The Unknown Warrior (22 page)

Accommodation

Tents were clearly used for accommodation by armies on the move – even those troops being transported by the great ships of the Armada brought such items along with them for the intended campaign on land against England (Flanagan, 1987: 10).

The work at Flodden seems to have located the possible site of the Scottish pre-battle camp on Branxton Hill. On stripping the site, excavators discovered an arc of stones set into a shallow slot across one of the excavation trenches. ‘Just possibly this is the sort of trace a tent or temporary shelter may have left behind, the stones perhaps supporting thin stakes, which would prop up a hide or oil-cloth roof, pretty much like the “benders” that modern travellers live in. There were also a couple of post-holes elsewhere in the trenches, and these stone-line holes may have once supported the central posts of other tents' (Pollard and Oliver, 2002: 156). Although this evidence might seem a little thin for such a claim, further along the hill an earthen bank running behind a gun emplacement they had located, may support this hypothesis, as it may have been part of a defensive bank thrown up around the camp to protect it from attack. If this is the case, then historical accounts of the battle seem to be accurate in this respect (
ibid.
: 156–7).

Camp sites leave elements relating to the time when soldiers were stationed there. The siege of Newark, Nottinghamshire, between 1642 and 1646 is a case in point. Parliamentary forces dug a bank and ditch around the town to cut it off, gun batteries and forts were soon constructed with Scottish forces building an encampment known as ‘Edinburgh' to the west of the works. Archaeological fieldwork has recovered numerous artefacts from the site of this encampment: iron slag – the by-product of the smelting process activities of the armourer – the lid of a large powder flask, hinges from a wooden box, musket balls (including one with sprues) and lead sheeting for the making of musket balls (
ibid.
: 234). In addition to these finds, the presence of bricks in these fields intrigued the authors as it might indicate that ‘the camp [included] not just tents but also more substantial buildings. If so, this would tie in with the portrayal of what looks like houses among the tents on Clampe's contemporary map of the siege of Newark' (
ibid.
: 239).

Sieges of this period present their own problems, as one of the methods of protecting the town or city concerned would be the deliberate destruction of the suburbs by defenders. This would deny cover for any offensive actions undertaken, creating an effective killing ground; it would also deny accommodation to the enemy. Burned layers for such destruction can be found at Gloucester, the only Parliamentary garrison between Bristol and Lancashire. Here, the suburbs of 214 houses and a church were burnt down on 10 August 1643. The clay floor of one of the destroyed houses, in Southgate Street, was seen through archaeology to have been sealed ‘by piles of debris from a fire and building rubble, including stone roof tiles, and the cesspit was left open and derelict. This event could be dated archaeologically (by the clay pipes and pottery) to a time bracket 1640–60, with the most likely historical context being that afternoon of 10 August 1643' (Atkin, 1989: 9).

Within the context of siege warfare, soldiers must have spent at least some of the time in trench systems cut either to protect or to encircle the town or city concerned. At Gloucester, much material, as we have seen, has been recovered from the great defensive ditch cut around the city. Other excavation work has uncovered the remains of a possible Royalist attack trench or ‘sap'. This work would have been cut on a perpendicular from the encircling Royalist trenches to get closer to the defenders' positions (
ibid.
: 9). Some of the fiercest actions in this siege supposedly took place in these trenches with accounts describing ‘our muskettiers sending plenty of shot into their trenches, and cast divers granadoes provided ready' (
ibid.
: 10). Were one to describe the image of a trench raid with firearm and grenade, and with several of the troops involved smoking nearby, one would be forgiven if this conjured up images of Vimy Ridge, Messines or Verdun in the First World War – this was, however, 1643.

Study of the distribution of metal artefacts has also possibly led to the location of the 1651 camp site of the Parliamentary armies at Worcester (Foard, 2001: 92).

Religion

In Europe, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were an age of enormous religious turmoil with the emergence and rise of Protestantism on the mainland, the Reformation in Britain, and the Thirty Years War.

Although Henry VIII was responsible for the Reformation in England, closing the monasteries and generally crushing the Catholic Church as a result of his failure to gain papal approval for the dissolution of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Protestantism was not always his chosen path. Earlier in his reign, Henry had written a treatise condemning the heresy of Martin Luther for which he had been awarded the title ‘Defender of the Faith' by the Pope. This title has been retained by British monarchs despite the break from Rome and can be seen on British coinage to this day – with the abbreviation
Fid.Def
. The
Mary Rose
sank in the post-Reformation period of Henry's reign and thus it is perhaps surprising to find wooden and bone rosary beads and their containers on the wreck. A wooden box for these was found on the orlop deck, amidships, and a fruitwood container from the stern of the main deck (for these items see Rule, 1989: 22;
Mary Rose
, 2005). Catholics were subject to severe persecution and thus, unusually in our study, it is likely that these men would have tried to keep their religious beliefs secret.

Religious houses did not escape the ravages of military actions in this period – the Friary at Jedburgh (see pages 106–7) was razed by Lord Eure and the Earl of Hertford (1544–5). Excavations on this site pointed to this military destruction: ‘Extensive burnt deposits in the north and south range indicate that the Friary was destroyed by fire. Building debris, roof slate and glass, in particular, indicate that the Friary may have become a roofless, windowless ruin in the wake of this episode.' Or, as a contemporary author wrote, ‘The people thus fled, and the town given to the Englishmen by the chance of war, the gunners burned the Abbey, the Greyfriars and divers bastells and fortified houses' (Dixon
et al.
, 2000: 87).

The footsoldiers on board the ships of the Spanish Armada who were to undertake the invasion of England in 1588 would in many cases have had strong religious beliefs. They were, after all, the army that was to crush Elizabeth I's heretical nation. Finds retrieved from several of the sunken vessels investigated include elements of Catholicism, though it is more likely that these relate to the nobility – the officers on board. Among the assemblage was a gold
Agnus Dei
reliquary from the
Girona
that contained wax pellets made from paschal candles and blessed by the Pope (Flanagan, 1987: 6).

Religion was also an important element of the English Civil War, although it is not possible to divide allegiances down purely religious lines; it would be too simple to state that all Parliamentary supporters were of Puritanical leaning, for example. At the foot of Edgehill, there was once a church by which the Royalist armies must have passed en route to the battle. Geophysical survey and excavation by Pollard and Oliver (2003: 107–9) have located this building, which is likely to have been the site of prayers by those going into battle, both those for whom this was a new experience and those already hardened by participation in the Thirty Years War in central Europe.

Medicine

The survival conditions on the
Mary Rose
have enabled us to obtain some of the best evidence for the tools of the surgeon's trade for a specific engagement in any of the eras covered by this book. In the cabin of the barber surgeon, a walnut chest was discovered. In it were the preparations required for the immediate treatment of sailors and infantry in the forthcoming battle. Rows of lidded, turned wooden containers and still-corked medicine jars, probably from Raeren in Germany, contained ointments; one still retained the fingermarks of the last user.

On examination, it seems that the range of medicines on board the
Mary Rose
offered treatments

mainly for wounds, burns, and other skin complaints. However, most were probably fairly effective, as they contained active ingredients used in medicine until the start of the 20th century – and in one case, to the present day. One preparation for burns consisted of zinc mixed in animal fat – similar to modern calamine lotion whose active ingredient is zinc oxide. Another consisted of copper salt in animal fat, an antibiotic ointment used until recently to treat necrotic skin ulcers.

The chest also contained large quantities of pine resin, an antibiotic dressing for wounds which prevents fluid loss and dehydration. Scraps of bandages were found in the chest, and perhaps most surprisingly, a jar of peppercorns, which textbooks recommended both as a dressing for rheumatic aches and, for internal use, to treat gastric spasms. According to Brendan Derham, a doctoral student at Bradford University who conducted the research, the chest contained almost no medicines for internal consumption because barber-surgeons (including ship's surgeons) were prevented at the time from prescribing them. This remained the prerogative of physicians, an elite group who rarely went to sea. (British Archaeology News, 1999)

In addition to field dressings, impregnated with herbal infusions, and wooden spatulas for applying ointments, there was a heavy mortar for pounding the drugs, a bone earscoop, a brazier, a pewter bleeding bowl and a chafing dish. Perhaps the cherry wood feeding bottle in this assemblage was there to enable the very weak or those with severe facial injuries to eat (for this collection, see
Mary Rose
, 2005). Other pewter items from the cabin of the barber-surgeon included drug flasks and an item which seems more akin to an implement of torture, a urethral syringe (Rule, 1989: 23). Although being treated for injuries sustained during this period must have been, on occasion, a truly hellish experience, it was certainly not for lack of care or thought.

At Sandal Castle in Yorkshire, four small, unglazed white ware jars were found in the kitchen. These were not local wares, they had been imported from abroad or elsewhere in the country. Along with the presence of several glass bottles and the nearby English Civil War period cemetery of nine skeletons, the excavators believed that this might suggest that the kitchen had been converted into either an impromptu field hospital or a medical dispensary during the siege (Mayes and Butler, 1983: 213).

Excavation work also reveals that some of the other sufferings of troops of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries included lice. Hair lice have been retrieved from the fine teeth of the combs on the
Mary Rose
, and such parasites seem to have afflicted soldiers from all eras (Strickland and Hardy, 2005: 7).

THE PRISONER

The excavation of the bodies of at least sixty men from the Battle of Good Friday in Uppsala (1520) revealed that the majority seem to have been killed while they were fleeing; with wounds to the back and to both sides of the skulls (Kjellström, 2005). One of the men (Skeleton A4:00) had been decapitated – his sole wound being from a very sharp blade from behind that had severed his head. His body had been placed on its back in a grave pit, with the skull to the right of his waist suggesting that his head was perhaps not severed during the battle. The osteologist examining the burials postulated that ‘the direction of the blow and orientation of the cut together with the burial context points towards the man being executed' (
ibid.
: 36, 44). If this is indeed the case, then the archaeological record has another example of a probable prisoner of war executed following his capture.

The English Civil War, as with all civil wars, brought out bitterness and rancour that, on occasions, could manifest itself in appalling treatment of wounded or captives. For example, ‘On Christmas Day 1643 Lord Byron accepted the surrender of some 20 Parliamentarians at Barthomley, Cheshire. “I put them all to the sword,” the Royalist commander boasted, “which I find the best way to proceed with these kind of people”' (Carlton, 1991: 19). This being said, not all those captured were killed – many were treated with kindness and respect, especially the nobility. Footsoldiers could actually be ‘encouraged' to change sides to fight for their captors.

Some information derived from Beeston Castle might just relate to the last desperate moments of infantrymen before being captured. Excavations discovered a number of matchlock priming pans which seemed to indicate that the guns had been deliberately destroyed – perhaps akin to an artilleryman's ‘spiking' of the guns – to prevent them falling into enemy hands (Harrington, 2004: 115). Archaeologically our main traces of the imprisoned relate to inscriptions left by the incarcerated, and through cemetery evidence.

Excavations at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, have yielded possible information about the fate of prisoners from the English Civil War. Being some 6 miles from the King's capital of Oxford, Abingdon was a Royalist centre until May 1644 when it was taken by a group supporting the Parliament. Within the context of the grounds of the abbey church, 50m from the contemporary town gaol, a mass grave was found. The remains of one of these men had a musket ball in his ribcage. Were these men those included in the burial register for 1644–5 with the entry ‘for the burial of nine prisoners from the town gaol' (T. Allen, 1990: 27)? If so, perhaps we are either seeing the execution of one or more of these captives, or the fatal results of a failed escape attempt. Given the ledger entry, were these men Royalist prisoners of war?