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Introduction | Soldiers | Prisoners | Mobs and mob violence
Citizens | Sacks and sieges | The aftermathCitizens
Reading
By November 1642, Reading had a Royalist garrison of foot soldiers and cavalry. The town itself had been converted into a fortress. The free school had become a magazine. Nearly 3,000 soldiers were quartered on 5,000 inhabitants – in John Kendrick's ‘house of industry’ in Minster Street, at the friary, in the royal stables of the old Hospital of St John and in Thomas Harrison's barn on Whitley Hill. All passage to and from the town was strictly guarded.
The townspeople went in fear of their lives. Houses were broken into, some were burned down and even magistrates were beaten up in the streets. There were frequent alarms that the Roundheads were about to assault the ramparts. The cloth trade was ruined, since no one would risk putting waggons or packhorses on to the roads. The one thing that kept the clothiers busy was the forced task of making clothes for the garrison, for which payment was seldom, if ever, made.
Dorset and Wiltshire
Parliamentarians and Royalists frequently clashed in Dorset and Wiltshire. The soldiers of both armies, often underpaid and ill equipped, raided the inhabitants and plundered small communities in their path. No one was spared. An aged labourer made a pathetic inventory of his household goods, all stolen by Parliamentarian soldiers:
7 pairs of sheets, 3 brass kettles, 2 brass pots, 5 pewter dishes, 4 shirts, 4 smocks, 2 coats, 1 cloak, 1 waistcoat, 7 dozen candles, 1 frying pan, 1 spit, 2 pairs of pot hooks, 1 peck of wheat, 4 bags, some oatmeal, some salt, a basketful of eggs, bowls, dishes, spoons, ladles, drinking pots, and whatsoever else they could lay their hands on.
Houses were taken over as army quarters and their original inhabitants ejected. Crops were trampled by marching men or eaten by cavalry horses. Taxes were imposed and levies extracted by both sides. Women were violated and the rapists haphazardly punished.
Lancashire
In Lancashire in 1644, the Royalists press-ganged crowds of local men and marched them away to attack the Parliamentarian garrison at Bolton, 'the reare being brought up with troopers that had commission to shoot such as lagged behind, so as the poor countrymen ... [were] in a dilemma of death, either by the troopers if they went not on, or by the ... shot of the towne if they did'. They were right to worry (see Sacks and sieges).
Naseby
After the battle of Naseby on 14 June 1645, it was reported that Parliamentarian troops murdered a mass of 'Irish women of cruel countenances', brandishing long knives. In fact, they were probably Welsh women, defending themselves with cooking utensils and crying out in their mother tongue.
Pursuing Royalist troops into Leicester after Naseby, Roundhead cavalry overtook the royal coaches and wagons carrying several hundred women – wives, mistresses and camp followers. The richer of these were robbed. The others were systematically killed or ‘had their cheeks and noses slashed to the bone’.
Essex
In Essex by 1646, a weekly assessment based on the value of buildings, land and produce was being efficiently collected from more families than had paid tax in peacetime. In addition, excise taxes were placed, first, on luxuries but soon on food and everyday articles in town and village markets. Women had the major role in managing this local economy, so as the wars continued, they realised best how expensive it was for everyone.
London
In 1649, harvest failure and famine stalked England and was portrayed in the newsbooks and pamphlets of the time. In Westminster, the overseers of the poor protested to the newspapers after reading of a local family reduced to eating cats and dogs, saying that they would have been happy to help if the victims had come to them rather than to the press.
Plague | Fire | War | Treason | Travel guide | History
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