“The Gear Rout”: The Cornish Rising of 1648 and the Second Civil War

Abstract

In July 1648 John Bond, Master of the Savoy, delivered a thanksgiving sermon to the House of Commons, in which he praised God for the series of victories that the New Model Army had recently won in many parts of England and Wales. The tangled, multi-layered conflict known to posterity as the Second Civil War was still raging, rebel forces were holding out in Colchester and the Scottish army of the Engagement was marching south, but Bond—anxious to buoy up the Army’s allies and to cast down the spirits of its enemies—did everything he could to emphasise the universality of the recent successes. “The garment of gladnesse reacheth all over…the Land,” he declaimed, “the robe [of victory] reacheth from…Northumberland in the North, to…Sussex in the South…[and] from Dover…in the East, to Pensands, the utmost part of Cornwall, in the West.” Bond’s reference to Penzance would have struck a chord with many of his listeners, for accounts of an insurgent defeat in the little Cornish town had been read out in the House some weeks before. Yet, from that day to this, the rising at Penzance—and indeed the entire “Western dimension” of the Second Civil War have been largely forgotten.