Rumor Wars

Abstract

Following military failures in late 1644, long-simmering religious differences burst into public, threatening to sunder parliament’s cause. A formidable presbyterian alliance gathered strength, deploying multiple tactics to pressure parliament to settle the church and crack down on the sects; at the same time, a developing independent coalition adopted equally sophisticated techniques of organization and propaganda to counter this push. This chapter analyzes these practices—including petitioning, lobbying, secret printing, street propaganda, rumormongering, and regular meetings—to reveal a novel environment of energetic partisan politics. These organizational developments were accompanied by ideological shifts, in which presbyterians drew back from earlier militant political commitments, while some independents articulated newly radical political ideas, hinting at social egalitarianism, press freedom, democratization of the polity, or limitations on state power. Moreover, these ideological shifts and religious divisions increasingly dovetailed with disputes over military reorganization, culminating in the creation of the New Model Army.