Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps and tables
- Preface: ‘A phoenix in flames’
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Introduction: Commune at the crossroads
- 1 A domination of abbots
- 2 The crisis of the early fourteenth century
- 3 Classes of the commune before the Black Death
- 4 The struggle continues, 1335–99
- 5 A turning-point: the generation of 1400
- 6 Highpoint of vernacular religion: building a church, 1400–1548
- 7 Classes of the commune in 1522
- 8 Surviving Reformation: the rule of Robert Strange, 1539–70
- 9 ‘The tyranny of infected members called papists’: the Strange regime under challenge, c.1551–80
- 10 Phoenix arising: crises and growth, 1550–1650
- 11 Only the poor will be saved: the preacher and the artisans
- 12 Gentlemen and commons of the Seven Hundreds
- 13 Immigrants
- 14 The revival of the parish
- 15 ‘More than freeholders ought to have voices’: parliamentarianism in one ‘countrey’, 1571–1643
- 16 ‘Moments of decision’, August 1642 to February 1643
- Afterword: Rural sunrise
- Bibliography
- Index
16 - ‘Moments of decision’, August 1642 to February 1643
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps and tables
- Preface: ‘A phoenix in flames’
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Introduction: Commune at the crossroads
- 1 A domination of abbots
- 2 The crisis of the early fourteenth century
- 3 Classes of the commune before the Black Death
- 4 The struggle continues, 1335–99
- 5 A turning-point: the generation of 1400
- 6 Highpoint of vernacular religion: building a church, 1400–1548
- 7 Classes of the commune in 1522
- 8 Surviving Reformation: the rule of Robert Strange, 1539–70
- 9 ‘The tyranny of infected members called papists’: the Strange regime under challenge, c.1551–80
- 10 Phoenix arising: crises and growth, 1550–1650
- 11 Only the poor will be saved: the preacher and the artisans
- 12 Gentlemen and commons of the Seven Hundreds
- 13 Immigrants
- 14 The revival of the parish
- 15 ‘More than freeholders ought to have voices’: parliamentarianism in one ‘countrey’, 1571–1643
- 16 ‘Moments of decision’, August 1642 to February 1643
- Afterword: Rural sunrise
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The moment of decision for most men came when they were faced with Parliament's Militia Ordinance or the Royal Commission of Array, each of which commanded their military service.
‘Our troubles began about August last’, explained ‘one who was present [at the] taking of Cicester’:
on Thursday, February 2, 1642/3, by seven thousand of … Cavaliers, under the command of Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice, the Earls of Northampton, Carnarvon, Denbigh and Cleveland, the Lord Digby, Lord Andevour, Lord Wentworth, Lord Taffe, Lord Dillon, Lieutenant-General Wilmot, Sir John Byron, Colonell Gerrard, Colonel Kyrke, Colonell Dutton, Captain Legge, and divers others.
The symbolism of the list was lost on no-one. The lords came to Cirencester to do more than take a town. Eminences of the kingdom of Charles I came to assert the ascendency of the king's court over a rebellious, parliamentarian, commonalty that, for the time being, included most of the local gentry.
‘Our greatest enemies from the first have been our owne countreymen,’ he explained. The ‘moment of decision’ had come six months earlier, on 11 August 1642. George Brydges, sixth lord Chandos of Sudeley, the king's lieutenant in Gloucestershire, sent out messengers summoning the leading men of Gloucestershire to a meeting ‘at the sign of the Ram’, Cirencester. This was the inn at which, 242 years earlier, the Ricardian earls had been surrounded and captured, prior to their execution in the market-place to the acclamation of the crowd. In 1400 the townspeople had intervened decisively in a struggle between two rivals for the throne.
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- Commune, Country and CommonwealthThe People of Cirencester, 1117-1643, pp. 225 - 246Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011