Cross-dressing in the name of God
Perhaps the most unusual and fascinating of all the women who dressed as men during the Civil War were those who “counterfeited their sex” because they wanted to serve as soldiers themselves.
There is good evidence to show that a handful of exceptional women fought in the rival armies. A “woman corporall” was among the royalist prisoners captured when parliamentarian forces took Shelford Church in NottingJCOUJKTG KP #PF NQPI CHVGT VJG EQPʚKEV was over, a Cheshire man of royalist sympathies expressed his distaste for the fact that one of his neighbours, a certain Katherine Dale, had allegedly served as a parliamentarian trooper during the Civil Wars. “If Kate Dale… had ridden as a trooper for the king,” he remarked, UPKʛN[ pKV JCF DKP ICNNCPV KP JGTe DWV TKFGKPIG for the Rebells… it was a most base thing.”
If these two women did, indeed, serve as soldiers, they would surely have done so in male attire. And the same was evidently true of the parliamentarian trooper at Evesham, who in 1645 aroused the suspicions of a local tailor by ordering him to make “a petticoat… for my sister, which is just of my stature every way”.
The tailor was convinced that the petticoat was intended for the soldier himself, rather than his ‘sister’, and so informed the authorities. According to the contemporary pamphleteer who related the story, “this young man was sent for… and being examined… [admitted] he was indeed a female, and… that herself and VJTGG OQTG UWʛEKGPV OGPoU FCWIJVGTU ECOG out of Shropshire when the king’s forces commanded there, and to get away, came disguised in that manner, and resolved to serve in the warre for the cause of God”.
/QTG GXKFGPEG QH HGOCNG IJVGTU FTGUUKPI KP OGPoU ENQVJGU ECP DG HQWPF KP VJG PCPEKCN accounts of the chamberlains of Worcester. Among those accounts is a note of a payment made in 1649 “to a messenger to carry a letter… concerning the woman that cam[e] disguised in mans app[ar]ell in the name of a souldier”. Presumably Worcester’s local governors were appealing to someone in higher authority for advice as to how to deal with the unsettling male impersonator who had recently been discovered in their midst.
How many other cross-dressed women like these may have served, unrecognised, in the armies of king and parliament? Sadly, we will never know.
“This young man was sent for… and being examined… [admitted] he was indeed a female”