It is generally agreed that the red-coated New Model Army, well-disciplined, regularly paid, many of them hardy conscripts eager to fight, and under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax, was the deciding factor at the key Battle of Naseby in the summer of 1645 and for the rest of the War. Parliament decided it needed such a professional army in December 1644 and wanted its officers to be all strict Presbyterians but, typically, both Cromwell and Fairfax were less fundamentalist, insisting on promoting good soldiers whatever their religion (or class).

More recently, historians have emphasised how vital the Royal Navy's 6 year defection from King to Parliament in 1642 was, particularly in the precarious early years of the War. This track explores why it did so.


Why did the King lose the Navy?
Why did the King lose the Navy?
Control of the ports and of the country?
In 1642.
He was soft on the Armada,
Two-faced, wed to a Maria,
Stopped us relieving the Protestant Martyrs
In the 30 Years War.
Hooray the Navy rises!
Hooray the Navy rises!
Against the Court and its favourite’s prizes,
Against Bad King Charley.

Why did the King lose the Navy?
Why did the King lose the Navy?
Control of the ports and of the country?
In 1642.
A smut on Good Queen Bess’s memory:
Sturdy English sailors, breezy piety,
A Protestant trade-wind up your fancy
Buckinghams and Straffords!
Hooray the Navy rises!
Against the Court and for the Houses,
Customs dues in the Commons’ pockets,
Against Bad King Charley.

Why did the King lose the Navy?
Why did the King lose the Navy?
Control of the ports and of the country?
In 1642.
He clothed it poorly and fed it badly
On Ship Money forced on a mutinous country,
‘Than serve the king better slave in a galley;
They’re cherished more than we!’
Hooray and up it rises!
To foreign flags through each Charley crisis
To Parliament now, as a new world’s finest,
Admirals predicted.

Why did the King lose the Navy?
Why did the King lose the Navy?
Control of the ports and of the country?
In 1642.
It gave its love to the Earl of Warwick,
A sailor himself, who paid its service
Fought Spain and Pope like Good Queen Bess did
And for the mercantile interest.
Hooray and up it rises!
Securing trade and naval bases,
Big respect in foreign places,
London for the Roundheads!

Why did the King lose the Navy?
Why did the King lose the Navy?
Control of the ports and of the country?
In 1642.
He overtaxed the Merchant interest,
The City of London, trade and business,
Licensed greed for his royal favourites,
Cavaliered our Houses.
Hooray the Navy rises!
All but one of the royal warships,
A six year fleet of Roundhead fierceness,
Against Bad King Charley.

Why did the King lose the Navy?
Why did the King lose the Navy?
Control of the ports and of the country?
In 1642.
It put him in the Shire fields till he sobered,
Showed his cavaliers to the Cliffs of Dover,
Make a fo’c’sle of the House of Commons
Locked its doors against him.
Hooray the Navy rises!
Mutinous crews deciding captains
Against the Court and for the Houses,
Against Bad King Charley.

from The English Civil Wars and other Nursery Crimes., released August 22, 2021 https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/the-english-civil-wars-and-other-nursery-crimes
The tune (dorian mode, duple rhythm, bagpipe-friendly) is the traditional Irish folk song "Óró sé do bheatha abhaile" which is rooted in Jacobite (1740s) rather than Puritan allegiances. Pic of Maz as period Puritan lady by Bhas Allan.
Watch the film of the album, which includes this track, here - https://youtu.be/rKDIJGQYUAY

Oliver's Navy

Jack and Jill were generic names for male and female ("Jack shall have Jill, nought shall go ill" as Shakespeare has it) but this nursery rhyme arguably references one of Charles many devious attempts to raise money (by dubious or illegal taxes) without having to ask Parliament, who would refuse or raise demands in return. In one particular scam, Charles reduced the actual imperial measures of a half pints of wine (a Jack) and quarter pints of wine (a Gill) but maintained the tax: in other words, a net gain for the Crown (a crown is still marked on the half way point of pint glasses today)

In effect, Charles attempted to rule as an absolute king (like his French father in law) without Parliament but was unable to raise money for his projects and wars without them so concocted various devious new or archaic taxes. The Civil War "was the outcome of his long struggle with and eventual dismissal of Parliament, along with his imposition of taxes and attempts to impose religious uniformity."

We have added a middle verse below as our summary (in the same structure) of this interpretation.


Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.

A selfish King had a fiscal sting
To shrink the Jack and Gill measures
But tax them the same for his luxury and gain.
He fell down but his Crown fell further. *

Up Jack got, and home did trot
As fast as he could caper
He went to bed to mend his head
With vinegar and brown paper.


from  https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/the-english-civil-wars-and-other-nursery-crimes


Jack and Jill

Featuring John Charlton on assorted support vocals and first bass.  As the first phase English Civil War Battle of Edge Hill (1642) petered out in an uneasy draw, Parliamentarian King's Lynn had been fortifying for some time against the arrival of 'foreign forces' and the fear of mercenaries enlisted by the Queen landing at Lynn in support of the King. In the surrounding countryside the royalist gentry, with Sir Hamon Lestrange of Hunstanton (eluding an arrest ordered by Lynn's council ) the main mover, were slowly gathering strength, famously building and stocking a magazine at Sedegford for the purpose. The Lestranges also contacted and lavishly funded royalists in the town. Susan Yaxley's account (The Siege of Lynn, Larks Press, 1993) notes that "a civil war in which Norfolk was dominated by his political enemies might well mean that the Lestranges faced financial disaster."

Intriguingly, the Sunday cannon ball which blasted through the stained glass window of St Margaret's (now Lynn Minster) at the best of Colonel Cromwell causing consternation to the minister and flock within, is chronicled on Sep 3 1643. September 3 spookily recurs throughout Cromwell's career. He was at the Siege of Drogheda on Sep 3 1649. He won the decisive Battles of Dunbar (miraculously) and Worcester (more predictably) on September 3 1650 and 1651 respectively. And on September 3 1658, sick with a urinary tract infection and heartbroken for his recently deceased daughter Elizabeth, he died. Knowing him, he probably still regarded it as his Lucky Day.

The Cavalier adventures of Roger Lestrange, joining the King in his new capital of Oxford after the defeat at Lynn, and finally arrested at Appleton after a madcap scheme to retake Lynn for the king, make up the rest of our tale.

My father leapt upon his high horse
And galloped it hard into Lynn,
“One seizes this Parliamentary town,
Declares it for the King!”

“You have no mandate!” cried Mayor and MPs
Laughed Dad, “Arrest those knaves!
Cavalier bravado has come to town
Which you from yourselves I’ll save.”

Though Cromwell’s preachies at the Gate
Of Lynn as at Heaven knock,
Our stained glass windows shoot all to hell,
Our royal passage block,

We are the laughing cavaliers
And we need a royal 'we'.
Now it's weeing down with cannonballs
And the laugh laugh is on...me.

Say I “Great king, your royal East
And loyal Lynn, I’ll re-seize ’em,
They’re rebels for Your Majesty
And I’m the man to lead ’em!”

The king he writes a broad letter
And thrusts it into my hand,
“Roger L’Estrange shall rule in Lynn
With forces I command.”

We live and die a chevalier’s life,
Have it all and spend even more
On a falconer, fool, on a fowl-mouthed fop’s
Black marble stable floor.

We are the laughing cavaliers
And we need a royal 'we'.
Now it's weeing down with cannonballs
And the laugh laugh is on...me.

From Oxford Town to Norfolk woods
The four winds see me ride
And show my fine letter to a Jack
His poor coat to turn or bribe.

‘Captain Leaman’ is that seaman,
Cries he, ‘Er, we’ll talk anon,
I must now to Lynn awhile but will
Return here to Appleton.”

He rides to Colonel Walton and brings
Six redcoats in disguise,
“Show us His Royal Traitor’s hand!’
They pinch me as a spy.

We are the laughing cavaliers
And we need a royal 'we'.
Now it's weeing down with cannonballs

from The English Civil Wars and other Nursery Crimes., released August 22, 2021 peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/the-e…sery-crimes
John Charlton wrote the first melody. Ours is the "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" bit. The lyric was published in my book of folk ballads 'Doin Different' https://garethcalway.blogspot.com/p/doin-different.html
PG Wodehouse's views on the English Civil War are probably best summed up by Bertie Wooster who once twittered that "one man's caviar (Cavalier?) is another one's major general."

The Backwoods Cavalier featuring John Charlton

Featuring (I think) our only recorded guitar duel.

Alexander Leslie (an experienced continental campaigner already knighted by the Swedish king for bravery in the Protestant cause in The Thirty years War) is the 'crooked man' of this nursery rhyme. He walked the 'crooked mile' of the Anglo-Scottish border and of the torturous twists and turns in Anglo-Scottish relations throughout the 1640s, changing allegiances - and paymasters ('the crooked sixpence') - one minute following the Charles who ducked and dived between deals he had no intention of honouring, another making deals with the new powers in England. (In return for his first change of sides, Charles I knighted Leslie and made him Captain of Edinburgh Castle in which capacity he would later receive his defeated King and subsequently hand him over to the Roundheads.)

So the 'crooked' Leslie began fighting for Scotland against England (for a good deal of money), then switched to Royalist England and for Charles (for a good deal of money) until 1644 when he helped the Parliamentarian general Fairfax crush the Royalists at Marston Moor (for a good deal of money).

Nothing defines a nation so much as a border, the self-affirming sense that 'beyond that line is what we are NOT'. The winding geographical and historical border with Scotland is a kind of dialectic: two 'home' nations defining themselves AGAINST each other (witness their irespective national anthems) despite being as economically, scientifically, theologically, imperially and militarily entwined as 'Boswell and Johnson' (no relation) for half a millennium.

A different kind of North-South border was the one across Europe at this time; the one dividing Protestant northern Europe from the 'ancient menace' of Catholic Spain, Rome and France. Charles I was married to France, had flirted with Spain and was a little too south of that border in his suspected religious allegiances. (eg Charles returned to Irish Catholics, Highland Catholics, and specious offers of help from Spain and the Papacy, rather than deal with the Short Parliament, Apr-May 1640, which was willing to fund a campaign against the Scots in return for a lot less concession than the Scots were demanding. Not that Charles, as crooked as Leslie in his higher way, would have kept any word he gave them.) 

There was a crooked man
Who walked a crooked mile
He found crooked sixpence
Upon a crooked stile.
He found crooked sixpence
Upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat
Which caught a crooked mouse
And they all lived together
In a crooked little house.
And they all lived together
In a crooked little house.
credits
from The English Civil Wars and other Nursery Crimes., released August 22, 2021 https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/the-english-civil-wars-and-other-nursery-crimes
Bhas's picture seems to capture the opposed soul music of Puritan and Royalist (the former's instrument so pure it remains unstruck) co-habiting uneasily together in their crooked little house.

youtu.be/rKDIJGQYUAY

There Was A Crooked Man

There's more to this Anglican hymn than often meets the ear. It was written as the preface to William Blake's poem about his fellow Radical John Milton and is an Arthurian vision of the new England fought for by the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War. The music was added in 1916 as a bid to raise national morale in the darkest days of the First World War. A fuller commentary is given here - https://soundcloud.com/gareth-calway/jerusalem-with-commentary

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountain green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/the-english-civil-wars-and-other-nursery-crimes
from The English Civil Wars and other Nursery Crimes., released August 22, 2021

youtu.be/rKDIJGQYUAY 



Jerusalem

A marriage (and we are actually married, 45 years so far) of melody and rhythm. We do folk, indie, Americana, Norfolk noir, beat poems &  ghazals. Traditional tunes with contemporary beats. Music videos  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb8wV0-DNiFs1R5G2VSytBQ
Maz lead & harmony vocals, acoustic guitar. Gaz vocals, voice, bass, drums & percussion, harmonium, recorders, lyre harp, field recordings.

New tracks tagged #English Civil War