The Fiery Crucible: The Bloody Man, #2

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

A note on Footnotes

The Story So Far

Chapter 1

Map 1: The Second English Civil War, 1647

Illustration 1: The Prophet Theaurau John

Chapter 2

Illustration 2: Army flags of the 2nd English Civil War

Chapter 3

Map 2: The Southern Campaign, 1647

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Map 3: The South-Western Campaign, 1647

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Map 4: France at the outbreak of the Fronde

Map 5: The Low Countries, 1647

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Map 6: Cromwell’s New England, 1645

Chapter 11

Map 7: The lower New Netherlands, 1647

Chapter 12

Map 8: Brazil and New Holland in the late 1640s

Chapter 13

Map 9: The Netherlands during the Regents’ War

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Map 10: The Lothian Campaign, 1648

Chapter 16

A note on Footnotes

As you read this work, you may notice that there are rather a lot of footnotes. You don’t need to read them to understand what’s going on, as everything important is in the main narrative. However, as The Fiery Crucible is ultimately a speculative work examining how history might have gone differently, I felt it would be helpful to show my working and explain what actually happened for readers unfamiliar with the period. Hopefully you find them enlightening. 

The Story So Far

One Act of our lamentable tragedy being ended, we are now entering again upon the scene

In 1633, an obscure East Anglian gentleman farmer named Oliver Cromwell decided to seek a new life in the New World. That was fourteen years ago now, and the world has changed greatly since that day.

Cromwell’s advent in the Americas radically changed the course of New England, as the new colony of Saybrook quickly grew to rival the existing settlements. It was not long before his dominant personality occasioned the first steps towards political unity in the region, with the foundation of the New England Commonwealth.

Yet while in the Americas the fledgling colonies began to take root, war was coming to their homeland. What started as a conflict between the King and his Scottish subjects was soon compounded by war between the Monarch and his Parliament, and the fighting quickly transformed into a multi-sided life or death struggle that only become more savage as the participants grew more desperate. At first, the King stood dominant; but his victory was short-lived, and at the cost of thousands of lives his armies were eventually defeated.

Yet even imprisoned, the King remained the King; and it was not long before his manipulations caused his former enemies to fall upon each other in their own civil war. The fiery destruction of London has only been the first act in this new chapter of violence.

The ripples of the conflict have already spread far beyond the British Isles. In the Netherlands, the young Stadtholder’s impetuous support for his father in law King Charles is about to provoke a civil war of his own; in France, Cardinal Mazarin’s fragile control over the throne looks increasingly imperilled. Even in far-off New England, the fragile colonial unity forced by Oliver Cromwell and his allies is threatened by war.

Cities burn and mad prophets stalk the streets. Some say that it is the end of the world. There are many Bloody Men abroad.

Chapter 1

For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

Matthew 4: 5-7.

(Taken from The British Revolution by Richard Moore, Miskatonic University Press 1937)

"Events in and around London had proceeded so quickly in those dramatic days of February 1647 that it took the rest of the country several months to catch up; however, just as the ripples from a large rock being tossed into a pond soon disturb the whole surface of the water, the shockwaves from the army’s mutiny and the destruction of London quickly radiated outwards, and it soon became apparent that London was not the only place where simmering tension was ready to explode into violence. 

Dependable Puritan strongholds such as Hull, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Coventry soon joined the Army in revolt. Yet worryingly for the Independents, previous bastions of Parliamentary support such as Kent, Sussex, and coastal Essex were amongst the first to raise the Royal banner[1]. In Maidstone, a confused battle broke out between the garrison and the population before it was realised that both factions had independently risen in the King’s name; Chelmsford was taken from within in a midnight raid when elements of the Essex Trained Bands, led by a certain Colonel Farre, arrested and disarmed the troops more inclined towards Agitation[2]. Perhaps the most grievous loss to the Agitators was the commander of the Navy, the Earl of Warwick, who had always been inclined toward the Presbyterian faction and took with him the crucial coastal fortresses of Rochester, Chatham, and Deal[3].

March 27th, the accession day of Charles I and a traditional feast of celebration, saw further spontaneous demonstrations of Royalist sentiment. Wayfarers across the country were compelled to drink the King’s health on pain of a beating, and Nathaniel Fiennes in Lichfield recounted how the butchers in the previously staunchly Parliamentarian city threatened to chop up Independents as they cut up their own meat[4]. Other, more refined, expressions of loyalty came pouring in; perhaps the most significant came from the citizens of York, who, with London’s fires barely extinguished, wrote to the King requesting that their city, as one of the oldest and most important centres in the Kingdom, should be chosen as the new capital[5]. The letter found Charles in Bedford, where he was negotiating with members of the English Presbyterian leadership; while his reply remained coy on the long-term status of York, the offer was enough to induce him to move northwards and establish his wartime headquarters there in mid-April…"

(Taken from The Wars of the Five Kingdoms by James Price, Miskatonic University Press 1947)

The renewed fighting was not just confined to England; spring 1647 unexpectedly saw the unrest spread to Wales. Royalism had been strong in the Principality during the initial phase of the fighting; the Welsh gentry were concerned that a victorious Parliament would marginalise them, and had sided with the King en masse, while lurid propaganda that the English would come to kill their women and children was enough to sway many of the common people[6]. While Wales had escaped the worst of the fighting, however, the spread of new religious ideas could not held be back so easily.

In 1639, when the writ of the King still ran largely unquestioned in England and Wales, a former school-teacher and graduate of Jesus College Oxford named Vavasor Powell had begun roaming the towns of South Wales, preaching his own idiosyncratic version of Puritanism. Powell could not escape the attention of the authorities for long, and after being arrested several times, he was finally slung across the border into England[7]. In 1645, with the Royalist armies crumbling, Powell returned to his homeland and resumed his vocation. By 1647, he had become Metropolitan of the Itinerants, the centre of a network of preachers and believers who criss-crossed Wales evangelising and spreading Baptist doctrine. His friend, William Erbury, left a vivid description of his influence;

"He knew the Welsh language better than he understood any other, and the people regarded him as an apostle. He frequently preached in two or three places in a day, and he was seldom two days in a week throughout the year out of the pulpit; nay, he would sometimes ride an hundred miles in a week and preach in every place where he might have admittance, either night or day; so that there was hardly a church, chapel, or town hall in all Wales where he had not preached. He proclaimed Jesus at fairs, markets, and wherever there was a gathering of people. He preached the glorious gospel upon mountains, in jails, and even in the houses of persecuting magistrates.[8]"

In early March 1647, news of the Army’s mutiny reached Wales. The region had already been on the brink of revolt; the troops stationed in Pembrokeshire had not been paid for over six months, and Powell’s preaching in the region had spread radical religious views amongst soldier and civilian alike. When Rowland Laugharne, a prominent local landowner and Presbyterian, went to Pembroke to secure the Castle for the King, he had the misfortune of arriving while the commander of the garrison, John Poyer, was the worse for drink[9]; enraged, Poyer leapt on to a horse and led his men in a furious charge which scattered the Engagers. Within days, Poyer had been joined by the garrisons at Tenby and Fishguard; and then on March 20th, Vavasor Powell strode into Chepstow and launched into such a powerful speech condemning the actions of the King that the troops there tore down the Royal standard, arrested Sir Nicholas Kemeys, the local landowner and Lord Lieutenant, and pledged themselves to his command. With an army behind him, Powell marched westwards into Glamorgan; and by the summer, his ensign of the black and yellow cross, taken from the armorial banner of the see of St David[10], was being flown by small groups of rebels across southern Wales[11]…" 

(Taken from The British Revolution by Richard Moore, Miskatonic University Press 1937)

"The opening of the Second English Civil War found London surrounded, isolated and hungry. While the immediate vicinity of the city had remained quiet, supporters of the King held positions in Kent, Surrey, Berkshire and Essex, cutting the capital off from friendly supporters to the south and north. Most important of all, the Royalist seizure of Rochester was a boot on London’s windpipe, giving the Engagers the ability to choke off trade down the Thames and blockade the capital from afar. Given the supply situation, this threatened to end the Army’s revolt before it began. Food had already been scarce before the city burned; the destruction of grain warehouses threatened starvation for the survivors of the conflagration.

Action was needed, and urgently, even for no other reason than the fact that London’s food supplies could not hope to sustain 12,000 troops on top of the civilian population. At an emergency meeting of the Army Council held on March 5th, it was agreed that the New Model Army would split into two. The larger portion, led by John Lambert, would march southwards into Kent to wrest control of Chatham and Rochester from the Earl of Warwick; the remainder, commanded by Thomas Rainsborough, would forge northwards into Essex to retake Colchester and Chelmsford, bringing County’s grain supplies under control for shipment southwards. 

On March 6th, a grey and miserable morning, Lambert’s force crossed London Bridge, smouldering from the fire but still precariously standing, and marched southwards, electing to pass via Sevenoaks rather than advance along the south bank of the Thames to Gravesend, which was assumed to be under enemy control. Gambling that he could reach Maidstone before news arrived of his movements, Lambert marched a rapid pace, arriving before the town just before dusk, and catching the defenders, as he had hoped, entirely by surprise. After a brief skirmish, the townsfolk collectively elected to change sides and flung open the gates; the garrison quickly surrendered after being offered generous terms, leaving the Kentish capital firmly in the hands of the New Model Army.

Rochester was bound to be a tougher nut to crack. When Lambert arrived before the town on March 15th he found the city gates closed to him and the walls heavily defended; lacking the heavy equipment needed to break down the defences, he settled down to what promised to be a long siege. For the next two weeks, the fighting settled down to dreary skirmishing, with occasional sallies that accomplished little but increasing the number of dead and wounded. Then, on April 1st, Lambert received a stroke of luck. Peter Potts, the Admiralty commissioner at Chatham, was, almost alone in the Navy, sympathetic to the Independents[12], and passed messages from within the walls alerting Lambert to the fact that Warwick had been unable to keep his promises regarding pay arrears, and many of the seamen were mutinous as consequence.

The mutineers were convinced to throw in their lot with the Army, and as a result on April 7th the crews of six ships in Chatham docks, including the flagship Constant Reformation, struck the King’s colours and opened fire on their former comrades, while Lambert launched an assault from the landward side. There followed ‘four or five hours of hot service’ as both sides brawled in the streets, until, with their backs to the sea and Warwick having fled out into the estuary in a pinnace, the defenders finally surrendered. The common soldiers were spared under the harsh terms of the capitulation, but their leaders were not so lucky, and Sir George Lisle, who had commanded the Engager defence of the walls, was executed by firing squad. His colleague Bernard Gascoigne was about to receive the same fate until his captors realised he had been born ‘Bernardo Guasconi’, a Tuscan; he was promptly spared, for the picturesque reason that nobody wanted to be barred from visiting Florence should they travel to Italy in the future[13].   

At a considerable cost in blood, Lambert was now the master of Kent, but he was given little opportunity to enjoy his victory. He was about to prolong his march southwards to take the fortress at Deal and relieve Dover when rumours reached him of a Royalist army massing in Surrey; this prompted him to leave Rochester on April 20th on a back-roads route across the North Downs…"

****

Hornsey Wood

Middlesex, March 1647

The Prophet Theaurau John tenderly brushed the unconscious Prophetess’ hair from her face and covered her body with an old blanket. Her vision had been a strange one, this time. The screaming, flailing, and frothing at the mouth had come as usual. But instead of the prophetic doggerel that normally flowed from the Prophetess’ lips, there had been only gibberish; fragments of words, meaningless sentences, unpronounceable groups of consonants that sounded like the language of demons. Only one word had meant anything to the Prophet, and for the first time in weeks he thought of his shop, now a distant ruin, and the battered copy of the Historia Regum Britanniae that he had kept there. Camlann, his love had said. Gueith Camlann.

John.

The Prophet flinched despite himself at sudden sight of the Seraph before him, and lowered his eyes to avoid the Angel’s multi-faceted gaze.

Lord, he murmured.

Satan is loosed from his prison, John.

The Prophet’s eyes widened. It is too soon, he thought. Surely this could not happen until…

The Seraph loomed forward, as if reading his thoughts. The time of ending comes, John. Now all must be set in motion. The unborn Messiah must be conveyed to his birthplace- to the birthplace of Man. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

The eyes bored into the Prophet’s soul.

Satan shall deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle. Two giants, one great, with hair the purest white, the other lesser, with red hair as Judas. Even now, John, the nations prepare to march. Their number will be as the sand of the sea. Gather the faithful, John, and go to the West. Gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

The Prophet sank to his knees, humbled by the enormity of what was to come. I understand, Lord. But where must I go?

A hand clutched at his. The Prophetess was sitting up, her eyes shining with joy, her breath steaming in the cold spring air and her hand cradling her belly.

To the isle of apples, my love, she said. "To the hill of thorns. Where everything began, and all shall end. Where Man fell, and shall be redeemed. I will bear my child, the saviour of the world, to Eden. To Avalon. And I shall show you the way."

****

(Taken from The Wars of the Five Kingdoms by James Price, Miskatonic University Press 1947)

"As the second English Civil War began to rage, London, whose buildings were already beginning to rise again, just as randomly and poorly-constructed as before[14], was quickly going hungry. Food was reaching the city- the farmers of Kent, Essex and Berkshire were able to demand astronomical sums for their produce- but many, who had lost everything, simply could not afford to eat. Desperate Londoners began to cast aside old certainties in order to fill their stomachs, and one attractive model on offer was that of the Levellers, to the north of the City[15]. In October 1646 a small group led by Gerard Winstanley[16], a bankrupt tailor, had occupied Brownswood Manor, in Hornsey a few miles north of Aldersgate, pulled the up enclosures and began to plant vegetables and graze sheep[17]. Given the political turmoil of the time, nobody was in a position to evict them; the landlord, Bishop Juxson, was far too sensible to set foot in London and had retired to his Gloucestershire estate, while the sitting tenant, a Mr John Smith, had apparently fled to the continent after the battle of Longdon and had not returned. The Levellers, so-called because of their tendency to ‘level’ enclosures rather than their equally fervent desire to bring down all forms of social distinction, somehow managed to avoid the close attention of the authorities thanks to the increasingly chaotic political situation in London, but astonished the London newspapers, one of whom wrote that;

The new people that begin to dig in Hornsey Wood say they are like Adam, expecting a general restoration of the Earth to its first condition, and therefore they dig and dress the earth. They will not fight, knowing it will not be good for them, and would have none to work for hire, professing no need of money. They allege that the prophesy of Ezekiel is to be made good at this time…[18]

The Fire of London was taken as stark confirmation of the Leveller faith; and soon, drawn by goods freely distributed amongst the population, other Londoners began to join them, cutting turf on common land like Hampstead Heath and planting vegetables in defiance of all tradition and law[19].  

Yet even the occupation of land could do little to stave off the capital’s food needs. Vegetables and crops took time to grow, and in the meantime the people were still hungry. Throughout March many had left the capital, searching for better prospects elsewhere; the biggest exodus came on March 20th, when the Prophet Theaurau John, citing a prophetic vision by his lover Anna Trapnel, commanded his followers to abandon London. The following day, a ragged band of eight or nine thousand men, women and children marched westwards, in search of food, forage, or whatever the Prophet’s obscure religious obsessions demanded. The famous march of the ‘Salvation Army’ had begun…"

(Taken from The British Revolution by Richard Moore, Miskatonic University Press 1937)

"It is tempting to think of the Salvation Army as a chaotic band of vagrants and lunatics, a weird collection of the hungry, insane and desperate with no organisation or programme. To a certain extent, this was true; the followers of the Prophet Theaurau John included men, women and children, possessions carried upon their backs and convinced that the world was coming to its end. They looked more like a nation on the march than a conventional army. Yet this was no aimless mob; at the core of the Prophet’s pilgrimage was a well-organised, well-drilled force of soldiers who made up in unshakeable faith and fanaticism what they lacked in equipment.

Theaurau John himself had been a soldier, and through his service with Henry Ireton in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire had obtained a broad understanding of tactics and drill. Beneath his evident insanity lurked what appears to have been a shrewd military mind. He was not alone; most of the men on the march had seen combat at one point or another, and the outbreak of fighting on the night of the fire meant that for many, their weapons were the only possession they still retained. The Prophet was also benefited by the presence of a number of professional soldiers, amongst them Thomas Venner[20], an excellent forager who had experience of fighting in New England, and Thomas Kelsey[21], a Lieutenant-Colonel in the New Model Army who had deserted to join the pilgrims.

As the Salvation Army moved westwards, Venner and Kelsey quickly organised the able-bodied men- and some women- into the equivalent of three regiments of foot. They had plenty of time to drill; the pace of the civilians was so slow that in the first week, the pilgrims managed barely three miles per day. The slow progress of the Salvation Army, and their insatiable desire for sustenance, quickly aroused resistance; the Duke of Buckingham, who had been raising troops for the King in Buckinghamshire, ordered a small force southwards, where it was supplemented by bands of local farmers, worried at the prospect of their lands being ransacked. The two sides met at Little Chalfont, just outside Amersham, on April 14th, and in an ugly skirmish, Kelsey’s improvised pikemen proved their worth, repelling a charge from the Earl’s horsemen and chasing his foot from the field…"

****

Sandsfoot Castle

Dorset, June 1647

Winston Churchill looked down at the papers on his writing desk, emitted a grunt of irritation, and crumpled the upper-most sheet in his hand. Pathetic, juvenile rubbish, he thought, peevishly. When he had first been confined at Sandsfoot, in the summer of 1645, he had consoled himself with the idea that he would finally have time to write the great literary work he had always fancied lay within him. But after the first, heady months when he still felt boundless enthusiasm for the project, progress had been slow. Worse still, when he returned to the sections he had already penned, he had realised it was unreadable and little could be salvaged.

The grandly-inscribed title page for the book lay on his desk, mockingly. "Divi Britannica; being a remark upon the Lives of all the Kings of this Isle, from the year of the World 2855 until the year of Grace 1625", it read, and Churchill, grimacing, rose from his desk paced across the small room to the barred window, which looked out into the grey expanse of Weymouth Bay. He found it cruel to be imprisoned here. The accommodation was comfortable enough, the food tolerable, but the view…

Even on the clearest day it was impossible to see his ancestral home, far inland at Glanvilles Wootton, but the fact that it was only twelve miles away made him despair; a morning’s ride, he thought, and yet it might as well be the other side of the earth.

Elizabeth, his wife, visited when she could. She had even been allowed to stay at the Castle for a time the previous year, when it briefly looked as if the King was about to make peace with his foes. The result of that arrangement had been young John, his first child, born in the spring. News of the boy’s arrival had been in the last letter Churchill had been permitted, three months earlier. How he yearned to meet him! Since then, all communication had abruptly stopped. Churchill assumed the fighting had begun again, and found his captivity even more unbearable than before. The thought of the King being defeated again while he was cooped up under arrest… 

Churchill was drawn from his reverie by the sound of a distant explosion. Is it midday already? he thought, surprised; a gun was normally from the walls fired to mark noon. But then came another bang, and another. The room shook as something struck the walls nearby, and Churchill rushed to the window. We are under attack!

Sure enough, three ships lay in the bay- but too far out to be the source of the bombardment. Another explosion rocked the room, and Churchill realised that the low booming of cannon had been joined by the sharp crack of musketry. They’re coming from the landward side, he thought, where the defences are weaker. He paced back and forth for a while, frustrated, listening to the sounds of fighting. Then, abruptly, the noises stopped. He waited for what seemed like an eternity, listening for any sound to reveal what was happening; then finally, he heard the jingle of keys and the door to his quarters swung open.

Three men regarded him; one, a dirty fellow holding a musket as a club, was clearly a common soldier, but the other two men were officers. One,