9 - Cruso and the English Civil Wars

Summary

1642 saw the initial exchanges in what became known as the First English Civil War, and so it was a good time to publish books on military matters. John Cruso published two new military works for soldiers on campaign as well as a second edition of The Art of Warre. Although he probably made some money from these enterprises, his primary motivation was, it seems likely, the desire to do his fellow soldiers a service by furnishing them with the latest knowledge on specific military matters. In 1644 he published a second edition of Militarie Instructions. A handwritten copy of this suggests that Cruso's words did not merely sit on soldiers’ bookshelves but were taken on campaign.

First, however, we should catch up with Cruso in Norwich. He continued to work as a church elder and, more importantly for this chapter, as a militia captain. Norwich did not see direct action in the English Civil Wars, although it did experience a huge gunpowder explosion, the ‘Great Blow’ of 1648, the result of a confrontation between rioters and New Model Army troops. The city corporation, along with many other cities in England, took the side of Parliament. One question that arises is which side John Cruso took in the Civil War. Here, it will be instructive to examine the allegiances of the men to whom he dedicated his military works and those who wrote dedicatory verses for these works, as well as to look for any clues in the texts themselves. In short, this chapter explores John Cruso's life and work in the 1640s, a decade dominated by the English Civil Wars, in which England's patchwork of towns, villages, and fields became a vast chessboard.

The 1640s were a period of continuity, but also of change for John Cruso. He continued to live in the parish of St Peter Mancroft. His journey to the Dutch church was a little longer than it had been when he lived in the parish of St Andrew. It would take him past the market cross and the fifteenth-century Guildhall. Beneath its magnificent exterior, it housed a gaol. The Kett brothers, Robert and William, who had led the rebellion in 1549 which had led indirectly to the arrival of the Strangers, had been detained there.