The Unknown Warrior (21 page)

Survival conditions are key to the archaeological dataset in terms of any bias that might otherwise creep into our understanding. It is an archaeological cliché that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence', and this is something that Margaret Rule (1989: 19) highlights when she considers the drinking equipment on the ship: ‘the almost complete absence of objects made from horn within the ship does not mean that the men drank only from wooden or pewter tankards; we have to recognise that horn is food material for micro-organisms and that most of the horn objects were “eaten” by bacteria.'

The soldiers on board
La Trinidad Valencera
were also provided with drinking vessels – leather goatskins for wine and for water were found by the excavators. These skins were lined with pitch in similar fashion to the flasks on the
Mary Rose
and plugged with wooden stopper funnels in their necks (Martin, 2001: 84).

Around the gatehouse and ringwork terminals of the besieged Basing House, bottle glass was found in relative abundance, though in poor condition. Most of these fragments were green and probably from wine bottles (Allen and Anderson, 1999: 76). Pottery assemblages, which included drinking vessels such as flagons, have been found on several sites of the English Civil War period – particularly siege sites. Pontefract and Beeston castles (Noake, 1993: 203) had such collections. Dudley Castle contained a communal drinking vessel known as a ‘tyr' (Harrington, 2004: 115), which may have been used by the military garrison in more carousing moments. Excavations from Newcastle-upon-Tyne uncovered a stone-lined pit with detritus dating from 1645 to 1675. Clay pipe fragments, glass and pottery, along with coinage – predominantly Scottish – hinted both at the domestic nature of the fill and, perhaps, of the nationality of some of the troops. The earliest levels held material of pre-Civil War vintage which might have been in use in the siege and there were many tin-glazed wares and vessels known as ‘Bellamine' jars (Ellison
et al.
, 1979: 159).

Eating

We are fortunate to have evidence for the food of the soldier from sites where provisions were collected – from ships and castles. The former reflects victuals provided to crewmen on active service, while the latter reflects a particular set of circumstances – food available to the besieged. This category also shows the increasing privations suffered by those cut off from regular supplies.

Although some of the skeletal material on the
Mary Rose
provided evidence for malnutrition in early life, including rickets and prolonged deficiency of vitamin C (Stirland, 2000: 87–8), the excavations of the ship produced evidence for the quality of some of the victuals provided to troops of the Tudor era. Admittedly, these foodstuffs were for sailors and archers alike in situations not encountered by the infantry per se, but the infantrymen on board would have had access to these rations. Stirland discusses this material and her work is worth quoting at some length:

The meat consisted of beef and pork and one fallow deer haunch, probably for the officers. The beef had been butchered according to the King's regulations and consisted entirely of flat bones, devoid of marrow. It was all of a high quality from immature animals. There was one cask of pork, which included some marrow-containing long bones, as well as vertebrae and ribs. A large deposit of pork and ham, which had been butchered in quarters, was also found loose in the hull. All the meat had been salted. The fish was stockfish and largely consisted of headless cod … As well as plum stones and grape pips, there were the remains of grape skins in a barrel, although these could have been left from wine. (Stirland, 2000: 148–9)

Large quantities of animal bones were found during the excavations of the gatehouse, ditch and kitchen of Basing House, some of which were burnt or butchered. From the layers of the 1645 English Civil War siege, the animals represented included cattle and sheep (these two being the largest set), pig, horse, roe deer, red/fallow deer, domestic bird, fish and rabbit, although the latter may have been intrusive, as is the case on many archaeological sites (Allen and Anderson, 1999: 87). It seems reasonable to suggest that the food was available to infantry among the besieged, as well as its commanders. The animal bone assemblage at Beeston Castle, demolished under the orders of the Parliament in 1646, included sheep, cattle and pigs (Harrington, 2004: 51).

Siege conditions were also apparent at Dudley Castle, where the Royalist commander, Colonel Leveson, and his force held out against Parliamentarian opposition, before eventually surrendering to Sir William Brereton. As the castle was slighted, the sealing of the garderobe provides a secure Civil War date for deposits. Studies concluded that there was much evidence of food within these layers, including coriander, figs, grapes, pumpkins and strawberries, and of animal, bird and fish bones (Gaimster
et al.
, 1996).

The butchered mammal bones from Civil War layers at Pontefract Castle included cattle, sheep and pig, but much of this comprised skull and foot bones, perhaps illustrating that cuts of meat not normally consumed were eaten when supplies became shorter during the siege. The excavators believed the assemblage included a greater dependence on former ‘inedibles' – these included three butchered horse bones and a dog and a cat bone in context 116 (first–second siege) and a horse bone from the third siege deposits (Richardson, 2002: 378–9). A large collection of fish bones was also present at Pontefract, associated with the first to second siege. These were almost all large and very large cod (
c.
1m in length), though halibut, conger eel and plaice were also included. ‘The range of the excavated skeletal elements would suggest that these fish had been brought to the site as stockfish (salted and dried to keep for many months), rather than being beheaded at the castle' (Nicholson, 2002: 393).

Smoking

This era sees the emergence of a new pastime of the infantryman – smoking. It is a habit that endures right through to the present day and is still traceable in the archaeological record of the First World War. Tobacco was first seen in Europe and used as a narcotic in the sixteenth century. Most of the excavations of the English Civil War period sites of the seventeenth century have a great deal of clay pipe evidence.

At Southgate Street in Gloucester, excavations of a 5.5m wide and 2.3m deep V-shaped ditch of the English Civil War defences of the town yielded over 500 clay pipe fragments (Harrington, 1992: 33). Some of these pipe bowls were found pressed into the floor levels of buildings on the city's outskirts which had been deliberately destroyed by fire on 10 August 1643. They were of an identifiable type – such as the example with ‘RR' stamped on its base (Atkin, 1989: 7).

Clay pipes were excavated from the fill of a Civil War defensive ditch dug by Royalist troops at Sandal Castle in Yorkshire (Harrington, 1992: 21) as they were at Newcastle-upon-Tyne within a new defensive system around the old castle (
ibid.
: 22).

Basing House retained a number of clay pipe fragments from the citadel – including London-style pipes (
c.
1640–60). Some of these pipe fragments showed signs of external burning, which the excavators took as probably being inflicted at the time the building was razed (Allen and Anderson, 1999: 78). Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire had a collapsed countermine which contained fragments of clay pipe (Roberts, 2002) and Beeston Castle in Cheshire also had many of the ubiquitous pipes. Here there were some seventy-three clay pipes of the English Civil War period – with stamps on them including ‘NE', ‘OP', ‘SE' and ‘AL' – all of which are common in Chester (Ellis, 1993: 172).

Toilet

Curiously, human toilet activity is important for our study of the sixteenth- to seventeenth-century infantryman, for the very end product of the act as much as for its indication of the diet of troops.

Urine was a vital ingredient in the production of saltpetre. Cord, when soaked in saltpetre, could ignite and smoulder and thus apply the requisite flame to the charge of matchlock and cannon. ‘The process involved, though somewhat dangerous, was not unduly complicated; it involved the extraction and refinement of saltpetre from the “earth”, found in decomposing organic matter in cattle-sheds and dovecotes; the saltpetre was then blended with charcoal and brimstone, and the mixture finely milled' (RCHME, 1964: 53). Human urine was also used, and people were employed to collect it on siege sites of the English Civil War.

Gaming

Although it was not to be, after the catastrophe that befell them, the soldiers on board the
Mary Rose
might have expected long periods of boredom when not in action. As their martial predecessors had done on many occasions, the troops took gaming equipment onto the ship with them. The excavations recovered part of this important assemblage. Finds included bone dice in wooden chests, many gaming counters, and even a backgammon set in the carpenter's cabin (Rule, 1989: 22). A leather pouch was discovered that may have served as the shaker for dice in a game (see Plate 14).

Their seventeenth-century counterparts also played games – one of the finds of Pollard and Oliver's work at Edgehill with the most human poignancy was a piece of lead caseshot that had been ‘converted into a gaming piece by having a series of lines incised into one end' (Pollard and Oliver, 2003: 115).

All of these pleasures had, in theory, to be paid for, although many were those who complained of privations caused by having troops billeted upon them, and much was taken in the aftermath of siege or when an army moved through a village, town or city. Although standard coinage of the 1640s has been found in besieged towns and cities, other sites issued specific ‘Siege Money'. A case in point is Newark. Here there were two denominations of coins produced in 1645 and with the legend ‘Newarke': 1
s
, and 1
s
9
d
. Those coins marked ‘Newark' were of 2
s
6
d
, 1
s
, 9
d
and 6
d
from 1645; and 2
s
6
d
, 1
s
, 9
d
and 6
d
from 1646. They are all lozenge shaped with a crown between the letters C and R and the value on one face, and
obs
(
obsessum
, ‘besieged'), the place name and date on the other. Many such tokens have been found around Newark. It is probable that the origin for the manufacture of these tokens was a scarcity of regular coinage in the isolated town (RCHME, 1964: 73). Siege coinage has also been located in Pontefract Castle where it was produced by the garrison (Wright, 2002).

Writings

The English Civil War was the first war in Britain to have war correspondents, with accounts of battles, atrocities and heroism appearing in newspapers and pamphlets published by both sides. Propaganda was spread among the troops, as were radical theories of religion, the rights of men and of suffrage among the forces of Parliament. A degree of literacy would have been required even if only by a small number of men to read this material to others in a regiment.

We are also fortunate to have the writings of some of the common footsoldiers of the age, such as Neremiah Wharton who wrote of his service in the Parliamentary armies of the early years of the war before his probable death at the Battle of Edgehill in 1642 or soon after (Ede-Borrett, 1983).

Graffiti provides us with further evidence of literacy among the serving soldiers of the seventeenth century. At Pontefract Castle we see pieces of wall plaster and the walls themselves with names and dates carved into them. Graffiti in the Constable Tower relating to the Royalist garrison of the first and second sieges of 1644–5 include the names ‘William' and ‘John'. Those on the walls of the cellar, mostly in capitals, were from the time of the Parliamentarian garrison 1648–9; the names in this graffiti may also relate to the imprisoned. As such they are a fascinating record – their testimony includes ‘16 Geo 48 Be
AL
e' (George Beale 1648), ‘
ROBERT BRIER
1648', ‘
IOHN
1648
SMITH
' (John Smith 1648) and ‘
IAMES
1648
BROVSTON
' (James Brouston 1648) (Bostwick and Roberts, 2002: 296–8). We even have a record of two of the men whose names appear: Robert Greathed (recorded as captured in October 1648), and John Grant, a gunner (
ibid.
: 296–8) (see Plate 16). Most infantrymen on board the
Mary Rose
appear to have marked their possessions with simple graffiti marks (see
Mary Rose
, 2005), although writing material such as leather parchment made from sheepskin was found on the ship.

Several churches lay claim to have been ‘defaced' by soldiers during this turbulent time, with buildings used as billets, prisons and stables, and with soldiers carving their names into monuments. One such church is Bromham in Wiltshire, which claims to have graffiti carved all over the reclining alabaster monument of Sir Roger Tocotes, a veteran of the Wars of the Roses. This was said to have been carved by Parliamentarian troops after the nearby Battle of Roundway Down in 1643. Although some of the names may indeed have been carved by these men, it is impossible to blame them for starting such sacrilegious actions as there is at least one pre-existing date on Sir Roger: 1641. It is a common claim that such iconoclasts as the Puritanical elements of Cromwell's armies were responsible for such damage. Often it is not true, but simply a good story. On occasions, however, the evidence seems more clear, the inscription in Burford Church, Oxfordshire, which we shall examine below in the section on The Prisoner (see page 126) being a case in point. Another church that retains graffiti from this period is that of Old Basing, next to Basing House, Hampshire.