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- Herausgeber: The History Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
The appalling effects of civil war are often suffered most horrifically by the ordinary men, women and children involuntarily caught up in it, as it tears asunder the very fabric of their lives. Such was the fate of the citizens of Chester, who for almost four years found themselves at the centre of the battle between King and Parliament. Chester's inhabitants withstood the terrors of bombardment and the rigours of starvation, in one of the most fiercely contested sieges of the Civil War. Using myriad contemporary sources it is possible for the first time to present a detailed picture of the part played in the siege by the 'common sort', the 'forgotten voices' of Chester: ordinary citizens forced by their employers to enlist in the City Regiment, their brutal introduction to the realities of war and their gallant defence of Chester.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2003
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The Great Siegeof Chester
The Great Siegeof Chester
John Barratt
First published in 2003 by Tempus Publishing Ltd
reprinted 2011
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© John Barratt, 2011, 2013
The right of John Barratt to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUBISBN 978 0 7524 9633 7
Original typesetting by The History Press
CONTENTS
Illustration List
Chronology
Introduction
1
‘Most Anciente Citie’: Chester in 1642
2
War comes to Chester: August 1642–July 1643
3
‘The Tymes’ Troublesomenesse’: July 1643–November 1644
4
The Leaguer begins: November 1644–May 1645
5
Chester Surprised: June–September 1645
6
The Battle of Rowton Heath: 24 September 1645
7
The Great Assault: 25 September–8 October 1645
8
Tightening Siege: October–November 1645
9
‘Fire, Famine and Sword’: November–December 1645
10
Surrender: January–February 1646
11
Aftermath
Appendix
A Tour of Civil War Chester
Maps
Notes
Bibliography
ILLUSTRATION LIST
Illustrations courtesy of John Barratt unless otherwise stated.
1.
John Speed’s Map of Chester, 1610.
2.
Braun and Hogenburg’s Map of Chester, 1585.
3.
An eighteenth-century view of Chester.
4.
Dee Mills and Dee Bridge.
5.
Sir William Brereton.
6.
Chester Cathedral.
7.
Cavalry.
8.
Infantry Equipment.
9.
Pikemen.
10.
Musketeer (Partisan Press).
11.
Artillery.
12.
Dragoon and camp follower (Partisan Press).
13.
King Charles I.
14.
Training.
15.
Sir Thomas Aston.
16.
Chester Castle.
17.
Eastgate.
18.
Northgate.
19.
Castle and Bridgegate.
20.
Construction of defences.
21.
Plan of the defences of Chester.
22.
The Roodeye.
23.
Arthur, Lord Capel.
24.
Hawarden Castle.
25.
John Williams, Archbishop of York.
26.
John, Lord Byron.
27.
The propaganda view.
28.
Sir Thomas Fairfax.
29.
Prince Rupert.
30.
William Legge.
31.
Montgomery Castle.
32.
Musketeer (Partisan Press).
33.
John Booth.
34.
Sir George Booth.
35.
Sir John Owen.
36.
Prince Maurice.
37.
George, Lord Digby.
38.
Lady Neale.
39.
A ‘Sconce’.
40.
Storming the ‘mount’.
41.
Transporting guns.
42.
Battery position.
43.
View from Parliamentarian battery.
44.
Firelock.
45.
Sydenham Poyntz.
46.
Sir Marmaduke Langdale.
47.
Charles, Lord Gerard.
48.
Cavalry on the march.
49.
Crossing the Dee.
50.
Cavalry action.
51.
Medical instruments.
52.
The exchange.
53.
Bridge of boats.
54.
Battery fire.
55.
Women in the breach.
56.
Morgan’s Mount.
57.
Storming a breach.
58.
Encounter with a bear.
59.
View of Chester from Welsh side of the Dee.
60.
Sir William Brereton – an alternative image.
61.
Soldiers on campaign.
62.
Mortar.
63.
Mortar fire.
64.
Women ‘fire-watching’.
65.
Bridge of boats site.
66.
Attempt to burn the bridge of boats.
67.
Coins.
68.
Jacob, Lord Astley.
69.
Rioting.
70.
Thomas Mytton.
71.
Surrender.
COLOUR PLATES
1.
The fourteenth-century Abbey Gateway.
2.
View eastwards along the northern section of the city walls.
3.
The Dee Bridge.
4.
Bridge Street, house of the Cowper family.
5.
The ‘Old King’s Head’.
6.
View of the Parliamentarian siegeworks from the Welsh side of the Dee.
7.
‘God’s Providence House’.
8.
The ‘Bear and Billet’, Lower Bridge Street.
9.
The High Cross.
10.
Memorial window.
11.
Foregate Street.
12.
Women and children.
13.
Kaleyards Postern.
14.
Newgate.
15.
Site of the Parliamentarian bridge of boats.
16.
Artillery position.
17.
The Phoenix Tower.
18.
The breach.
19.
Parliamentarian battery position.
20.
Barnaby’s Tower.
21.
Dee Bridge and Bridgegate from Handbridge.
22.
Tower of Chester Cathedral.
23.
The city walls in the vicinity of the Goblin Tower.
24.
Traces of embankments at Abbey Green.
25.
Walls near Morgan’s Mount.
26.
Pemberton’s Parlour.
27.
The New Tower.
28.
The city walls near Pemberton’s Parlour.
29.
Eastgate Street.
30.
Watergate Street.
31.
Fort Royal site.
32.
Remains of Parliamentarian ‘mount’.
MAPS
1.
The Chester Area, 1642–46.
2.
Chester, 1642–46.
3.
The Defences of Chester, 1643–44.
4.
The Leaguer of Chester, 1644–46.
5.
Battle of Rowton Heath.
6.
The Defences of Chester, 1645–46.
7.
Battle of Denbigh Green.
CHRONOLOGY
1639
First Bishops’ War.
1640
Second Bishops’ War.
18 September
Order for repairs to Chester defences. Francis Gamull made captain of city Trained Band.
1641
October
Outbreak of rebellion in Ireland.
1642
4 January
King fails in attempt to arrest five leading opponents in Parliament. Civil War becomes inevitable.
8 August
Sir William Brereton expelled from Chester after attempting to recruit for Parliament.
22 August
King raises standard at Nottingham. Official start of Civil War.
6 September
Chester assembly orders further repairs to defences.
23–28 September
King Charles I in Chester, secures election of pro-Royalist William Ince as mayor.
23 October
Battle of Edgehill; marginal Royalist victory.
1643
3 February
Order by Chester assembly for levying of £500 for construction of outworks to protect suburbs.
13 March
Cheshire Royalists defeated at Middlewich. Sir Nicholas Byron appointed governor of Chester.
18–21 July
First attack on Chester by Sir William Brereton repulsed.
16 September
Cessation signed between King and Irish Confederates.
7 November
Brereton takes Holt Bridge then occupies north-east Wales. Lord John Byron appointed ‘Field Marshal General of North Wales and those Parts’.
21 November
English troops from Ireland land at Mostyn. Brereton retreats across Dee.
4 December
Hawarden Castle surrenders to Royalists.
12 December
Byron begins Nantwich campaign.
13 December
Royalists surprise Beeston Castle.
24 December
Bartholmley ‘Massacre’.
26 December
Royalists defeat Brereton at Middlewich.
1644
6 January
Prince Rupert appointed captain-general of Wales and the Marches.
18 January
Royalist assault on Nantwich repulsed
25 January
Battle of Nantwich: Fairfax defeats Byron.
11 March
Prince Rupert visits Chester and orders alterations to defences. Gamull fails in bid to become governor.
18 May
Rupert and Byron begin Lancashire campaign.
19 May
William Legge appointed governor of Chester.
11 June
Rupert takes Liverpool.
2 July
Royalists defeated at battle of Marston Moor.
21 August
Colonel John Marrow defeated and mortally wounded at Tarvin.
18 September
Byron defeated at Montgomery.
October
Brereton begins to close in around Chester.
1 November
Parliamentarians take Liverpool.
December
Leaguer of Chester begins.
1645
18 January
Royalist defeat at Chrisleton.
January/February
Lord Byron becomes governor of Chester.
19 February
Prince Maurice relieves Chester.
22 February
Parliamentarians surprise Shrewsbury.
13 March
Maurice leaves Chester. Siege resumed.
15 March
Rupert and Maurice relieve Chester and Beeston.
16 May
Leaguer again raised by Brereton on approach of Royalist ‘Oxford Army’.
14 June
‘Oxford Army’ defeated at Naseby.
28 July
Leaguer of Beeston Castle resumed.
20 September
Parliamentarians surprise Chester suburbs.
22 September
First Parliamentarian assault on city repulsed.
23 September
King Charles enters Chester.
24 September
Royalists defeated at battle of Rowton Heath.
25 September
King Charles leaves Chester.
9 October
Second major Parliamentarian assault on city repulsed.
1 November
Battle of Denbigh Green. Sir William Vaughan’s relief attempt defeated.
10 November
Parliamentarians begin mortar bombardment of Chester.
25 November
Last major Royalist sally repulsed.
10 December
Major damage from Parliamentarian mortar bombardment.
1646
7 January
Brereton summons to Chester to surrender rejected.
14 January
Byron orders survey of food stocks in Chester. Increasing protests among citizens.
29 January
Surrender negotiations begin.
30 January
Surrender terms agreed.
3 February
Chester surrenders.
INTRODUCTION
In most accounts of the English Civil War, the spotlight falls on the great set-piece battles such as Edgehill, Marston Moor, Naseby and Worcester. This is both understandable and justified, for such dramatic actions could change the course of events in a few hours of bloody combat. Yet equally significant in its ultimate effect was the ‘other’ war of countless skirmishes and scores of sieges, ranging across virtually the whole of the British Isles in the decade following 1641. The outcome of these often little-known episodes would eventually decide the control of vast tracts of the country, possession of which was vital for the war efforts of the opposing sides.
Although marauding armies might leave a swathe of looting and wanton destruction in their path, the major battles rarely had any direct impact on the civilian population other than the conscripts enrolled in the opposing armies, the unfortunate camp followers caught up in the action and farmers unlucky enough to have their fields turned into battlegrounds. Sieges, however, especially those of towns and cities, involved all of their inhabitants – men, women and children of all classes and backgrounds – bringing them direct and sometimes prolonged experience of all the manifold dangers and horrors of war.
Chester was one such place. Prosperous, and perhaps a little complacent, on the outbreak of war in 1642 its citizens had the misfortune to be living in a location of prime strategic importance to both King and Parliament. The result, as Chester became a pawn on the chessboard of war, were three years of constant threat, alarms and upheaval, culminating in one of the longest sieges of the Civil War, which reduced much of Chester to ruins and left its starving population ripe for the ravages of plague.
A wide range of contemporary sources, including the journal kept during the siege by a Chester alderman, the detailed account of the final months of the siege written by the Royalist governor, the letters of the Cheshire Parliamentarian commander and extensive civic and personal records provide a vivid and comprehensive portrait of the impact of the Civil War on Chester, its people and the soldiers involved on both sides.
This is the first detailed account of one of the key sieges of the English Civil War to appear in the last eighty years, and makes use of a number of sources and much research which have appeared in the intervening period, adding greatly to our knowledge of many aspects of the Civil Wars.
Thanks are due to the patient and knowledgeable staff of a number of libraries and institutions, notably Chester Record Office, Cheshire County Record Office, Chester Public Library, the Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool, the British and Bodleian Libraries, the Grosvenor Museum Chester and Chester Heritage Centre. Numerous individuals have also provided invaluable information and insights whilst I was researching this book. They include Ivor Carr, John Lewis, Les Prince, Stuart Reid, Keith Roberts, David Ryan, John Tincey, Simon Ward and the late Norman Dore.
Thanks are also due to Stephen Beck and Derek Stone for the line drawings and maps.
Chester remains a city steeped in its history, and not even a casual visitor, still less one with an interest in the Civil Wars, can walk its streets and walls without constant reminders of Chester’s role in this turbulent episode of British history. Awareness of this, and of the men, women and children, of all sorts and conditions, caught up in these events, have been with me throughout researching and writing this book, and if the end result conveys some inkling of this to those who read it I will be well satisfied.
John Barratt September 2002
1
‘MOST ANCIENTE CITIE’: CHESTERIN 1642
In 1612, when the cartographer and historian John Speed published his great atlas, The Treatise of the Empire of Great Britain, the plate depicting his native county of Cheshire included, in pride of place, a plan of ‘that most anciente citie’ of Chester.
From Roman times, Chester had played a leading role in the life of its region and the country as a whole. The town was of great geographical and strategic significance. It was situated on a low hill to the east of the River Dee, with other rising ground on the west bank of the river. The gullies which ran down either bank formed the lowest bridging point of the Dee.
Chester was the gateway to North Wales. Its bridge was not the only point at which the lower Dee could be crossed, for downstream there were fords over the estuary, shifting and treacherous traps for the unwary, at Blacon and Shotwick, and upstream, 6 miles south of Chester, another bridge at Farndon. But the main route to North Wales, whether for Roman legionaries, Norman earls, Plantagenet kings, and merchants and traders of all times, had always run through Chester. Chester also dominated the western route to Scotland through Cheshire and Lancashire via the crossings of the River Mersey at Hale Ford and Warrington.
For centuries Chester had been a considerable port. Its ships could be seen in harbours all around the British coast, and its seamen and merchants were encountered as far afield as France, Portugal and Spain. Most important, however, were the city’s links with Ireland. Its ships carried the trade of the Irish Sea, and, in time of war, English armies and their supplies. As recently as 1641, when rebellion broke out in Ireland, Chester’s streets and taverns had been filled with swaggering brawling soldiery on their way to the wars.1
1. John Speed’s map of Chester, 1610. Note that the River Dee ran much closer to the western wall of the city than today. Significant suburban development had occurred to the north and east of the old city, and at Handbridge on the southern bank of the Dee.
But by the opening of the seventeenth century, the greatest days of the port of Chester lay in the past. The silting-up of the Dee Estuary had been a problem for over 200 years, and in the mid-sixteenth century the New Quay was built at Neston, nearer to the mouth of the river. This became the harbour for larger vessels, though smaller ships continued to make their way upstream as far as Chester itself. Neston was the main embarkation point for troops sent to Ireland. The importance of the city’s links with Ireland would grow during the Civil War, when Chester and its port were the main landing places for English troops recalled from the province of Leinster to serve the Royalist cause.2
As Speed’s map shows, early seventeenth-century Chester still had close links with the surrounding countryside. By 1642 the city’s population totalled between 5,000 and 10,000. Numbers had been rising steadily since the previous century, despite temporary setbacks resulting from regular visitations of the plague, the most serious of which, in 1603–04, had killed 1,000 people.3
Chester remained a fairly compact city. The majority of its inhabitants lived within the circuit of its largely intact medieval city walls. Most of the principal buildings were situated along four main thoroughfares, Eastgate Street, Bridge Street, Watergate Street and Northgate Street, which followed the plan of the old Roman fortress. Here were the shops and dwellings known as the ‘Rows’, whose unusual construction excited much comment from visitors.4 Dotted along the streets, among the churches, shops and taverns, were the richly ornate half-timbered homes of Chester’s leading merchants and the town houses of the gentry of west Cheshire and north-east Wales. Behind these streets, and bringing a rural feel to the smelly, noisy, crowded town, were orchards, gardens and even a few fields, and, in the north-west angle of the city walls, an area of allotment-like plots known as ‘the Crofts’.
2. Braun and Hogenburg’s map of Chester from Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1585). Note the shipping on the Dee, and the cross on the Roodeye (itself used for grazing livestock). The allotments and orchards in the western part of the city are clearly visible, as are the gardens behind many of the larger houses such as those on Eastgate and Bridge Streets.
In sharp contrast to the splendid residences of the well-to-do were the dwellings of the poor, who frequently lived in crowded conditions in cellars, behind shops, or in poorer districts such as the area around Gloverstone.
In the north-east angle, almost a fifth of the area within the city walls was occupied by the cathedral, its close containing the homes of the clergy and associated buildings. Since medieval times spiritual power had been counter-balanced by the secular, in the shape of the castle, which occupied a similarly large area in the south-west corner of the walls.
Like most of England’s medieval towns, seventeenth-century Chester had spread beyond the confines of its city walls. Suburbs had grown up: to the east along Foregate, or Forest Street, as far as the tollgate known as the ‘Bars’ and the village of Boughton; to the north along Northgate Street: and below the city walls along St John’s and Cow Lanes.
Along the banks of the River Dee were the establishments of the leather workers and the famous water mills. There were eleven of the latter, six of them for corn milling, and three for cloth fulling, whilst the remaining two were employed in raising water from the river to the water tower which had been built over the Watergate in 1600 by John Tyrer. From here, and from another tower at Boughton springs, east of the city, water was piped to various properties and to a conduit situated at the Cross in the town centre.5
The medieval Dee Bridge linked Chester with the suburb of Handbridge, situated on the rising ground on the west bank of the river. Home of the Dee fishermen, Handbridge had frequently been destroyed and rebuilt during medieval conflicts with the Welsh.
Clearly visible from the west bank of the Dee were the spires and towers of Chester’s eight churches. Particularly noticeable was St John’s, some 150 yards to the east of the city walls, whose dominating tower would prove a sore trial to Chester’s garrison during the later stages of the siege.
Chester was still closely surrounded by countryside. The townfields, where cattle were grazed and crops grown, lay to the north, and elsewhere the built-up areas were bounded by a mixture of heathland, cultivated ground and marshes. The latter were quite extensive, particularly towards the mouth of the Dee, and treacherous, though not impassable to those familiar with their shifting pathways. To the south-west of the city walls was a great area of open grassland, formed by the gradual retreat of the River Dee, known as the Roodeye (after a cross which had stood there), and used as a site for fairs, the embryonic Chester Races, public meetings and the grazing of livestock.6
Four main roads radiated out from Chester. From the Northgate ran the route which led via Hoole, Bridgetrafford and Delamere Forest to Warrington and the crossings of the Mersey. The path of the old Roman Watling Street led through the Eastgate, passing through Boughton, the Gowey Valley, Tarvin and Peckforton Gap, and on to Cheshire’s second town, Nantwich, and eventually into the Midlands. Crossing Rowton Heath to the south-east of the city was the road to Whitchurch and Shrewsbury, with a branch into Wales over Farndon Bridge. Perhaps most important of all was the old soldiers’ way into North Wales, leaving Chester by the Bridgegate, traversing the Dee Bridge, then tracing its course through Wrexham, Hawarden and the moors and hills beyond, with a fork diverging along the Flintshire coast.
3. Eighteenth-century view of Chester from the south west. Note the castle (centre), Dee Bridge and cathedral (centre left). The dominating tower of St John’s Church is to the right of the castle.
On three of these roads lay what was in effect the ‘outer ring’ of Chester’s defences. Beeston Castle, built by the thirteenth-century earls of Chester, from its towering and precipitous rocky crag dominated the Cheshire Plain and Peckforton Gap.7 King Edward I’s castle of Hawarden, 7 miles west of Chester, was the first of the chain of fortifications which studded North Wales, whilst the Welsh end of Farndon Bridge was secured by Holt Castle. Though possession of these strongholds was not always essential for use of the routes which they guarded, their occupation for much of the war by the Royalists was a significant advantage to the defenders of Chester.
Chester was not only the administrative centre of the County Palatine; it had also been a bishopric since 1541 and was an important centre of ecclesiastical government.
Chester’s economic well-being was closely linked with its surrounding region. Numerous fairs were held, at which county gentry, their wives, and prospering Chester merchantile families rubbed shoulders with apprentices, Cheshire farmers and cattle drovers from North Wales, and the lilting tones of the Welsh were as commonly heard as the slower speech of the Cheshire Lowlands. The main industries of the town were connected with the cloth and leather trades, the latter estimated to have employed 25% of the working population.8 Chester-produced goods were sold over a wide area, and the city was of great importance to the economy of North Wales, importing cattle, lead and coal.
The civil government of Chester had been established under the Charter of 1547, and was administered by an assembly consisting of the mayor, two sheriffs, a recorder, twenty-four aldermen and sixty elected common councillors, chosen by the householders of the city. In practice, the mayor, recorder, sheriffs and aldermen exercised the real authority, and formed a kind of ‘inner cabinet’ known as the ‘Brethren’. The mayor was elected annually in a somewhat complex process supposed to reflect the generalised view of the citizens.9
It has been suggested that Chester came into the hands of the Royalists as the result of manoeuvrings by a small group of aldermen determined to retain pre-war trading advantages which they had obtained from the Crown, and had since maintained and extended by sometimes dubious means. However, by the 1640s, threats to trade and Chester’s decline as a port in the face of Liverpool, her brash new rival on the Mersey, were causing more generalised unease. Also significant was the sharp rise in pro-Royalist sentiment through much of the region as Civil War loomed.10 In any case, the Brethren, among whose number were the leading merchants and employers of the city, had ample means to gain the support of the generally acquiescent common councillors and ordinary citizens, whose livelihood depended upon Chester’s prosperity.
Aldermen and sheriffs were not elected, vacancies being filled by co-opted members chosen by the remainder of the Brethren. Finances were obtained by means of the assembly’s powers to collect money to pay for the administration of the city, and by its right to administer the estates of minors and orphans within Chester and its ‘liberties’ (the surrounding area beyond the city walls).
The trade of Chester was controlled by the ‘Guild Merchant’, whose presiding officer was usually the mayor, so that it and the civil government of the city were normally in the same hands. The Guild could own property, hold courts, and fine and even imprison offenders. By the seventeenth century the Guild was a ‘closed shop’, an oligarchy of a few wealthy families who regulated trade to their own advantage, and stifled the opposition of any dissidents. Its powers were secured by an annual payment of £300 to the Crown.
Among the leading supporters of the King were a group of local magnates, including Lord Rivers, Lord Kilmorrey and the Earl of Derby, all of whom had substantial holdings of property in and around Chester. Derby was lord lieutenant of the county, and although the main family estates lay across the Mersey in Lancashire, his influence (or, in the summer of 1642, for practical purposes that of his son, Lord Strange, soon to be 7th Earl of Derby) was considerable.
Of more immediate significance were the attitudes of the Chester merchants and assembly members. Chief among them were two cousins, William and Francis Gamull. The Gamulls had wide-ranging commercial interests. They were exporters of calf skins, leather merchants, and landowners, and also possessed six of the Dee mills, with fishing rights on the river. The Gamulls were hard-headed businessmen, who lost no opportunity to extend their empire. They made full use of advantages such as those presented to them by Francis’s election in 1634 as mayor, and in 1641 as a member of Parliament for Chester. The Gamulls’ acquisition of exclusive trading privileges by royal grant, or by more clandestine means, made them highly unpopular among many rivals and ordinary citizens, but by virtue of being among the largest employers in Chester, the Gamulls, with their fine house on Bridge Street, were assured of considerable power within the city.
4. Dee Mills and Dee Bridge. Based on a contemporary drawing by Randle Holme, this view shows some of the Dee Mills close to the Dee Bridge, and the gatehouse at its southern end. The water tower on the Bridgegate (centre) is wrongly positioned. As other illustrations make clear, it was actually smaller and built above the left-hand tower. On the far left is the little-used Shipgate.
