Living through civil war sieges in Newark – the civilian experience
[00.00]
In the seventeenth century, the market town of Newark sat at the lowest bridging point across the River Trent astride the Great North Road which linked London with the north and Scotland. Unsurprisingly, control of this town became a strategic objective for both sides during First Civil War.
Besieged not once but three times, by parliamentarian and Scots armies, Newark was fought over for years and in the words of the diarist, John Evelyn writing in 1654, it earned the reputation for being a “brave towne and garrison”.
But the cost for its people was high because behind its medieval walls and more modern earthwork siege defences, Newark was more than a military strongpoint. It was also home to more than 2,000 citizens – men, women and children – who struggled to survive the dangers and hardship that came with siege warfare.
For more than 20 years historian and author, Dr Stuart Jennings, has worked to uncover the stark realities of ordinary people’s lives as they struggled to raise their families and survive bombardment, hunger and disease. He tells publisher, Mike Gibbs, what he has uncovered.
[01.28]
Mike Gibbs: Stuart, for those of us who don’t really know Newark, could you give us a description of what Newark was like in the 17th century?
Stuart Jennings: Newark was at the heart of a central North/South route, linking London and the South-West with York and so, in the 17th century, it was a town that had considerable inns where people could stay. The Great North Road and the Fosse Road intersected just outside Newark and the town had the last bridge over the River Trent before the Humber estuary, so anybody who wanted to travel up to York needed to pass through Newark. So it was quite an important staging post for journeys. It was an essential communication point.
The town itself generally consisted of thatched cottages and houses. There were only three stone buildings within the medieval walls: one was the church, one was the castle, and the other was the Magnus school room. Everything else was either wood or timber-framed and thatched. One of the joys today, you can go to Newark today, and still see many of the properties that were there in the 17th century – they survived.
[02.54]
Mike Gibbs: So it was a strategic point?
Stuart Jennings: It was essential – especially as initially the Parliamentarians took control of Nottingham and Derby. It was the link between the King’s northern army and the army based at his capital in Oxford.
[03.13]
Mike Gibbs: But I believe in the years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War, Newark wasn’t in a very good state economically. What was the population at this time?
Stuart Jennings: This is always a difficult question to answer because the sources we use were not meant to count population – they were used to raise money. But, looking at the variety of sources that are available, which include the 1641 Protestation Oath, that include parish registers, burials and baptisms, and then looking slightly later at the Hearth Tax returns, 1664 and 1674, it’s generally assumed, and I believe we are not far off, if we talk about a population between about just over 2,000 up to about 2,400.
[04.02]
Mike Gibbs: And its strategic position is going to make it really important during the Civil Wars. Newark, I think, is very unusual in that it has three sieges. What was the chronology of the sieges?
Stuart Jennings: The first siege happened quite early on – 27 February 1643 – when a Parliamentarian force under Major-General Ballard laid siege to the town. Thankfully, at the time, Sir John Henderson was there with 4,000 cavalry troopers and they put up a stiff defence and, after one day, it was obvious that it was a tougher nut to crack than they first thought. There was a lot of repercussions: Ballard was blamed for the failure. He withdrew too soon, according to Sir John Gell and John Hutchinson, the two commanders of the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire forces that were there. So it gave them a taste of what was to come and it actually taught the garrison at Newark that they needed more substantial defences – the medieval walls were not sufficient.
The second siege happens – virtually a year later, in 1644, and it begins on 29 February. And the combined forces of parliament, led by General Meldrum, assembled – and it’s a substantial force with a huge artillery train. And it begins by bombarding the town, a lot of fighting – the defences are better, they keep the Parliamentarians out – but it is obvious that the town will not stay strong forever and so they put an appeal to the King, and the King orders Prince Rupert to gather what troops he can and to march across country to Newark, to break the siege.
[16.03]
Prince Rupert does a tremendous job of bringing soldiers across country in a matter of days, overnight marches, and he catches the Parliamentarians completely by surprise when he arrives outside the town with his cavalry on 29 March. So they’ve already had nearly four weeks of being besieged and Rupert really, in a move of tactical genius. doesn’t hang around. The infantry is still to catch up, they are still arriving: he charges twice with his cavalry troops into the besieging Parliamentarian cavalry and he shatters them. The cavalry disperse and run away. It’s normally the Royalists we’d associate but, on this occasion, it was the Parliamentarian cavalry that were shattered.
So John Meldrum moved his infantry into the stone remains of what was called a stone house, it was just the foundations, called the ‘spittal’. But, from captured Parliamentarian prisoners, Rupert learns that they had got very few possessions or food or victuals, so he decides to wait and, within 24 hours, Meldrum has to surrender and all of the infantry march away. This gives Newark somewhere in the region of several thousand muskets – they had to leave all their muskets behind. All the artillery pieces are left behind, and it really sets up Newark for the rest of the war in terms of armour and weapons.
[07.32]
The third siege begins technically on 26 November 1645 and we know that date because it is recorded in the corporation minutes. It had really begun before then, but it wasn’t a closed siege and people could get in and out of Newark. But, on 26 November, the Scottish army arrived at Southwell and then crossed over to the island and, at that stage, the third siege is seen to begin. And that goes on to 5 May when King Charles himself, having surrendered himself to the Scottish forces, gives a direct order that the garrison is to surrender. According to both the records that survive, I think Newark would have continued the siege longer: they’d still got adequate food, some of it was stale. They’d got plenty of ammunition and the weather was quite wet. I mean, the winter had been extremely hard. So the siege ends on 5 May and the Royalist soldiers leave early because, at the time, plague was raging in the town and, in one respect, that’s why so many records and so much of 17th century Newark still survive, because the Parliamentarian soldiers wouldn’t go into the town because of the plague that was raging.
[08.52]
Mike Gibbs: And how does this experience in Newark compare with other towns in Britain?
Stuart Jennings: Part of the problem is that often things that get destroyed are the things that would give us a clue – I mean, registers tend not to be continued if they’re in the middle of fighting. Town minutes tend to disappear. We very rarely get to hear how it affects ordinary people. We hear the military accounts. Newark is unique and, again, partly because the plague was there, that loads of records survive. The military garrison records were destroyed, as was normally the case, because obviously they were incriminating of those who fought for the King. But, in Newark, a complete set of registers throughout the period of the war; the church wardens’ accounts continued throughout the war; the borough corporation minutes continued throughout the war, and there are around 100 miscellaneous documents from bills, from statements, from recording petitions – they all survived. So Newark gives us an excellent example of one individual town. It may be slightly different for other places but Newark is really a good example of what life was like for civilians.
[10.08]
Mike Gibbs: And you, personally, have spent many years now, researching those records and getting a really deep understanding of how the siege – or the sieges – actually impacted on the civilian population, not just the military situation. Can I begin that exploration with you, then, by asking you, armies are very expensive and I guess the town itself must have covered a lot of the costs that were involved?
Stuart Jennings: Yes, the Royalist garrison had what was known as ‘contributions’ and each parish was expected to raise so much towards the support of the garrison in the surrounding area, and these contributions could be in cash or in goods.
In terms of what was available within the town, the first thing to say is that, although there’s a castle there, it’s not a traditional castle – it’s a fortified episcopal palace. And in the 16th century, it was converted even more – lots of the big rooms were made into small apartments. And, by the time of James I, when the castle reverts back to the Royal family, there’s a complaint to the Crown that the castle isn’t fit to hold 100 soldiers – no water, very little accommodation. Now, what do you do when you get somebody like Queen Henrietta Maria arrive, with an army of 5,000 soldiers? The simple answer is that most soldiers are quartered in everybody’s house – from the poorest to the largest.
[11.54]
Mike Gibbs: And this is what is known as ‘free quarter’?
Stuart Jennings: Well, technically, they’re given vouchers they can claim back, but you only get it back if your side wins. And, of course, they back the wrong side. It’s a bit like laying money on a horse race, you know, you don’t get your money back if your horse doesn’t finish the race. So yes, it was left with a lot of debt but, theoretically, that could happen. And the miscellaneous minutes actually record what happened. If a soldier dies – I mean, certainly after the second siege, a number of Rupert’s cavalry were badly wounded and some of them died in people’s homes. And actually, if the people had not got the resources, the borough corporation paid for the winding sheet and for the burial of the soldiers. So, if the soldier dies in your house and you are nursing him, looking after him, you don’t have to pay for his funeral. You have to pay for his upkeep, of course, and hopefully the medication is provided by the garrison surgeon or physician, but a lot of it is actually taken from people and never returned. But it is marvellous that it does manage to survive. It isn’t until the 1660s that we realise just how much is still owed, and one of the things about Newark, after the Restoration of Charles II, is a series of legal cases where people who had lent money to the garrison, now that the King’s back on the throne, want to get their money back. And we’re talking several thousand pounds, which was a lot of money.
[13.23]
Mike Gibbs: And this must have created tremendous friction between, I would have thought, the townsfolk and the occupying forces, whichever side they were.
Stuart Jennings: As the war went on, increasingly it tended to be soldiers from Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire that made up the bulk of the garrison. Staunton not only had a troop of horse, he had a regiment of infantry. Holles was in the town and his regiment was raised from Newark and surrounding areas so, in one sense, some of these people were local.
There isn’t much evidence of a great deal of it – I mean, the Parliamentarians like to say – and it’s this case of ‘what’s propaganda and what reflects reality?’. The minutes don’t tend to record much conflict. The corporation worked closely with the governor to make sure that any potential friction was quickly dealt with.
[14.18]
The reality was that civilians and soldiers, if you quartered with people, you shared the same hardships, and that’s true with disease, with lack of food, with lack of provisions, with lack of lack of warmth, with lack of clothes. So in one sense it’s a shared experience, certainly during the third and final siege.
[14.38]
Mike Gibbs: One of the most interesting aspects is the fact that there was a shortage of actual coinage in the town. How did the authorities cope?
Stuart Jennings: When the Royalist army, including the Newark force stormed Leicester in 1645, they marched away with 20 wagons full of weapons and silver plate, and tradition has it that the coins are made from silver plate that was either taken from Leicester or deposited by Royalist families in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire for safekeeping. And what they do, they cut the plate into triangular lozenges: one side normally has the crown and the other side normally has the words ‘OBS’, which is an abbreviation of the Latin for the word ‘besieged’. And they come in different values and the value of each coin is dictated by the weight of silver in it. The siege money is nearly all, or what we know, is all silver, and it’s literally lozenges cut out from plate silver.
You’ve got to be besieged for quite a while to run out of money. Coins, you know, are there – one of the interesting things is, from a Parliamentarian view during the final siege, they actually have to have convoys of chests of coins to pay the soldiers besieging the town.
[16.04]
There is an entry in the diary of Sir Henry Slingsby, who was in Newark at the time, who’d run out of money, and he makes a note in his journal about how he resolved this:
“Going in disguise from Newark to my own household, with intention to supply my wants with money, whereof a long time I had had great scarcity. I went to my own house. After I had satisfied myself with one day’s stay, and taken £40 in gold, I resolved to go back to Newark and, as I came, so I went – in disguise – and, by good fortune, returned to Newark.”
And this is at the end of 1645, when both Scottish and Parliamentarian armies are there, so people can still get in and out, but actually they had to produce their own siege coins.
[16.58]
Mike Gibbs: Throughout these three sieges, there must have been an awful lot of physical damage done to the town. Could you describe that?
Stuart Jennings: Probably not as much as we would have thought, partly because the sieges always tended to happen at the end of winter, when most of the thatch was wet. And so, although they used Granados that were fired in by mortars, they didn’t always catch fire, because it was too wet. Some houses were destroyed – I mean, the most famous one is the house of Hercules Clay, who had been a mayor of the town previously. And he had a dream that his house was going to be hit by a grenade, and he had the dream two nights running, and so he moved his family out and the next night the house was destroyed. And he left a legacy for a sermon to be preached on the day that the house was destroyed as an act of thanksgiving to God and the tradition still goes on once a year in Newark – that sermon is still preached.
Yes, there was some damage done. The stone buildings, by and large, didn’t do too badly. The defences, by the time of the third siege, meant that cannons really had to get through barriers of sod and soil before they got anywhere near walls or the town, which deflected many. Probably the most moving thing, within the miscellaneous papers, there survives a wonderful petition that gives us a sense of what it was like for an ordinary citizen when their house was destroyed. The person is called Charles Piggott, and the Piggott family had been in Newark for quite a while – they’re still there in the 1670s – but they are very poor. And a petition is written on his behalf and his family, somebody has penned it for him as he has spoken:
[18.48]
“Your poor petitioner hath in a very large manner tasted of the miseries and afflictions of these times for, at the last fight against Newark, he had his house blown up with a granadoe and all his goods burnt and broken to the utter undoing of your poor petitioner, his wife and seven children.”
The petition goes to the commissioners in Newark for some allowance, to actually get a new hovel or money towards a new hovel. Unfortunately, we don’t know the result of this but subsequent research into the Piggott family shows that, even by 1644, they’re still living in poverty in one half dwelling in Millgate, which was one of the poorer areas. The areas by the gates tended to get congested, so the poor tended to live there.
At the Restoration of Charles II, the town put in a plea, talking that they’d lost over £40,000, being a faithful garrison for his father, Charles I. And it’s explained that they actually burned up to a sixth part of the town, so any part of the town that existed beyond the defences, the houses were set fire or destroyed, unless they could be moved. So beyond the defences, there’s the ribbon development, beyond the town defences, developed at the start of the 17th century. All of those buildings went, so you can see how they amounted to £40,000 worth of damage.
[20.23]
Mike Gibbs: And did they get recompense?
Stuart Jennings: They got a new charter, so they could have better conditions for the market. It was a market town, so charters were important, but it was taken off them by James II, so it didn’t last for long and then they had to get it back again, but that’s important because they actually can specify the damage. And the interesting thing is most of the damage occurs beyond the defences, not within.
[20.51]
Mike Gibbs: Sieges, historically, are often accompanied by disease, plague. What was the experience of Newark and its people?
Stuart Jennings: There are three epidemics of typhus, often known as ‘camp fever’. Typhus is caused by body lice. It’s a disease of poverty, overcrowding and poor nutrition. Now, the irony is that children can sicken with typhus but rarely die from it, but it has a high mortality rate for adults. So, in 1643, ‘44 and ‘45, there are three outbreaks of typhus and you can see this in the registers, because the number of children dying remains constant, but the number of adults dying doubles, quadruples, and it’s during the winter months. In the winter months, of course, and certainly for most of the Civil War, the winters were particularly harsh – very cold. Most people were poor – they had probably at best one or two sets of clothes. In the winter months, certainly during the sieges when there was little firewood, it would be cold – you would wear everything that you’ve got and you probably wouldn’t wash as much. You certainly wouldn’t wash your clothes – there’d be no way of drying them. So people acquired lice.
[22.22]
It’s often known as ‘camp fever’, because it’s often associated with field armies and, of course, you’ve got loads of soldiers in the town and they’re living in people’s homes, so it runs rampant. About between 12 and 15 per cent of the civilian population are killed by typhus over the period of the war. Now, the interesting thing is most of the soldiers in the garrison were quartered in people’s homes, but they rarely appear in the burial registers. Some do – there’s a total of 24 over the whole of the Civil War: most of them are either officers, gentlemen, or local men who’d fought in the town regiment.
What happened to the other soldiers? You don’t mean to tell me that 12 to 15 per cent of the population died of typhus but the soldiers who were living with them didn’t. And I think we’re going to one day find a huge burial pit that was for the garrison. With all these developments, one developer is going to hit it sometime, and we’re all waiting with bated breath to find out where it is. We do know the churchyard at the St Mary Madgalene church was extended and we do know a lot of the burials were in there, but we don’t know where the soldiers are buried.
[23.34]
But, to crown it all, in October 1645, plague was discovered in the village. Now, we knew something was going on then but we didn’t quite know what. And part of the research for my first book actually tried to unpick what was going on – and it’s quite clear that it’s plague. It’s probably brought into the town by Prince Rupert and some of his guards who came with him, to defend his honour before the King, after he surrendered Bristol in 1645. And at the time of the surrender, plague was raging in Bristol. John Twentyman, a contemporary witness of the time, who was in the town throughout the war, says it was brought into the town by soldiers, so even he, as a contemporary witness, acknowledged that.
[24.19]
The man who identifies it, the local churchwarden, then arranges with the corporation to appoint people to check the corpses to look for the buboes. It begins in October, a little bit in November: over the cold months, when the rats are less active, it dies down, and there’s no relief because typhus kicks in then. But from about February, March onwards, towards the surrender, plague explodes and the burial registers are full of people being buried, who have died of the plague.
[24.54]
When the garrison is surrendered in May, that plague mushrooms out into the whole of north Nottinghamshire and, in 1646, they had to cancel Goose Fair, because of the fear of plague being brought into the town. That probably is the first time that Goose Fair was ever cancelled – it wasn’t cancelled again until the First World War, and the Second World War, so that’s how prolific it was. In somewhere like East Stoke, the normal average burial totals, even over the worst of the war, was about 10 people per year – it was a small village. In 1646, 130 burials occurred – the village is virtually decimated.
So plague becomes a problem and, in one sense, it’s devastating for the community. Even people who fought in the Newark regiment can’t pay their taxation fees because they can’t leave the town. Nobody can leave the town, so they have to appeal to parliament to give them longer so that they can raise the money and can deliver it to where it needs to be taken. It’s the fines they pay for being delinquents. As late as Christmas 1646, the borough minutes of Nottingham, a county town, record that they’ll allow corn to pass along the River Trent via Newark so that there’s corn in the town of Nottingham, but nothing is to leave the town – no furniture, nothing, no goods. So even, what, seven months after the surrender, there’s no trade, there’s nothing leaving Newark, because of the fear of the plague. And that really is what the long-term consequence is for Newark.
[26.42]
For cities like Bristol and Chester, they’re big commercial centres – they quickly regain their populations as people are drawn in. Newark is a market town, it really doesn’t get back to the same sort of population level until the middle of the 18th century.
[27.00]
Mike Gibbs: So, could you summarise for us what Newark was like at the end of the Civil Wars, compared with the start?
Stuart Jennings: There’s a wonderful quote in the pamphlet produced after the surrender of Newark, where it’s described as a ‘miserable, stinking, infected town’. It was a town that was affected in so many ways. Commerce, of course – you know, the continuation of the plague meant it couldn’t be re-started again, realistically, until 1647/48. Agriculture was profoundly affected – it’s like having all these defences, these urban defences, it’s quite a circuit round the town, very impressive. I mean, some of them still survive, the most impressive of course being the Queen’s Sconce, south of Newark, to which people can still go and climb up onto, and see. But to build these defences, you can’t just build mud walls – you’ve got to fence them with turf.
So the island, caused by the two arms of the Trent, much of the pasture was dug up so that the weather and cannon balls wouldn’t destroy the mud defences. And, to regain pasture, to get it best – I’m told by farmers in the area, it would take two or three seasons to get the pasture back. In some places, it might even take longer, but at least three years before the pasture would be back to what it was before the Civil War. That would have been particularly hard, not only for the farmers, because it was an area that was famous for producing cheese and large cattle, but the area was also where horses were raised, foals were raised into adults – it was a good grazing pasture, it was at the heart of the horse trade in the mid-17th century. That didn’t take on again until much, much later. And it’s these long-term consequences that mean that Newark takes longer to recover.
[28.59]
Mike Gibbs: Stuart, thank you very much indeed for such a fascinating discussion, it takes us beyond the earthworks and actually introduces us to the ordinary people, the ordinary citizens, of Newark at this time. Thank you.
[29.22]
You can learn more about the lives of the ordinary citizens of Newark throughout the sieges by visiting the National Civil War Centre situated in the town. Details of its fascinating exhibits can be found on the Centre’s website, www.nationalcivilwarcentre.com where you will also find details on the guided walking tours which include many of the buildings that survived the conflict as well as the Queen’s Sconce on the southern edge of town – probably the most impressive civil war siege earthwork left in Britain.
The Centre’s education team also provides a range of classroom-ready programmes, videos and very popular school visits.
To learn more about Dr Jennings’ discoveries about life in besieged Newark, get hold of a copy of his book, “These Uncertaine Tymes” published by Nottinghamshire County Council in 2009. Sadly, this is out of print but copies are widely available through second-hand book sellers and many libraries.
And the good news is that he has now written another book on Newark’s military history entitled, “Royalist Newark 1642 – 1646”, published in paperback by Helion and Company in 2024.
To find out more about other civil war sieges which occurred near you, do visit the websites of two of our educational partners, The Battlefields Trust at www.battlefieldstrust.com, and The Fortress Study Group – www.fortressstudygroup.org.