God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [64]
Some of the soldiers heading north engaged in informed acts of iconoclasm. On 15 August soldiers calling themselves ‘London Prentices’ arrived in Marsworth, Buckinghamshire, on their way to Aylesbury and indulged in some unofficial reformation. They demanded the key to the church from the parish clerk and ‘broke down the rails at the upper end of the Chancel where formerly the Communion Table stood, and beat down all the painted glass in the windows’. They then went to the minister’s house, in search of the service book and surplice, telling him ‘that if he did not deliver them to them, they would pull down his house over his head’. Told that the minister did not have them they went back to the church, and ‘finding them there, first tore the two Service books all to pieces, scattering some of the leaves about the streets, and carrying the rest away upon the points of their swords’. Afterwards ‘one of them took the Surplice and put it on him, as the Minister useth to do, and so marched away to Aylesbury triumphing in contempt and derision?.69
English soldiers purging churches on their way north in 1640
Their targets were clearly not indiscriminate, and they were not unique to these men: reports of similar attacks on altar rails, communion tables, stained glass and vestments recur in other parts of the country. These items were often ritually degraded, not simply destroyed. Some of these acts aped official ritual practice – like poor Mohun, objects taken from churches were displayed in pillories, for example. Others were tried in ‘court’ or burned. Church services were disrupted too, but at critical moments – such as immediately after the sermon. This may suggest a tenderness about disrupting the preaching of the Word among those intent on attacking idolatry. These acts were informed by a popular anti-popery, in which the dangers of corruption were attached to specific aspects of the physical environment, and particular moments in religious ritual: they were not apolitical or irreligious, since they shared the vocabulary of state and church. The dates of these acts seem also to have had some ritual significance – incidents were reported on 5 November, Plough Monday and Candalmas, all of them important dates in the ritual calendar. The humour of the participants (their ‘triumphing in contempt and derision’) again suggests a political intent rather than an inchoate violence. Rough music parodied the sacred music of Laudian ritual and the mock courts and trials of offenders were clearly occasions of raucous humour. Iconoclasts relished their temporary power.70 Elsewhere soldiers did ‘justice’ on secular issues – in helping to break down enclosures, breaking open prisons to release debtors and deserters or smashing windows and tools in a House of Correction in Wakefield (an institution in which the able-bodied but unemployed poor were incarcerated and set to work).71 These were overturning times, when poor men could do justice on their oppressors – enclosers, creditors and Poor Law officers – and purify churches.
To say that soldiers were doing this is in some degree misleading for, of course, prior to their muster these were not soldiers at all, but simply men of low status. Evidence is difficult to come by, but there is enough to suggest that these attacks by soldiers sometimes enjoyed the support of the local godly, and might be related to previous disputes and local preferences. In Radwinter, Essex, for example, Richard Drake had been in conflict with a section of his congregation since his arrival in 1638. He favoured relatively high ceremonial, and that had led to a running battle with the local godly. He had raised the chancel, railed the altar and refused to church women (that is, ritually receive them back into the congregation after childbirth) unless they came up to the rails. Similarly, he would not administer communion at Easter and Christmas