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By Root 1112 0

resort to arms appeared more likely, people of all ranks were confronted with the practical consequences of failed negotiation. Rents were appearing in the fabric of political authority and conflicts which in normal times could only have been expressed in the expectation of exemplary punishment were publicly voiced. But with a division in national government increasingly obvious it was possible for these languages and disputes to be appropriated to local conditions and in those local conflicts a voice was given to those normally excluded from the counsels of government. This was not simply a matter of the people being given a voice by the revolution, however, for the people were also in some circumstances making it: the Stour Valley riots helped to shape national political action. Print created reciprocal relationships between national and local issues, connecting parochial battles with conflicts of national significance and advertising local examples of general threats.

Some kind of strategic position emerged from these local battles but the complexities of allegiance are liable to be flattened out in maps of that position. It would certainly be a mistake to conclude from the military geography either that people did not have opinions, or that areas under the military command of one side or the other were homogenously and unequivocally in favour of that cause. All the evidence suggests that the nation was divided from top to bottom, and that every village had its royalists and parliamentarians. Nonetheless, we can discern geographies of allegiance, starting with broad national distinctions and leading to more subtle anatomies of particular areas. Clearly local political cultures were significant in moulding these choices, but so too were local political contingencies.

The war was starting with a series of whimpers rather than a bang, but it was starting nonetheless. In the arguments urged in favour of these mobilizations two fears stand out: for the future of reformation and the security of the gains already made; and for the security of the social, religious and political order in the face of ignorant zeal. Religious conflicts were increasingly expressed as a choice between Protestation and Prayer Book; between defence of the doctrine of the church, or both the doctrine and the discipline. Fear of popery was juxtaposed to fear of religious and social anarchy. The really pernicious thing about these concerns was, of course, that it was possible to be equally worried by them all: the real political failure of the Long Parliament lay in the fact that they came to be seen as alternatives. Similarly, the ‘just’ prerogatives of the King were juxtaposed with the ‘just’ rights and privileges of Parliament: who was there who didn’t believe in both? But as activists sought to take control of military resources, it became harder to sustain a complex attitude – the Hull magazine was either with Parliament or with the King, and it was difficult to find a third way, particularly after the King disavowed the authority of the King-in-Parliament as superior to his own personal word.

As war erupted a third anxiety came to lie alongside these fears for religion and the balance of rights, powers and privileges: that this was not worth a war. Awareness of the costs of war, already evident in the Covenanters” occupation of the north-east or the apparent spiral of social disorder that was being unleashed, informed attempts to pull back from the brink, or to stay out of the fighting. In the first eight months of 1642 all but two English counties generated petitions which used the language of accommodation, but even this was a language used for partisan purposes.76 Caught between these competing concerns ‘choosing sides’ was not an easy or once-and-for-all thing. An important strand of opinion was bewilderment at a world out of joint, at a body politic so diseased as to be monstrous. Above all, though, among those activists driving events, fear was triumphing over hope. For most active participants this was to be a defensive war, defined by