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Civil War London Mobilizing for Parliament, 1641-1645
Jordan
S. Downs
Politics, Culture and Society in
Early Modern Britain Series Manchester:
University Press, 2021 Hardcover.
xi + 326 p. ISBN 978-1526148810. £85
Reviewed by Sarah Covington The Graduate Center and Queens College City University of New York
While studies of the English civil
wars have certainly benefitted from approaches that extend the conflict to a larger
“three kingdoms” or “four nations” framework, an apparently concomitant decline
has appeared since the 1990s in studies of the local, regional, or municipal
aspects of this most important “internecine” conflict. Peter Lake and Richard
Cust, in their recent book on Cheshire before the civil war, have described the
historiographic decrease in local histories, once so dominant in the 1960s and
1970s, as “entirely inexplicable.” But historiography, like history itself, is
never entirely unfathomable, and one could find answers (or theories) in a
number of externally-driven explanations. The aforementioned three kingdoms
approach, inspired in part by J.G.A. Pocock’s manifestoes in the 1970s,
succeeded in restoring Ireland as a co-equal actor in the conflicts, even if
many studies which contained the title “in Britain and Ireland” tended to
remain firmly anglocentric. Equally important and beginning in the 1990s, the
dominant neoliberal discourse around economic and political globalism, or the
term “globalism” or transnationalism generally, has perhaps contributed to the
turn away from the local, given that “global history” is more professionally validated
as well. Whatever the case, the local tends to become subsumed if not erased in
the process, even in studies that take up the relatively recent theories of
glocalization. It is therefore refreshing to see an emerging scholar return to
local, regional, county or in this case municipal contexts, extracting deeply
from one terrain to produce rich and exciting yields that start and remain with
the local and reveal expansive understandings and insights in the process. Focusing on London in the years from
1641 to 1645, Jordan S. Downs’ Civil War
London : Mobilizing for Parliament, 1641-1645 offers an impressive portrait
of a city responsible in great part for the unfolding of the war to come, even
if it was not monolithically in favor of the parliamentary cause. Building on
and departing from the works of other historians, including London civil war historians
Keith Lindley, Stephen Porter, Ann Hughes and Elliot Vernon, Downs investigates
wartime military, financial and ideological mobilization in order to uncover
larger issues of popular politics, print culture, livery companies and church
parishes, city and state interactions, and the essential role of leadership in
directing and manipulating London’s vast resources. One of the key early events
to propel events forward was the 1641 uprising of Catholics in Ireland against
protestant settlers, resulting in violence, the appearance of protestant
refugees in London (and elsewhere), and not least, the production of pamphlets,
sermons, and petitions that drummed up hysteria around a “Popish plot” against
the city. Stirred on by a “zealous leadership that would repeatedly agitate”
the crowds against the king in turn, events in Ireland, according to Downs,
“helped to prime London logistically and ideologically for the coming war at
home” [35, 30]. The weaponization of scriptural verse and use of “providential
exhortations” further connected Ireland and London, and shaped by extension the
civil war to come [40]. Downs is very good in this early
chapter and those which follow in detailing the charitable efforts in London
toward the refugees and later the war wounded. Equally important is his focus
on those in the city, including “’ill-effected’ ministers,” who remained
loyalist, neutral, or of the peace party, and whose “oppositional” voices were
a target of suppression for those leaders advocating for war [50, 52]. One of
the most effective leaders in this regard, and a central character in the book,
is Isaac Pennington, soon to become Lord Mayor and a man who was “nearer than
most to the beating heart of parliament’s wartime mobilization” [10]. Indeed,
Pennington appears throughout as a wily machine politician, removing the
existing loyalist mayor from office in 1642 and after himself installed,
quickly becoming a name that was “synonymous with mobilizing efforts” [64].
Downs is excellent in presenting the many ways in which the people and
institutions of London were tapped for the war by men such as Pennington: in
addition to army volunteers and the donations of horses, the middling sorts, widows
and congregants were urged to give to the parliamentary cause, while the
estates of unwilling bishops were tapped as well. Not least, Downs delves into
the detailed financial contributions of livery companies, which included the
twelve great livery companies and other lesser ones. Parliament was involved in
all of this, coordinating with city leaders, and “repeatedly turn[ing] to
livery companies in order to fulfill wartime financial and military needs,” to
the point of great strain for those companies [75]. Establishing the Committee
for the Advance of Money, parliament further worked with Pennington—himself an
MP— to secure loans through the London parishes, while Downs also offers a very
useful and fascinating map, or comparative “topography of support,” from wards
within and outside the City [98]. Downs presents a portrait of
impressive municipal effectiveness and religious and political leadership when
it came to mobilizing for war. None of this proceeded without challenge,
however. Public opinion could sour quickly, especially after the losses of the
parliamentary army in the early stages of the war; the peace petitioning of
1643 also “threatened to do irreparable damage to wider belligerent
interests” and “[erode] the pressing need for mobilization” [123]. The
imposition of the excise tax resulted in some grumbling as well. On the other
hand, the king’s charge of treason against seven Londoners, for example,
allowed the city’s radical leadership “to gain control over London’s press and
secure the metropolis,” just as it “steeled proponents of the cause and
energized efforts by the accused to mobilize the metropolis” [127, 129].
Pennington, again, was central to this, as he and his allies “tighten[ed] their
grip on City pulpits” or “rid metropolitan parishes of lingering loyalism,”
among other actions [139, 152]. Other fears, generated by news such as the
so-called plot of Edmund Waller, involving a royalist storming of London in
1643, were themselves incentivized by Pennington and (not least) John Pym as an
opportunity to enact a loyalty oath and further boost mobilization. Meanwhile,
disgruntlement with the Earl of Essex’s leadership or the peace party compelled
the city’s leaders to draw up petitions, encourage popular agitations en masse, and throw support behind their
man in Sir William Waller. As Downs writes, “the adoption of the
Solemn League and Covenant and the arrival of Scottish soldiers altered the
dynamics of the civil war, and by extension the politics of mobilization in the
capital, particularly in 1644” [241]. Troops from the Eastern Association of
counties also assumed increasing importance, lessening the demand for militia recruitment
in London. The demand to enforce loans and raise funds and taxes in London
nevertheless continued, just as Londoners generally “had good reason to express
their concerns [that] they did in fact pay more on average than their suburban
counterparts” [248]. Not least was the necessity to house and care for the sick
and wounded, which had “[begun] well before the outbreak of the civil war and
persisted well past its end” [257]. Meanwhile, religious divisions intensified
over the course of 1644, as reports of mass desertions in the army and the
trial of William Laud proceeded to generate yet more petitions, tensions, and
counter-acting efforts of officials. Downs ends his story with the
parliamentary victory at Naseby in 1645, in which only providence appeared to
free the godly cause “from so many narrowly averted crises” [281]. And many of
these crises unfolded in the city. Downs tells a story of plots, counter-plots,
tensions and crisis, all of which could have taken the war in another
direction. On the other hand, these tensions energized mobilization efforts, as
the authorities well knew. Reframing the rhetoric as one of self-defense, or
resorting to coercion or even extortion if need be, proved highly successful
and even vital to propelling if not quite winning the war just yet. Downs is to
be commended for telling such a story, which could only have been done by
diving deep into the records of one diverse group of people living in one particular
place. Some extension outward might have been useful: work on the Adventurers by
Karl Bottigheimer and more recently David Brown could have been employed or
acknowledged; on the other hand, the frequent mention in the text of the same
historians—Lindley, Brenner, Como—can be somewhat tiresome, even if Downs cites
them in order to engage their arguments. Nevertheless, Civil War London is a commendable and meticulously researched study,
and one which should be read by all who are interested in the civil wars, civic
history, popular politics, print culture, religion, and social and economic
history. Hopefully it will also usher in a new age which restores and extends
local (or in this case municipal) history in exciting and innovative
directions.
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