English Civil War?

Question

How did the ENGLISH CIVIL WAR shock ordinary people?

Answer 1

I'm not sure there has been any investigation into this point, or indeed whether it has ever been established that ordinary people were shocked. My guess is that they went about their day to day lives, much as they had before the war started. They would have had the inconvenience of soldiers in their towns and villages at times. Mothers and fathers may have lost sons who went off to fight. The biggest shock would have been the execution of Charles I. After the Civil War, they would have had the shock, perhaps, of iconoclasts smashing up parts of their Parish Churches - and having Christmas abolished.

Answer 2

what's so Civil approximately conflict? The English have consistently been a contentious lot. during the 1600's England replaced into nonetheless dealing with the subject of religion and with the turning out to be use of the printing press techniques must be comfortably dispersed. between those techniques replaced into the thought that Kings ought to rule with the consent of britain's Parliament and not in simple terms order Parliament to do the monarch's bidding. The Stuarts have been between England's maximum unique rulers. James the 1st replaced right into a autocrat who had a crude allure that saved him in potential in spite of savage disagreements with Parliament and his friends. His son Charles replaced into an altogether distinctive characters. Lofty disdainful boastful he had few acquaintances and he replaced into remarkably inept while dealing with human beings. Pitted against efficient bold adult men desperate to declare the choose of Parliament, Charles blundered back & back, the end result replaced right into a Civil conflict during the years 1642 to 1645 that led to a stalemate, the debate over the powers of The King unsettled brought about a renewal of the conflict in 1648 ending with Charles the 1st dropping his head to an awl in 1649. interior the spirit of no longer so Civil Wars the Parlimentarians quarrled among themselves for some extra years with the conflict seen finnished in 1651. England experimented with Parlimentary rule from 1649 to 1653 until now submiting to a psuedo King, the Protector Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell, nevertheless incomes a bad acceptance in later years, frequently as a results of repair of the Stuarts with the help of Charles the 2d, in spite of the incontrovertible fact that Cromwell replaced right into a suitable standard and actually had to do solid for England and if he have been granted some extra years of existence, properly, issues could have been somewhat distinctive - - - Peace....

Answer 3

The popular image of the ECW involves Roundheads (looking stern) and Cavaliers (looking dashing) fighting not-terribly-bloody battles in nice areas of open countryside, with no civilian involvement. Partly, that image results from colorful re-enactments by by groups like The Sealed Knot.

But it seems that, in reality, it was not much like that at all, and that the impact on "ordinary people" was immense and frequently very nasty indeed.

MSN Encarta (see Link 1 below) has a piece on this that is worth quoting in full: -
"The First English Civil War had a much more extensive impact on people’s lives than was once thought. This is partly because the war was not only fought at major battles between the field armies of both sides, but also in thousands of small skirmishes between local forces and garrisons as both sides sought to secure disputed territories. Many more men fought in the war than was once thought. One reliable estimate is that one in four of the adult male population of England and Wales fought in it. Moreover, it may be that 200,000 people out of a total population of around 5 million died in battles and skirmishes and from diseases carried by armies, a greater death rate than that inflicted on the English population by either of the two world wars of the 20th century. It is also now known, contrary to earlier accounts, that the war was fought with some brutality, if not on the scale of depravity that was reached in contemporary wars in Ireland or in the European Thirty Years’ War. Massacres of civilians were not unknown and garrison commanders often flouted the law in requisitioning men, money, horses, and goods. It is no coincidence that “plunder” entered the English language in the 1640s. Few in the country could have been unaffected by or unaware of the war. Even these people who lived in areas in which control was not disputed (like large parts of southern and eastern England, including London, held by the Parliamentarians, and those parts of the north and west that remained in royalist hands) were severely affected by measures adopted by both sides to win the war."

I think that the key points in that paragraph (from the perspective of the Question asked) are: -
[a] A surprisingly large proportion of the population was directly involved in the War. If one-in-four adult males in England and Wales, just about every family was either involved directly, or had friends who were.
[b] The death rate given by Encarta amounts to 4% of the population. That is HUGE. But I have actually found other sources that suggest it could have been as high as 10%. Disease was a far more common killer than wounds received in battle.

Although it isn't in the paragraph quoted above (it's in the following para in Encarta under section III, so it's worth using the link), there is another piece of evidence indicating that the War had nasty and widespread effects beyond the armies themselves. This was the formation of armed militias in many localities, aimed at protecting the locals from the armies of both sides. A sort of localized "UN peacekeeping force" - and probably no more effective in stopping violence.

And the Encarta article concentrates on the ECW in England and Wales. That ignores the very real fact that what we call "The English Civil War" was just part of a much wider (and frequently even more bloody) struggle that raged in Scotland and Ireland also. In those theatres, atrocities were even more common than in England. In Scotland, the struggle was between Highlands and Lowlands, and between Catholics and Presbyterians: fertile causes for settling old scores and exercising sectarian intolerance. Similarly in Ireland, the war was between Catholic and Protestant, between dispossessed Irish and Scots/English newcomers: again, a very good excuse to get bloodthirsty.

So, to conclude, my answer is that the ECW shocked ordinary people enormously.

Answer 4

it killed thousands of people, it ruined many cities, it brought poverty in the contry, it made thosands of people homeless and jobless.