We’re picking up on last week’s post about the years–and the rebellions–that led up to the English Civil Wars. By way of reminder, we’re in the 17th century, complete with inflation and displaced and hungry peasants. Riots are breaking out around the country.

Now it’s time to add dissatisfied soldiers, sailors, merchants, and townspeople to the picture. 

 

The care and feeding of a military

Between 1627 and 1629, England was at war with France, in part because that was what England and France did–think of them as two kids kicking each other in the back seat of the car–and in part because England was supporting the Huguenots, French Protestants who weren’t have a good time in Catholic France. That’s an oversimplification, but it’s a side issue so don’t lose sleep over it. What matters for us is that England felt the need to build up its armed forces. And if there’s one thing we know about any military it’s that they need to eat.

Ah, but Charles (and probably many a monarch before and after him) had a nifty way to feed his soldiers on the cheap: billet them on the local populace. In other words, house them with locals, who then have to feed and put up with them.

Did the locals get paid for this? The hell they did. That would’ve cost money. 

Wars are like monarchs: they always cost money, but better it should be local people paying than the treasury, right?

As a justice of the peace outlined the situation, “Will His Majesty make war without provision of treasure or must our country bear the charge of all England? It is not enough that we undergo the trouble of insolent soldiers in our houses, their robbery and other misdemeanours but that we must maintain them at our own cost.” (I’m quoting here and elsewhere from Fiery Spirits, by John Rees.)

For all its problems, billeting works well enough when you’re talking about soldiers, but sailors are more useful on ships than on shore, so the government had no choice but to feed them itself, and when supplies that were meant for Plymouth’s sailors were diverted to another purpose, the sailors’ complaints broke into the open. 

As Sir Fernando Gorges, commander of the fort at Plymouth, wrote, “They . . . say they are not suffered to come ashore. They have no means to put clothes on their backs much less to relieve their wives and children. When sick, they have no allowance of fresh victuals. The sick when put ashore are suffered to perish for want of  being looked to. Some of their provisions are neither fit nor wholesome.” 

So far, we have two unhappy groups of people. Let’s add some more.

 

Pressing and mutiny

Before you have to feed a military, you need to create one. And what’s the cheapest way to do that? You press them.

No, not press as in get rid of wrinkles but as in force young men into the military. It’s like a draft but more random, and it didn’t make the impressed men (or their families) happy. When somewhere between 80 and 100 impressed men were marched to Plymouth, headed for the naval ships that were gathered there, they were locked in the Guildhall–think of it as a city hall–overnight. In a room that also held 40 pikes and some swords. On account of that, their officers didn’t get that year’s Nobel Prize for Foresight. Eventually someone opened the door and the men broke out, armed with those pikes and swords, and got into a battle with the town watch. Three died; sixty escaped. 

The group was eventually disarmed and the leader, Robert Kerby, condemned to be hanged, but sailors broke down the gallows that had been erected for him and threw it into the sea.  Then they tried to release him and two sailors were killed in the fighting.

Kerby was reprieved until after the fleet sailed, then discharged. 

It wasn’t happening just in Plymouth. Mutiny was having a moment. An Irish regiment marched to Bristol and sailed home. After a mutiny in Harwich, the leaders were imprisoned and the soldiers tore down the prison. Some of them reached Gravesend and were rescued by “divers women” who “come down to the ships and will not suffer them to be taken from them.”

I’m not sure who Rees is quoting there but never mind: they make their point.

In Exeter the mayor closed the city gates to keep a couple of hundred rioting soldiers out. One hacked his way through, threatening to behead the mayor. 

Companies of sailors rampaged through London in gangs and one gang attacked the Duke of Buckingham’s coach, demanding their pay. They were given a bit of money, which settled things down for the time being but didn’t solve the underlying problem.

Will you forgive me if I offer a life lesson here? It’s free, if that helps. In case you’re ever in a position where you’ve built up a fighting force (it could happen to anyone), complete with arms and all that, for fuck’s sake, keep them paid. And fed. Failing to do that is right up there with locking your prisoners in a room full of pikes and swords, then opening the door and expecting to find them singing hymns. 

I know. It’s always easier to see these things in retrospect.

 

Parliament

All this mattered to Parliament in a way that the uprisings by a bunch of peasants (that’s last week’s post) didn’t. 

For one thing, not just individual households but towns began complaining against the billeting system. Respectable people were complaining; people with money and power and voices that could be heard all the way to the halls of Parliament. 

For another, the country couldn’t do without its army and navy. Parliament and the king might be (and were) in conflict over who held what power, but this much they agreed on. So in 1628, four sailors were allowed to address the House of Lords, and they told their delicate lordships that they’d asked for their pay before and were now more than 15 months in arrears. 

Buckingham–the king’s favorite; you’ll find him center stage throughout this mess, at least until he gets killed, at which point he ceases to matter–promised they’d be paid within the week, which of course they weren’t. But it wasn’t his fault, he told them and the world at large once the week had passed:

“I have done more for you than ever my predecessors did. . . . I procured an increase of your pay.” 

He detailed the amount but it’s in old money–shillings and dingbats and who knows what–so we’ll skip it. The sailors might’ve been more impressed if the theoretical money had found its way into their pockets.

 

Merchants

One more thread of rebellion was weaving itself into the pre-war tapestry: wealthy merchants were refusing to pay import and export taxes. Charles had raised them and Parliament (and the merchants) argued that it and only it had the right to do that. The conflict escalated to involve confiscated cargoes; merchants breaking into the warehouse to reclaim their cargoes; basic smuggling techniques to avoid customs officers; and imprisoned merchants. 

The question of who had the right to fiddle with which taxes sat at the heart of Parliament’s conflict with the king. The king needed money–kings always do, somehow–and Parliament’s goal was to make him come to them for it so he’d have to meet their demands. Charles, of course, was always on the lookout for work-arounds so he wouldn’t have to.

I suppose I should mention here that the East India company and the Levant Company had turned down his request for a loan. You’d almost think we were following the formula for writing a thriller, building the tension with every new scene.

It all led to the overthrow of the king.

*

Speaking of kings, as of February 12 the US government said it would be ending the ICE occupation in Minnesota. In response, the people I follow there said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” It may happen, though, because the announcement dropped just as funding for ICE was coming up for a vote. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.  

The question is, if the occupation does end, what does that mean? My best guess is that ICE won’t do anything quite as visible again, at least until its funding’s secure, and that the lesson it learned is not to shoot white people in public and not to piss off entire communities. There’s been no change to the plan to build a network of mega-detention centers across the country. (Yes, that’s real.) Illegal detention and harassment of Black and brown people and of observers and demonstrators may be more discreet, though.

Local officials in Minnesota are quoted as saying the damage the surge has done to families, local businesses, and schools will be difficult to repair, and costly. People still need help and if you want to donate, a source I trust shared a link to a set of organizations helping people in hiding with everything from diapers to pet care, from food to rent. “These funds are administered by neighbors helping their neighbors,” the site writes, “not large organizations. This is one of the most direct ways to help and to get cash and resources into people’s hands quickly.”

Apologies for printing appeals for donations, but they’re needed. I trust that if you can’t or don’t want to donate, you won’t but will understand why I ask.