Having written about Thomas Audley, who hailed from Earl’s Colne and became Colchester’s recorder before going on to become Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor (remarkably dying in his own bed in 1544), I was keen to see his tomb. I was quietly surprised to find him tucked in a side chapel surrounded by filing cabinets!
Thomas had written clear instructions in his will about what he wanted – little in the way of pomp and ceremony. While he might not have wanted an expensive or public funeral the chest tomb he commissioned, complete with the family crest, was not cheap. It’s made from Belgian slate.
Thomas’s tomb was placed in the side chapel that was newly completed. However, there’s been a church in Saffron Walden since Saxon times and the building on the site has gone through several reincarnations until becoming, in the fifteenth century, the largest parish church in Essex – the nave is some 50 ft high. Inevitably the saffron crocus which gives the town its name features in the decorations.
Unfortunately the church’s medieval glass did not survive the Reformation or the attentions of the Roundheads – although there is no documentary evidence of soldiers under the command of Thomas Fairfax damaging the church in 1647 (and he was known to take a dim view of such behaviour). The only medieval stained glass to survive is thought to be a likeness of Margaret of Anjou – Henry VI’s unfortunate and oft reviled consort.
Which brings me to the Parliamentarians and the English Civil War. In May 1647 there were a week of debates held in the church about the future of England’s political and religious life. Men whose view did not coincide with the dominant Presbyterian view were regarded as increasingly dangerous. There were calls for religious independents and Levellers who wanted to extend voting rights to be rooted out of the army and punished. There were even calls for the New Model Army to be disbanded.
In 1646 the army was at Nottingham under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax. He moved his men to Saffron Walden when the Levellers began to petition soldiers. There was an increasingly vocal demand for extended suffrage. The use of a system of printed petitions that were widely distributed was something else to add to Parliament’s list of concerns – before long men like Lilburne were demanding that there should be more frequent elections to avoid Parliament becoming tyrannical in much the same way as the monarchy before it.
In March, the following year Parliament decided to disband the army in England and to send another to Ireland to suppress the rebellion there. Even worse, arrears in pay were not to be fully honoured – after the years of war there wasn’t much spare cash in the coffers. Unsurprisingly the soldiers drafted a petition demanding their money in full as well as indemnity against anything they might have done during the war. They also wanted pensions for widows, orphans and those disabled by their soldiering. Soldiers who were prepared to go to Ireland only wanted to do so under the command of their own commanders. Parliament decided that men like Colonels Pride and Lilburne were traitors to the State for encouraging the petition – who’d have thought that what today seems largely reasonable would have been greeted with such alarm?
Most ordinary soldiers did not want to go to Ireland. And when a deputation from Parliament arrived tor recruit for the campaign rather than signing on for the new campaign as had been expected, representatives from each of the eight regiments in Saffron Walden formed a council of action and drafted a document which they presented to Fairfax and to Parliament reiterating their grievances.
Meetings followed in the town’s church on 6 and 7 May during which Parliamentary and army representatives tried to arrive at a compromise as well as to recruit for the Irish campaign.
On 18 May, Parliament decided to disband the army with the exception of men prepared to go to Ireland or for garrison duties. Fairfax was told to organise this and moved to Bury St Edmunds. The agitators, as they were known, refused to comply even when Fairfax order them to stop holding meetings. Instead a new petition was presented to him and the regiments, increasingly militant, refused to disband.
The Saffron Waldren debates reflected the widening void between those in power and the soldiers of the New Model Army. This difference would come to a head in November 1647 with the more famous Putney Debates. Ultimately, Fairfax would refuse, in 1649, to go to Ireland. The experiences of Saffron Walden had turned him into something of a political mediator as well as maintaining military unity. It was Fairfax who first chaired the Putney Debates but illness forced him to step down and it was Cromwell who suppressed the army’s radicals.
