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By Root 1178 0

in the light of much larger, even apocalyptic issues, and as such were represented in print for the edification of a non-local audience. Standard metaphors and forms of explanation were appropriated to the highly unusual conditions of incipient civil war. Providence, wonders and signs were good to think with. These pamphlets were being published into a market, and intersected with attempts to mobilize provincial opinion via press and pulpit or to take control of local institutions like the militia or law courts. Anti-Puritan and anti-Catholic pamphlets clearly resonated in local panics and controversies. By refining political differences into polemical positions, and soliciting support for these positions among wider publics, print had helped to corrode normal political processes. Events were over-interpreted in a febrile atmosphere, in which passions were inflamed, animosities were stoked up in print, and plots were detected everywhere.

7

Raising Forces

The Slide into War

Speaking in July 1642, in the course of a Commons debate about whether Parliament should raise an army in its own defence, Bulstrode Whitelocke reflected on how Parliament had

insensibly slipped into this beginning of a civil war by one unexpected accident after another, as waves of the sea which have brought us thus far; and we scarce know how, but from paper combats by declarations, remonstrances, protestations, votes, messages, answers and replies we are now come to the question of raising forces.1

As fear drove partisanship beyond the bounds of accepted convention, institutions of local government became sites of partisan conflict: institutions intended to give voice to the local community, and to represent and reproduce its social order, became the focus for explicit political conflict. Like Parliament these institutions were no longer acting as the embodiment of an organic political community and for some people resistance to this process became the primary concern, overriding the issues which had spilled out of Parliament. Such men forged neutrality agreements, seeking to protect county government from the spirits and afflictions which had eroded parliamentary government. But they did not succeed: there were always activists who could see religious and political debates clearly, and were willing to subvert political decencies in order to defend their corner. As this battle for military control of the provinces got under way, local people were able, or were forced, to take sides. Not only were national political issues of the most fundamental concern now being discussed before the public, but ordinary people were making active choices based on their understanding of the issues.

∗

Central to this was a slow-motion battle for military resources, justified as a necessary security measure. In January measures to take control of stores of arms and strongpoints and to disarm papists had been easily carried. This had been followed by the Militia Ordinance, eventually passed on 5 March. In early June, as musters began to take place under its authority and following the exchanges over the Nineteen Propositions, the King issued Commissions of Array so that in the late summer local communities were choosing not just whether to obey an ordinance for the militia, but whether to obey it in preference to a commission from the King. The Commissions of Array were also more warlike than simply implementing the muster, allowing individuals to raise troops under their command.

A further key escalation came on 12 July. Parliament voted to raise an army, and appointed the Earl of Essex its general – this was also going beyond taking control of the musters. A failure as a courtier, Essex had significant military experience (like his father the Elizabethan traitor); in fact there was no aristocrat of his rank who could match it. He was an assiduous parliamentarian, often associated with anti-court positions, and a man with an acute sense of personal honour, who felt his political disappointments keenly. When Charles raised forces Essex’s military experience