In linking the onslaught of various pest infestations to military invasion, Pulter makes explicit reference to a sixteenth-century siege in France, but siegecraft remained central to the English civil wars she herself lived through. David R. Lawrence relates that “as Englishmen went to their storehouses and churches to dust off their pikes, muskets, and corselets when Civil War broke out in 1642, they also grabbed shovels, picks, and axes for use in building siegeworks. In the early days of the war, and for much of the next four years, citizens and soldiers in towns across the country set to work digging bulwarks and trenches. Old town walls and medieval castles were given modern bastions made of earth, wood, and stone, while pioneers followed the two armies and constructed sconces and batteries at strategic points across England. The most extensive earthworks were constructed in the first year of the war around London.”1

The way that Pulter’s contemporaries might have thought about ever-present Civil War fortifications could be relevant to “The Caucasines.” Lawrence observes that “contemporaries considered a fortress to be similar to a man,” citing, as an example, an excerpt from Robert Ward’s popular military handbook published a few years before the Civil War’s outbreak.2 Might this concept support a reading of “The Caucasines” as simultaneously reflecting on the besiegement of personal faith as well as of the Royalist community?

Footnotes