Thomas Carlyle described what happened on Triploe Heath as, "one of the remarkablest scenes our History ever had." Fairfax himself said that, after that, "I never gave my free consent to anything they did." What the soldiers were asking for was, by any standards, just. But the method by which they expressed it, 2 'Agitators' from each Regiment, was anathema to Fairfax and Cromwell; perhaps as near as we ever got during the Civil War to democracy!

This picture is of Civil War graffiti on the south buttress of the nave of Thriplow Church. Date is either 1642 or, more temptingly, 1647; initials are "JLL"  Picture by kind courtesy of Shirley Wittering, Archivist, Thriplow Society.