Oliver's lost army: Buried side by side, the Roundheads who fell victim to a terrible siege
By
Chris Brooke
Last updated at 9:22 AM on 18th August 2010
They were crammed together and buried side by side, stripped of all clothing and personal possessions.
Force of circumstance determined this most impersonal and undignified resting place.
For the men buried in mass graves at a ruined York church were the soldiers of Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentary army.
Skeleton army: The remains found in York, one of 10 mass graves containing Roundhead soldiers
The Roundheads were not killed in combat but probably by infectious disease during the gruelling English Civil War siege of the city.
Leader: Oliver Cromwell led the Roundhead cavalry
Their comrades went on to defeat King Charles I's Cavaliers at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644 and turn the tide of the war.
But history forgot the more than 100 souls who probably never made it to the battleground.
Now, more than 350 years later, archaeologists have unearthed the graves and their skeletons to reveal the story of Cromwell's forgotten soldiers.
Routine excavations in 2007 at the site of a medieval church, south of York's historic city walls, led to the uncovering of ten mass graves.
Archaeologists knew from previous
discoveries that the 'lost' 11th century church of All Saints in
Fishergate had once been there. However, these newlydiscovered graves
took archaeologists forward 600 years to a time when the country was
split in two by a bloody civil war.
The position of the graves showed they were dug at a time when only the shell of the abandoned church remained. They varied in size, with the smallest containing four skeletons and the largest 18.
Delicate work: An archaeologist examines one of the 350-year-old bodies
No ceremony: The bodies were evidently buried with some haste
The skeletons were arranged neatly in parallel rows, mostly laid on their side or face down in the dirt, and were packed together like sardines in a can. Larger graves had a second row where the heads of one row overlapped the feet of another.
PSALMS BEFORE BATTLE
Cromwell's Parliamentary army in 1644 was a loose collection of regional fighting groups, unified the following year as the New Model Army.
The intention was to enforce strict discipline in return for regular pay of eight pence per day for the infantry and two shillings for the cavalry.
It was the first British army to wear the famous red coat uniform. The infantry had muskets or pikes, the troopers carried a sword and two pistols.
Derided by Royalists as the 'new noddle' army, it became an effective force under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax, with Cromwell initially in charge of the cavalry
Officers were appointed on merit rather than status. One colonel was a shoemaker.
Cromwell preferred soldiers who were devoted Puritans like himself and sang psalms before battle. Their close-cropped hair led to the term Roundheads.
No buckles, buttons or jewellery were found, indicating they were probably buried naked. In total there were 113 skeletons.
It was not possible to establish the sex of them all, but 87 were male, most between the ages of 35 and 49.
Details of the find are revealed in Current Archaeology magazine in a report by experts Lauren McIntyre and Graham Bruce.
Analysis of the skeletal remains indicated they were not wounded and did not die in battle. But most had conditions, such as spinal joint disease, caused by excessive physical labour.
'The skeletons are likely to represent a military group who all died within a short period,' said the authors.
'Given the probable 17th century date, it is likely that they relate to the Civil War.'
York was a Royalist stronghold and was besieged by a Parliamentary force of 30,000 between April and July 1644.
The siege ended soon after both armies clashed in fields outside York at Marston Moor - the largest single battle of the Civil War.
Evidence suggests that the 113 bodies could well have been Cromwell's soldiers who died from disease while laying siege to the city.
Although the Royalist army was well-provided for behind the city walls, the besieging Parliamentary forces suffered severe deprivation, making them susceptible to illness and diseases such as dysentery and typhoid.
The skeletons are being kept for further study at the University of Sheffield's archaeology department.
I dont know if anyone has noticed but it seems they didnt suffer with tooth decay Third picture down shows an almost perfect set of teeth with no holes,
What diet were they on , fluoride toothpaste didn't exist at that time. So how come no tooth decay?
It makes you wonder ,
Tiffany, London UK, 18/8/2010 11:22
No sugar = minimal tooth decay. Until fairly recently sugar was only for the rich, many graves much older than this have been excavated in which the skeletons have perfect teeth. As a student in the 1980s I worked on a dig where several Saxon graves were opened including one of a man who died somewhere in his late sixties and although his teeth were worn from the rough diet of the time there were no missing teeth and not a spot of decay.
- Sophie, Leeds, 19/8/2010 00:36
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