealth in the process. Mid table, comfortable but a bit of a slog to support, is Francis Fettiplace who did what he could without sticking his neck out too far; Samuel Luke’s Scouts had him taped though, reporting local gossip that he answered the call from Thomas Blagge at Wallingford and
‘not only persuades the people to contribute, but helps them with carts and horses to carry in provisions
And then at the bottom of the table hoping for relegation to an easier league that won’t be so hard, there are the Simeons and the Stonors. They try to avoid trouble, maintain their private chapels, carry on their role as local good eggs. Even they are split though. While the Simeons avoid trouble completely, a son of the Stonor family, William Stonor, being a passionate young man, could not stomach such lily livered, pasty faced prudence, and went off to war. And died in the Siege of Basing house in 1645.
So, there are varied opinions throughout our area; but what we don’t see is anything of David Underdown’s lovely hypothesis from the West country. This was his Field: forest pasture idea, or Chalk and Cheese as his put it – a distinction between the chalk uplands and the lowland arable based farms. His research suggested that in the West country the uplands, characterised by dispersed settlement, with small individual farms, the spirit of independence would encourage puritanism, a personal relationship with God – and therefore support parliament. Whereas the lowland arable land would encourage open fields, collective farming and community – and support loyalty to Anglicanism and the King.
In fact it seems the other way round for us. After the Restoration there were far more dissenters in the towns like Watlington Dorchester, Henley and Thame and in rural lowland parishes like Lewknor and Kingston Blount. Though it is difficult to know, because the structure of some of the parishes were insanely complicated, for the most delicious of reasons, with little isolated colonies in the hills to give lowland parishes access to woodland and summer pasture. This is because the parishes were formed along the lines of ancient manors, economic units as it where. I love this almost more than any other historical fact, just by the way. Sadly they’ve all been tidied up
But these remote enclaves and long, strip like structures, meant that people at more remote places in parishes like Bix and Goring often went to church in other parishes that were closer, possibly with a different style of minister. Or, it has to be said, they didn’t go at all. There’s a lovely, weary sounding parish record from one Ralph Price, the minister at Rotherfield Greys, who complains that he
‘used to toll the bell and wait for a congregation, till at last he grew tired of it and left it off and indeed there are but four or five houses near the church’
Poor Ralph. Parishes in the Chilterns before modern times could be quite remote, and maybe didn’t have such easy access to the kind of news, pamphlets and radical religious writing that were so wildly common in the revolutionary period.
But an attitude that must have prevailed everywhere was the ‘plague on both your houses’ one; neutralism. Or at least concentrating on keeping body and soul together whatever your allegiances. Samuel Luke sees a few examples of this at Henley, such as this, when a local tells him
That on Sunday last he saw 2 barges the one laden with wine and hops and the other with coals and iron, and as he was informed were to go from thence to Henley and so to be conveyed in carts – to Oxford
Needs must when the devil drives.
But neutralism was almost certainly widespread across SOx. I did a bit of work on this and looked at landowners, trying to identify those active on either side. There were 99 red balloons of course, but also 99 estates. Of those that showed some sort of active allegiance, I identified that there was a pretty even split between active royalist and parliament supporters – about 20% of each. Also I found that you were much more likely to be royalist in the Chiltern hills or strip parishes – the %age royalist there rises to 30%.
Now there are many wrinkles in all of this; we are near Oxford and so 7 estates are owned by colleges, and in Oxford the colleges seemed to be very much royalist in orientation, while the townspeople favoured parliament. So I have excluded those. Also there are many estates where the landowner is non resident. There were some owned by Robert Claydon a London banker, who had a wheeze of lending money to estate owners, and then taking over their estates when they couldn’t repay. And others, like Badgemore Park outside Henley, where we just don’t know who even owned it.
But I find it interesting that the split rather confirms the story of greater puritanism in the lowland than the hills. In conclusion, as far as we can tell, in south Oxfordshire the lowland and towns mildly favoured parliament, the Chiltern Hills the King – and over half the people just tried to keep body and soul together.
Anyway, in July 1646, with the King now fled to the Scots .,and the long torturous and hopeless negotiation starting, to try and make the king see reason and agree to some sort of compromise with Parliament’s increasingly radical demands, everyone celebrated the end of the chaos. Once again having a powerful local MP helped. Whitelock moved a proposal in parliament to give a warrant to remove the fortifications at Phyllis Court, and even got extra money to make sure those soldiers were handsomely paid and duly left. And then he told everyone the town that it was over at last, and they could destroy the no doubt hated symbol of all the violence. And out they came in answer to his call, and together, with happiness in their hearts.
‘I have a great number of my countrymen, my neighbours, who willingly came at my warrant with mattocks, shovels and some carts to help the slighting of the works at Phyllis court’.
Bulstrode had his house back, and would get it fixed up. The building would remain on the same location until the 1870s when I think I am right in saying the building we see today was constructed. And all over the country, people and parishes would do the same, and could start fixing their buildings, and repairing their businesses too. The normal economy started to re-assert itself, butchers could supply their trade at regular markets at Thame again, bargemen and Maltsters start moving their goods freely along the river. Prosperity began to return and the 1650s were a period of economic growth. In Thame, children moved back into the repaired school buildings.
It was slightly less happy for those landowners who had fought for the king, and for some Catholic landowners too. At Stonor, the family was required to sell most of their land outside Oxfordshire, and lease out Watlington Park, as they were sequestered for failing to adequately support parliament and also had to pay recusancy fines. Other Catholic families were more fortunate; the Simeons for example seem to have escaped any problems, and were able to help the Stonors raise loans. In Shiplake, the Plowdens returned, having been driven out by Batholomew Hall. They had fought for the king, so during the war their estates were sequestered and rented out – but they returned and were able to get their lands back.
This is a common, standard process across all royalist or absentee families; Committees of Sequestration and Compounding were set up. The Sequestration committee made judgements about estates to be confiscated; the Compounding Committee listened to the claims of returning landlords, and set a fee for them to get their lands back and start with a blank slate. We’ve already heard of the Knollys of Greys court, having to compound for their absence at a critical time. In more serious cases, this quite frequently became a job for the woman of the family. If they had fled overseas, it was much easier for the woman to return without being arrested. And the committees were much more generous to women claiming poverty than their menfolk, since their earning capacity was much lower, and presumably their direct involvement in the conflict also much lighter. One could example are the Verneys; you might remember we talked about their agonising split of loyalties. Thus it was that Mary Verney came over from, their exile, and probably already suffering from the cancer that would kill her, she petitioned, lobbied, bribed and forged her way back into the family estates before she died. Ralph Verney would later also return.
There is no doubt that many gentry and noble families who supported the royal cause suffered financially for their loyalty, including a specific tax raised on them in 1656, the Decimation Tax. But this was no social revolution as would happen in France 150 years later when they finally got round to political reform; there were no mass executions, no mass expulsions, no invective against England’s long established social structure of yeoman, gentry and noble. To see if this was the case locally, I again went and did a bit of research, and I mapped the history of the larger estates across SOx – I was way too lazy to do it for all of them, and I’d still be doing it if I had. What I found is that of 97 estates, only 17 had changed hands by 1660, which might be not much more than a normal turnover rate.
The story of the 50s nationally is of a country coming to terms with the Republic, of Republicanism becoming the new normal. And although the factionalism of what a republic should look like never be resolved, and eventually and tragically kill our brave experiment, most ordinary people started getting back to work. There was, as the historian John Morrill puts it,
‘a return to the old ways and old officers’
In Thame the manor courts started working again. Whitelocke’s diary through the 1650s records a procession of orderly church services, renewal of connections across the country, and meetings with the Warden of Henley to discuss government. More and more of the royalist landowners returned, compound for their estates, and take up their positions in society again. The Stonors re-start making charitable gifts and public works. The County Committees, which to the fury of the gentry and nobility had been composed of much more ordinary people and had run local government are disbanded, the old forms and JPs return.
The Lady Periam school had kept going throughout the war years, only hitting problems paying the school master in one year when the tax from the garrison had got too much. The only impact of the war seems to have been that in the 1650s far more of their apprentices go to work in London rather than locally – the result probably of links forged during the war. There is no sign of protest over the execution of Charles I, no sign of support for Charles II’s invasion from Scotland in 1651.
One area of continuing change is probably religion. Anthony Wood in Thame watched with disgust at the influx of preachers into town. Oddly enough, in many ways the Commonwealth and Protectorate were much more tolerant of religious difference than the Restored church of England. This had something to do with the rise of the religious Independents, amongst whom Cromwell counted himself, and Cromwell in particular was against a state church and reckoned every congregation must find their own way to God. Admittedly that didn’t include holding public Mass, and the BCP was formally banned; but outside London, that ban was not rigorously enforced.
But there was a constant scrutiny of ministers, because there is a big effort to make sure ministers are of sufficient quality and properly trained; and the state remains suspicious of old royalist ministers – our Thomas Newlin of Bix as mentioned, is a good example of that. The air of protestant religious freedom led to a lot of debate – which you either might find invigorating or chaotic and sectarian depending on your personal character profile. We have a lovely example where in Watlington a debate was held in 1652 ‘on infant baptism’ between the Anabaptist minister from Abingdon, John Pendarves, a right old radical, and the royalist Minister and poet from Pyrton, Jasper Mayne. Mayne made the not unreasonable point during the debate that descriptions of the traditional Anglican Church as ‘whore of Babylon’, or ‘habitation of devils’ were inappropriate and possibly even rude. The result was uproar from Pendarve’s followers and the debate broke up in chaos, and I think soldiers were called. So much for rational debate.
There was also the appearance of one of the most influential movements in our history, of the Quakers. In 1655 John Fox himself was in Reading; and in 1658 Ambrose Rigg, one of the original Valiant 60, came to preach in Henley Market place. It needs to be said that the Quakers were not the quietist lot they are now – they were often loudly, even wildly aggressive at traditional services, in what they called ‘steeple houses’. Here’s a sample couple of lines from Ambrose Rigg, with which he might have amused the market traders of Henley in 1658
Awake, awake all you filthy dreamers who are in the defilements of flesh. And who have made people brutish by your false dreams, which you have called the word of God
Ok. As it happens, his kind and gentle words of God’s mercy were not well received, and the butchers threw their offal at him top shut him up. But the Quakers would stay and thrive in Henley – William Waters founded the first Friends house at Northfield End in 1668, and there is a Meeting house here still though not quite the same spot. A house would also be established in Warborough, which also still has a presence.
All I have to do now, is to finish off our story. Back to the National story briefly; the Protector Oliver Cromwell died on 3rd September 1658, his special day. And contrary to a much repeated view, there is no convincing evidence he nominated his son Richard to succeed him. It’s more likely that the moderates on the Privy Council around his deathbed were determined to return to the good ‘ole hereditary principle. Richard Cromwell succeeded to power, without contention, and all seemed set fair that England and Wales would be for ever more be a Republic, the Stuarts were toast and hurrah for that.
But it was not to be. The factions – Cromwellians, Moderates, Radicals, Presbyterians and the Army – just could not find a way to sink their differences, and Richard did not have Cromwell’s personal authority to keep the lid on it all as he had done. After months of infighting and squabbling, General George Monk eventually threw up his hands, dictated terms to Charles which were turned into the Declaration of Breda and in May 1660 the Stuarts arrived home, temporarily thankfully just to be partisan for a moment, and the swarm of threadbare aristocrats with him.
So, as a final tableau, let me take you Henley’s St Mary’s Church in January 1661. The minister was William Brice, who had replaced the moderate puritan Robert Rainsford when he died in 1649. William was altogether more rigorous in his views; although his parishioners seem to have thought well of him, and reported him as being conscientious and charitable. He was also on the committee for scandalous priests, to seek out the inadequate and overly traditional. That January, after the Monarchy had been re-imposed, the assembled parishioners had a treat in store, because William Knollys of Greys Court was there with his friend William Kitson, minister of nearby Fawley, who had been in place since 1613 would you believe. Knollys agreed with Brice that his friend Kitson should come along and preach the sermon that day. And given how long he’d been around, it’s likely this was a sign of the changing times, the restoration of the traditional church of England and its BCP.
So all was set fair, and the congregation, Whitelocke and all the dignitaries looked on expectantly as at the allotted time, Kitson got to his feet and approached the triple decked pulpit. But Brice was in the way, praying in the reading pew, and as Kitson approached he did not stand aside to allow him access to the pulpit. While Kitson stood there, awkwardly, there Brice sat, stubbornly refusing to make way. Even if Kitson asked him to move, he just sat there blocking the way. Kitson stood in the aisle, unsure what to do.
At this point William Knollys got involved; he and a group of others, laid hands on Brice, and forcibly dragged him from the pulpit and from his church. Knollys was furious at the incident, and Whitlocke reported that
Mr Bryce hardly escaped being sent to prison by Mr Knollys
This seems spookily symbolic; the ejection of the Commonwealth. Before long, Brice was removed completely, and he became a Presbyterian Minister. Whitelocke’s star had also fallen; he managed to survive, with a vote in parliament to pardon him passing by 50 votes, but his influence was over. This isn’t a biography of Bulstrode Whitelocke but since he’s contributed so much to this podcast, I hope I’ll be allowed to add that he lived on to 1675, and in his last years often preached at his house at Chilton Lodge, which he made an open house to anyone who wanted to come. The Quaker William Penn sometimes did that, and later published Quench not the Spirit, a selection of Whitelocke’s sermons, describing him as ‘one of the most accomplished Men of the Age’.
