The English Revolution of the mid 17th Century gave rise to many factions within. Levellers, Ranters, Diggers to name a few. Coming in early form also was a group even a movement with beginnings of a view that stable governance less state interference and seeing peace within state as profitable, achievable and sustainable. Desire for war was seen by now among many as unnatural and an intrusion on locality by the state imposed upon them, peace was seen as desirable and more beneficial to local communities.
A peaceable army, a neutralist approach or localism though association, we see adopted at the beginnings of the English Revolution in 1642 by many local counties, 22 in all with pacts to demilitarise the inhabitants within. These groups of mid gentry, priests, yeomen, keepers of the peace and local folk were to be called Clubmen The Clubmen by 1645 were at their most prominent. Objections to what was described as “a war most horrid and unjust” and “altogether swallowed up in the arbitrary power of the sword”. The Clubmen by this time, were fast becoming a focus for both Parliamentarian and Royalists armies. Loyalties in general among this growing body of Clubmen were across the counties neutralist in nature. Each in all dealing with garrisons of troops from both sides being quartered in or passing through. What they all had in common and what was to become one of their banner motto’s “If you offer to plunder or steal our cattle, be assured we will bid you battle”. This experience, the continuing plundering of their goods, land and having their lives effected by imposing of sums of money, combined with the loss of order from undisciplined troops, the Clubmen’s desires for a peace between King and Parliament had by 1645 come to a head.
The Dorset Clubmen in written petitions and declarations and at public gatherings around the county called for an ending to the war.
Clubmen in Dorset in trying to bring the warring armies to an agreement came in a declaration titled ” The Desires and Resolutions” in May, and read out by a Thomas Young at Badbury Rings to a gathering of 4000. The Clubmen through the written document made clear their neutrality and called for “an end to this civil and unnatural war within the Kingdom”, ” foreseeing that famine and utter desolation will immediately fall upon our wives and children”.
The declaration follows with a list of a defense of their own lives, fortunes, laws, liberties and properties against all plunderers and all other unlawful violence whatsoever.
As this shows, the keeping of the peace and having the right to police as such their own localities against garrisons based and passing through soldiers has a conflict of what is desired of local against the actions of state upon those at its heart. A reversal as such with the state of top down political stability now seen as anarchical and bottom up localities filling the void with local governance.
Wearing of the white ribbon a symbol of the Clubmen’s neutrality and the desire to get the two warring parties to return to what was known as “our ancient laws and liberties” through agreement is shown again later with the Dorset proposals sent to both Parliament and King in The Humble Petition Of The Habitants Of The County Of Dorset in July 1645.
“Calling for his Majesty and the two houses of Parliament to continue once again to be restored to the blessing of peace by a happy accommodation of their present differences without further effusion of christian blood”.
The petition is signed off as “by a thousand of your majesty’s loyal subjects of the county not in the armies of either parties in the present wars.
The Clubmen’s fortunes came to a violent ending with the arrests of their leaders in Shaftesbury and a bloody battle on Hambledon Hill where they met the New Model Army in the form of Cromwell’s dragoons.
Seeing the Clubmen as either for Parliament or with Royalist sympathies and hedging their bets where their interests lay may be what was being forced upon them as the war drew on and in some cases where previous alliances were held. Regular payments to what were the beginnings of a professional army in the form of the New Model Army produced disciplined soldiers and reduced plundering, to the cost of the Kings Army in keeping the provinces on side. The Clubmen and as the Dorset declarations reflect, are a push for a resolution to the war and with self and property at threat having the right to defend themselves.
The Clubmen as a political public tried to win the peace thorough settlement and in keeping with locality knew where their power lay.
Haydn Wheeler
