The Newark 1646 Group

Against all odds - the final siege of Newark, 1646

Today, we sometimes see the British Civil Wars—British, because Scots [especially here at Newark] Welsh and indeed Irish people were afflicted as well as English—as a piece of distant theatre, acted by dashing wrong but romantic Cavaliers and dour, efficient, right but repulsive Roundheads. Yet it has been estimated that, in proportion to the population of the time, MORE British people were killed in, or died as a result of, the civil wars than died in the first and second World Wars put together.

So here in Newark, where so many fought and died, and especially here where victims of the fighting are remembered, we should think for a moment of the horrible realities of the war, even more horrible in that it was fought between men , and suffered by women and children, of the same nation, the same speech, perhaps even the same community or the same family. It was, in fact, a war without an enemy…as the Parliamentarian Sir William Waller wrote to his Royalist friend and enemy Sir Ralph Hopton after the Battle of Chewton Mendip in 1643 [where one of my own family was killed]

‘That great God which is the searcher of my heart knows with what a sad sense I go upon this service, and with what a perfect hatred I detest this war without an enemy…The God of peace in his good time send us peace, and in the meantime fit us to receive it. We are both upon the stage, and must act those parts that are assigned us in this tragedy. Let us do it in the way of honour and without personal animosities.

Kipling, who understood the war so well though he wrote much later, expressed it even more starkly, describing the feelings of the troops waiting to go into battle.

…the raw astonished ranks stand fast

To slay or to be slain

By the men they knew in the kindly past

That never shall come again

By the men they met at dance or chase

In the tavern or the hall

At the justice-bench or the market place

At the cudgel-play or brawl

Of their own blood and speech and race

Comrades or neighbours all

More bitter than death this day must prove

Whichever way it go

For the brothers of the maids we love

Make ready to lay low

Their sisters’ sweethearts, as we move

Against our dearest foe.

No wonder Andrew Marvell, writing at the time, yearned as so many must have done for the return of peace: standing in a moment of tranquility in Sir Thomas Fairfax’s garden at Nun Appleton, even there he was reminded of war

See how the flowers, as at parade

Under their colours stand arrayed

Each regiment in order grows

Those of the tulip, pink and rose

And yearned for peace

Unhappy! Shall we never more

That sweet militia restore

When gardens only had their towers

And all the garrisons were flowers…

Thankfully, the siege we are commemorating this weekend did in fact presage the ending of the war, at least in this part of the country. And as we remember with honour and sadness those who died here and throughout the nation in the civil war, let us each resolve to do all that we can to ensure that nothing like it, no violence or enmity between those who are called British, whatever their origin, race or religion, ever afflicts our country again..

Charles' eloquent speech was followed by Tony Barton's exquisite and poignant fanfare, his own composition based on the Last Post and beautifully played on his replica C17th cavalry trumpet.

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5 May 2006