God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [261]
Before the war the local community had not been understood only in terms of neighbourliness and mutual support but also in terms of good government. Local notables held offices in the church and state, and used their authority and discretion to bring order and harmony to their parish. Constables, churchwardens, overseers of the poor were effectively arbiters of local decency. Parish communities formed around strongly held notions of order, hierarchy and authority, and membership of the community was policed. Local officeholders and village worthies might exercise a close and oppressive control over local sociability and sexual life. The village greybeards exacted deference in return for a fatherly care – it was by no means a bucolic paradise, but a very stable reconciliation of social status and political authority. Parish community was also marked ritually – the agricultural cycle, the devotional calendar and the life-cycle of the individual were marked out by public ceremonies. In towns the civic year was also marked, and strong corporate structures integrated individuals into a social body. These practices resolved conflict – communities were not marked by the absence of conflict so much as by collectively acceptable means to reconcile and live with it.84 By the end of the war many of the established routines of village and county government were still in place, or had been reestablished. Crimes were punished and social policies implemented. In some cases these activities were hampered or complicated by military authorities, or the administrative structures erected to fight the wars, but much had survived.85
Nonetheless, during 1645 there is plenty of evidence that the experience and perception of disruption, and the publicity given to advocates of other forms of social compact, called forth an active attempt to refurbish older forms of community for the new world created by the war. The material costs were difficult to bear, and the new forms of authority and political mobilization presented a challenge to the ideals and institutions of local government. In a sense this was a crisis in community – the formal and informal sources of authority through which local conflicts had been reconciled, order established and protection provided. Established patterns of authority and ritual were also challenged by the threat to the territorial basis of religious community. Was communion for those of a like mind, or all those living together? And what forms of ritual life could bring people together in a shared community?
Drawing on traditions of self-government in these challenging times, there were active and creative responses to these problems during the latter stages of the war. For, just as with the financial balance sheet, there were opportunities as well as burdens. By 1646 the war had provided opportunities to work off grudges, to redress local wrongs, to further a particular view of reformation, to promote pet projects, to make money, to assume local office. The war created the problems addressed by clubmen, excise rioters and witch-hunters, but also created the opportunities for obscure people to promote their own solutions. It had unleashed energies and arguments that went beyond the issues at the heart of peace negotiations. That affected formal negotiation – inducing both caution and urgency – but also provided the basis for activists to pursue purposes quite different from the formal war aims of the military parties. Anxiety, opportunism and creative adaptation were symbiotically linked; and they resonated deeply in English society.
Revolution, 1646