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War Music
A Brief treatise of ECW Music and 'How It Was'
By Robert Giglio

During times in camp, on the march or in battle, the officers and common soldiers of the English Civil War would often lift their spirits through singing, as has happened throughout history. The Royalists sang songs mainly of a sentimental, bawdy or humorous nature, with airs and words that we find acceptable even today. The Parliamentarians are often credited with singing psalms and hymns, which was considered typical of them, but songs equal to those of the cavaliers were not unheard of.

This article will give a brief background into what each faction did sing, for entertainment, moral, and political purposes. Society members should all have a copy of the ECWSA's Songbook by now (latest version distributed at Severn), which contains numerous period (and not-so-period, but entertaining!) songs, many with tunes as well. This will be an on-going project, to add to and update the songbook.

Those Singing Cavaliers

Cavaliers have survived in popular imagination as a jolly crew, come wind or weather - "fall back, fall edge", to use their own contemporary phrase - with time to wench, dice, drink, and sing, as well as fight their more austere opponents. This picture is indeed accurate, and I am happy to say is very well recreated by our Royalist officers and soldiers (and wenches!)

A great part of their revelry was accompanied by song, and that no convivial gathering was complete without topical ballads of love and war. John Webb, who was a Parliamentarian spy, reported to his chief that ever since the Royalists had established their headquarters at Oxford, "they have made songs...in a disgraceful manner in contempt of religion and Parliament."

Cavaliers were clearly happy to toss off an impromptu chorus literally at the drop of a feathered hat! For example, when they rejected Cromwell's summons to surrender Devize in 1645, they did so by tying a set of verses to a dog's collar and sending the animal into the Parliamentarian lines. The verses went to the tune of 'I Tell Thee Jack', and began with the remarkable modern line - "Believe it, friend, we care not for you." Since many of the Devizes defenders were Welsh, the message concluded - "Her loving friend, if her minds her manners, shon up Morgan, gent."

Coincidentally, a Welshman and Devizes figure again provides the most famous musical incident of the war connected with the Royalists. The story begins with a raid on the town by the Parliamentary cavalry of Sir William Waller. They caught the cavaliers napping, and in a blistering charge slashed and pistolled their way through the streets at will. After the raid a group of Cavaliers gathered in the quarters of a Welsh captain named John Gwyn, to see what could be done. Many of these men were "reformadoes" - officers whose regiments had been so depleted that they were chiefs without Indians. Their social status made it unlikely that they would serve as common troopers, but by temperament and skill they were very much there for a bold independent stroke, and Captain John Gwyn was an ideal leader.

After two hours of heated talk it was decided to save face with an unofficial counter-attack, and twenty-seven cavaliers rode ten miles across the down to Marlborough to smash Waller's rear-guard camped unsuspectingly on the outskirts of the town. It was agreed that after swords had been drawn not a word was to be spoken, but they were to fall on, one and all, singing "a brisk lively tune."

True to plan they charged in at noon on market day, singing lustily, and to the delight of the country folk drove the roundheads through the town, before returning unscathed to Devizes with a haul of prisoners, horses, and weapons. The brisk lively tune which braced their spirits that day was not dissimilar to the Scottish air, 'Up in the morning early'. If this was the message it conveyed in those days, it surely made its point with the bewildered roundheads.

This is not the only recorded instance of singing swordsmen. When Prince Rupert's cavalry entered Birmingham on April 3rd, 1643, a parliamentarian scribe sourly commented that "they rode into the town like so many furies of bedlams, the Earl of Denbigh being in front, singing as he rode." Alas, the Earl's rejoicing was premature, because a roundhead marksman shot him out of the saddle.

Those Somber Roundheads

The references to Roundheads singing psalms and hymns are many, as there is nothing like the imminent possibility of violent death to turn soldiers' thoughts to higher things.

In Thomas Shadwell's play 'The Volunteers' (published posthumously in 1693) the old cavalier, Major-General Blunt, recalls how the Puritans "used to sing a psalm, fall in, and beat us to the devil." Soon after the return of Charles II, a Royalist poet spoke of "...the dirges that through nose, Humm'd out to damp their pagan foes. When holy Roundheads go to battle." The best evidence of all is from the pamphlets written during the war, which establishes that the Parliamentarians were constant psalm singers, both in defense and in attack.

In 1642, the cavalier James Standley, Earl of Derby, advanced his troops against Manchester, feeling that any Parliamentary activity in Lancashire was a affront to his personal dignity. Although his Cheshire levies deserted, being unwilling to follow him out of their own county, he still had sufficient troops to siege the town. For eleven weeks the Royalists continued the siege, while the Parliamentarian defenders kept up their morale with daily prayer meetings and psalm sessions on street corners, much like the modern Salvation Army. There was also a lot of religious singing in the town's taverns and inns, "Where it might not put in the head formerly", which meant that these places that were usually pulsated to more earthly rhythms, now had become the billet of God-fearing soldiers during the siege.

Before Leeds, the roundhead troops under Sir Thomas Fairfax in January, 1643, were led in song by Jonathan Schofield, minister of Crofton chapel at Halifax, in the 68th Psalm: "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered." After they had fought their way in, the battling parson called for a second verse.

Another of these muscular ministers, John Tilsley, Vicar of Deane, was with the roundheads who took Preston in February 1643. "So soon as matters were settled we sung praises to God in the streets," he wrote, and then elaborated with a minor miracle. "Sir, it was wonderful to see it; The sun brake forth and shined brightly and hot, in the time of the exercise, as if it had been midsummer," he related.

In 1643 Lord Brooke's soldiers (of his purple-coated regiment) chanted the 149th Psalm as they stormed Lichfield Close, as follows:

"Let the high praises of God be in their mouths And a two-edged sword in their hand. To bind their kings with chains, And their nobles with links of iron."

At the Second Battle of Newbury in October 1644, the Roundheads again came forward to the sound of psalms, although with little success. The Roundheads had more success at the Battle of Marston Moor the previous June, where they sang psalms in the cornfields after a preliminary bombardment, and when the day was finally won they sang again.

Yet another minister, John Vicars, describes how in the gathering gloom of night and the haze of black powder, the sound of music rang out at he Battle of Marston Moor, "...some of the regiments of the Parliament side were standing on their guard, and all or most of the riders were religiously singing psalms..." and he later adds that, "For they (the Royalists) only knew them, I say, to be the Parliament soldiers by their singing of psalms", and finally ends on a note of pious exultation, "A blessed badge and cognizance indeed." It was also Vicars who reported that when Cromwell and Verneyden charged at Winceby, on October 11th, 1643, threading their way uphill through treacherous rabbit warrens to rout twice their number of Royalist horse, they did so "singing psalms."

Probably the most famous of all psalm singing in battle occurs at Dunbar in 1650. Cromwell had allowed the Scottish General Leslie to trap him on a narrow coastal plain; the only escape was to embark on a fleet lying offshore and retreat to England. Leslie abandoned his strong position, intending to prevent the small scale Dunkirk, and Cromwell, who had "much hope in the Lord", now declared that God had delivered the Scots into his hands. A dawn attack wrecked the fine Scots Army, and as they fled, Cromwell halted his Ironsides (his regiment of horse), and bade them sing the 117th Psalm, as follows:

"Praise the Lord all ye nations, Praise him all ye people, For his merciful kindness is great towards us, And the truth of the Lord endureth forever."

At first it might seem the devotion had vanquished common sense, and a good opportunity to push home a relentless pursuit had been squandered, but the key to the story lies in one sentence, "by the time they (the Ironsides) had done their party was increasing and advancing." It was Cromwell, of course, who reputedly told his men to put their trust in God, but to keep their powder dry, and Dunbar shows him following his own advice. Helmets were doffed and thanks dutifully offered to Jehovah, Lord God of Battles, but the pause also provided a convenient opportunity for blown horses to gather second wind, for stragglers to come up, and allowed Cromwell time to think about his next move. These, in fact, were the real reasons that Cromwell elected to sing a psalm.

At Edgehill, eight years before, Cromwell had learned the military imperative of keeping his cavalry together after a successful charge. It had been apparent how Prince Rupert's failure to control his victorious horsemen had thrown away a valuable tactical advantage. Marston Moor was another battle which might have ended differently had not Goring's cavalry streamed off in joyous and pointless pursuit of the Parliamentary right wing after it routed. Psalm singing, as at Dunbar, was not only good religion, but was also sound tactics.

Another reference to psalm singing, although less glorious, occurred in September, 1642, when an officer in the army of the Earl of Essex found himself in a less than ideal night bivouac near Worcester:

"We had small comfort, for it rained hard. Out food was (hedgerow) fruit, for those who could get it; our drink, water; our beds, the earth; our canopy, the clouds. But we pulled up the hedges, pales, and gates, and made good fires. Thus we continued singing psalms until the morning."

Colonel John Hampden's Regiment of Foot sang psalms on the march, which no doubt was a custom shared with other Parliamentarian units, although no contemporary reference can be found to endorse this. However, apart from psalms, the Parliamentarians had other kinds of religious songs. In August 1642, the Roundheads descended on Canterbury in a fury of anti-Episcopal zeal, bent on an orgy of vandalism against the Cathedral. As a rule they wrecked church organs during these forays, but at Canterbury they stopped short and someone began to play 'The Zealous Soldier', but so hamfistedly that the instrument never sounded right again.

One of England's foremost composers of hymns, George Wither, was a staunch Parliamentary supporter who laid aside his pen to raise a troop of horse, and subsequently became governor of Farnham Castle in Hampshire. It seems likely that his men would have flattered their captain by singing his verses, but no mention of this is made, however.

The psalm and hymn singing of the soldiers can easily be understood if it is remembered that many of them were fighting out of genuine religious conviction, since the seventeenth century was a period when most men were believers to whom devotions came naturally. It must be noted that the Roundheads never seem to have attempted instrumental accompaniment to their singing (as the Cavaliers often did.)

Despite what has been written thus far, the Roundheads did not restrict themselves exclusively to holy music. Many of them had a liking for robust songs and cheerful instruments, which the more austere Puritans in their ranks were doubtless forced to accept. Occasionally, rowdy music became a hallmark of the Parliamentarians. For example, at Cambridge, John Barwick protested bitterly that when Roundhead troops were quartered in the colleges it was a case of "fiddlers and revels day and night."

In the early days of the Civil War, in an excess of religious fervor, a squadron of Roundhead troopers wrecked the organ of Exeter Cathedral, and amused themselves by playing unspecified airs on the organ pipes they had stolen. Then they mocked the unfortunate choir boys, crying, "We have spoiled your trade; You must go and sing 'Hot Pudding Pies'!"

The Roundheads are seen in a less callous light in Scotland soon after the Battle of Dunbar, when General Monck and his army were holding the country for Parliament. A Scotswoman, hauled before the dreary elders of her Presbyterian Kirk on a charge of rowdiness, pleaded not guilty, and sought to lay the blame on the English soldiers. They had neither raped, robbed, or rioted on her premises, but "they brought over a piper with them and did dance." In addition, when the Parliamentarian soldiers married local Scots girls, whom they did with great frequency, they liked to do so to the sound of the pipes. Clearly, they were not all psalm-droning Puritans with an antipathy to any other sort of music.

In conclusion, it seems that while the Society's camp is indeed bawdy, loud, and with many songs at night, it is just one aspect of living history that we can say that we do better than most!