CIVIL WAR IN CHESHIRE. II
A MEMORABLE SIEGE
In 1645 word was brought to Chester that the king himself was coming,
and the drooping spirits of the Royalists revived. Charles entered the
city with about three hundred followers who had escaped from the battle
of Naseby, where the main Royalist army had been cut to pieces by
Cromwell's Ironsides. During his short visit to Chester the king was the
guest of Sir Francis Gamull at his home, still called Gamull House, in
Bridge Street.
Many of you have read the inscription on the Phoenix Tower on the walls
of Chester--
'King Charles
stood on this tower
September 27th, 1645, and saw
His Army defeated
on Rowton Moor.'
Rowton Moor is no longer moorland. A village now stands on the
battlefield where the last hopes of the loyal inhabitants of Chester
were destroyed. The defeated army consisted of the remnants of the
Royalist cavalry under Sir Marmaduke Langdale, who was trying to cut his
way through the enemy to reinforce the garrison of Chester. The
Royalists were almost successful, and a sortie was made by the troops
within the city to join hands with Langdale, but the Puritan General
Poyntz, following closely on the heels of the Royalist horse, threw
them into hopeless confusion and drove them helter-skelter in all
directions. During the battle Sir Geoffrey Shakerley, whose tomb is in
the Shakerley Chapel at Little Peover, carried dispatches to the king,
ferrying himself across the river Dee in a tub. Some matchlocks and
firelocks used in this battle have been found on the Heath, and are now
in the Chester Museum.
This defeat was almost the final blow received by the king in his
struggle with Parliament. On the following day Charles fled into Wales
by an undefended road, asking only that the city might hold out for
eight days longer to enable him to make good his escape. In a tiny
window in Farndon Church are some pieces of ancient painted glass, with
portraits of several of the Cheshire esquires who attended Charles
during his stay in Chester.
The cordon was now drawn tighter round the doomed city, and a regular
blockade followed to starve the citizens into surrender. When the
Cromwellian troops who had been battering Lathom House in Lancashire
arrived and took up a position on the north side of the walls, the city
was completely surrounded. Dodleston Hall, to the south-west of the
city, was occupied by Brereton to prevent any further escapes into
Wales. The Roundheads made a floating bridge across the river Dee, which
was, however, destroyed by fireships which were turned adrift and were
carried up the river by a strong spring tide. Scaling-ladders were fixed
on the walls, but the Royalists dragged them up into the city in the
night-time.
The inhabitants were determined not to give in without a struggle. Even
women took a share in the work of defence, carrying baskets of earth to
fill up the breaches made by a night attack upon the city walls. The
city was well protected by the river Dee on its western and southern
sides; a semicircle of mud earthworks was made round the north and east
of the city. Many large houses in the neighbourhood were burnt by the
Royalists to prevent their being used by the enemy. The suburb of
Boughton, with its hall, was entirely destroyed, fighting taking place
almost daily in this quarter. The Royalists also made breaches in the
Dee Bridge.
When the outworks were carried by the Parliamentarian troops, all S.
John's parish lay at their mercy. The Roundheads turned the church into
a fortress, and planted a battery of guns on the tower, from which they
battered the city walls. In a glass case at the west end of the church
you may see a cannon ball that was fired from the walls and long
afterwards found embedded in the church tower.
The walls were also fiercely bombarded from Brewers Hall on the opposite
side of the Dee, though a battery of guns placed on the summit of
Morgan's Mount kept the besiegers at bay on the north. The Water Tower
at the north-west corner of the city bears the marks of some well-aimed
shots from the guns of Cromwell's men.
Within the city the hardships were very severe. Fires were frequent,
especially in the night-time. Cold and bleak December days increased the
suffering, and, worst of all, food was getting scarce, and the pinch of
hunger began to be felt. At length the inhabitants were reduced to
eating the flesh of horses and dogs, and still Sir Nicholas Byron held
out, waiting daily for the help that never came. Famine did its work at
last, and after a siege of eighteen weeks the city surrendered to
Brereton on February 3, 1646.
One of the conditions of surrender was that the victorious troops should
not do any damage to the city. The fragment of the High Cross, now in
the Grosvenor Museum, shows that in this respect the soldiers of
Cromwell did not keep their word. Sir Francis Gamull, the mayor,
bargained with the Roundheads that the tombs of his family should not be
harmed, and this explains the fact that the Gamull monuments in S.
Mary's-on-the-Hill are almost the only relics of the kind in Chester
that escaped destruction.
The events of the war were published every week in the Mercurius Aulicus
or 'Court Mercury,' a forerunner of the modern newspaper. In the Free
Library at Birkenhead are preserved some sheets of this paper, on one of
which is related the story of the capture and recapture of Beeston
Castle. After its occupation by the Parliamentary troops a daring
assault was made upon the castle by Captain Sandford and a party of
eight Royalists, who scaled the steep rock on which the castle is built
and called upon the defenders to surrender. Captain Steel, the Puritan
commander, was tried for cowardice in yielding to so small a force, and
condemned to be shot. After the battle of Rowton Moor the castle endured
a seven weeks' siege, and surrendered in November, 1645. Shortly
afterwards Parliament ordered the castle to be dismantled, and it has
been in ruins ever since. Several of the officers who were killed at
Beeston are buried at Tarporley.
Many of the Cheshire halls, which were held mainly by Royalists,
suffered severely for their loyalty to the king. Crewe Hall was taken by
the Roundheads, retaken by Byron, and finally garrisoned by the soldiers
of Brereton. Huxley Hall was occupied by Colonel Croxton during the
siege of Chester. Puddington Hall, in Wirral, the ancient home of the
Masseys, whose owner, Sir William Massey, remained in Chester till its
fall, was destroyed by fire.
Adlington Hall, the home of the loyal Leghs, endured a fortnight's
siege, at the end of which time its gallant garrison of one hundred and
fifty men was compelled to surrender and permitted to depart. The marks
of cannon shot used in the bombardment may still be seen upon the
massive oak doors of the courtyard. Wythenshaw Hall was held by
Royalists, but Colonel Dukinfield, a friend and neighbour of Sir William
Brereton, compelled a surrender after a short siege. Cannon balls have
been found in the grounds of the hall.
Vale Royal, the private residence of the Cholmondeleys since Henry the
Eighth turned out its abbot and monks, was plundered and partly burnt by
the soldiers of General Lambert's army. Sir Peter Leycester, of Tabley
Hall, fell into the hands of the Parliamentarians and was sent to
prison. During his captivity he first planned his famous book of the
History and Antiquities of Cheshire.
The lot of the unhappy Cheshire squire was indeed pitiable. Royalists
and Roundheads were equally unwelcome guests, treating their host with
scant ceremony, ransacking his house and helping themselves freely to
everything that might be of any service to them. Let Peter Davenport,
the squire of Bramhall, tell in his own words the story of his woes: 'On
New Year's Day, 1643, came Captain Sankey (a Parliamentary officer) with
two or three troopers to Bramhall, and went into my stable and took out
my horses, above twenty in all, and afterwards searched my house for
arms again and took my fowling-piece, stocking-piece, and drum, with
divers other things. Next day, after they were gone, came Prince
Rupert's army, by whom I lost better than a hundred pounds in linen and
other goods, besides the rifling and pulling to pieces of my house. By
whom I lost eight horses, and they ate me threescore bushels of oats.'
Poor Peter was not yet at the end of his troubles, for when the war was
over he had to pay five hundred pounds in order to buy back his own
property, for the estates of the Royalists were confiscated by
Parliament and sold back to their owners for large sums of money.
The empty niches over the porches of many Cheshire churches tell their
own tale of the damage done by the Cromwellian troops. Sculptured images
were everywhere broken in fragments, lead was stripped from the fonts
and roofs to be turned into bullets. The pipes were taken from the organ
of Budworth Church, and the stained glass windows of Tarvin destroyed by
the Puritan fanatic, John Bruen. The sacred buildings themselves were
used throughout the war as barracks, fortresses, stables, or prisons.
The destruction of property and of works of art that can never be
replaced was indeed largely the work of the Roundheads; but it was the
Royalists who perpetrated the blackest deed in this long tale of civil
strife. In the winter of 1643 Lord Byron's troopers were plundering the
villages of South Cheshire, burning farms and homesteads, and driving
the country people before them. One of his officers, Major Connought,
entered the village of Barthomley, and many of the panic-stricken
inhabitants took refuge in the tower of the church. Connought and his
brutal followers broke up the pews, gathered together the mats and
rushes strewn upon the floor, and made a bonfire at the entrance to the
tower. Forced from their place of refuge by fire and smoke, the
unfortunate villagers were stabbed and hacked to death as they came out
one by one. This was their Christmastide, the season of peace and good
fellowship and brotherly love, and men, blind with the lust of blood,
were cutting the throats of their brothers as if they were sheep in the
shambles. Happily, such scenes as this were rare, even in those dark
years.