Speaking of Oxford as a royalist stronghold during the English Civil War:
Anthony Wood – or Anthony a Wood, as he styled himself – was an Oxford type, a kind of person still to be found in the city’s narrow streets. He liked to spend his afternoons picking up old ballads, broadside and pamphlets … He had … 35 items on Conduct, and 660 on Armies, including battles, sieges and civil war. He also collected accounts of treason trials, crimes and murders (357), smoking, cards, feasting, progresses and sideshows (56), and works on the radical sects – among whom he included Presbyterians (179) – and on witchcraft (42) and women (139). He was especially careful about cataloguing the last group, indexing them under ‘Women’s advocate; women’s vindications, women virtuous; women hist of; Women’s rhetroic; women’s history’ Wom Parl. If; Women modish and vanity; women excellent.”
From, Diane Purkiss, The English Civil War: A People’s History, Harper Press, 2006. p. 277
About