The first recorded battle of the English Civil War on open ground was in the countryside around Southam, 23 August 1642, when Lord Brook ordered his parliamentary guns to open fire on a royalist brigade which found itself unexpectedly opposing him. When the cannons stopped firing nine years later, 160,000 were dead (3% of the population of Britain), with many others dying of disease, starvation and displacement. The first recorded burial from this conflict was in Southam churchyard, a man called John Brown*, a parliamentary soldier.
[*Not to be confused with John Brown the militant American anti-slavery campaigner, whose actions helped spark the American Civil War two centuries later.]
Who presided over John Brown's burial is not recorded. Was it the royalist rector of Southam, or some puritan stand in? Whether it was him or not, the day was a disaster for the minster of Southam, Francis Holyoke. Until then, in spite of the town being allegedly parliamentarian in sympathy, he had lived a peaceful, interesting and productive life, earning himself the nickname 'The Holy Oak' and practicing as a loyal servant of the king.
Francis Holyoke was a well-educated man, a sort of Dr Johnson of his day. Born at Nether Whitacre in north Warwickshire in 1567, he was educated at Queen's College Oxford, and steadily progressed over the years in ecclesiastical circles, becoming rector of Southam in February 1604. He was married to Judith, with a single son, Thomas, born in 1616. His passion, if not obsession, was etymology - the study of words.
The standard dictionary of the time was Rider's Dictionary. Francis freely plagiarised and 'improved' it, republishing the book as Rider's Dictionary Corrected in 1606, with several subsequent editions into the 1640s. There was some legal dispute about whether this should be allowed, but there was no such thing as copyright law in those days. Francis's work would have been familiar in literate circles, on every college library shelf and in every classroom. It was the Oxford English Dictionary of its day.
It would be fascinating to know what connections Francis had in literary circles, and more about the man as an individual. There is a reference to him in connection with Burton's famous The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), but I'm not aware of any surviving documents, other than his dictionaries and a couple of standard sermons. What is known, is that on 22 August 1642, his world collapsed.
Parliamentarian troops on their way to Warwick occupied Southam for two nights. Francis, a keen royalist, had his home stormed, his servant killed (according to a later statement by Francis's son), and Francis himself summarily ejected from his position as rector. It was claimed that arms were found in his house, but this is by the parliamentarian chroniclers who are not necessarily reliable. These were brutal times, with parliamentary troops acting in a manner comparable to the Taliban today, in their levels of intolerance and brutality towards opponents.
His remaining years were spent in impoverished circumstances, living on charity, his wife dying an early death because of the trauma she suffered (this again is according to the statement made by their son in an appeal to parliament for financial aid). Francis lived on, dying nine later, aged 86 - a remarkable age for the time - having witnesses a world turned upside down by religious and political extremism and the rise and rise of Oliver Cromwell at the head of English parliamentary affairs. He is buried in St Mary's Church, Warwick.
Images:
* http://www.flickr.com/photos/xanthias/533127481/in/photostream
* http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=11942862720
