On Easter Monday 1643 Prince Rupert led a force which assaulted the town of Birmingham as he moved along the road to meet up with Queen Henrietta Maria who was on her way to meet Charles I in Oxford.
This was a short and seemingly insignificant skirmish. Birmingham had no significant defences and the parliamentary defenders probably included less than 200 townsfolk and a small detachment from the nearby Garrison in Lichfield. Yet the Engagement became a cause to celebrate for the propagandists of both sides.
Royalist newsbooks used the ‘atrocities’ committed by Rupert’s force – said to include the deliberate burning of 80 houses ‘to ashes’, mistreatments of girls and murder of a minister – to blacken Rupert’s reputation in newsheets with titles such as ‘A true relation of Prince Rupert’s barbarous cruelty against the towne of Birmingham‘. Meanwhile, Parliamentary newsletters responded with a vigorous defence.
Birmingham heritage professional Rik Sowden, Historian and Interpreter tells publisher Mike Gibbs what his investigation of these events has revealed.
