John Poyer, the Civil Wars in Pembrokeshire and the British Revolutions

Lloyd Bowen

Description

This is the first book-length treatment of the ‘turncoat’ John Poyer, the man who initiated the Second Civil War through his rebellion in south Wales in 1648. The volume charts Poyer’s rise from a humble glover in Pembroke to become parliament’s most significant supporter in Wales during the First Civil War (1642–6), and argues that he was a more complex and significant individual than most commentators have realised. Poyer’s involvement in the poisonous factional politics of the post-war period (1646–8) is examined, and newly discovered material demonstrates how his career offers fresh insights into the relationship between national and local politics in the 1640s, the use of print and publicity by provincial interest groups, and the importance of local factionalism in understanding the course of the civil war in south Wales. The volume also offers a substantial analysis of Poyer’s posthumous reputation after his execution by firing squad in April 1649.

Maps
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1: The Setting: John Poyer and Early Stuart Pembrokeshire, c.1606–1640
Chapter 2: The Irish Crisis and the Coming of Civil War, 1640–42
Chapter 3: Allies and Enemies: Poyer and Pembroke during the First Civil War
Chapter 4: The Struggle for Supremacy: Poyer and Post-War Politics, 1646–47
Chapter 5: The Road to Rebellion, August 1647–March 1648
Chapter 6: Poyer, Powell and the Prince, March–April 1648
Chapter 7: The Siege of Pembroke, May–July 1648
Chapter 8: Revenge and Revolution: Poyer, Print and Parliamentary Justice, August 1648–April 1649
Chapter 9: Afterlives
Appendix: Timeline of the Civil Wars in Pembrokeshire

Sujets

• Histoire
• Great Britain
• History
• Wales
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786836564
• Langue: English

Extrait

JOHN POYER
JOHN POYER
the Civil Wars in Pembrokeshire and the British Revolutions
LLOYD BOWEN
© Lloyd Bowen, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78683-654-0
eISBN 978-1-78683-656-4
The right of Lloyd Bowen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover image: John Speed, ‘Penbroke’ (detail from Penbrokshyre described ...), engraving by Jodocus Hondius in The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain (1611); © Album/Alamy Stock Photo.
Cover design: Olwen Fowler
For Nicki, Tal and Osian, and in memory of my mother and father
‘I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying’. Woody Allen
Contents
Map
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1 The Setting: John Poyer and Early Stuart Pembrokeshire, c .1606–1640
Chapter 2 The Irish Crisis and the Coming of Civil War, 1640–1642
Chapter 3 Allies and Enemies: Poyer and Pembroke during the First Civil War
Chapter 4 The Struggle for Supremacy: Poyer and Post-War Politics, 1646–1647
Chapter 5 The Road to Rebellion, August 1647–March 1648 105
Chapter 6 Poyer, Powell and the Prince, March–April 1648
Chapter 7 The Siege of Pembroke, May–July 1648
Chapter 8 Revenge and Revolution: Poyer, Print and Parliamentary Justice, August 1648–April 1649
Chapter 9 Afterlives
Appendix: Timeline of the Civil Wars in Pembrokeshire
Notes
Bibliography
Map

Adapted with permission from D. W. Howell (ed.), An Historical Atlas of Pembrokeshire (Pembrokeshire County History, 5, 2019).
Abbreviations
BL British Library, London
Bodl. Lib. Bodleian Library, Oxford
CJ Journals of the House of Commons
HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports
Leach, Pembrokeshire A. L. Leach, The History of the Civil War (1642 – 1649) in Pembrokeshire and on its Borders (London, 1937)
LJ Journals of the House of Lords
NLW National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
Pembs. Co. Hist . Brian Howells (ed.), Pembrokeshire County History Volume III: Early Modern Pembrokeshire, 1536–1815 (Haverfordwest, 1987)
PJLP Wilson H. Coates, Anne Steele Young and Vernon F. Snow (eds), The Private Journals of the Long Parliament (3 vols, New Haven and London, 1982–92)
TNA The National Archives, Kew
Whitelocke, Memorials Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of the English Affairs (4 vols, Oxford, 1853)
Worc. Coll. Worcester College, Oxford
WWHR West Wales Historical Records
Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to the staff of the libraries and archives who have helped me research this volume. My thanks to the ever professional and efficient staff at The National Archives, The National Library of Wales, Lambeth Palace Library and the Bodleian Library. Particular thanks are due to Mark Bainbridge of Worcester College Library in Oxford who assisted me in accessing the Clarke papers and answered my many enquiries with speedy good grace. James Kirwan and Sandy Paul of Trinity College, Cambridge, were also very helpful in providing me with a copy of a unique Poyer text at lightning speed.
I am very lucky in being part of a supportive academic community in the Department of History at Cardiff University. My colleagues have sustained my spirits and provided a stimulating environment in which to think about and discuss the British Civil Wars despite the many challenges our Department faces. Particular thanks are due to Mark Williams and Keir Waddington for their unstinting support and assistance. The book was shaped by conversations with Stephanie Ward who did not fall asleep when discussing something other than misery in the 1930s, and I am very grateful for her encouragement. David Doddington was always good for the LOLs.
The research for this volume arose out of a conference on the memory of the civil wars I organised with Mark Stoyle. Mark’s encouragement, enthusiasm, historical acuity and practical advice and assistance have been invaluable in thinking about and writing this volume. His has been the most important intellectual stimulus for this work, and I am enormously grateful for his wonderful good humour, support and friendship. Andy Hopper, Ismini Pells and David Appleby are splendid colleagues on our AHRC project investigating civil war petitions, and I am most appreciative of their stimulating company and assistance.
The staff at the University of Wales Press have been the model of efficient support and I am thankful for their diligent professionalism. Llion Wigley has been impressively patient with the various iterations of this project. He did not panic when the initial ‘small pamphlet’ became something rather different, and I am very appreciative of his help.
My friends have been tiresomely but predictably absent in the researching and writing of this book. Dar remains a slave to the Caribbean all-inclusive, while Dark Skies’ fixation with ocelot breeding and Exchange and Mart means he is rarely available for comment. Dids went to the spectacular lengths of dying so he would not have to read this book; chwarae teg .
My family has been an inexhaustible source of support, humour and distraction. I am so very grateful to my wife Nicki and our sons Taliesin and Osian for helping me research and write this book. One of this triumvirate has tremendous patience and generosity, which have been so important for me. My boys are just remarkable, and their plans for world-domination through Poyer studies, or Juan Sweener, remain viable. I am very sorry my parents did not live to see this book published, but they contributed to it as much as anyone, so thank you mam and dad.
Preface
M ost books examining the British civil wars ( c .1642–51) have an entry in their index: ‘Poyer, John’. It usually is only a single entry, however, denoting a brief mention of John Poyer’s role in an insurrection against parliamentary rule in 1648. Poyer rebelled against the parliament which had been victorious in the first civil war (1642–6) and his actions helped to initiate a series of uprisings and provincial revolts which, along with the invasion of the Scottish Covenanters in the summer of 1648, are collectively known as ‘The Second Civil War’. His rebellion is sufficient to justify his inclusion in such texts, but this book’s aim is to provide a richer context for, and more detailed analysis of, his revolt, and also to suggest that Poyer had a fascinating history before April 1648 which not only repays deeper enquiry, but which can also help us better understand his motivations and actions during that tumultuous spring and summer.
John Poyer’s was a fascinating life. He was essentially a nobody; born into an obscure family in a run-down town ‘in a nooke of a little county’, as one contemporary put it, on the western periphery of the British mainland. 1 Yet he became a leading light of the parliamentarian war effort in this part of the country in the early 1640s and held out as mayor in his bastion of Pembroke as the royalist tide swept up to the town’s walls. Poyer was a charismatic and capable individual who managed to mobilise the local population behind him in some desperate times. His early declaration for parliament should have left him in an enviable position after the king’s defeat in 1646. Many parliamentarians were rewarded with offices and positions of local power as the new order needed trusted servants to implement its policies in the provinces. This was not to be Poyer’s fate, however. Although he remained governor of Pembroke, he was crossed by local gentry enemies who had opposed him during the 1640s. These were men who initially supported King Charles I, but who later found their way into parliament’s camp. As one Poyer supporter put it at the time, ‘in our distresse [they] were our greatest enemies and successe onlie induced [them] to profess our frindshippe’. 2
Despite Poyer’s steadfast support of parliament, then, the aftermath of the civil war saw him effectively ‘frozen out’ of local government as his enemies rose to positions of authority through their productive friendships with powerful figures in parliament and its New Model Army. Estranged, isolated and impoverished by his wartime service, Poyer looked for support from a parliament that increasingly did not favour him. His marginalisation eventually led to outright resistance, and Poyer rebelled against parliament and the New Model Army in early 1648. He soon declared his support for the imprisoned Charles I and sought aid and assistance from the exiled Prince of Wales. This royalist revolt spread quickly through south Wales but was ruthlessly suppressed, and parliament sent down Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell to besiege Poyer and his recalcitrant royalists in Pembroke. After a long and attritional siege Poyer surrendered to parliament’s mercy in July 1648. He and two of his fellow rebels were put on trial in Whitehall shortly after King Charles I was beheaded. They were found guilty and sentenced to death, but it was decided to show mercy so that only one of their number would die. A child drew lots on their behalf, and the unlucky Poyer was given a blank piece of paper which meant his death. He was executed by firing squad in Covent Garden