Hunt - The English Civil War At First Hand

The land is weary of our discords, being thereby polluted with our blood.

God has given you great successes in many places against our enemies, and sometimes he is pleased to give our enemies successes against us; in all of them, whether of the one or the other party, the poor English are still sufferers.

Whose goods, I pray sir, are plundered? Whose houses are burnt? Whose limbs are cut or shot off? Whose persons are thrown into loathsome dungeons? Whose blood stains the walls of our towns and defiles our land?

Is it not all English? And is it not then time for us, who are all Englishmen, to be weary of these discords, and to use our utmost endeavours to put an end to them?

I know, sir, you are all here of the same opinion with me in this point; and that it was an unhappy mistake of those who told us in the beginning of our warfare, that it would be only to show ourselves in the field with a few forces, and then all would be presently ended.

We have found it otherwise: let us now again seek to recover these blessings of peace, whereof we are told, that nihil tam populare quam pax, that nothing is than peace more gracious to be heard of, more pleasing to be desired, and more profitable to be enjoyed.

So lamented the parliamentarian Bulstrode Whitelocke in a speech to the House of Commons. As early as 1643, he could already sense the terrifying chaos awaiting his countrymen. The civil wars of the 1640s, known historically as the English Civil War, ripped apart England, Ireland and Scotland. Institutions, hierarchies and the very fabric of society were transformed by the most dramatic decade in British history. When King Charles I raised his Royal Standard in August 1642 and declared war against Parliament, he unleashed a revolution. The civil war years would see a king executed, the establishment of a republic, the digging of communes in Surrey, the abolition of the House of Lords, a torrent of religious freethinking, and the creation of a military dictatorship. All on English soil. Meanwhile Ireland would suffer subjugation and sectarian bloodshed while Scotland erupted into brutal clan conflict. By the conclusion of the wars in 1651, the British Isles had become a foreign land. New ideas about political liberty and religious toleration, the balance of power between King and Parliament, the justice of private property, and the function of the Church of England had melted away the old belief systems. In the process the country became a vast battlefield: 30,000-strong armies laying waste the country; tortuous sieges gutting medieval towns and country houses; and staggering displays of military bravura that have secured the names of Edgehill, Marston Moor, and Dunbar their place in British history.

This revolutionary epoch came with a terrible human cost. Almost a quarter of a million people lost their lives in a conflict unrivalled for proportionate British casualties until the carnage of World War One. The grim horror of civil war divided families and communities. The country went to war over the rights of parliament against the unfettered power of the monarch as well as the future direction of the Church of England. Such seemingly esoteric issues set father against son and forced brother into battle against brother. The competing pull of King and Parliament, Anglican and Puritan scythed through old loyalties and traditional ties. During some nine years of fighting, no corner of the British Isles, no town or village, escaped the gruesome burden of war.

The devastation of those years affected rich and poor, Cavalier and Roundhead alike. In a predominantly rural economy, the chaos of huge armies on the march, working sons press-ganged into combat, and soldiers arbitrarily billeted in houses and farms destroyed the precarious living of millions. Harvests were left to rot, property plundered and generations of work sent up in the flames of war. It was a terrible, bloody time a warning of the dangers when politics collapse, ideology flares and religious zealotry possesses a people. While few understood the wars roots or reasons, all had to endure the exhaustive search for its resolution.