Neutralism, Conservatism and Political Alignment in the English Revolution: The Case of the Towns, 1642–9

Abstract

THAT towns were a significant element in the English Revolution goes without saying. It was not simply a matter of their parliamentary representation, much of it in the hands of the gentry and hence more a part of the history of the county community than a separate urban element in itself. Nor was it just the product of their strategic importance, though the numerous sieges of the war testify to the value contemporaries gave to that factor. Above all, it was the perception that the towns were intimately connected with the process of rebellion and sedition, the feeling that within the towns and especially within the middle mercantile strata of their population were to be found strong and active supporters of the Parliamentary cause. Thomas Hobbes suggested that merchants, looking at the examples of the United Provinces, had connected in their minds overthrow of the monarchy, the establishment of a republic, and the spread of commercial prosperity; Clarendon felt that the majority of the towns were naturally malignant and hence had been unusually receptive to Puritan infiltration and influence from the more radical sections of Parliament. In short, many people would have agreed with the comment that appeared in a news-sheet in 1643: ‘most corporations, as we find by experience, are nurseries of faction and rebellion’.¹