Chapter 29 - Appendix FAQ

The reference material in this Appendix is organized like an FAQ. For an overview of the politics of the time, see the Appendix of Book One 'HellBurner'. Here is a list of the questions that are answered below.

1. Where can I read about the non-fiction events and characters?
2. How can I tell which characters are historic and which are fictional?
3. What was a Pistoleer?
4. What are the differences in dates between Julian and Gregorian calendars?
5. Why was the Sack of Brentford such a turning point?
6. Who were the Clubmen?
7. Were tradesmen part of Essex's army?
8. Why were there so many officer defections to the king?
9. Why were the casualties so heavy with the enlisted men yet so light with the officers?
10. What was William Waller's connection to Robert Rich?
11. Did Waller invent petards?
12. Was Waller really called William the Conqueror?
13. How were military prisoners treated in 1642 England?
14. How did non-combatants fare in 1642 England?
15. Were the Clan McLeod guarding the walls of Chichester for the royalists?
16. Did Queen Henrietta really steal the crown jewels and pawn them?
17. Why did Henrietta flee to The Hague rather than to Paris?
18. Was Henrietta's invasion carried to Bridlington by the Dutch Navy?
19. Where was Henrietta when the English fleet was bombarding Bridlington?
20. Was John Hotham, Parliament's governor of Kingston-upon-Hull, in negotiations with Henrietta to turn Kingston over to the king's forces?
21. Was Charles being two-faced in his dealings with the Dutch/French and the Austrian/Spanish alliances?

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1. Where can I read about the non-fiction events and characters?
First try "bcw-project.org", the robust and well organized British Civil War website.

If you can't find it at BCW then do a keyword search on Google. If a relevant BCW or Wikipedia article is listed, then other articles in the list will also be relevant. If not, then add more keywords and search again.

Note that a Google search will also find digitized versions of rare books and long out of print books, including memoirs from the era of the Civil War. What a wonderful world we live in, where it is so easy to reference the thoughts of the long past. Be warned that most old histories of the Civil War are heavily slanted to make the Royalists look like heroes and republicans look like villains. Blame that on Charles II and his decades long efforts to assassinate the truth and anyone who opposed his saintly father and his equally saintly cousin Prince Rupert.

For maps and descriptions of the Battle of Brentford, see "battleofbrentford.org", or better yet, read the novel "The Pistoleer - Brentford” which precedes this novel.

2. How can I tell which characters are historic and which are fictional?
As a rule of thumb, if the character is a Parliamentarian, has a title, or a military rank of captain or above, then they are historic and so are their families. Otherwise the character is likely fictional. I have kept the descriptions and actions of the non-fictional characters as close to historical accounts as possible.

In situations where there is no historical record of a non-fictional character's location or actions, I have attributed actions to them that would have been logical and in keeping with their character. A notable exception to this rule is with Robert Blake, who eventually became Admiral Blake, the father of the modern British navy. There is almost nothing known about Blake's whereabouts or actions in the years 1638 through late 1643 when his heroic stand at Bristol made him the darling of news sheets.

In this book I have Blake commanding a company in Ruthven's parliamentary army in Devon, which has a very high probability of being true. I then have him on a small ship on the North Sea coast, which is poetic license on my part in order to lead into the plotlines of subsequent novels. One of the greatest mysteries about Blake is how a petty captain of mounted infantry ended up as the shipboard Admiral of Cromwell's fleet. He must have had some experience on ships, and so I have taken the liberty of nudging him into such a role. Did Blake have an argument with Admiral Tromp at Bridlington? That has the likelihood of a lottery win, but something, sometime in unrecorded history must have soured the two men against each other.

3. What was a Pistoleer? (for more info see the Appendix of Book One)
Pistoleers were mounted infantry. They rode lighter, cheaper horses, wore only enough armour to protect chest and back, and were more likely to carry a multipurpose axe than a cavalry sabre. Their main weapons were pistols, not lances, although many also carried a carbine ... a short musket. They evolved in the protestant Dutch army because that army was short on cavalry.

During a large battle they were often kept back as a strategic reserve, but before the battle they would be used as couriers, scouts, and skirmishers. The weakness of The Pistoleers was that normal pistols were single shot, and reloading them on a moving horse was slow work. For this reason pistoleers carried more than one gun, and one of them would be a Dragon. A Dragon was a blunderbuss pistol ... a scatter gun, the sawed off shotgun of the era. During the British Civil war companies of Pistoleers were called 'flying squads'.

4. What are the differences in dates between Julian and Gregorian calendars?
Quick answer: add ten days to the Julian, and add 1 year if prior to March 25. Sometimes, almost.

The Julian calendar was standardized by Julius Caesar to better align with the solar year, with January 1 as the first day of the year, and the solstices and equinoxes falling on December 25, March 25, June 25 and September 25. Julius adopted it because the existing Roman calendar was based on moon months, so did not track the solar year. He copied the calendar of Alexandrian Egypt, which was Greek. Even Julius got the leap year corrections wrong, so even his new calendar crept ahead of the solar reality by about 3/4 of a day per century.

The Roman Empire's Christian Church in Constantinople used the Julian calendar, but a break away protesting group of Christians under the King Bishop of Rome (later known as the Pope) decided to Catholicize it by fixing Saint's Days to solar dates and then proclaiming that the sun was wrong when the calendar got out of sync with the sun. They even decided that March 25 should be the first day of the new year rather than January 1. (Now you know why fiscal year ends are often March 31). By 1582 the Pope's version had shifted ahead of the solar reality by 10 days, making a mockery of Jesus being born on the solstice of December 25 because in 1582 the shortest day of the year fell on December 11.

Pope Gregory was forced to correct the calendar because even illiterate farmers were ridiculing the Catholic calendar, never mind all the new age scientists. The Gregorian Calendar skipped ahead the ten days that had been lost due to Julius's faulty leap year correction, put the first day of the year back to January 1, and corrected the leap year formula. Too bad he didn't skip ahead twenty days instead, for that would have put the solstices/equinoxes on Dec 31, Mar 31, June 30 and Sept 30.

It gets even more muddled after that. Due to the reformation, many kingdoms did not accept Gregory's new calendar, while others accepted some of the corrections but not others. For instance, Scotland went Gregorian in 1600, but England not until 1752. When studying historical dates, therefore, it is important to know which calendar they relate to. For instance, March 10, 1640 may actually be March 10, 1641 or March 20, 1641. This is why some notations will use March 10, 1640/41.

5. Why was the Sack of Brentford such a turning point?
The reason that the Brentford incident of November 1642 became so infamous was that it took looting to its most extreme end ... slaughter. Just as the slaughter of Magdeburg in Saxony by the army of the Catholic Empire had the unintended consequences of bringing the Swedish Army to Saxony to chase down and obliterate the perpetrators, so too did the slaughter of Brentford by Prince Rupert have unintended consequences. The villages and towns near London, the Thames Valley, and Sussex, even those who had been friendly to the king, became terrified of becoming the next Brentford, so refused help to the royalist armies and formed Clubmen militias for self defense.

6. Who were the Clubmen?
Quick answer: Vigilante militias.

Because Britain is an island, it needed a large defensive navy, and had little need of a large standing army. Traditionally it had a small professional army who could call upon local militia's to bolster their numbers or to do the logistic work of supporting the army. In ancient times these militia were called the fyrd. By the Civil War they were called the Trained Bands. When Parliament took control of most of the trained bands, the king dusted off a law that allowed him to press ALL able men into his service as a militia force.

As the local militia groups were pulled into armies and marched away, and as armies began marauding villages and towns, and even sacking them (Brentford), a third type of militia sprung up... the independent clubmen. The local clubmen were vigilante militias organized primarily for local defense, and defense from all comers no matter whose side they were on. Since the young and trained men had already been pulled away, the clubmen tended to be older and wiser and less likely to be pressed into an army. It was they who repaired or built fortification and barricades and it was they who would man those barricades when strangers approached.

7. Were tradesmen part of Essex's army?
Absolutely. Gentlemen were horsemen, but most of Essex's army were infantry. The infantry, especially the Trained Bands of towns and cities, had been heavily recruited from the huge pool of tradesmen apprentices. These were young, well fed, strong men with coin in their pockets and skilled hands and minds, and they were financially backed by their trades masters. Though the gentlemen formed the frame of Essex's army, the tradesmen were the driving force and muscle.

8. Why were there so many officer defections to the king?
The problem with any civil war is that families are often split between sides. The English Civil War stemmed from a vocal but mostly non-violent arguement amongst the ruling class, who were all related at the second or third cousin level. As it became more violent, family members were often caught on different sides. A classic example was how elder lords with long memories sided with the Reformers, while their younger sons and grandsons rallied to the king's side in hopes of earning a knighthood or a title.

Defections only became a problem after both sides had raised armies. Once the king labeled the Reformers as Rebels, and labeled their cause as a treasonous rebellion, wealthy men began to fear being charged with treason, at a cost of their lives, their titles, and their estates. Once Parliament began running the kingdom through ordinances (laws not signed or sealed by the king) they countered the king by also threatening lords with charges of treason.

9. Why were the casualties so heavy with the enlisted men yet so light with the officers?
Civil wars catch family members on each side, which is what makes them so grief ridden. The officers and cavalry were drawn from the wealthy classes. Great care was taken by the officers on both sides to spare wealthy looking men, just in case they were related. No such care was taken with the enlisted men, many of whom had been pressed into service and were viewed as individually unimportant.

As the wealthy tended to be well mounted and well armoured, they had a fighting advantage over the enlisted men. Rather than cavalry companies charging each other with the risk of the mutual slaughter of wealthy relatives, the cavalry tended to charge at and slaughter the enlisted men. At Edgehill, for instance, the casualty numbers were high because Prince Rupert's heroic cavalryers charged into unarmed carters, porters, kitchen workers, and camp followers rather than risk injury to themselves and their expensive horses by charging into formations of pikemen and musketeers.

10. What was William Waller's connection to Robert Rich?
Sir William Waller and Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick were the same age and were both born into wealth beyond avarice. In their youth while Rich was founding colonies and commanding privateer ships in the New World, Waller was serving in the Venetian army and in the continental Thirty Years War.

As of 1636, Waller was a shareholder in Rich's flagship Providence Island Company, so they must have been at least business confidents. Since the shareholder list of that company parallels the list of leading Reformers, they must have shared many other friends and acquaintances amongst reformers. Waller was the MP for Andover, just north of Winchester so it makes sense that he be the colonel chosen to chase the king's men out of Sussex.

11. Did Waller invent petards?
No and Yes. The French invented such mines in the 1500's and called them petards, meaning breaking wind. In 1642 Waller's own flying army was moving too quickly for cannons to keep up with them, so he used petards to great effect in blowing down gates, doors, and walls of castles. All you needed was five or ten pounds of gunpowder in a metal container which directs the force of the explosion and a fuse cord to set it off.

When lose, gunpowder burns and flashes, but does not explode. To cause an explosion you must contain the flash gasses, for instance, in the barrel of a gun. For a petard mine, even a cooking pot will do as a container, with the mouth of the pot flat against the gate and the base of the pot wedged in place so it doesn't easily fly backwards. The theory is simple. You must make it easier for the explosive gasses to blow through the gate than blow the pot backwards. For Waller to have used them so successfully, there must not have been common knowledge about what they were or how they worked amongst castle guards.

12. Was Waller really called William the Conqueror?
William the Conqueror was the name that the Fleet Street news sheets gave to Colonel William Waller after his string of successes against the king's regiments in Sussex. Speculation is that he was given this nickname because he was taking the same cities and towns that the Conqueror took in 1066, as that is the only similarity between the two men.

Both William Waller and William of Normandy were trained and successful as a military commanders, yes, but Waller lacked the ruthlessness to be a conqueror. He was known for forbidding slaughter, restricting looting, and for treating his prisoners well and (too often) freeing them and sending them home. The king's regiments must have trusted his reputation, because they were not afraid to surrender to him even without specific terms of surety. These easy surrenders saved countless lives and injuries in 1642/43 ... and not just amongst enlisted men, but also amongst non-combatants.

William of Normandy, on the other hand, was very much a ruthless conqueror. On the day he invaded in 1066, England was very much an Anglo-Danish kingdom and London was the largest Danish city on earth and York was the second largest. For the duration of his reign he waged a focused campaign of genocide against the forty percent of the population who were Anglo-Danes. This genocide was so complete that his sons inherited an Anglo-Saxon kingdom where the northern third of the kingdom (the Danelaw) was a barren wasteland.

For anyone interested in the heroic resistance of the Anglo-Danes to William the Conqueror, reading my HOODSMAN series of historical adventure novels is a MUST.

13. How were military prisoners treated in 1642 England?
In Germany and Ireland the Protestant armies were fighting Catholic armies, so the fate of military prisoners was hateful and sordid. In England the armies were both Protestant (of varying degrees) while Catholics masqueraded as protestants, so prisoners were better treated than those of the continent.

Since the winter of 1642/43 was bitter, however, simply withholding food and warmth from prisoners could cause their death. Keep in mind that when a soldier was first captured they were dismount, disarmed, and then robbed of anything of value, including boots and clothing.

Despite his piety, King Charles was not a forgiving man, and his right hand, Prince Rupert, used the vicious German tactics of terror and human shields. Thus the prisoners of the royalists tended to be abused. Unless you were wealthy enough to be held for ransom, the abuse could include beatings, maimings, slavery, or being pressed into the king's service. Food and medical attention were scarce in the king's army, although there was always enough for "those of good breeding” and the "cavalry core” of the king's army. Prisoners were at the bottom of the pecking order.

Parliament's rebel army took far better care of their prisoners, including food, warmth, and medical care. This made sense since royalists of good breeding would have relatives in the rebel army, and since it was hoped that enlisted men would change sides and join "the good old cause". It was often the case that commoners were simply disarmed and sent home, especially if they were pressed men who lived nearby. Those of good breeding were more likely to be held for ransom.

Ransom by either side was more about holding hostages than raising money. Hostages to force wealthy families to change sides, or to stay neutral. Hostages to stop the other side from executing a prisoner for treason. Hostages to be traded. Hostages as a source of intelligence.

14. How did non-combatants fare in 1642 England?
The fate of the non-combatants, especially the women and children, is always the saddest tale in any war, and especially in a civil war. The two armies were very different in their approach to non-combatants. The king was constantly short of cash, so his army looted whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, in the name of the king. Parliament generally paid for what they needed, but they often paid with the proceeds from looting great estates.

The king's army would freely loot any house, village, or town that was accused of helping the rebels. The rebel army tried to constrain their looting to the estates of the wealthiest royalists. As that included all of the hated bishops, it was normal for the rebels to loot Cathedrals, their compounds, and the bishops' many palaces. Note that there was a huge difference in effect between the rebels looting the wealthy, and the royalists looting villagers. This because the winter of 1642/43 was brutal, and life would have been hard enough for villagers even if the king's army had not taken everything from them.

Since it is normal to hide or protect things from looters, many non-combatants were beaten. Since the king's army was far more prone to looting the townsfolk, they were also more prone to raping the women. In Germany rape was viewed as just another form of looting, but Prince Rupert's heroic flying army took it one step further by forcing women to cooperate by threatening their families. The rebel army had a different attitude from the gentlemen royalists. The rebels were mainly townsfolk where (prior to and during the Civil War) prostitution was pervasive, so they were well used to paying for sex. The royalists were "old school” who took sex as their right.

15. Were the Clan MacLeod guarding the walls of Chichester for the royalists?
Quick answer: Maybe

Accounts from both sides applaud the company of Scots that guarded Chichester's walls for the royalists. I could find nothing more about them, such as who they were, how they got there, and what happened to them. From logical conjecture, they were highland Scots from the west coast. These highlanders took Charles’s side during the Bishop\s war with the Covenanters. Charles used the Scottish and Irish rebellions as an excuse to gather an army in England, which led to the Army Plot (a failed coup d'etat of the English parliament).

From the times of the Vikings there had always been a separation of peoples between the east coast lowlanders and the west coast highlanders. The west coast and Irish Sea were influenced by the rustic Vikings of the Norwegian fjords, while the east coast was influenced by the Byzantine connected Vikings of Denmark and the Baltic. During the Norman genocide of the Anglo-Danes, the east coast became influenced by the Normans. The Norse kept their influence on Northern Ireland and the West Coast for a few centuries longer. This means that Northern Ireland and the islands and highlands of the west coast shared culture, peoples and clans.

The Macleods were a leading clan that spread across all of these regions. The Macleods would therefore have taken part in Charles’s army in England, and in the Scottish armies that were sent to Ireland to quell the rebellion there. So, were the Scots on Chichester's walls western highlanders? Very, very likely. Would they have included Macleods? Very likely. Would they have been shipped from Chichester to Ireland? Very likely for this would solve two problems for parliament. It would get them out of England, where they were not wanted, and would put them in Ireland where they could support the other Scots who were quelling the rebellion under the command of the Covenanters at the request of both the king and the English parliament.

16. Did Queen Henrietta really steal the crown jewels and pawn them?
Quick answer: Yes.

Ever since William the Conqueror there has been a misunderstanding by the kings about what is theirs, personally, and what belonged to the Crown. The Crown is the sum total of everything that "belonged in common to everyone” that was administered but not owned by the king. The crown jewels did not belong to Charles and Henrietta despite their frequent claims to the contrary.

Henrietta physically took the crown jewels into her possession and claimed them as hers, with her husband's permission but without the permission of Parliament. In a day when you could still be hung for stealing a horse, she should have been hung. She fled England (where she was hated as the Catholic witch who was ruining the kingdom) to The Hague in Holland, with the crown jewels in hopes of selling them. She was able to sell some of the smaller pieces, however she was unable to sell the well known signature pieces. Those she used as security for loans worth far less than the jewels. In other words, she pawned them.

As a side note, various kings have gone to extreme measures to steal crown land from the English public. William the Conqueror enacted the Forest Law, which claimed all wild land on his behalf. By the time of Henry VIII there was too little useful common land left for him to steal, so instead he stole all of the land belonging to the Monasteries (the second largest land owner after the Crown). Under the Stuart regime, allowing drainage projects to be considered 'enclosures' allowed the Stuarts to steal common wet lands. More recently a prime minister was knighted because he had "forced” the royal family to pay taxes on Crown property, thus giving the royal family a modern legal claim to the property.

17. Why did Henrietta flee to The Hague rather than to Paris?
Quick answer: She was delivering her daughter Mary to be married to William, the son of the Prince of Orange.

Henrietta would have been welcome in every royal court in Europe, for she was well connected. She was the Catholic queen consort of the (supposedly Protestant) King of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. She was the daughter of Catherine de Medici of Florence, once the Queen of France, and sister to the ailing King of France. Charles’s sister Elizabeth was the Queen of Bohemia in exile in The Hague, Holland. As a Catholic monarch in a Protestant kingdom Henrietta also had access to the courts of Rome, Vienna, and Madrid.

Henrietta had multiple missions on the continent.
* To deliver Mary to the court of Fredrick, the Prince of Orange in Holland to seal a Stuart-Nassau alliance.
* To turn millions of pounds worth of stolen jewels into coin for Charles.
* To buy military supplies and hire a foreign army.
* To charter a convoy of ship to carry supplies and men to England.
Meanwhile, Charles was sending secret offers of alliances to every court in Europe, despite most of these courts being at war with each other due to the ongoing 30 year conflagration.

Henrietta chose Holland because:
* That was where the Orange court was.
* That was where her sister-in-law Queen Elizabeth was.
* That was where the English nobility had fled to.
* That was where the biggest jewelry market in Europe was (because Hebrews were welcome in Holland).
* The place was awash in wealth from the Dutch Banks, Stock Markets, and the India Companies.
* She did not trust Cardinal Richelieu who was running France on behalf of her brother.

18. Was Henrietta's invasion carried to Bridlington by the Dutch Navy?
No and yes. The invading army and the supplies were carried on chartered Dutch cargo ships. Those ships were escorted by the Dutch Navy under Admiral Maarten Tromp. There were seven cargo ships and eight navy ships, so it was a formidable convoy. That Dutch treachery was the beginning of a long slow decay of the trust that the English people had in their long time allies, the Dutch republics. This decay spawned the First Anglo Dutch War of 1652-54 which was mostly an ongoing series of sea battles between fleets under Admiral Tromp and under Admiral Robert Blake. Blake won the last of these battles when Tromp was killed.

19. Where was Henrietta when the English fleet was bombarding Bridlington?
According to Henrietta's letters to Charles, when the bombardment began she was sleeping in a large house near to Bridlington pier. The house was targeted so she fled through the streets, eventually taking cover in the river ditch. A nearby sergeant was hit by shot. The bombardment lasted about two hours. Royalist apologists tell the story of her courageously going into a wrecked building to save a dog. It is quite believable that she would carry a dog to safety rather than a child, because she was of the same cut of female nobility who in the 1800's forbade the use of dogs for pulling carts in coal mines fully twenty years before they forbade the use of children under ten from pulling those same carts.

20. Was John Hotham, Parliament's governor of Kingston-upon-Hull, in negotiations with Henrietta to turn Kingston over to the king's forces?
According to Henrietta's letters to Charles, yes she was. Parliament removed Hotham from the governorship, but only after they had proof of his double dealings. Within a period of twelve months, Hotham was wanted for treason by both sides. He and his son John Jr were both hung.

21. Was Charles being two-faced in his dealings with the Dutch/French and the Austrian/Spanish alliances?
Yes, but this was nothing new. He had been doing this ever since 1628 after his wife's popish advisors paid John Felton to assassinate his closest advisor, the Duke of Buckingham. The worst instance was in 1639 after Dutch Admiral Tromp had destroyed the Spanish/Portuguese Armada. The armada was carrying troops from Spain to Dunkirk to bolster the Spanish army so that the Spanish Netherlands would not fall to the Dutch/French alliance. The Spanish troops fled from the ruined ships onto English shores, but instead of returning them to Spain, Charles had them transported to Dunkirk on English ships. Like most kings, his politics was all about what was good for his extended family rather than what was good for the kingdom or his subjects.

The same could be said of Fredrick, the Prince of Orange and protector of the Protestant faith. Had he supported England's Presbyterian Parliament rather than the Catholic Queen Henrietta, the Civil War would have been over in the winter of 1642/43, and England would have become either a constitutional monarchy or a republic. Either way they would have allied themselves to the Dutch republics, and that would have brought the vicious continental wars to an early end. Republics would have sprung up everywhere, millions of lives would have been saved, and the history of the world would have been very, very different. For instance, because English Royalists would have been exiled to the American colonies rather than English republicans, today the UK and Canada would be republics and the USA a kingdom.

THE END of Invasion Appendices
Be sure to watch for more adventures of The Pistoleer coming soon.

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The Pistoleer - Invasion by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-15