Propaganda e crítica social nas cronologias dos almanaques astrológicos durante a Guerra Civil inglesa no século XVII
This article is part of an extensive investigation carried out concerning the use of astrological almanacs during the English Civil War in the 17th century as a medium for propaganda and social criticism. During that conflict there were astrologers who were partisans of the Parliament, such as John Booker, and other who supported the King, such as George Wharton. This work analyses some of those publications, showing that the political commitment of the authors was noticeable in an explicit form (and sometimes in an indirect way) in those almanacs.
The Royalist War Effort
IN previous years a certain anecdote has received frequent quotation in works upon the Civil War. It concerns a husbandman at Marston Moor, who was ploughing his fields when the rival armies drew up there to fight the biggest battle of the war. On hearing that the conflict was produced by a quarrel between King and Parliament he replied ‘What, has they two fallen out again?’ It is time that this engaging character vanished from the pages of history. Not merely does the incident not occur in any contemporary source, but it is inherently ridiculous. The land concerned lies a few miles from York, site of a Royalist garrison to which such a farmer would have been forced to contribute money for the previous two years. For the past three months it had been besieged by an army of nearly 30,000 men, some of whom would certainly have requisitioned supplies from the hero of the story. His ignorance is as incredible as the flippancy with which he is said to have greeted the news of the fratricidal conflict between the two traditional guardians of the Common Weal. In place of this happy portrait of rural insouciance, successive local studies are drawing a picture of the Civil War as a terrible and protracted conflict which imposed unprecedented burdens upon the local community.
THE WORCESTERSHIRE CLUBMEN IN THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR
AbstractThe purpose of this essay is to make a detailed examination of one of the so-called ‘Clubman’ movements of the Great Civil War. These movements, associations of countrymen formed to resist the depredations of an unruly soldiery, have been detected in Worcestershire, Shropshire and Herefordshire in early 1645, and in Worcestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon, Berkshire, Sussex, Hampshire and South Wales later in the same year. Although long known to historians, they have only recently attracted their close attention, as part of the new interest in the provincial history of the Civil War. Within the last few years they have been discussed at length by D. Underdown in his study of Somerset and J.S. Morrill in his general work upon the Great Rebellion and have been made the subject of a thesis by G.J. Lynch which is now considered the standard work upon them. Mr Lynch and Dr Morrill differ from Professor Underdown in stressing the positive and clearsighted aspects of the Clubman movements, bu...