The Unknown Warrior (23 page)

Some of the strongest buildings of the Civil War period were churches and this made them suitable not simply for religious use, but also for use as fortified centres and prisons. St Mary's Church at Painswick, Gloucestershire, is a case in point. The Parliamentarian governor of Gloucester, Colonel Massey, established an outpost in this town, but, in March 1644, his troops were all forced into the church after attack. The doors of the church were fired on and grenades were thrown resulting in many casualties and the capture of those within. The church then changed roles from place of shelter to place of imprisonment for the Parliamentarians. One of those imprisoned, Richard Foot, left his name carved in the church in association with a quote from Spenser's
Faerie Queene
, ‘Be bold, be bold, but not too bold' (Wroughton, 1999: 212). Huge numbers of people were taken prisoner during the Civil War – Carlton (1991: 18) has calculated the numbers as being 34,393 Parliamentarians and 83,041 Royalist captives, a total of 117,434 – a figure greater than his estimate of 84,378 fatalities.

An inscription carved by a prisoner of the English Civil War is present in the dungeon of Pontefract Castle (see page 119), where the legend ‘John Grant 1648' is carved onto the walls. His name appears three times scratched into the sandstone during a five-month incarceration – this being the same man who, from letters written between the two sides, appears to have requested a visitor's pass for his wife (Bostwick and Roberts, 2002: 296).

It wasn't only the opponent's forces that were locked away when captured; for discipline to be maintained, it was necessary to clamp down harshly on any dissent within. The formation of the New Model Army revolutionised the fortunes of Parliament in the Civil War. There was a large tranche of radicalism in the ranks – with political and religious pamphlets to the fore, reinforced by the orations of preachers. One such radical sect, the Levellers, called for political reform, for greatly increased enfranchisement to permeate Britain as a result of Parliament's victory. This was more than the leaders of the army, including Cromwell, were willing to tolerate and the Levellers were suppressed. Not only were several members of the sect shot at Gloucester Green in Oxford, but, at nearby Burford, Cromwell captured some 340 members and imprisoned them in the church. One prisoner, Anthony Sedley, carved his name on the font: ‘Anthony Sedley Prisner 1649'. Sedley's fate is not known, but three leaders of the insurrection were shot against the wall of the church.

MEMORIALS AND BURIALS

Soldiers from this period were afforded memorials in churches, too. For example, the stained-glass windows at Middleton Church, near Manchester, depict sixteen archers who fought alongside Sir Ralph Assheton at the Battle of Flodden (C. Bartlett, 2002: 62–3). English Civil War soldiers are also depicted in the church window at Farndon, Cheshire – a Royalist memorial. Unknown pikemen and musketeers are both depicted.

Memorials were also placed on the sites of conflict to commemorate the unknown soldiers who had died. The 1642 battlefield of Edgehill – the first major battle of the Civil War – was a case in point (it is now Ministry of Defence land).

As with the victims of Visby (see
Chapter 4
), burial was not prompt in every case. Some of the bodies from the mass grave of the 1520 Battle of Uppsala, Sweden, were left exposed for some time before burial. Although the skeletal material showed relatively few teeth marks of scavengers, the bones were largely disarticulated. Perhaps this corroborates a note from the Swedish Archbishop Trolle of Uppsala, allied to the Danish king, to the effect that the bodies of fallen men were ‘left to dogs and ravens in bogs' (Kjellström, 2005: 45).

There are records for burials in the seventeenth century being given to those killed in battle by later societies, long after the actual event. Claverton Church, near Bath, records the burial within its grounds of victims of the 1643 Battle of Lansdown. These were individual soldiers who were discovered, supposedly in their armour, in the nineteenth century and reburied with Christian dignity. Other early excavations found mass burials, which supposedly related to Civil War actions, but left little by way of record and thus we cannot conclude much from the results of the work – an example being the possible soldiers' bodies from the siege of Leicester (for discussion of earlier finds, see Courtney and Courtney, 1992: 69).

The work at Abingdon revealed the presence of an English Civil War period cemetery, which contained around 500 burials, 250 of which were excavated. Of particular interest was the alignment of these graves: north–south. This seems to have been a deliberate attempt to avoid the more Catholic east–west alignment and would thus sit well with the mid-seventeenth century, with its more Puritan outlook. Finds from the graves included a silver penny of Charles I, Scottish silver shillings of Charles I or James VI, and a coffin plate of 1650–75 (T. Allen, 1990: 27). What was especially intriguing about this cemetery was the presence of the mass grave of possible Civil War prisoners (see page 125). Perhaps a ‘dignified' burial was not deemed the right of a captured opponent.

THE FALLEN

Many of the crew, mariners and archers alike, perished with the rapid sinking of Henry VIII's flagship the
Mary Rose
on 19 July 1545. Following the excavation and recovery of the ship, Anne Stirland examined the human bones that formed an element of the archaeological deposit. She found that a total of ninety-two relatively complete skeletons were present and that the skeletal assemblage represented a minimum number of 179 individuals, all male (Stirland, 2000: 74–5). The heights of these men ranged from 159 to 180cm with an average of 171cm, the majority being between 18 and 30 years of age (
ibid.
: 79–80).

Stirland attempted to discern differences in skeletal traits that might reveal whether particular skeletons belonged, in fact, to the infantrymen on board – the archers. The shoulder blades were particularly important in this research. Ten of the fifty-two complete pairs of shoulder blades displayed a condition called ‘os acromiale' – a non-fused epiphysis of this bone. Stirland believed that the most likely cause of this trait was the continuous use in practice and in combat of the longbow; after all: ‘Every boy aged from 7 to 17 had to be provided with a bow and two arrows by his father and, after 17, had to provide a bow and four arrows for himself. Practice butts were also supplied in every town' (
ibid.
: 122). Such long-term use of a weapon that puts considerable strain on the body seems to have affected the shoulders of certain men. Also, many of these skeletons had more developed thigh and buttock muscles, something one would also expect for bowmen (
ibid.
: 134). One of these men was finally buried as an ‘Unknown Mariner' in Portsmouth Cathedral, 1984.

In 2001, archaeological work on the slopes of Uppsala Castle in Sweden unearthed a mass grave. The bones were radiocarbon dated to 1440–1650, at the 95 per cent probability level, and this, along with their context and evident trauma, resulted in them being related to the Battle of Good Friday in 1520. On a cold and snowy 6 April 1520, Swedish troops attacked Danish forces stationed in Uppsala. As at Towton (see
Chapter 4
), the weather had made the use of early models of firearms problematic. Swedish forces were composed of groups of organised peasants, who found themselves up against paid mercenaries from Germany, France and Scotland (Kjellström, 2005: 24). Fortunes changed throughout the day, but early successes for the Swedish troops soon ended and the Danish forces prevailed. Overall losses for the battle were said to be over 4,000.

The grave found in 2001 contained the bodies of at least sixty comparatively tall men, aged between 25 and 34 years, one of whom had been decapitated. Trauma patterns on the skulls – the location of most of the wounds – seem to indicate that these men were trying to flee when they were cut down; there were few defensive wounds to their front or hands, while wounds to their posteriors, and to both sides of the head, were common (
ibid.
: 46).

As with so many of the combatants featured in this book, the rank and file of defeated armies of the Civil War period were probably buried in mass graves, or, in some cases, were buried where they fell. Despite this, burial rites were seemingly well observed, if the writings of the period are to be believed (Harrington, 2004: 109). Although multiple burials of this period have been found at places such as Leicester, Tantallon Castle in East Lothian, and Taunton, it is not fully possible to link them directly with the Civil War, although this explanation remains a distinct possibility (
ibid.
: 108–9). There are records of the discovery of Civil War burials throughout England, such as that of a number of Royalist skeletons, some of which retained traces of clothing, on the Warwickshire Sites and Monuments Record (
SMR
).

Castles also have information relating to those who fought in the wars of the seventeenth century. Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire held the remains of men probably killed in the siege. Six graves from this period have been found – possibly part of the Royalist garrison – with one skeleton, Grave 043, displaying a clean unhealed blade-weapon wound to the frontal bone (Roberts, 2002). Sandal Castle, also in Yorkshire, yielded the remains of nine men from the Civil War levels, all of whom had been deliberately buried – one had been in a coffin (perhaps Major Ward) and the green stains on some of the bones of the other men indicated the presence of a now-corroded shroud pin. These men ranged from 16 to 40 years of age and had an average height of 169cm. Two men were between 16 and 18 years old, and seven between 20 and 40 years. One of the younger men had suffered a severe soft tissue injury to his right hip. This tear had resulted in ossification of the wound (Manchester, 1983a: 55, plate 18).

UNKNOWN WARRIOR 9

Five of the men buried at Sandal Castle displayed signs of trauma; Graves 535, 536 and 541 had small irregular pieces of ferrous metal on the floor of the grave. In Grave 536 this was near the left loin of the skeleton, in 541 the metal was present below the right innominate/right loin, and in 535 below the left innominate. ‘It is probable that this metal is from one or more of the mortars which exploded within the castle during the siege … [this] metal may have been responsible for death, either immediately due to haemorrhage from soft tissue injury to spleen, liver or kidneys; or subsequently due to consequential wound sepsis' (Manchester, 1983b: 337).

Burial 535 had serious congenital abnormalities that Manchester believed might have precluded him from active combat duties due to the flattening of the femur heads as a result of bilateral congenital acetabular dysplasia. This would have caused No. 535 to have had the unusual gait which is associated with this degenerative joint disease and he would have been in some pain. Manchester postulated that this illness would have meant it was more likely that theman performed domestic duties within the castle, or, perhaps, might have been the blacksmith as he was tall and powerfully built (
ibid.
: 337). That he had a healed forearm or ‘parry' fracture might be indicative of the kick of a horse.

On the other hand, a further wound suffered by this man in conjunction with his death in the siege, possibly as a result of mortar fire, and his powerful stature might indicate that he performed some martial role, thus warranting his inclusion as one of our ‘unknown warriors'. He had suffered a 30mm-long linear injury to the calvarium of the left frontal bone, perhaps the result of ante-mortem aggression. With this man, his frontal bone was abnormally thin and a straight blow would probably have caused more damage: ‘the superficial nature of the injury may in fact indicate a cutting wound, or possibly a blow the force of which was impeded by head protection of some kind' (Manchester, 1983b). The man may also have been wearing some form of helmet.

UNKNOWN WARRIOR 10

A postern gate was located on the eastern side of the citadel at Basing House in Hampshire. As we have seen, this building, held by the Royalists, was besieged and taken by overwhelmingly superior Parliamentary forces in 1645 – a decisive year of the Civil War. Archaeological work to a gully inside this gate in 1991 produced a fascinating discovery within the gully's fills: a human skull and two cervical vertebrae and fragments of a third were recovered (see Colour Plate 11). Although some of the right side of the head was missing, the majority was intact and enabled investigators to make several observations. The head was almost certainly male and probably of someone 18–25 years of age (judging from the attrition of the teeth). The man suffered from quite severe dental pain, and the wear on the teeth suggested that this led to him favouring the use of the left side of his mouth to avoid having to use his right teeth. Allen and Anderson (1999: 99–100) suggested that the high levels of dental caries in a young individual might indicate the increased carbohydrate consumption of post-medieval populations. The skull also indicated that the young man suffered from iron deficiency anaemia.

The skull itself had a severe wound to its top – a 40mm-long lesion caused by a blade weapon. Although there is no evidence for this wound healing, it would not have been enough to have caused death, although blood loss could have been severe. The authors believed that the most likely scenario was that the man may have been rendered unconscious by this blow, and was then decapitated – hence the presence of only three vertebrae (
ibid.
: 100).