XPost: soc.history.war.misc, soc.culture.scottish, alt.religion.   
   hristian.presbyterian   
   XPost: alt.religion.christian.baptist   
   From: cequka@iprimus.com.au   
      
   The Scottish aristocracy was so arrogant and snobbish that they refused to   
   grant to their middling class or middle class peasantry the right to use   
   longbows on a large scale when fighting in major battles against English   
   longbow archers. This led to disastrous and humiliating defeats for the   
   Scottish armies against English armies at the Battles of Dupplin Moor in   
   1332, Halidon Hill in 1333, St. Neville's Cross in 1346, Flodden Field in   
   1513, Solway Moss in 1542, and Pinkie Cleugh in 1547. The longbow had a much   
   better rate of fire, range, accuracy, and penetrating power than the   
   crossbow. Although the Welsh also used the longbow extensively, the   
   Anglo-Norman Welsh Marcher or frontier counts and barons learned from the   
   Welsh, employing Welsh mercenaries and English yeoman footsoldiers and light   
   horsemen trained in the use of the longbow, as well as in the use of the   
   pike, billhook, halberd, hatchet, and sword. The French aristocrats, like   
   their Scottish counterparts, also refused to arm their peasantry with the   
   longbow, fearing that they could turn this powerful weapon against them, as   
   the English yeoman archers were to do on two occasions against their land   
   lords, during the Wat Tyler Revolt of 1381, and in Jack Cade's rebellion of   
   1450, although both revolts were crushed by the English knights with the   
   help of loyal yeomen archers. On their own, and without the support of   
   knights and pikemen as a covering and counterattacking force, English yeomen   
   archers could not win battles, even if they could exact a heavy toll on a   
   frontal attacking cavalry, and on a frontal infantry assault.   
      
   The Scottish were again defeated heavily on four occasions during the   
   English Civil Wars of the 1640's and 1650's, that is, at the Battles of   
   Preston in 1648, Dunbar in 1650, Inverkeithing in 1651, and Worcester in   
   1651. Oliver Cromwell's disciplined, well trained, well armed, well paid,   
   and highly motivated Puritan Army known as the Roundheads and the Ironsides   
   were more than a match for the English Anglican Royalists and their Scottish   
   Presbyterian allies. The English Puritans were mostly Congregationalists and   
   Baptists. The Scottish Presbyterians had originally been allied with the   
   English Puritans when the English Civil War began in 1641, but by 1648 they   
   turned traitor and allied with the English Royalists or Cavaliers when the   
   Puritans refused to impose Presbyterianism on England as the official state   
   religion, as it was in Scotland, and by Cromwell's desire to grant religious   
   toleration for the Scottish Congregationalists and Baptists. Cromwell   
   himself, despite his religious radicalism, was in many ways conservative and   
   realistic in socio-economic policies, as witnessed by his refusal to give in   
   to the Communist demands of Gerard Winstanley's "Diggers" or "True   
   Levellers," and also by his refusal to allow the "Social Democratic"   
   platform of John Lilburne's "Levellers" to succeed. With the dismal economic   
   record of the late Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact as an example, Cromwell did   
   England a favour by refusing to allow Winstanley and Lilburne to succeed,   
   much as Napoleon Bonaparte was to later do with the French Enrages led by   
   Nicholas Noel-Gracchus Babeuf, although Martin Luther was rather excessive   
   and cruel in his urging the German knightly landlords in crushing the German   
   Peasant Revolt of 1525. Cromwell did not support the dissolution of the   
   English House of Lords, and he also maintained a high property qualification   
   for the eligibility to vote in House of Commons elections, some 200 pounds   
   per annum worth of property to be owned by an adult male, a high sum of   
   money for the 1650's. Not until 1911 were the English House of Commons   
   members paid by tax-payer funded salaries, meaning that most of its members   
   until then were obliged to be men of wealthy status in order to sit as   
   unpaid legislators. Cromwell was probably in the main sincere when he said   
   that the reason why he wished to allow the Jews to legally settle in England   
   was in order to encourage their conversion to Christianity, and he quoted   
   St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans 10 : 14 - 15 in support of this. The   
   English Presbyterian William Prynne was opposed to this Jewish immigration   
   policy, and Martin Luther himself had violently denounced the Jews in his   
   1543 published pamphlet called "On the Jews and Their Lies," after his hopes   
   for the large-scale, voluntary conversion of the Jews to Lutheran   
   Christianity did not happen. The Dutch Reformed Calvinist or Presbyterian   
   theologian Franciscus Gomarus also was strongly opposed to those Jews who   
   refused to convert to Calvinist Christianity voluntarily, although his   
   proposals against them were somewhat less harsh than those of Martin   
   Luther's.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)