'Give mee a Souldier's Coat': female cross-dressing during the English Civil War

Abstract

This article lifts the veil on the women who dressed as men during the English Civil War - and on contemporary reactions towards them. The piece begins by noting that - although it is often claimed that the armies of king and parliament were accompanied by many females who had 'counterfeited their sex' in order to march into the field - those claims rest on a surprisingly slim evidential base. Next, the article considers the ways in which both cross-dressed women and women in quasi-masculine attire were viewed during the half century before the war began, and suggests that attitudes towards such women may sometimes have reflected broader politico-religious attitudes. Finally, the article explores the handful of cases in which the presence of cross-dressed women in the rival armies is genuinely attested to - and asks what these cases reveal about reactions to such women during the conflict itself.

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