God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [338]
Despite the importance of popular sovereignty in these arguments, these were days for the Saints, as much as the people. With Common Council elections due in London the purged parliament had passed legislation excluding all those who had sided with the King in the wars, or who had signed an engagement calling for a personal treaty the previous summer. This secured the City for the army – radical militia committees and financial support were quickly in place, and the chorus of opposition to the purge from City Presbyterians was robbed of institutional power. This might have been the effect of the exclusions from the franchise in the latest Agreement of the People: ‘a dictatorship of the godly [rather] than a golden age of democracy’.43 Such were the discomforts of the army’s position: an instrument of the people, but suspicious of the people’s attachment to monarchy, and to this particular king; committed to freedom of conscience, but forced to exclude from power those whose consciences dictated unpalatable policies.
Even the hand of providence was unclear. A desire for guidance led to the extraordinary spectacle of the Council of Officers listening solemnly to the visions of Elizabeth Poole, a woman of humble background from Abingdon, expelled from a Baptist congregation for her beliefs. Although many people thought miracles had ceased, it was quite common to accept the possibility of direct, personal revelation, and dreams were often interpreted in this light. But for women prophets this authority was ambiguous – it depended on their being empty vessels. There was an acute suspicion of female prophets and their motives.44
These were the resonances of Elizabeth Poole’s appearance before the General Council of the Army at Whitehall on 29 December, at the height of tense discussion about how to proceed. To be heard in such circumstances she had to act as a kind of spiritual consultant – answering questions put to her, but not affiliating herself with a partisan position.45 What she offered though was in a sense a reconciliation of the politics of Reformation and of Enlightenment, ‘declaring the presence of God with the army, and desiring that they would go forward and stand up for the liberty of the people as it was their liberty and God had opened the way to them’. Her vision had been of a man, representing the army, being a means to cure the weak and distressed land, personified of course as a woman. But she also warned that ‘the business was committed to their trust, but there was a great snare before them’. Colonel Rich was moved: ‘I cannot but give you that impression that is upon my spirit in conjunction with that testimony which God hath manifested here by an unexpected providence’. Poole was engaged in conversation by Harrison and Ireton, the latter declaring, ‘I see nothing in her but those things that are the fruits of the spirit of God’.46
So powerful was the impression that she was called back on 5 January. There she made a direct political intervention, in relation to the Agreement of the People. She warned the army that the kingly power had fallen into their hands, but only as ‘stewards, and so stewards of the gifts of God in and upon this nation’. As stewards their duty was to improve upon this gift, without fear of the great, but without overbearing their own position either: ‘I know it hath been the panges [?] of some of you that the King betrayed his trust and the parliament theirs; wherefore this is the great thing I must present to you: Betray not your trust’. She then handed over a paper against the King’s execution. This was very powerful, and