Royalist Finances in the English Civil War: The Case of Lichfield Garrison, 1643–5

Review of periodical literature published in 2008

“…Specific tactical decisions are also rescued from scorn: far from being confused, preparations were in fact necessarily flexible so as to meet a developing threat; and far from being a potentially devastating blunder, the decision to concentrate forces in Essex rather than Kent was a pragmatic response to intelligence that Parma was planning a swift assault on London from north of the Thames. Jumping forward to the Civil War, Atherton uses a case study of the garrison at Lichfield to suggest that Royalist finances in the north midlands remained surprisingly healthy well after Naseby. Indeed, the experience of Lichfield contradicts the established picture of the Royalist war effort, in which regularized and well‐managed taxation gradually descended into plunder by an increasingly ‘feral’ soldier‐gentry.…”