The English Civil War: A People’s History

Middle-class town dwellers like John Milton had other interests. Milton loved books. On a winter’s morning in 1639, he would have been at his desk or in his library, reading, writing, thinking. He liked to get up early, working or studying until dawn. He had only the slender light of a candle to illuminate and warm his small dark parlour. He did not order a fire, despite the cold; Milton was not a poor man, but he was not a rich one. At thirty-one, he did not have what his father might have called a proper job, and by 1639 he had published only one poem. But he already knew that he would be the greatest English poet in history. His Latin was so good that he could, literally, write like Horace and Ovid; he knew the epics of Homer and the tragedies of Euripides by heart. Now he had just come back to England after a Grand Tour of Italy, and was writing an elegy in Latin for his only real friend, who had just died. During the war, Milton would have many associates, but no real intimates; the conflict would both further and thwart his passionate ambition.

Nehemiah Wallington might have been reading, too, if he had not had to work so hard at his trade of woodturning; like most ordinary Londoners, his day was dominated by work, to which he was called by the many London bells which tolled the hours of daybreak and dark. He liked to follow theological debates when his job allowed, and he especially loved the bestselling work The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven; much of its homespun wisdom found its way into the journal Nehemiah was keeping, recording his spiritual life. At forty-two, he couldn’t help but be conscious that his life might well be drawing to a close. So Nehemiah liked sermons too, and preaching of all kinds. That was lucky, because a sermon from a very godly preacher could easily last two hours, sometimes longer, and on a Sunday Nehemiah and hundreds like him would be in the congregation, absorbing every word. It was people like Nehemiah who hated the Anglican Church’s swerves towards what they thought was treacherous popery, and provided most of the unrest before the Civil War itself began. It would not take much for them to blame the king for it, and his little Catholic queen.

If Nehemiah went to his favourite church, though, he could pass the theatres it denounced on his way, and sometimes even feel tempted to enter them. If he had ever given in to temptation, he would have seen thrillingly innovative new scenery that looked from a distance like the real world, and in 1639 might have been adorning plays like Henry Glapthorne’s Argalus and Parthenia. A Caroline play could be perverse and tragical, climaxing in a huge pile of corpses, or a sharp and salty comedy that made fun of the people in the next street. Nobles, on the other hand, could see a very different kind of production, a masque, a four-hour extravaganza presented by the most beautiful and alluring ladies of the court; in one scandalous production they wore topless costumes, baring their breasts. This was doubly scandalous, because these were real women acting, and speaking lines as well – not professional actresses, but the queen and her ladies. A man named William Prynne had recently lost his ears for writing that women actresses were notorious whores, in a manner that plainly insulted Queen Henrietta. But to a man like Wallington, the queen’s activities were a clear temptation to providence, and a sign that London was no city for the godly, but rather a portal of hell.

For better-off children, the country could be a delicious place of play. In 1639, some who would rise to prominence in the war were still close to a childhood of wild unsupervised games. The eleven-year-old John Bunyan might have been holed up somewhere with his favourite book, no Bible, but the racy – and sexy – adventures of a superhero called Bevis of Hampden. And thirteen-year-old Richard Cromwell, Oliver’s son, was still slogging his unenthusiastic way through grammar school, unaware that he was to be – briefly – ruler of England. The young Matthew Hopkins shows what terrible pressures could be created inside the good seventeenth-century child. As a boy, Matthew is said to have ‘took affright at an apparition of the Devil, which he saw in the night’. As the son of a godly vicar, whose will insists firmly on salvation through faith alone, Hopkins was like most godly children; he was terrified of the powers of hell, which he believed might claim him. And yet in maturity Hopkins liked to invent different childhoods for himself. He told William Lilly that he came from a line of schoolmasters in Suffolk, ‘who had composed for the psalms of King David’; there was indeed a John Hopkins, an English hymn-writer, but he didn’t have a son called Matthew. Hopkins told Lady Jane Whorwood that he was really named Hopequins and was the grandson of an English Catholic diplomat, Richard Hopequins, a much grander background than he could really claim. These alternative identities suggest a profound wish to hide from something or someone, perhaps from the Devil.

Among all those relishing peace were the two men who were to be the chief protagonists in the coming wars. The man who was to be the only king ever executed by the English people was born a privileged little boy, but one whom nobody particularly wanted. Charles Stuart spent a childhood ill and in pain, bullied by those he loved, and he grew into a disabled and often unhappy adult. In the same calendar year, another boy was born, a boy who was to become the only man not of royal blood ever to head the English state. Oliver Cromwell was welcomed into a family of struggling East Anglian gentry, the adored and long-awaited only boy in a family of girls. The boost to his self-esteem was lifelong.

When Charles was born on 19 November 1600, he was his parents’ third child, and they had a fine son already, destined to rule in Edinburgh one day. Charles was nobody’s favourite, nobody’s problem. He was first assigned a noblewoman to be his foster-mother, in the manner usual for those of his class; her name was Lady Margaret Ochiltree. Charles cared enough about Lady Margaret to be angry when her pension fell into arrears in 1634. But of course she didn’t do the childcare herself; Charles also had a wetnurse, and a rocker who was supposed to rock the cradle, but was also a general nurserymaid, and other nursery nurses. Like other upper-class children, his closest bonds were therefore with servants, and hence precarious because servants could come and go. A child was supposed to be attached to his natural parents, but when he was only two, Charles lost his parents to England; James left Scotland in April to take the throne of England after Elizabeth I died in March 1603, and was followed a month later by Anne, with her eldest children, Henry and Elizabeth. With astonishing insensitivity, or perhaps with a desire to begin Charles’s princely training, the royal couple also moved him to a new household, that of Alexander Seton, Lord Fyvie, who had nine surviving daughters and a son.

Installed in this overflowing family, Charles does not seem to have flourished. Reports sent on him spoke of his longing to be with his parents. There was another problem, too, one that would overshadow Charles’s relations with his parents still further. Fyvie sent bullish reports on Charles to the court, but read carefully they contained alarming news. In April 1604 – when Charles was three – Fyvie said that Charles was ‘in good health, courage and lofty mind’ but added that he was ‘weak in body’. Most ominously of all, he confided that Charles was ‘beginning to speak some words’. If Charles was really only beginning to speak at the age of three, it points to severe disability. Fyvie added ‘he is far better of his mind and tongue than of his body and feet’. This report alarmed Charles’s parents, for James sent Dr Henry Atkins to examine the prince. Arriving on the night of 12 May 1604, he reported to the king that he had found the young duke ‘walking with an ancient gentlewoman his nurse in the great chamber … although he walked not alone but sustained and led by that gentlewoman’s hand’. Atkins said that Charles evaded an examination by ‘calling for music to one of his servants … desiring several kinds of measures … and would imitate the instrument with the sound of the true tune with his high tender voice’. But the next day he was duly examined, and Atkins reported that he was in reasonable condition but for the joint problems, ‘the weakness of his legs’, diarrhoea said to be caused by teething, and a desire to drink often. Tellingly, Atkins couldn’t examine Charles’s teeth because ‘his Highness would not permit any to feel his gums’. Despite his fairly reassuring report to the king and queen, Atkins wrote more frankly to Secretary of State Robert Cecil that ‘at my coming the duke was far out of order’. To the king he announced that the duke would begin a journey south under his supervision. Charles had difficulty standing and walking because ‘he was so weak in his joints and especially ankles, insomuch as many feared they were out of joint’ and of the ‘joints of his knees, hips and ankles being great and loose are not yet closed and knit together as happeneth to many in their tender years which afterwards when years hath confirmed them proves very strong and able persons’.

The lonely little boy had rickets. This childhood illness was a dominant factor in the development of his personality. The victims of rickets suffer low height and weight, and painful decayed teeth. The spine and breastbone are affected, long bones are shortened and deformed, the ligaments are loose, and fractures are common. Rickets gives bow legs and a pigeon chest, visible deformities. Rickets may also have caused lowered resistance to other diseases, including measles, diarrhoea and whooping cough. But perhaps most significantly, modern studies of rickets suggest that it affects the personality, making for apathy and irritability, and this was noted in Charles’s case. His guardian wrote to James, saying that ‘the great weakness of his body, after so long and heavy sickness, is much supplied by the might and strength of his spirit and mind’ – which might be a diplomatic way of calling the small duke a headstrong child. A toddler in pain is a difficult toddler.

Unfortunately, Charles was not especially lucky in his parents’ response to his illness. If we compare it with that of Buckinghamshire gentleman Ralph Verney, we can see that the royal family were not only careless but callous. Mary Verney wrote of her son: ‘for Jack his legs are most miserable, crooked as ever I saw any child’s, and yet thank God he goes very strongly, and is very straight in his body as any child can bee; and is a very fine child in all but his legs’ … And she too blamed diet. ‘Truly I think it would be much finer if we had him in ordering, for they let him eat anything he has a mind to, and he keeps a very ill diet.’ Ralph Verney’s response was anxious and sympathetic: ‘truly the crookedness of his legs grieves my very heart, ask some advice about it at London, but do not tamper with him’. What he meant by this is dismally clear. When Charles arrived in London on the heels of Atkins’s report, fresh stories of his illness flew about, and those eager to act as guardians to him melted away. ‘There were many great ladies suitors for the keeping of the duke; but when they did see how weak a child he was, and not likely to live, their hearts were down, and none of them was desirous to take charge of him.’ Kind Richard Carey took Charles on, though he reported that ‘he was not able to go, nor scant stand alone, he was so weak in his joints, and especially his ankles, insomuch as many feared they were out of joint’. Carey’s first move was to surround Charles with his own servants; another change of personnel for the little boy. Even more disturbing is his account of his wife’s struggles with James I’s plans, as Richard reported:

Many a battle my wife had with the King, but she still prevailed. The King was desirous that the string under his tongue should be cut, for he was so long beginning to speak as he [the king] thought he would never have spoke. Then he [the king] would have him put in iron boots, to strengthen his sinews and joints, but my wife protested so much against them both, as she got the victory, and the King was fain to yield.

These cruel treatments, contested by Charles’s new foster-mother, may have had their origins in James’s own separation from his mother and his own lack of security. Mary Queen of Scots fled to England without James before his first birthday, leaving him with foster-parents. James himself did not walk until he was about five, and like his son he too had childhood rickets. Also like his son, he compensated for his difficulty in walking by taking up riding and then hunting with especial vigour. When James was around four, he was moved from the woman’s world of the nursery to the schoolroom; this was three years earlier than normal, and it reflected his status as king, but it was hard on him. He loved books, but his tutor George Buchanan was a hard man who hated Catholics, and Mary Queen of Scots most of all. James grew up with his ears ringing with stories of his mother’s wickedness. Buchanan thought she was a witch, a whore and a murderer. On one occasion, he beat the king severely. James may also have been alarmed at seeing his own disabilities reflected in his son. James had very noticeable physical problems: his tongue was too large for his mouth, which made him dribble, and he had only imperfect control over bodily functions and a profound dislike of bathing. When thwarted, he would fling himself furiously about, sobbing or screaming, as his son did.

Historians have tended to portray Charles’s rickets as shortlived, but this may betray the influence of Stuart propaganda. Richard Carey was afterwards keen to tell the world that he had performed a miracle cure. ‘Beyond all men’s expectations so blessed the duke with health and strength under my wife’s charge, as he grew better and better every day.’ Royal astrologer William Lilly said Charles overcame his physical weakness by running and riding and hunting, and that his success made him stubborn in endeavour. Similarly, Philip Warwick reported that ‘though born weakly yet came [he] through temperance and exercise to have as firm and strong a body as that of most persons I ever knew’. And all his life he walked breathlessly fast. But on 6 January 1605, when Charles was created Duke of York, all his robes and other vestments had to be carried by an attendant gentleman, and Charles himself was held in the arms of the Lord High Admiral, the Earl of Nottingham. On 15 September 1608 he was too weak to go to a christening, and it was said that he was ‘exceedingly feeble in his lower parts, his legs growing not erect but repandous [crooked] and embowed, whereas he was unapt for exercises of activity’. As late as 1610 his movements were clumsy, and his part in a masque had to be specially contrived to hide his legs – a circle of children surrounded him as he danced. Finally, Charles’s father and his son, the future Charles II, were both tall, but Charles remained small, further evidence of the severity of his rickets. His brittle bones impeded his growth severely, so that he only reached 5’ 4”, or in other accounts 4’ 11”. (5’ 4” is based on a surviving suit of armour.) The Court portrait painter, Van Dyck, used devices such as a flight of steps, the presence of a dwarf, and a raised throne to make Charles look bigger. In the case of the mounted figure of Charles created by Hubert le Sueur the sculptor was explicitly told to make the figure six feet in height. By contrast, both his older siblings Henry and Elizabeth were relatively tall – Henry was 5’ 8” at the age of seventeen – and also healthy.

The disparity led to rivalry, and James made matters worse by telling Henry that he would leave the crown to Charles if Henry did not work harder. This sort of cruelty, together with the characteristically violent and competitive early modern boys’ culture, led Henry to bully his smaller, weaker, less capable brother, and to taunt him, explicitly, about his disability. One day, as the two were waiting with a group of bishops and courtiers for the king to appear, Henry snatched the Archbishop of Canterbury’s hat and put it on Charles, saying that when he was king he would make Charles primate, since he was swot and toady enough for the job and the long robes would hide his ugly legs. Charles had to be dragged away, screaming with rage. Like many a victim of bullying, Charles tried to win his brother over by extreme submissiveness: ‘Sweet, sweet brother,’ he wrote, desperately, when he was nine, ‘I will give everything I have to you, both horses, and my books, and my pieces [guns], and my crossbow, or anything you would have. Good brother love me … ’ The pathos of this letter can scarcely be exaggerated. In late 1612, however, Henry was dead, aged eighteen. He died of typhoid fever after a hard game of tennis. His last request was for his sister Elizabeth to visit his bedside; there was no mention of his brother. Diarist and MP Simonds D’Ewes recorded that ‘Charles duke of York was so young and sickly as the thought of their enjoying him [as king] did nothing at all to alienate or mollify the people’s mourning’.

King James wrote textbooks to edify his children, but was less enthusiastic about spending time with them. He preferred his male companions, especially his lover and favourite George Villiers Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham, beautiful as a hunting leopard, supernaturally brilliant at divining the psychic needs of the powerful and supplying them, became after Henry’s death the elder brother Charles had always wanted, one who loved and accepted him. Like all brothers, Charles and Buckingham fought for mastery, and Charles usually lost. Charles bet Buckingham a banquet on a game of tennis – he lost – and another on which of two footmen could run fastest – he lost again. The disastrous Spanish marriage negotiations of 1623 were a similar game, designed to show the boys in a romantic, daredevil light. Fancying himself in love with the Spanish Infanta, whom he had never seen, Charles impetuously decided to sweep her off her feet. Adopting a disguise was part of the fun; all his life he loved theatricality. In this case he donned a false beard and a false name, John Smith, and set out, accompanied by a similarly attired Buckingham, who was travelling as ‘Tom Smith’. The disguises were so poor that they were arrested as suspicious characters in Canterbury. The boys bought better beards over the Channel, and visited the court of Louis XIII; they rustled some mountain goats in the Pyrenees, and in March they walked into the British embassy in Madrid and declared that they were taking control of the marriage negotiations. To show his love, Charles climbed over the wall of the garden where the Infanta liked to walk. As he leapt down, the Infanta fled, screaming for her chaperone, and Charles had to be let out by a side door. Charles also made many concessions to the Spanish in the negotiations. But when Philip began to insist that Elizabeth’s eldest son would need to marry a Hapsburg before Spain would help the Palatinate, Charles balked. This gave Philip the excuse to pack off his guests by pretending that Charles’s threat to return home to his ageing father was a farewell. The boys slunk home. Charles may have been miserable and humiliated, but London was overjoyed – the people had not warmed to the idea of a queen from Spain.

And yet Charles’s lifelong quest for the love he lost as a child did evoke a response in some of those closest to him, most of all in his future wife, who had herself been a lonely little princess. When Buckingham was removed by an assassin in late August 1628, Charles and his till-then neglected bride fell abruptly but permanently in love, and what had been a miserable forced marriage became blissful domesticity. Gradually, encircled by his wife’s warm regard, Charles built up a retinue of trusted retainers who could help him to feel safe, conceal his deformities, and support him. He made an idyll and then resisted anything that came to disturb it. The loyalty Charles commanded was personal and protective. All his life, Charles would be loved by those who saw him every day, hated only by those who saw him from a distance. James Harrington, one of those appointed by Parliament to attend on the king during his captivity, ‘passionately loved his Majesty, and I have oftentimes heard him speak of King Charles I with the greatest zeal and passion imaginable, and that his death gave him so great a grief that he contracted a disease by it; that never anything did go so neer to him’. Sir Philip Warwick wrote that when he thought of dying what cheered him up was the thought that he would meet King Charles again. Warwick also praised the dignity of his deportment, a contrast with his father’s uncontrolled excitability: ‘he would not let fall his dignity, no not to the Greatest Foreigners that came to visit him and his court’. Clarendon was personally devoted to the king whose decisions he criticized. The Duke of Ormonde, passed over for promotion by Charles, lost his son in 1680, but wrote to a wellwisher that ‘my loss, indeed, sits heavily on me, and nothing else in the world could affect me so much, but since I could bear the death of my great and good master King Charles the First I can bear anything else’.

Historians have long agreed that ‘the man Charles Stuart’ was one of the principal causes of the war. The king’s small and painful body was a picture in miniature of the divisions that were also to rive his people. Charles’s love of codes and disguises and his longing to make the monarchy independent of any hurtful criticism proceeded from the bullied child he was. He wanted to put the past behind him, but that longing itself chained him to it. His odd and fatal mixture of indecision and stubbornness is typical of a victim of bullying. All his life, Charles needed love. He set his people test after test, and they could not love him enough to heal the wounds inflicted in the past. By 1639, Charles was keeping the peace by deafening himself to any signs of conflict. His need for tranquillity had become one cause of the coming war.

Oliver Cromwell was born on 25 April 1599, in the High Street of Huntingdon. He was the last of a long family; he had six sisters, and three siblings who died in infancy. Like Charles I, he had an older brother named Henry, four years older than Oliver, who died before 1617; another boy, named Robert, died in 1609, shortly after his birth. Cromwell had an unusually close, tender and long-term relationship with his mother for whom he soon became the main patriarch and protector. For most male children in Tudor and Stuart England, the early years were split in two by the onset of formal schooling or training around the age of seven. Before that, they were at home under the care of mothers and servants. Schooling represented a violent repudiation of infancy, and with it the world of the mother; it also symbolized a tussle with the father’s authority. It was a chance for boys to be different from their fathers, to do something their fathers had never done, to climb an inch or two further up the social ladder than their fathers had. And their fathers were not always overjoyed about it.

The grammars were a wide crack in the invincible hierarchy of the class system in more respects than this. The master was compared to an ‘absolute monarch’, ‘a little despotic emperor’. It may be that many grammar schools bred suspicion of such absolutism. What reinforced these feelings of misgiving and dislike were the beatings; it is hard for us to imagine what these were like, or to understand the fear and horror they generated. Both John Aubrey and Samuel Hartlib still dreamed of school beatings twenty years after leaving. Bulstrode Whitelocke, who hated them, understood them as ‘a severe discipline’, that would lead boys to ‘a greater courage and constancy’. The experience of this schooling was shared by all the men who became Charles’s principal foes, though it was also common enough among Royalists. Oliver Cromwell attended the free school just down the road from his home, which offered a grammar-style education, preparing him for entry to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Many not very reliable and Royalist accounts of Cromwell’s childhood describe him as distinctly rowdy in late boyhood and early adolescence; taking hearty exercise, behaving with noticeable boisterousness, scrumping apples and stealing pigeons, getting into fights … All this may well be untrue, but the stories convey the perception that Cromwell was energetic and dynamic, a force of nature difficult to control.