Brampton Historical Society welcomed Stuart Orme, the curator of the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon, for his talk entitled 'The World Turned Upside Down – The Experience of the British Civil Wars', writes David Wastell.
Few living in Brampton and the surrounds could fail to appreciate that Oliver Cromwell was a 'local', but Stuart’s talk explained the background to how the Lord Protector became just that.
From a summary of how Civil War occurred to the impact of the war on everyday people, Stuart had his audience gripped from the outset.
The Civil War is something we are all familiar with, but I don’t think any of us had truly understood the impact of the war on all aspects of society, with village pitted against village and family against family – I, for one, had not realised that Hemingford Abbots was on a different side to Hemingford Grey, or that Oliver Cromwell’s uncle had been a royalist.
As Stuart highlighted, the mists of time has made us think of the Civil War with a romanticism, and not truly appreciate the impact and horror on everyday living – not only the number of casualties (proportionally more than either of the world wars) from both fighting and army living, including army fever that followed the camps.
This fever was likely to be malaria due to the undrained fens, but the impact on the general population with harvests not gathered in and taxes imposed to raise funds (often from both sides of the conflict as towns and villages were taken over by either side at various times) and that this was not just an English Civil War, but affected those in Scotland and Ireland.
And that conflict can foster the growth of new philosophies and changes to the order of society. These included ideas of equality of man (not woman!) with reference to the idea that all men should be entitled to a vote for the first time.
There was also the rise of personal religious thoughts compared to the organisation of the formal churches, and the increased role of women as they took on the roles men who were fighting.
The group's next meeting is on September 25 and the talk is entitled ‘The House of Spies’ and will be given by Roger Leivers.
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