God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [63]
This climate proved unfavourable to raising troops. In late June there were reports of men refusing to serve in Norfolk and the Lord Chamberlain went to Wiltshire in person to quell disturbances there. Troops imprisoned for refusing to pay coat and conduct money had been freed from gaol by some of their colleagues and it was said that the men raised there would not march unless the King came in person. Similar stirs were reported in Huntingdon, Warwickshire and Cambridge.62 Men raised in Essex were reported to have slain some of their officers and beaten a deputy lieutenant, those in Norfolk to be refusing to embark and those in Cambridge to have beaten their officers at Newmarket.63 The Earl of Northumberland was sure that the army would be under-strength given what he knew of the restiveness in London, Kent, Surrey, Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire while in Lincolnshire the deputy lieutenants threatened to resign their positions in the face of the rebelliousness of the pressed men.64
Some of this was motivated by resentments over pay and conditions,65 but it seems that much of this restiveness was related to religious feelings. Francis Windebank, son of the Secretary of State and a man of fairly Romish sensibilities, was responsible for raising men in Devon. On first meeting his men he was told that ‘if they found we were papists they would soon despatch us’. In order to counteract this threat, on the first day’s march ‘I desired them all to kneel down and sing psalms, and made one of my officers to read prayers, which pleased them not a little’. He had also plied them with drink and tobacco, with the result that ‘they all now swear they will never leave me so long as they live, and, indeed, I have not had one man run from me yet in this nine days” march’. Other captains of similar bands were in fear of their men, who were very threatening. Behind all this lay ‘the Puritan rascals of this country [who have] strongly possessed the soldiers that all the commanders of our regiment were papists’. Credulous popular anti-popery may well have lain behind many of the discipline problems, fuelled by rumours about the papistical purposes and leadership of the army. This anti-popery was centrally concerned with ritual forms: ‘I was forced for two or three days to sing psalms all the day I marched, for all their religion lies in a psalm’. Soldiers in Warminster (Wilts.) insisted that their commanders take communion with them before setting out.66 In Daventry (Northants.) troopers said that they would not fight against the gospel and would not be commanded by papists.67
We know for certain that two officers were murdered on the grounds that they were papists: William Mohun suffered a terrible beating and eventual death in Farringdon at the hands of soldiers raised in Dorset; and Compton Evers was killed three weeks later by men raised in Devon. An illustration of the spread of rumour, but also of its potential unreliability, is Castle’s report on the death of Mohun, to whom he gave the rank of captain rather than lieutenant. He said that Mohun had been hanged; in fact he was forced out of the window of his lodgings, from where he fell to the ground. He was severely beaten, dragged by his hair through the town and left in a ditch for dead. Regaining consciousness he made it to a nearby house, where medical care was interrupted by the arrival of soldiers. Cornered, he