"From which I may say that London was never truly
London till now; for now she sits like a noble lady upon a royall throne,
securing all her encroaching pendicles under the wings of a motherly
protection; yet these limits were never heretofore granted till the Parliament,
for their better safety, confirmed this construction, that (Grand Cayro
excepted), I have not seen a larger inveloped compasse within the whole
universe.[1]"
William Lithgow
"And it was also Ordered that there should be Bulworkes
presently raised in the Fields before the Citty, to Fortifie the same against
any Invation ..."
A Continuation of Certain Speciall and Remarkable Passages
-24 October 1642
David Flintham's new book is a valuable contribution to our
knowledge of London during the English civil war. London was without a doubt an
essential city economically and militarily for both Royalist and Parliamentary
forces during the English Revolution.
It is hoped that Flintham's excellent new
book stimulates further research.
The historians who have written on London have recognised
its importance. Some have gone as far as saying that King Charles Ist leaving
London led to his defeat. As Flintham outlines in his book, London was not an
easy city to defend. At the start of the war, Parliament quickly recruited
amongst the capital's citizens.
Using extensive photographs and illustrations, Flintham has
expertly put together a vivid picture of how Londoners constructed a vital
system of fortifications. Like today, it was not an uncommon sight to see armed
soldiers patrolling the capital.
The hallmark of any good book is to give its reader a new
insight into the subject, and Flintham's book does that, who knew that London
had a considerable section of its population who were neutral during the war.
Another strength of the book is that the author an
acknowledged expert on London's Civil War defences and had visited the places
he talked about in the book and photographed them a trait that the late
historian John Gurney did to good effect.
As I said, London was of vital importance to both sides
during the Civil Wars. Parliament recognised that at some point Charles 1st
would seek to try to win his capital back. So in August 1642, Parliament issued 'Directions for the
Defence of London'.
It urged its trained bands to "take a speedy cause to
put the City into a posture of defence, to resist and oppose all such force, to
fortifie all the passages into same, suburbs and places adjoining whether the
same be within the said City and Libertie;"[2].
Flintham is sceptical as to Parliament's motives for such
large-scale construction "In considering the effort which was put into the
construction of the Lines of Communication, the question arises the Royalist
threat that great that the defences needed to be constructed quickly to protect
the capital? Or was the construction of the defences seen as a way of
channelling Londoners' energy away from protesting at the way the war was going
and the conditions they were living under?".
London must have a been an extremely tense city in which to
live in. In his Lecture London and the English Civil War the historian Barry
Coward uses an eyewitness account by William Lithgow to describe the atmosphere
during wartime :"Lithgow's comments are not only a fantastic contemporary
eyewitness account of what was happening in Civil War London, but in inviting
comparisons with post-invasion, present-day Baghdad – constant military
activity, a collapsing economy and a society fractured by internal political
and religious divisions and the tearing down of statues – they provide an
excellent introduction to the historical question that this article addresses:
why did London not collapse into an anarchy of disorder, why did the capital
not fall apart under the impact of the Civil War, why did the capital's social,
economic, political, religious and governmental structures survive the massive
stresses and divisions brought about by the war that is reflected in Lithgow's
eyewitness account?
What makes this the intriguing historical problem is that as
the major part of this article will show, London was subjected to pressures by
the Civil War that could easily have rent apart its social, economic and
political order, in the process shattering its internal stability. As will be
seen, the general character of London on the eve of the Civil War made it a
very unstable, volatile place in normal times, and the extraordinary conditions
of Civil War brought massive additional economic problems, political divisions,
religious controversies and a ferment of ideas that shook the stability of the
capital. Yet, shaken though the stability of London was, there was no real
threat that the social and political order in the capital would disintegrate
into anarchy or revolution ".
While the first part of the book is given over to describing
how London fortified during the civil war, the second part provides us with a
Gazetteer of Civil War London. This part of the book in no way diminishes the
first it enhances it. Much work has gone into not only researching the places
listed in the book, but Flintham has used an extraordinary amount of shoe
leather in visiting and photographing these places. The book was a pleasure to read and hopefully gets a wide readership.
It is an excellent introduction to the military history of the civil war and
deserves to be on university booklist.
[1] https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2017/06/30/londons-forgotten-civil-war-fortifications-walk-4/
[2] http://www.mernick.org.uk/thhol/whimount.html
