Signs and wonders in Aldeburgh: Reading notes from The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England by Darren Oldridge (2016)

THE PLACE ON THE EAST COAST which the reader is asked to consider is Seaburgh. It is not very different now from what I remember it to have been when I was a child. Marshes intersected by dykes to the south, recalling the early chapters of Great Expectations ; flat fields to the north, merging into heath; heath, fir woods, and, above all, gorse, inland. A long sea-front and a street: behind that a spacious church of flint, with a broad, solid western tower and a peal of six bells.     

     How well I remember their sound on a hot Sunday in August, as our party went slowly up the white, dusty slope of road toward them, for the church stands at the top of a short, steep incline. They rang with a flat clacking sort of sound on those hot days, but when the air was softer they were mellower too….

My mind went back to James's fine opening of "A Warning to the Curious" (1925) when I read the below paragraphs in Chapter Three of The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England by Darren Oldridge (2016).

James himself informed readers that "....Seaburgh in 'A Warning to the Curious' is Aldeburgh in Suffolk."

Oldridge has this to say about Aldeburgh:

     Among the most widely reported apparitions were spectral armies fighting in the sky. These were linked closely to the civil wars: indeed, they were sometimes presented as otherworldly re-enactments of its battles. In one early report of the phenomenon, from the Suffolk town of Aldeburgh in 1642, witnesses heard only the noise of an aerial conflict; and some pamphlets in the late 1650s reported the din of canon, muskets and drums without any visible source.65 The printed accounts always emphasised the cacophony of battle, and this seems to have been the most common way in which people experienced these events. But the clamour was sometimes accompanied by the sight of "incorporeal soldiers". Two months after the Battle of Edge Hill in October 1642, "visions of horror" were reported near the site, as armies bearing the colours of the king and the parliament joined in spectral combat. News of this wonder led the king to send observers to the scene, where they apparently witnessed the spectacle for themselves. A pamphlet on the apparition in January 1643 spelt out its meaning: the Lord was enraged by the tumult and slaughter of the war "and so had permitted these infernal armies to appear where the corporeal armies had shed so much blood". The unearthly combat was "a sign of His wrath against this land for these civil wars"; and the author evidently hoped that it would hasten their end.66

     The main interest of these and other reported marvels lies in the social world to which they belonged: the existence of an audience that apparently found them credible, and an intellectual context in which they made sense. Those who recorded wonderful events did not, as a rule, assume that their readers would accept them uncritically: on the contrary, they were careful to buttress their accounts with the names of "men of credit" who had witnessed the things they described. The spectral armies at Edge Hill, for example, were certified by named witnesses including a Justice of the Peace and the minister Samuel Marshall. Testimonials of this kind supported news of prodigious events that were not, within the intellectual framework of most early modern readers, inherently incredible. The large and sustained market for such narratives probably indicates their plausibility, as does the fact that they were frequently reported alongside this-worldly events in the pamphlets and newsbooks of Stuart England. The market for wonders depended on a providential view of the world and the acceptance of an unseen realm of spirits. "Signs and wonders" were the most spectacular products of this way of thinking, but probably not the most important: the invisible hand of God was experienced most often in the ordering of human lives….

Frozen Thames: Reading notes from The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England by Darren Oldridge (2016)

In Chapter Three of The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England (2016) author Darren Oldridge :

     God's invisible hand was the most common, and paramount, supernatural force at work in early modern England. It could deliver otherworldly marvels – and the acceptance of this fact allowed people to discern "wonders" in the world. But more often the Lord's will was perceived in outwardly unremarkable events and the hidden dramas of the Christian conscience….

The "Signs and Wonders" section kicks off thus:

     In the weeks before Christmas in 1683, the river Thames in London froze over, and a small carnival encamped on the ice. John Evelyn, the horticulturalist and co-founder of the Royal Society, described the scene in his diary in the following month: "I went across the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to bear not only streets of booths, in which they roasted meat, and had diverse shops of wares, quite across as in a town, but coaches, carts, and horses passed over".6 This extraordinary fair continued into the beginning of February 1685 and occasioned a small flurry of printed images, comment and versification. One broadside detailed the entertainments on offer on the frozen river: 

     There roasted was a great and well-fed ox,
And there, with dogs, hunted the cunning fox;
Dancing on the ropes, and puppet plays likewise,
The like before never seen beneath the skies.7

     The last line was, perhaps, an exaggeration: the Thames had frozen on previous occasions in the seventeenth century, and the first impromptu festival on the river had assembled itself in 1608. Nonetheless, the "great frost" of 1684 was a rare and spectacular event that disturbed the ordinary course of nature; indeed, the titles of the various tracts that celebrated the occasion – Great Britains Wonder, The Winters Wonder, and the like – testified to this fact.8

     The marvel of the frozen Thames illustrated some themes that were central to the understanding of divine "wonders". For a start, the wonderful status of the event depended on the framework of beliefs and expectations through which it was perceived. This fact is, perhaps, particularly evident to modern-day observers because the episode involved extraordinary weather: after all, dramatically cold winters, floods and droughts continue to raise attention in western societies but are normally viewed in naturalistic rather than supernatural terms. This difference in perception is based on wider cultural assumptions. The willingness of early modern people to interpret an event as a wonder rested, ultimately, on the acceptance of divine interventions per se; it also depended on the nature of the occurrence itself and the larger significance that could be attached to it. In the right circumstances, relatively mundane natural phenomena might be elevated to the status of wonders. As the crisis between Charles I and his parliament tipped frighteningly close to civil war in February 1642, an unusual tide on the Thames was presented as one of "God's extraordinary heralds" of catastrophe.9 More gently, the appearance of a robin on the mausoleum erected for the funeral of Queen Mary in 1695 became the "Westminster wonder", betokening the survival of the English church and God's guidance of the nation.10

     The "great frost" of 1684 also indicates another feature of wonder narratives. As they relied heavily on the assumptions of their beholders, they could be perceived in various ways. Often only one account of a marvellous occurrence survives, but where several have been preserved they show the considerable range of readings that were available, both supernatural and otherwise. The "winter wonder" in London is a good example. Printed accounts of the extreme weather often presented it as a divine intervention. The author of one pamphlet in 1684 affirmed that such events were "the Lord's doings, and ought to be marvellous in our eyes".11 But the significance of the marvel was open to interpretation. According to one broadside, some feared that it presaged "an approaching sad mortality" like the great plague of 1666. Whether or not this was the case, the author continued, "sin is the cause of all / the heavy judgements that on us do fall", and prayerful repentance the fitting response.12 In another version, the frozen river was a test of the people's reaction to God's extraordinary deeds. The author of Londons Wonder (1684) feared the worst: 

     On this mighty river they there did invent
All kind of vain pastimes to reap their content;
They acted all rudeness there with one accord,
And little regarded the hand of the Lord.

     The carnival on the Thames was an impious response to the sign that God had sent, which should rather have inspired humility and charity towards the poor. The stalls and entertainments on the frozen river would anger the Lord and "make our sad judgement fall more severe".13

     The multiple understandings of the great freeze extended to naturalistic explanations. The author of A Strange and Wonderfull Relation (1684) rehearsed both natural and supernatural interpretations of "the present unparalleled frost", before siding decisively with the latter.14 Others ignored the cause of the extraordinary weather entirely, preferring to concentrate on the "humours, loves, cheats and intrigues" enacted on the frozen Thames.15 The physician John Peter wrote a treatise on the possible medical effects of the unprecedented cold.16 Perhaps the most nuanced understanding of the event was presented by the Anabaptist merchant Thomas Tryon. In Modest Observations on the Present Extraordinary Frost (1684), Tryon interpreted the extreme winter as part of a natural process by which God tested and judged the people: the extraordinary cold would, he believed, begin a cycle of disturbed weather that would cause great suffering. Using nature as His handmaiden, the Lord would thereby correct the "crying abominations" of the sinful population.17

The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England has an excellent index:

signs and wonders 7, 155; 

apparitions and visions 59–60; 

astronomical 56; 

divine providence 60–4; 

escapes from death 58; 

execution and revival of Anne Green 52–5; 

extreme life experiences 57–9; 

frozen river Thames 50–1 interpretations of 56; 

malformed infants 57; 

reports of monsters 7–8, 55, 56–7; 

spectral armies 14, 15, 59–60; 

types of 55