Women Beseiged and Beseiging
Pulter’s analogy comparing a siege to waves of rising political factions intensifies a focus on women’s position in the power struggles of the Civil War period. In Pulter’s England, women were denied official channels to determine their own fates in the political arena just as they were not trained for, or permitted to join combat on, the battlefield. The refusal to prepare women for, or allow them agency in, situations of armed conflict corresponded to the treatment of women as property to be guarded by male troops and the spoils of war for the victors. For women, this cultural reality would likely have exacerbated the terror of being under siege and the sense of helplessness at influencing the outcome, beyond prayers for aid. Henry’s threats to the governor of Harfleur in Shakespeare’s Henry V – in which he also feminizes the besieged city itself, following conventions of the gendered language of conquest – famously iterate women’s position under siege:
- If I begin the batt’ry once again,
- I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
- Till in her ashes she lie burièd.
- The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
- And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart,
- In liberty of bloody hand shall range
- With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
- Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants.
- ...
- What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,
- If your pure maidens fall into the hand
- Of hot and forcing violation?
- ...
- Take pity of your town and of your people
- Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command,
- ...
- If not, why in a moment look to see
- The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
- Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters,
- Your fathers taken by the silver beards
- And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,
- Your naked infants spitted upon pikes
- Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
- Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
- At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
Pulter’s contemporary, Margaret Cavendish – whose brother’s post-siege execution Pulter memorializes in “On Those Two Unparalleled friends, Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas, Who Were Shot to Death at Colchester” – gives voice, in Bell in Campo, to some of the frustrations women must have felt at being sidelined from matters of war:
LORD GENERAL But Nature hath made women like china, or porcelain, they must be used gently, and kept warily, or they will break and fall on death’s head: besides, the inconveniences in an army are so many, as put patience herself out of humour; besides, there is such inconveniences as modesty cannot allow of.
LADY VICTORIA There is no immodesty in natural effect, but in unnatural abuses; but contrive it as well you can, for go I must, or either I shall die, or dishonour you; for if I stay behind you, the very imaginations of your danger will torture me, sad dreams will affright me, every little noise will sound as your passing bell, and my fearful mind will transform every object like as your pale ghost, until I am smothered in my sighs, shrouded in my tears, and buried in my griefs.
In contrast to Pulter’s speaker waiting and hoping for help to arrive, Cavendish imagines women claiming martial agency and directing the outcome of battle. Her portrayals of women seizing military power are not entirely fantastical in this period. Alexandra G. Bennett provides notable examples of women’s involvement in armed conflict during the Civil Wars and Interregnum: Henrietta Maria rode with the Royalist army of Cavendish’s husband, William Cavendish; several noblewomen, such as Charlotte Stanley, countess of Derby and Blanche, Lady Arundell, “protected their homes against Parliamentarian forces during Interregnum conflicts;” and “Cavendish’s own stepdaughters Jane and Elizabeth also attempted (albeit unsuccessfully) to hold the family properties … against the Roundheads.”1. Women took up arms on the Parliamentarian side too. Brilliana Harley, for example, held her family home, Brampton Bryan Castle, against a seven-week Royalist siege, procured horses and money for the Parliamentarian war effort, gave shelter to local Parliamentarians, took soldiers into her house for her defence, and instructed soldiers to oversee the destruction of Royalist earthworks and to attack a nearby Royalist camp.2 Jane Ingleby fought at the July 1644 Battle of Marston Moor, women disguised themselves as men to enlist in Colonel Hammond’s regiment (though they were taken into custody upon discovery), and Ann Dimack also disguised herself so she could serve in the army with her lover.3 In Bell in Campo, Lady Victoria exhorts women to take fortune into their own hands through military action, instead of waiting at home for battles to be decided by men.
LADY VICTORIA … Most heroic spirits of most chaste and loving wives, mistresses, sisters, children or friends, I know you came not from your several houses and homes into this army merely to enjoy your husbands, lovers, parents and friends in their safe and secure garrisons, or only to share of their troublesome and tedious marches, but to venture also in their dangerous and cruel battles, to run their fortunes, and to force destiny to join you to their periods.
LADY VICTORIA … had our educations been answerable to theirs, we might have proved as good soldiers and privy counselors, learned scholars both in arts and sciences, as men are; for time and custom are the father and mother of strength and knowledge, they make all things easy and facile, clear and propitious; … wherefore if we would but accustom ourselves we may do such actions, as may gain us such a reputation, as men might change their opinions, insomuch as to believe we are fit to be copartners in their governments, and to help to rule the world, where now we are kept as slaves forced to obey; wherefore let us make ourselves free, either by force, merit, or love, and in order, let us practice and endeavour, and take that which fortune shall proffer unto us, let us practice I say, and make these fields as schools of martial arts and sciences, so shall we become learned in their disciplines of war.
Footnotes
1.Alexandra G. Bennett, “Margaret Cavendish and the Theatre of War,” in Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England, 1550–1700, vol. 7, ed. Sara H. Mendelson (Ashgate, 2009): 106-7.
2.Jacqueline Eales, “Harley [née Conway], Brilliana, Lady Harley,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).
3.Bennett, “Margaret Cavendish,” 107.