Published: 1999

At a time when England was divided by civil wars and local government was considered to be breaking down, the churchwardens of the Suffolk village of Cratfield continued to keep immaculate accounts, recording items such as the price of new bellropes and the costs of the soldiers sent from the village to fight for the Parlimentary cause.  Edited by Dr Lyn Botelho, the churchwardens’ accounts reveal how the villagers supported not only those fighting the Royalist armies but the ‘poore pepell whose howses wer burnt in the borders of Wales by the Cavellers’.