Private thoughts

One of the pleasures of researching the Civil War era is the amount of surviving information: private and public correspondence, charters, manuals, satirical pamphlets etc etc. Great heaps of the stuff. The more intimate material, which rarely survives for the medieval era, gives an insight into the private thoughts of individuals.

The below was written in 1638 by Bevil Grenville, a royalist commander and nobleman of Devon and Cornwall, on the eve of war with Scotland: "I cannot contain myself within my doors when the King of England's standard waves in the field upon so just occasions, the cause being such as must make all those that die in it little inferior to Martyrs. And for mine own part I desire to acquire an honest name in an honourable grave. I never loved my life or ease so much as to shun an occasion which if I should I were unworthy of the profession I have held, or to succeed those ancestors of mine, who have so many of them in several ages sacrificed their lives for their country."

 Bevil seems to have been well aware he would not survive. In 1643 he led the charge of Cornish infantry at the Battle of Lansdowne near Bath in Somerset. As the fight raged, his skull was broken by a pole-axe and he was carried off the field to a nearby rectory, where he died the same day. His Cornishmen refused to serve under any other leader and returned home.

Above is a pic of Bevil's monument, which stands on Lansdowne Hill near Bath.