ABSTRACT
In August 1643 a crowd of women gathered outside parliament to demand peace. Estimates of their number ranged from six thousand to three hundred. Reports as to their quality varied equally wildly. One described them as the respectable wives of sober citizens, many suckling their babes: another called them ‘Whores, Bawds, Oyster-Women, Kitchen-Stuffe women, Beggar women and the very scum of the scum of the suburbs, besides an abundance of Irish women.’ But whatever their number and social status, of one thing there can be no doubt: they and their families wanted peace, and didn’t want to go to war.1 Anticipating the reluctant Tommies of the Second World War, many a seventeenth-century soldier sang:2
I cannot act a soldier’s part Nor freezing lie in trenches. But wish myself with all my heart At Chelsea with my wenches.
