As Lloyd Bowen shows in his fascinating new book, John Poyer is an enigmatic and elusive figure. Was he, as one nineteenth-century antiquarian contended, a “great man” (209), consistently wronged by his local enemies and parliamentary masters? Or is he better characterized as an impulsive, unprincipled turncoat—“drunken Poyer” (208) in Thomas Carlyle's words—who flitted fecklessly between king and parliament, and ultimately dragged his native county into rebellion over a petty financial grievance?
In John Poyer, the Civil Wars in Pembrokeshire and the British Revolutions, Bowen offers by far the most authoritative study yet of Poyer and the events that would propel him to national prominence during the Second Civil War in 1648. He proceeds chronologically, tracing Poyer's rise from lowly origins as a Pembrokeshire glover, his emergence as a leading light of the parliamentarian cause in south-west Wales during the early 1640s, and finally the ill-fated insurrection against parliament that would eventually see him executed by firing squad in Covent Garden in April 1649. Throughout the book, Bowen skillfully weaves together the personal, local, and national dimensions of Poyer's story. One problem that any biographer must contend with is the paucity of testimony from Poyer himself: we are forced to view him predominantly through the accounts of his enemies (of which there were many), which have colored the largely unfavorable interpretations of later historians. Nonetheless, Bowen has managed to assemble an impressive range of sources—both untapped archival holdings and overlooked pamphlet publications—that help to shed fresh light on Poyer's perspectives and priorities.
From Bowen's careful handling of this evidence, a more nuanced and sympathetic portrait of Poyer emerges. His gradual alienation from parliament is explained with reference to a consistent set of ideological commitments, as well as the poisonous local rivalries that developed between different parliamentarian factions in Pembrokeshire as the 1640s wore on. Bowen argues that Poyer's political and religious moderation engendered an instinctive hostility to the New Model Army and its Independent allies at Westminster. This was compounded by the shoddy treatment that Poyer received from parliament as reward for his stalwart defense of Pembroke Castle, not least when his former royalist enemies were elevated to key positions on the Pembrokeshire county committee ahead of him. Bowen thus shows that Poyer's rebellion in 1648 was not—initially at least—royalist in nature, but rather aimed at securing compensation and indemnity for his military service in the First Civil War. It was only when the situation grew increasingly desperate that Poyer hitched himself to the Stuart cause and actively solicited support from the exiled Prince of Wales.
Bowen's writing is engaging and accessible throughout this volume, punctuated by succinct summaries of the national political context that will help to guide the general reader. But the book has important implications for specialists too. Its intricate analysis of Pembrokeshire politics, for example, adds to our understanding of the relationship between center and locality during the British Civil Wars. Bowen charts the ways in which the postwar splintering of the parliamentarian coalition intersected with, and exacerbated, provincial rivalries: Poyer's downfall was partly a result of his enemies having successfully forged connections with the ascendant Independent faction at Westminster. Relatedly, sections on the pamphlet exchanges between Poyer and his chief antagonist, John Eliot of Amroth, will be of great interest to scholars of seventeenth-century print culture. These build on recent studies by Jason Peacey in demonstrating that, along with being a critical component of an emerging public sphere, print was an effective means through which individuals could lobby political elites over private grievances. There is also an excellent extended discussion of Poyer's Declaration, a pamphlet printed in April 1648 with the aim of generating widespread popular support for his rebellion. Bowen shows not only that this was a “subscription text” (140) intended to create a royalist association in South Wales, but that subtly different versions of the Declaration may have been produced to appeal to different audiences—both presbyterian and episcopalian.
Still more broadly, Bowen engages with arguments about the nature of political allegiance during the British Civil Wars. The effort to reconstruct the self-image of those who have traditionally been dismissed as unprincipled or inconstant is certainly welcome, and complements the work both of Andrew Hopper on side changing and of Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor on episcopalian conformity in the 1650s. Bowen positions Poyer as an episcopalian parliamentarian, firmly committed throughout his life to the Church of England and its liturgy. Some detailed discussion of exactly how common this combination was would have strengthened Bowen's case here, since it might seem an incongruous one at first glance. Many Episcopalians were, of course, willing to countenance some measure of church reform during 1641–42. But given the abrupt radicalization of parliament's religious program in 1642, and particularly the increasing willingness of influential MPs to contemplate the “root-and-branch” abolition of episcopacy, how many of these moderates subsequently became “dedicated parliamentarian[s]” (81) like Poyer? Claims that “many fought on the parliamentarian side who were supporters of the Church of England” (81), and that “from the mid-1640s, accommodations between “prayer-book Protestants” and Presbyterians were not unusual” (82), are tantalizing but unfortunately not supplied with a footnote in either case. They also slightly contradict the earlier assertion that “somewhat unusually among precocious parliamentarians, Poyer was not a thoroughgoing puritan who had advanced ideas about Protestant reform” (4). Perhaps, then, this phenomenon of “prayer-book parliamentarianism” will prove a fruitful avenue for future research.
Moreover, this relatively minor point should not detract from the considerable merits of a book that deserves to be widely read and will sit alongside the work of Robert Ashton as a valuable contribution to understanding of the Second Civil War.
