Amongst the archives of the High Wycombe Society are a number of items that have been used on exhibition boards over the past fifty years. One of these is a reproduction of a pamphlet announcing “A Glorious and Happy VICTORY” in 1642.
Historians will immediately recognise this as a propaganda pamphlet of the period. There is no reason to believe that the events described within it actually took place, but the people it sought to influence would not have had the means to verify or refute its contents.
As Samuel Johnson was to observe a century later: ‘Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.’ (from The Idler, 1758) .
Nevertheless it is an interesting document which mentions Wickham in Buckinghamshire and it continues to attract attention even today. As Peter Gaunt, president of the Cromwell Association expressed very eloquently when asked about it recently “the battle is located not in the Buckinghamshire countryside but in the newsmongers’ garrets of London … this is one of several invented accounts, generally recounting great parliamentarian victories against huge but incompetent royalist forces, printed and circulating in London in the opening months of the war, both before and after Edgehill and Turnham Green. In this case, we can confidently say that there was no such huge battle, involving many thousands of soldiers and a high number of casualties, at this location. The mere fact that ‘Lord Wentworth’, son of the executed Earl of Strafford, was the royalist commander gives the lie to this account – he went abroad after his father was executed in spring 1641 and did not return to England until the early 1650s. It is a fabrication … it’s fake news!”
Fellow trustee of the Cromwell Association Dr Ismini Pells has explained that the inflation/distortion of military encounters was common during December 1642. Even the most minor of skirmishes were turned into ‘great’ and ‘glorious’ victories as … at this time a vocal peace movement was gaining momentum in London, supported both by royalist sympathisers and those who were simply appalled by the shedding of blood. As the biggest source of funding and manpower for the parliamentarian armies, it was important to impress upon the capital’s civilian population the importance of continuing the conflict if the parliamentarian cause was not to collapse completely. Thus, the pamphlets detailing these ‘victories’ were used to help maintain the momentum of the war effort in London over winter 1642-43.
But for those readers still curious to know what didn’t happen in 1642, there is a transcript of the pamphlet’s contents which can be viewed here: ArchiveCivilWarPropaganda.
A second pamphlet, dated 13th July 1647 entitled New Papers form the Armie also mentions a Treaty at Wickham. This does not qualify the location, so it may or may not relate to Wickham in Buckinghamshire, but from time to time the High Wycombe Society is asked about it, so you can also view a transcribed version here: CivilWarTreatyOfWickham
This post was originally published on 23d December 2018 but has been updated on several occasions since.