"Instantly to Their Imaginations": A Historical Commentary on Death and Un-Death in the Siege of Carlisle, 1644–45

Abstract

abstract: This article commentates on the reported appearance of a ghost at the Siege of Carlisle (1644–45) during the British Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century. This report came from the narrative of Isaac Tullie, a teenage boy and staunch Royalist partisan, who was resident in Carlisle during the siege. Tullie's account used the medium of the ghost to give meaning to his traumatic experience of the siege, which occurred as the Royalist cause collapsed in England in late 1644 and 1645. However, this was complicated by the fact that the ghost was that of a dead Parliamentarian-aligned soldier, who was reported to have changed sides to the Royalists after death. British conceptions of ghosts in this period were confused, with purgatorial, demonic, and divine explanations competing with one another. This ambiguity provided Tullie with a conceptual space to both recognize the heroism of an enemy and to reaffirm divine support for his own cause. The article links this case study to other debates current in the historiography of the British Civil Wars, most significantly side-changing and the emergent scholarship of civilian and military trauma during the period.