‘For King and Country’

Abstract

There is a story, very popular in recent decades, of a farmer on Marston Moor, who was working in a field in July 1644, when the armies arrived to fight the biggest battle of the English Civil War. On being told that the quarrel was between king and parliament, he replied ‘What, has they two fallen out again?’ Unfortunately, the incident is not recorded in any contemporary source. The Civil War was just not that sort of war. For almost two years our farmer would have had to send money and supplies to a garrison at York, seven miles away. Soldiers would continually have crossed his lands. For the past two months he would have been forced to give money and food to a huge army besieging York. His horses would probably have been taken too, and he would have been lucky if his cottage had not been plundered bare. This was, in brief, not a conflict that anybody could either not know about or could ignore. In fact, it was because the people were dragged reluctantly into it and loathed it, that it was eventually halted.