Wanton Troopers: Buckinghamshire in the Civil Wars, 1640–1660

By Ian F. W. Beckett

The causes of the three English Civil Wars (1642 to 1645, 1648, and 1651) are complex and controversial clashes of conviction, belief, and personality, and a struggle between opposing social groups and economic interests. But, whatever the focus of scholarship, many answers can be sought at the local level, among county communities that were far more outward-looking than once suggested. That is why Ian Becketts in-depth study of Buckinghamshire, one of the pivotal counties during this turbulent period in British history, is of such value. None of the best-known battles or sieges took place in Buckinghamshire, but there was destructive combat in the county on a smaller scale because its location placed it on the front line between the opposing forces between the royalist headquarters at Oxford and the parliamentarian stronghold of London. As Ian Beckett shows, the impact of war on Bucks was considerable. His analysis gives us an insight into the experience of local communities and the county as a whole and it reveals much about the experience of the conflict across the country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473856042

Ian F. W. Beckett

Ian Beckett is Professor of History at University College Northampton. Former positions include Senior Lecturer at Sandhurst, Professor of Modern History at the University of Luton, and Major-General Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Professor of Military Theory at the US Marine Corps University in Virginia. He is also Chairman of the Army Records Society. Other publications include 'The Oxford History of the British Army' and 'The Great War 1914-1918'. For the National Archives, he wrote the highly-regarded 'The First World War: The Essential Guide to Sources in the UK National Archives'. Ian F. W. Beckett is head of the Department of History at the University of Luton, Bedfordshire, England.

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For Naomi, Abigail, Jackson and Alex

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

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Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Introduction

Chapter 1      The Community and the Approach of War

Chapter 2      The War and the County Community

Photo Gallery

Chapter 3      The War and the Local Community

Chapter 4      The Revival of the County Community

Notes

Chronology

Bibliography

The wanton Troopers riding by

Have shot my Faun, and it will dye.

‘The Nymph complaining for the Death of her Faun’ (Andrew Marvell, published 1681)

Acknowledgements

In 2004–2005, the Buckinghamshire County Museum held an exhibition on ‘Buckinghamshire in the Civil War’, which brought together an extraordinarily rich range of seventeenth-century portraiture through the persuasive powers of the late Sir Oliver Miller. The exhibition was also made possible through the generosity of a number of benefactors including the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Ernest Cook Trust, and the Patrons and Friends of the Bucks County Museum and Art Gallery. Memorably, the exhibition was opened by Sir Edmund Verney Bt. standing in front of Anthony van Dyck’s portrait of his seventeenthcentury namesake and wearing the ring brought back from the battlefield of Edgehill where Sir Edmund had died in October 1642 defending the Banner Royal: only the severed hand had been recovered, still grasping the standard pole when it was recaptured.

Through my involvement with the Buckinghamshire Military Museum Trust, I was fortunate to be asked by Sarah Gray, then the County Museum Curator, to provide an introduction to the exhibition catalogue. It was based partly on a draft chapter I had done some years previously for an uncompleted monograph on the county’s auxiliary military forces. With the encouragement and assistance of Julian Hunt, then the Manager of the County Museum and Library Services, I began to expand the long discarded chapter into something rather more substantial. Indeed, it was intended originally that Julian and I should write the book together. I am grateful for his continuing help. Thanks are also due to Roy Bailey of the John Hampden Society, and to Derek and Jill Lester of the Chalgrove Battle Group, who made their new study of Chalgrove available to me. As always, I also owe thanks to Roger Bettridge and the staff of the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, and to Diana Gulland, the former Librarian of the Bucks Archaeological Society. Quotations from Crown copyright material in The National Archives appears by permission of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office; and other materials by permission of the Trustees of the British Library Board; the Henry E Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office. Of course, only I am responsible for errors of interpretation.

List of Illustrations

1. Buckinghamshire [1610, by John Speed].

2. The Fortifications of Newport Pagnell [1644, by Cornelius van den Boom]. (By kind permission of the Bodleian Library)

3. ‘The Hvmble Petition of the Captains, Officers and Souldiers of the Trained Bands and Voluntiers of the County of Buckingham’ [25 June 1642]. (By kind permission of the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society)

4. ‘The Happy Successe of the Parliaments Armie at Nevvport’ [10 November 1643]. (By kind permission of the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society)

5. Philip, 4th Lord Wharton (1613–95/6) with Jane, Lady Wharton (1618–58), and Henry Wharton [1656, by follower of Sir Peter Lely]. (By kind permission of Wycombe Museum)

6. Sir Edmund Verney (1590–1642) [c.1639, by Sir Anthony van Dyck and Studio]. (By kind permission of Sir Edmund Verney and the Claydon House Trust)

7. Arthur Goodwin (1593/4–1643) [1639, by Sir Anthony van Dyck]. (Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by kind permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees)

8. John Hampden (1594–1643) [c.1643, attributed to Robert Walker]. (By kind permission of the Trustees of the Port Eliot Estate)

9. George Fleetwood (1622–64) [1647, by Samuel Cooper]. (By kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery)

10. Sir Samuel Luke (d. 1670) [c.1650, by unknown artist]. (By kind permission of the Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford)

11. Mary, Lady Verney (1616–50) [1636, by Sir Anthony van Dyck]. (By kind permission of Sir Edmund Verney and the Claydon House Trust)

12. Robert Dormer, Earl of Carnarvon (1607–43). (Author’s Collection)

13. ‘Good and Joyfull Nevves ovt of Bvckinghamshire’ [1642]. (By kind permission of the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society)

14. Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–65) [c.1633, after Sir Anthony van Dyck]. (By kind permission of Mr J K Wingfield Digby, Sherborne Castle)

15. Bulstrode Whitelocke (1605–75) [1634, by unknown artist]. (By kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery)

List of Tables

Table 1.  Bucks Gentry in 1640

Table 2.  Bucks Members of the Long Parliament, 1640

Table 3.  Some Statistics for the Bucks Trained Bands, 1619–39

Table 4.  Rival County Commissions, June 1642

Table 5.  List of Delinquents and Papists Sequestered by the Bucks County Committee, 29 May 1647

Table 6.  Revenue of the Bucks County Committee, 1644–60

Table 7.  Parliaments and Elections, 1640–60

Introduction

The causes of the three ‘English’ Civil Wars (1642 to 1645, 1648, and 1651) are extraordinarily complex. They are still the subject of historical controversy. Clashes of interest, conviction, belief and personality could not be resolved through the mechanisms of monarchy, parliament, justice and local administration. The conflict has been characterised both as one of constitutional and religious convictions, and also as one of opposing social groups and economic interests.

Some interpret the war as a result of the breakdown of royal institutions, either due to structural failure or maladministration. Others tend to trace an ideological incompatibility between the crown’s absolutism, and the belief in monarchy tempered by the rule of law on the part of its subjects, as well as in the division between those favouring more flexible and reforming Arminianism, and those favouring more rigid Puritanism as the basis for the development of the Protestant religion.

Historical fashions have changed over the time. In the 1960s it was still customary to some extent to quote traditional stories of peasants coming across one or other of the armies about to do battle and, when told that the King and Parliament were at war, remarking something to the effect that, ‘Have them two fallen out then?’ The study of the wars through the prism of the county community became common in the 1970s, as it was clear that they had a significant local impact. By contrast, in the 1980s, it was argued that county boundaries were not the sole arbiter of loyalties. To some extent the preoccupation of the 1970s and 1980s with local issues has been superseded by renewed interest in the complex causes and contexts of what are increasingly seen not as the English but as the British Civil Wars or the ‘Wars of the Three Kingdoms’ embracing England, Scotland and Ireland. There is, too, a sense of the wider European context, in which the continent was consumed by the religious conflicts of the Thirty Years War between 1618 and 1648. In some respects, the historiography of the 1990s also centred on renewed debate as to the impact of long-term causation as opposed to short-term contingency. A tendency then to stress the reluctance with which many took up arms has been followed more recently by more attention being devoted to the deliberate subversion of the King’s authority by a small cabal of prominent noblemen and their associates, in reaction to which a ‘King’s party’ emerged in 1640 and 1641.

Nonetheless, whatever the focus of scholarship, many answers are still to be sought primarily at the local level, albeit that the county communities were far more outward-looking and integrated into the national scene than was once suggested. Moreover, it is still the case that the way in which radical royal policies threatened the stability of county communities contributed much to the breakdown of the relationship between crown and parliament, and thereby brought a prolonged period of conflict that impacted on all levels of society.

Each county was distinctly different in its reactions to the coming of war, notably in the reasons why men chose eventually, often reluctantly, to support one side or the other, or neither. Equally, attention on military aspects of the war has been drawn increasingly to those same localities, rather than to the conventional accounts of battles and major movements by armies, in an attempt to assess the impact of war upon the community as a whole.¹

None of the best-known battles or sieges took place in Buckinghamshire but a number occurred just beyond the county boundaries, such as the battles at Edgehill, Newbury, Cropredy and Naseby, and the siege of Oxford. Nonetheless, there was extensive, regular and destructive combat on a smaller scale because the county’s location placed it on the front line between royalist and parliamentarian territories. As the geography of support and control became clearer in 1642, the King held a sweep of territory in the west from the Scottish borders through Cheshire, Wales, the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire to Cornwall in the far southwest. The strength of parliament lay in the southeast and the heartland of the Eastern Association: Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire and East Anglia. Bucks was also effective border territory between the royalist court and headquarters at Oxford and parliament in London. The county dominated all the main road and river routes from London to the west and north, while its resources lay open to both sides, enhancing its strategic location. In such circumstances, there could be no prospect of the kind of local neutrality pacts found in some other counties. The impact of war on Bucks, therefore, was always likely to be considerable.

Chapter 1

The Community and the Approach of War

Bucks was primarily agricultural, and productively so. Both John Leland in the 1540s and William Camden in the 1580s had described the well-wooded slopes of the Chilterns in the south by contrast to the open pastures of the Vale of Aylesbury. On the Vale, sheep often appeared the principal inhabitants, though cattle were fattened on the rich grass of the great pasture of Creslow near Whitchurch. At the end of the seventeenth century, Thomas Fuller could still describe Bucks as living ‘more by its lands than its hands’. Enclosure of the common fields had accelerated rapidly during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in the northern half of the county, with marked depopulation resulting, especially in the three hundreds of Ashendon, as illustrated by ‘lost’ villages such as Doddershall, Fulbrook, Hogshaw and Shipton Lee. The pace of enclosure regained its momentum appreciably in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries so that it extended from existing arable land to pasture, meadow, wastes and woods. The rate of enclosure in Bucks was one of the highest between 1603 and 1607, the county being affected to some extent in 1607 by the ‘Midland revolt’ that occurred in counties to the north such as Northamptonshire, and in which enclosure was a major issue. The results, however, were frequently piecemeal as was true of the enclosure that had also taken place in the Chilterns on a lesser scale. Thus, a distinctly mixed pattern of land holding and division existed often in the same parish with both common fields and enclosed pasture and woods. This was certainly true, for example, of the disafforestation of the medieval forest of Bernwood around Brill, Boarstall and Oakley in the 1630s.

England in the 1620s and 1630s had a sluggish economy as a result of the decline of the cloth trade, inflation and the scarcity of coin. That of Bucks was arguably more buoyant because it was based largely on supplying the food requirements of the ever-growing population of the metropolis. That fact was not lost on either side during the war: no single settlement in the county or its neighbours had the same commercial pull as London.

There were, however, some small-scale industries. Needle-making had been introduced to Long Crendon in the mid-sixteenth century while lace-making had come to towns such as Olney, Newport Pagnell and Aylesbury in the late sixteenth century, although the bone-lace trade was in some trouble at Olney by the 1620s. Bricks had been made in the vicinity of Brill since the thirteenth century and the Verney family was also making them at Claydon in the early seventeenth century. Woodworking was carried on at Chesham and Chipping (or High) Wycombe and there was also some pottery making in the Chilterns. The most important industry was the manufacture of paper, mills having been established along the Wye, especially at Loudwater, and on the Colne, especially at Horton, during the sixteenth century. There were some 12 paper mills by 1636. The county population was probably in the region of 55,000 to 65,000, but towns were still remarkably small even in the early eighteenth century. There were, for example, fewer than 400 houses in Buckingham as late as 1725, and only 200 in Amersham as late as 1769.¹

The apex of this predominantly rural society was what might be termed the ‘county community’ (as opposed to the ‘local community’) – the gentry. It is clear that the county was relatively prosperous, with in the region of 200 gentry families, of whom approximately 40 or so were especially prominent. This county community as a whole was a relatively stable one. Thus, 11 families – those of Croke, Lee, Goodwin, Fleetwood, Pakington, Dormer, Hampden, Dayrell, Tyringham, Borlase and Bulstrode – had been continuously present in the list of justices of the peace between 1555 and 1625. Just nine families – Goodwin, Fleetwood, Hampden, Pigott, Tyringham, Borlase, Bulstrode, Denton and Coke – had provided all those returned to parliament as knights of the shire between 1604 and 1640. In the period between 1616 and 1635, there were usually seven or eight deputy lieutenants, and only 14 men from just ten families provided them: Egerton, Clarke, Tyringham, Hampden, Cheney, Denton, Borlase, Fortescue, Tyrell, and Verney. Between 1504 and 1660 a total of 23 families were to find more than one High Sheriff. A Hampden had been Sheriff on 19 occasions before 1642, and a Cheney on nine occasions.²

An alphabetical list of the leading gentry was compiled by Richard Grenville of Wotton Underwood, who was High Sheriff from 1641 to 1643. This purported to show the annual value of nearly 40 out of over 100 estates listed, and was inscribed in a notebook containing details of the county’s assessment for ship money in 1637/8. It has been used to indicate the wealth of the gentry but certain problems relate to its acceptance at face value. First, the estate values given are exceptionally well rounded figures that may indicate mere guesswork on Grenville’s part. Secondly, it has been suggested that the list was not in fact compiled until the l650s and underwent considerable revision up to Grenville’s death in 1666.³ In any case, the gentry tended to undervalue their estates routinely. It does have some use, however, in illustrating what might be regarded as the relative wealth of some families as opposed to others in the eyes of a contemporary. Certainly, it can be said that the estates for which values are listed may have accounted for at least a third of the county’s total wealth. Generally, those enjoying in excess of £1,500 per annum could be considered very wealthy, 30 or so individuals between them representing about a third of the county’s wealth of £208,000 as measured by the taxation assessments of 1641. To do much more without estimates of value for the remaining 60 or so estates listed is plainly impossible.⁴ The details are incorporated in Table 1.

A useful corrective to Grenville’s list is to consider the actual situation of the Verney family. The estate income of Sir Edmund Verney of Middle Claydon (1590–1642) from properties rose from about £800 a year upon his marriage to Margaret Denton in 1612 to perhaps £1,200 a year by 1642. Landholding had increased as a result of Verney marrying off his then 16-year-old eldest son, Ralph (1613–96), to an heiress with property in Berkshire and Oxfordshire in 1629. He had also purchased land in the former Royal Forest of Bernwood around Brill when it was disafforested in 1632. It suggests, therefore, that Grenville’s estimate was about right. Verney had acquired additional income as a monopolist resulting from his influence at court, having become a member of Prince Henry’s household and, subsequently, that of Prince Charles. Verney’s original royal appointment was perhaps owed to an existing member of the household, Sir Thomas Chaloner of Steeple Claydon. Edmund Verney was appointed Gentleman of the Privy Chamber in 1613 and accompanied Charles on his abortive attempt to woo the Spanish Infanta. Verney was named Knight Marshal in 1626, responsible for keeping order and security over the sprawling palace of Whitehall, and for maintaining judicial authority over the royal household. In addition, the post carried with it jurisdiction over the Marshalsea prison and, as a result of his position, Sir Edmund acquired various patents and licences including regulation of Hackney cabs in London, and control of the garbling of tobacco (by which imported bales of leaf tobacco were broken up for inspection and sampling).

Table 1. Bucks Gentry in 1640.

The office of Knight Marshal brought in 10s.0d a day, in addition to an annual pension of £200, while the licensing of Hackney cabs brought in £600 a year. In all, the additional income was probably worth about £1,000 a year. With a large family to support, however, including his mother and sister-in-law, four sons and six daughters – all potentially requiring dowries – Verney’s actual disposal income was small. Further sums promised by the King to help Verney maintain his position at court were not forthcoming and there was an increasing burden of debt with various refinancing deals on loans, leases and mortgages all needed despite land sales. Verney raised £4,250 in 1638 on a new mortgage of £3,250 on Middle Claydon secured from Francis Drake of Amersham, and £1,000 borrowed from Elizabeth Isham (née Denton): buying back the lease of Claydon House in 1620 had already cost £3,639. In 1639 Verney then traded in his income from various offices for a 21-year fixed annual annuity of £400 from the aulnage tax on cloth for use as security against debts and liabilities. When Sir Edmund Verney was killed at Edgehill in 1642, over 50 per cent of Sir Ralph Verney’s income was earmarked to paying off his father’s heavy debts, amounting to some £11,000, with interest payments and mortgages charges taking over half the annual income.⁵

A number of the closely knit group of Bucks gentry families had arrived in the county since 1600, such as those of Bennett, Pye, Proby and Drake. Equally, however, many of those more established were relatively new to wealth such as the Fortescue, Winwood and Temple families. Temple’s grandfather had bought Stowe in 1571 on the back of profitable sheep farming in Warwickshire, although Sir Peter Temple (1592–1653), who bought his knighthood in 1609, had then run up considerable debts in the 1620s in a classic case of being ‘land rich and cash poor’. Wool prices had declined and the family generally was disadvantaged by costly land disputes and the provision of large dowries.

Many of the gentry families were related to one another. As already indicated by Sir Edmund Verney’s marriage to Margaret Denton, Sir Alexander Denton of Hillesden (1596–1645) was Verney’s brother-in-law. Denton was also father-in-law to Francis, younger brother of Sir William Drake (1606–69). Denton was a cousin of Sir Peter Temple and a cousin by marriage to Richard Winwood of Ditton (1609–88). Denton’s wife, Mary, was a cousin of John Hampden of Great Hampden. Richard Grenville was son-in-law to Thomas Tyrell of Castlethorpe (c.1594–1672), Arthur Goodwin of Upper Winchendon (1593–1643) a cousin to the Tyringhams of Tyringham and Lower Winchendon, and Bulstrode Whitelocke of Fawley (1605–76) nephew and godson to Henry Bulstrode of Hedgerley (1579–1643). Whitelocke also often claimed to be a ‘kinsman’ of John Hampden, although this appears to have been a very distant relationship through Hampden’s great grandmother and Whitelocke’s mother’s Bulstrode family. Edmund Waller (1606–87) of Hall Barn was a cousin of Hampden. A future regicide, Adrian Scrope of Wormsley (1601–60), had married the daughter of a cousin of Waller and an aunt of Hampden. Goodwin was also father-in-law of Philip, 4th Lord Wharton of Wooburn (1613–96). Similarly, Temple’s first wife had been a Throckmorton from Weston Underwood. Temple’s sister, Anne, had married Sir William Andrewes of Lathbury, although this turned out to be an abusive marriage, compelling Anne to go to court for redress. The uncle of Thomas Fountain of Hulcott (1603–46) had married a Hampden, and the sister of Richard Ingoldsby of Lenborough (1617–85) had married the uncle of Sir Richard Pigott of Doddershall. John Hampden (1594–1643) himself was related to over 80 members