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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31.2 (2000) 258-259



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Review

Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution:
The Colchester Plunderers


Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers. By John Walter (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 357 pp. $64.95

Walter provides a detailed analysis of riots in the English counties of Essex and Suffolk, mainly in the Stour Valley, on the eve of the civil wars in August 1642. The disorders involved attacks by the local population on the houses of gentlemen (especially, but not exclusively, Roman Catholics) suspected of complicity in Charles I's intended war against the Parliament, and of members of the clergy who had supported Archbishop William Laud's allegedly "popish" ceremonial innovations in the Church. The violence was short-lived, but it was widely publicized and led many people to fear an impending collapse of social order throughout the whole country.

Historians have usually regarded the Stour Valley riots as the most serious outbreak of "class" violence during the English Revolution--the only time when the lower orders attacked the gentry just because they were gentry. Walter rejects this interpretation, using a version of anthropological "thick description" to uncover, he says, "the often complex politics" that lay behind the crowds' actions (4). The riots, he argues, were the outcome not of class hostility, but of anti-Catholic feeling, an expression of the deep suspicion of malevolent "popish" designs against English liberty that was a central feature of the popular political culture of the period. The rioters were selective in their violence, generally attacking only the houses of Catholics. One of their best-known targets, however, Sir John Lucas, was a Protestant, victimized because he was thought to be going to join Charles I as he prepared for war, and also because his family had a long history of conflict with the neighboring, Puritan, town of Colchester.

The prominent role played by Colchester townspeople has often been cited as compelling evidence for the "class" nature of the disorders. Colchester was the biggest town in a region with an economy that depended heavily on the cloth industry, and most of the smaller places from which the rioters came were also centers of cloth production. The industry was going through a serious depression at this time, and the resulting unemployment and distress provided plenty of fodder for popular violence. However, Walter rightly points out that the outbreaks were not directed at the employers who might have been blamed for the clothworkers' plight, or the grain dealers and middlemen whose activities were driving up food prices. Only the Catholic gentry and their supposed allies among the clergy were attacked.

The argument is persuasive and is supported by a close reading of the often untrustworthy and contradictory evidence about the attacks. But the book has some of the vices, as well as the virtues, of this kind of micro-history. As the author confesses, it has been a long time in the writing, and it shows. Walter convincingly establishes his central thesis--that the riots were not the result of class conflict--but his lengthy [End Page 258] criticisms of Marxist historians who thought otherwise now seem dated. He cites several recent studies of the popular political culture in other parts of England, but does not really absorb their most important message--that this culture was everywhere shaped by deeply held assumptions about gender and patriarchy. Such assumptions were certainly reflected in the anti-popish prejudices that Walter studies so intently. To anyone aware of this recent work, the complaint that historians are still analyzing crowd behavior without seeing "the need for an explanation beyond economic distress" is mystifying (286). It is equally mystifying that as important a book on Walter's own region as Hunt's on Essex is unaccountably ignored, apart from a few carping, ungenerous references. 1

A more highly developed comparative dimension might have given the book the wider audience that it deserves among scholars who are not specialists in the history of England's eastern counties in the...

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