page_title: History of Birmingham
section_title: Politics, religion and civil war
hierarchical_section_title: History of Birmingham / Tudor and Stuart Birmingham, 1485–1680 / Politics, religion and civil war
caption_attribution_description: Aston Hall 1
context_page_description: Birmingham has seen 1400 years of growth, during which time it has evolved from a small 7th century Anglo Saxon hamlet on the edge of the Forest of Arden at the fringe of early Mercia to become a major city. A combination of immigration, innovation and civic pride helped to bring about major social and economic reforms and to create the Industrial Revolution, inspiring the growth of similar cities across the world.
  The last 200 years have seen Birmingham rise from market town into the fastest-growing city of the 19th century, spurred on by a combination of civic investment, scientific achievement, commercial innovation and by a steady influx of migrant workers into its suburbs. By the 20th century Birmingham had become the metropolitan hub of the United Kingdom's manufacturing and automotive industries, having earned itself a reputation first as a city of canals, then of cars, and most recently as a major European convention and shopping destination.
  By the beginning of the 21st century, Birmingham lay at the heart of a major post-industrial metropolis surrounded by significant educational, manufacturing, shopping, sporting and conferencing facilities.
context_section_description: By the early 17th century Birmingham's booming economy, dominated by the self-made merchants and manufacturers of the new metal trades rather than traditional landed interests; its expanding population and high degree of social mobility; and the almost complete absence from the area of a resident aristocracy; had seen it develop a new form of social structure very different from that of more traditional towns and rural areas: relationships were based more around pragmatic commercial linkages than the rigid paternalism and deference of feudal society, and the town was widely seen as one where loyalty to the traditional hierarchies of the established church and aristocracy was weak. The first signs of Birmingham's growing political self-consciousness can be seen from the 1630s, when a series of puritan lectureships provided a focus for questioning the doctrines and structures of the Church of England and had a widespread influence throughout surrounding counties. A 1640 puritan-inspired petition raised by the townspeople against the local Justice of the Peace Sir Thomas Holte provides the first evidence of conflict with the country gentlemen who dominated local government.
  The outbreak of the English Civil Wars in 1642 saw Birmingham emerge as a symbol of puritan and Parliamentarian radicalism, with the Royalist Earl of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England condemning the town as being "of as great fame for hearty, wilful, affected dis-loyalty to the king, as any place in England". The arrival of 400 armed men from Birmingham was decisive in securing Coventry's refusal to admit Charles I in August 1642, which established Warwickshire as a Parliamentarian stronghold. The march of the King and his army south from Shrewsbury in the days leading up to the Battle of Edge Hill in October 1642 met strong local resistance, with troops headed by Prince Rupert of the Rhine and the Earl of Derby being ambushed by local trainbands in Moseley and King's Norton, and the King's baggage train attacked by Birmingham townspeople and his personal possessions plundered and transported to Warwick Castle while the King stayed with the Royalist Sir Thomas Holte at Aston Hall. The strategic importance of Birmingham's metal trades was also significant: one report suggested that the town's main mill had manufactured 15,000 swords solely for the use of Parliamentarian forces.
  Royalist revenge was exacted on Easter Monday, 3 April 1643, when Prince Rupert returned to Birmingham with 1,200 cavalry, 700 footsoldiers and 4 guns. Twice repulsed by the small force of 200 defenders behind hastily erected earthworks, the Royalist cavalry outflanked the defences and overran the town in the Battle of Birmingham, before burning 80 houses and leaving behind the naked corpses of fifteen townspeople. Although the Royalist victory was militarily insignificant, and came at the expense of the death of the Earl of Denbigh, the resistance of a largely civilian force against the royalist cavalry, and the subsequent sack of the town, presented the Roundheads with a major propaganda boost that was eagerly exploited by a series of widely circulated pamphlets.
  During the later years of the Civil War the subversive potential of Birmingham's manufacturing-based society was personified by the local parliamentarian colonel John "Tinker" Fox, who recruited a garrison of 200 men from the Birmingham area and occupied Edgbaston Hall from 1643. From there he attacked and removed the Royalist garrison from nearby Aston Hall, established control over the countryside leading out to Royalist Worcestershire, and launched a series of audacious raids as far afield as Bewdley. Highly active, and operating largely independently of the parliamentarian hierarchy, to Royalists Fox came to symbolise a dangerous and uncontrolled overturning of the established order, with his background in the Birmingham metal trades seeing him caricatured as a tinker. By 1649 his national notoriety was such that he was widely rumoured to have been Charles I's executioner.
caption: Aston Hall, built in 1635 by the Royalist Sir Thomas Holte, still bears scars from its attack by local Parliamentarians in 1643.
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