The Royalist War Effort

Abstract

IN previous years a certain anecdote has received frequent quotation in works upon the Civil War. It concerns a husbandman at Marston Moor, who was ploughing his fields when the rival armies drew up there to fight the biggest battle of the war. On hearing that the conflict was produced by a quarrel between King and Parliament he replied ‘What, has they two fallen out again?’ It is time that this engaging character vanished from the pages of history. Not merely does the incident not occur in any contemporary source, but it is inherently ridiculous. The land concerned lies a few miles from York, site of a Royalist garrison to which such a farmer would have been forced to contribute money for the previous two years. For the past three months it had been besieged by an army of nearly 30,000 men, some of whom would certainly have requisitioned supplies from the hero of the story. His ignorance is as incredible as the flippancy with which he is said to have greeted the news of the fratricidal conflict between the two traditional guardians of the Common Weal. In place of this happy portrait of rural insouciance, successive local studies are drawing a picture of the Civil War as a terrible and protracted conflict which imposed unprecedented burdens upon the local community.