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By Root 1495 0

capturing the justness of their (conflicting) causes in apposite scriptural citation. The parliamentary catechism was issued seven times and there was a fake eighth edition, satirizing the use of biblical language in such an obviously godless enterprise.51 Questioning the religious basis of the parliamentary cause was hardly unusual – but executing such a dangerously false and counterfeit text as a way of making the case was clearly offensive. Of course, these values were interpreted politically – satire in a good cause was unlikely to be proposed for burning – and so what was burned at any particular point reflected the influence of particular opinions. The general principles seem to have been fairly consistent, however: John Milton (whose pamphlet had been burned along with Overton’s in August 1644) was unusual in arguing that there should be no prior restraint. Licensing, on any grounds, ran the risk of suppressing truth as well as error, and it was better to allow error than to suppress truth.52 Most contemporaries were less excited about expanding truth than they were anxious about proliferating error and the corrosion of political decencies, however.

Polemic and mobilization, along with the attendant anxiety and creativity, were not only a matter for pamphlet readers, however. Soldiers and civilians of humble status were confronted by the material costs of the fighting. If they could not avoid these realities of war it is also unlikely that they could avoid the political principles that the war raised. The circulation of rival proclamations (something taken very seriously by both sides), the raising of armies and of money, and the elaboration of local bureaucracies to achieve this: all these things forced an engagement with the arguments and costs of the war. So, too, did the many independent mobilizations – petitioning campaigns, the clubmen movements and the religious ginger groups anxious to impose their view of an appropriate settlement. The presence of garrisons and passage of field armies, perhaps even service in them, all fostered political education, and engagement.

Before the war the middling and poorer sort had on occasion deployed the language of authority in order to legitimate their own claims. These opportunities were increased during the 1640s, by the greater variety of political languages available. Partisanship became a common feature of local disputes – disputes in Warwickshire over the legality of soldiers” actions, for example, reveal how deeply the languages of national politics had penetrated; elsewhere malignant contested with well-affected, and scandalous ministers were denounced.53 Thomas Miles was prosecuted at sessions in late 1648 for saying ‘that the parliament men were rogues and traitors, and that he would be one of the first to cut their throats and that the Lord General [Fairfax] would die like a rogue and rot limb from limb’. He counter-sued that the witness against him, Anne Smith, had scandalized the Queen. Smith not only denied this but claimed in her petition: ‘it is dubious… whether any suit can justly be commenced against [her] in the name of the Queen, so long as she is declared traitor by both Houses of Parliament’.54 Others claimed to be of ‘approved fidelity’, or to have suffered for upholding order against those who ‘did give out very opprobrious and railing speeches against the parliament’, or suffered ‘opprobrious words against the parliament’ while carrying out its commands: partisan identities were self-consciously adopted throughout England.55 People with reputations for malignancy were not good friends to have. William Flacke was anxious to dissociate himself from Richard Filch, ‘a person disaffected to the parliament and an enemy to the present government’. Flacke was present at a particularly violent outburst, but was anxious to point out that he had been ‘incidentally in his company’.56

Memories of actions during the war clearly persisted long after. Francis Smith, of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, was sued in 1651 for the price of a prayer book ordered while he was