Book Description

Loyalty and Locality is a study of popular behaviour during the English Civil War. The book makes three main claims. The first is that English counties did not behave as homogeneous units, as 'county communities', during the conflict of 1642-46; they divided instead along regional lines, certain areas supporting Parliament, others supporting the King. The second is that this general rule applied to cities too, and that in urban communities, just as in the countryside, it is possible to discern both 'Royalist' and 'parliamentarian' parishes. The third is that these internal divisions were not simply temporary alignments, conjured up by the extraordinary circumstances of 1642-46, but that they reflected deep and enduring splits in local society, contrasting patterns of popular behaviour stretching back over very many years. Mark Stoyle's book explores these themes primarily through a study of events in Devon and Exeter.