[00.00]
Strategically located at the lowest bridging point of the River Trent, the market town of Newark in Nottinghamshire became the focus of one of the most sustained conflicts of the British Civil Wars.
Staunchly Royalist, the town’s inhabitants were besieged by Parliamentary forces three times – in February 1643; again in February and March 1644; and finally, from November 1645 to May 1646, when they finally surrendered.
Throughout these years the civilian populations suffered many privations, including typhus and plague. Now, based on new archival research, Jade Jesty, a doctoral researcher from Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge, discusses daily life, and death, in the besieged town with publisher, Mike Gibbs.
[01.05]
Mike Gibbs: Jade, can I begin by asking you why did Newark-on-Trent hold such strategic importance during the Civil Wars?
Jade Jesty: It was the geographic location of Newark-on-Trent, which renders it a prime place for the formation of a military base during the Civil Wars. It’s situated at the intersection of the Great North Road, which connected London, York and Edinburgh, and the Foss Way, which connected Exeter and Lincoln. The River Trent split into two branches at Farndon just before Newark and re-converged further north at Crankley Point, which formed an island in the middle, and in the 1640s Newark has two bridges over the River Trent – the Newark Bridge, which allowed travel between Newark and the island and was the final crossing point before the Humber Estuary and Muskham Bridge, which stretched across the second branch. So, Newark is a fantastic place for the transmission of information and the transportation of goods between Charles I’s Royalist headquarters, which was established in Oxford in late 1642 and the Royalist base in York. So, it’s of huge strategic importance at this time.
[02.14]
Mike Gibbs: And why and when did it first become a town that was besieged?
Jade Jesty: After the Royalist success at the Battle of Edgehill on 23 October 1642, William Cavendish set out to establish the Royalist garrison at Newark, on the advice of Sir John Digby, Royalist Sheriff of Nottingham. For additional protection they established five Royalist outposts around Newark, and they sent in four thousand cavalrymen from the Earl of Newcastle’s regiment, to make this garrison in December 1642. Historian, Stuart Jennings, has produced several insightful studies into this militarisation of Newark and the demographic ramification of Civil War, and he notes that it was the gentry and the tenants who respond, very willingly, to Charles I’s summons at the beginning of the Wars.
The 35 individuals, who were nominated to Nottinghamshire’s Royalist Commission of Array in 1642 were predominantly members of the gentry, and elite men begin raising regiments for the King in Newark, including Royalist Colonel, William Staunton. And then, in the months after the first siege, Newark’s defences are strengthened more and more with additional fortifications in the land such as the King’s Sconce. But, also, the number of men stationed in Newark and the surrounding garrisons increase with the arrival of Queen Henrietta Maria, who’s resident in Newark in June and July, and she leaves behind two thousand soldiers in the city, ready for a following siege.
[03.37]
Mike Gibbs: And what sort of forces actually composed the Royalist garrison?
Jade Jesty: There’s a mixture. In my research, I’m looking at the non-elites of the garrison. So, the non-elites are, in my research, someone that might have held lower military status such as the rank-and-file soldiers. Labourers are also key, so we see that labourers are drawn into battle when sieges break out in cities, and they’re not always professionally trained soldiers either. We see butchers, bakers, grocers, participating in combat in Newark and elsewhere in England, for example. Civilians also become embroiled in siege warfare in a garrison, so sometimes we see men and women that aren’t necessarily professionally trained but they’re still participating in the defence of the city, and that is alongside more trained soldiers in professional Royalist armies, that we might expect to see in a siege, such as William Staunton’s army.
[04.36]
Mike Gibbs: Your research is unusual in that you’ve looked beyond the elite, the well-known people, to a more broad and diverse group of people. That must have actually set you a big challenge in terms of sources and research?
Jade Jesty: Yes, in my research I’m really trying to move away from the elite Royalist or the rich or the politically elite, so someone that may have held high military status such as a commander, and instead I want to look at, what I’m calling, the non-elite. And, yes, that has posed a difficulty with sources because the non-elites often don’t leave behind the written record that we might get from a higher ranking man in an army so, in my research, I’ve tried to look at different kinds of sources and records.
One of the ways I’ve done this is looking at newsbooks such as Mercurius Aulicus, which often describe the actions and behaviours of, to use their own words, ‘a common soldier’. Pamphlets also indicate how lower ranking members of the Royalist army might have participated in the war effort and these are also very useful for showing how elite members of society perceived their contributions, because it is the elites that are writing these sources. But these often include woodcut illustrations too, which are really useful for showing how wartime accounts are communicated, without necessarily relying on being able to read a text.
Petitions and examinations have been a fantastic avenue too, for highlighting the experiences of poorer soldiers and they’re often written in their own words or reflect speech that has been spoken in a trial. Sources of this nature show a real insight into physical and psychological impacts of war and trauma, which is also very key, and the Civil War Petitions Project has done an amazing job of collecting and digitising petitions of that nature.
There is also one other kind of source that I think has been under-appreciated and that is material culture, so tactile objects or objects that we hold in our hands. Coins, for example, are inscribed with political messages during the Civil War and they’re something that are handled by everyone, whether you’re a rich or a poor person at this time. Domestic items such as cups and goblets can also be considered as material vehicles for the spread of Royalist ideas and, by looking at this kind of source, which doesn’t necessarily rely on being able to read and write, we can understand how low ranking or non-elite soldiers might be constructing themselves as Royalist, or participating in the war in Newark.
[07.05]
Mike Gibbs: I’m sure this must have been a very diverse population, but can you give us a sense of who actually made up these non-elite groups that are at the centre of your research?
Jade Jesty: Yes. ‘Non-elite’ is actually a very broad and widespread idea and, of course, the term ‘non-elite’ is itself somewhat of a problem because it implies that anyone that isn’t elite is a deviation from the norm which, of course, isn’t necessarily true as the non-elites are making up the bulk of the population. But, nevertheless, I’m referring to members of the Royalist army that may hold lower military status, such as the rank-and-file soldier, or the foot soldier. Labourers too so, as I said before, butchers, bakers, anyone that had another occupation that wasn’t necessarily to fight in an army, so they’re not necessarily professionally trained.
In a similar vein we see civilians that become embroiled in siege warfare. Again, consciously and willingly, but sometimes unwillingly, and we also need to think about the role of women. So, women also participate in sieges throughout the country, not just Newark, and widows petition for relief in the years following the war because they’re left destitute by the deaths of their husbands. So actually, this non-elite group encompasses a huge amount of different kinds of people.
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Mike Gibbs: What did your research then reveal about the extent and depth of non-elite activism in the Royalist army?
Jade Jesty: It’s revealed quite a lot, and actually the non-elites of Newark demonstrated significant and conscious commitment to the Royalist cause and they’re the two things I want to really emphasise in my research, is that this commitment was significant and it was conscious, it was deliberate. So, while social class and military rank may affect one’s experience of the Civil Wars, it does not prevent participation and it does not prevent tenacity. Men and women on the ground sought to consciously construct themselves as Royalist and they consciously participate in the Royalist war effort, whether this was through physically fighting in a battle, or in a siege or wearing items on their body to signify their allegiance to the King.
[09.19]
Mike Gibbs: Throughout the course of the sieges, did the commitment of these ordinary folk, these non-elites, as we’ve referred to them, did it increase or decrease, or did it remain pretty much the same and how do you measure that?
Jade Jesty: Newark is a really interesting example because, if anything, the Royalists become more tenacious as the war continues, which isn’t something that you see everywhere. So the Newark garrison is only very begrudgingly surrendered to the Parliamentarians in May 1646, and there are several ways that we can measure how much more tenacious they become. And there’s a wonderful memoir left by John Twentyman, who was a member of the prominent family in Newark and he describes how the garrison remained strong even into 1646. And he tells us that the residents had pleaded with Charles, after Charles had asked them to stop fighting, telling him that they were willing and able to hold out against further Parliamentarian attacks and he says that “It’s only with great grief that they laid down their arms on his order.”
Material published following the Restoration reinforces the idea that the townsfolk had expressed exceptional commitment to the cause and one anonymous author asserts that they had “endured every extremity for the sake of the King.” So you see this really vivid strong language emerge towards the end of 1645 into 1646 where Royalists are increasingly showing their commitment for the King through this strong, very vivid, emotive language.
[10.55]
Mike Gibbs: And how did that differ or compare to other Royalist centres that were besieged?
Jade Jesty: We see similar attachment to what I’m calling ‘civic royalism’, or this attachment to the person of the King, and the Caroline family more broadly, in places such as Bristol and Newcastle where they frequently visit, or they have stayed over in the past. The same in Oxford, they’re physically present there. In contrast, in Colchester, there is no fervent royalism in Colchester really by 1648 when they’re besieged, which of course does reflect the nature of the Second Civil War, and the whole entire cause is sort of dwindling down at this stage but you don’t see that fervent attachment to the King in the same way that you see it in places like Newark and Newcastle and Bristol.
[11.42]
Mike Gibbs: You have mentioned loyalty to the King; what happened after he was executed?
Jade Jesty: That’s a really interesting question and actually the people in Newark and elsewhere still show this connection to the King and this loyalty to the King and, obviously, after Charles is executed and the Republic comes in and the institution of monarchy is abolished, it’s not necessarily allowed for this fervent royalism to be shown. So a lot of it then goes underground but, post-Restoration, you see a lot of Newark-based people expressing loyalty to the King and also reminiscing on how loyal Newark was.
And there’s a really interesting newsbook that comes out, where the people of Wisbech claimed to have been really Royalist and really fervently Royalist and the people in Wisbech weren’t Royalist, they were Parliamentarian. And, in the following edition of the newsbook, the people of Newark respond and they say “Let’s not forget that we were the most Royalist and actually Wisbech were not Royalist in the slightest.”
So actually they become quite offended that people aren’t remembering their role in the Civil Wars, and they really try and emphasise that Newark was this exceptional, loyal city, more Royalist and more loyal than other cities and they are quite offended when this idea of being so Royalist is forgotten or hidden.
And, following the Restoration, we also see these establishments of Royalist loyalty come out in the petitions ,and there’s one really interesting example, which shows a personal, emotional testament of loyalty to the King that we see made in the aftermath of the Restoration.
A man named John Brown of Foston in Lincolnshire petitioned the Court of Sessions for help in 1683 and he describes, in his words:
“Out of his loyalty and obedience to his King and sovereign did voluntarily and freely list himself as a soldier in the garrison of Newark.”
So, he’s showing how he participated in several fights and he also tells us that he was shot on numerous occasions, so he’s really undergone suffering for the King and he wants this role in the Civil Wars to be remembered.
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Mike Gibbs: If there was this strong commitment from the rank-and-file, if you like, of the Royalist forces, how did that differ, or was it the same, amongst the elites?
Jade Jesty: It’s much easier to access written evidence of loyalty amongst the elites and the leaders in Newark as they’re often the subject of printed material, the most obvious example being Prince Rupert of the Rhine and his behaviour through the second siege is widely criticised by Royalists and Parliamentarians. So it’s criticised by his allies as well as his enemies, but Royalist leaders in Newark also created their own accounts and memoirs of the war, and we can see that they are also expressing these highly personal and emotional testaments of loyalty to the King, but they’re expressing it through written text that they have penned themselves, whereas petitions are penned by a third party but of the spoken word.
Petitions are written in the language of the non-elites, so the non-elite will give a spoken testimony and then a third party will write them down, write the words down or a ‘scribe’, as we would call them. On the other hand, elites are writing these sources themselves, and one excellent example of this is the Royalist poet, John Cleveland, who was resident in Newark during the third siege and he served as Judge Advocate until its surrender. And he writes several letters where he describes Newark as “our mother church” and he describes the surrounding garrisons as “our chapels of ease”.
Not only is this illustrative of his fervent attachment to the Royalist cause, but he’s comparing it with religious structures, which I think is testament to this highly personal and effective attachment that many felt towards the city itself, as this bastion of Royalist loyalty. And this extreme resilience and the continuation in fervour, amongst the Royalist leaders in Newark, is really quite striking when we consider that there has been serious local and national losses in the recent months. So Charles had lost the Battle of Naseby in June 1645 and Shelford Manor was infamously brutally attacked in October, but the final Governor of Newark, John Belasyse, responds to Parliamentarians’ Summons for Surrender in March 1646, with a very emotive declaration and I think that’s worth quoting. That he would not be:
“stoked into apostasy nor frighted into dishonour by the threat of violence”.
And when he’s informed of significant levels of suffering in Chester, which had fallen to the Parliamentarians in January 1646, he simply declares
“I do not measure my allegiance by my interest in other cities”.
So, it’s clear that both the elites and the non-elites, they’re very attached to Newark itself, as much as the monarchy and Charles I.
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Mike Gibbs: What is their attitude to Prince Rupert, who you mentioned earlier?
Jade Jesty: The relationship between the Royalist rank-and-file and their commander, specifically Prince Rupert, is very interesting, and we see that commanders, especially Prince Rupert, are not always followed. So their expectations are not always met, but their instructions are not always followed, and there’s a very interesting example of this after Prince Rupert’s raising of the second siege in March 1644. An account of the siege is written in an anonymous letter by a Royalist eyewitness and it’s printed in a pamphlet.
The author condemns “our unruly soldiers”, to use his words, and describes how the Royalist foot soldiers had quarrelled with the Parliamentarian rebels following their surrender. The author even admits that the Royalists had been surprised by the strength of the Parliamentarians and claims that:
“To confess the truth our horses were so overmatched and our foot so beaten off legs that the lower ranks had found themselves less able to be present for the parley.”
But even more strikingly is that Rupert actually attacks his own men for this unruly behaviour and this eyewitness, who is a Royalist so he’s an ally of Prince Rupert, describes “For this were diverse of them slashed by the Prince”. So Rupert is physically attacking his own men after the siege, and I’m sure that this created a high level of animosity between the elite leaders such as Rupert and the rank-and-file on the ground, especially as they were not following any of his orders at this time
And the content of this account is actually later edited. So the eyewitness’s letter is reprinted in an edition of the Royalist newsbook, Mercurius Aulicus, and the text is copied almost exactly but in the third person, but the content is very, very different.
Most strikingly, all details regarding the troublesome unruly Royalist soldiers are entirely omitted, suggesting an attempt to minimise reports of Royalist debauchery in this newsbook with national readership and, where the original eyewitness describes arguments, Mercurius Aulicus recounts a very simple affair on the battlefield. It states:
“The next morning the rebels marched out who being gone the Prince had leisure to carry off their arms and ammunition.”
So there’s no mention of the Royalist horse, stealing arms or any reference to Rupert angrily attacking his own men, and even the foot soldiers and the rank-and-file are here described as “over-marched”, rather than “over-matched”. So the author is also downplaying this idea that the Royalists were somehow inferior to the Parliamentarian army, and there was a contemporary belief at this time, that the commander’s inability to control his own men was evidence of his effeminacy, so it reflected quite badly on Rupert.
It’s significant that the Mercurius Aulicus account excludes any reference to human casualty of the battle and the eyewitness actually recalls the death of his fellow soldiers and his allies in very vivid detail:
“The number of slain we know not but we think they lost towards nine score or 200 and we about half so many slain and wounded.”
Perhaps this was an intentional attempt to sanitise the narrative of the siege for a wider audience because the eyewitness account was initially a private letter, so it wouldn’t have been spread so widely, and perhaps the author was, therefore, willing to recount his more traumatic memories, the deaths of his friends and allies. But I think these editorial interventions are really interesting because they show us how the Royalist author of Mercurius Aulicus is seeking to change the narrative of the siege, not only to emphasise Rupert’s success, but to minimise this idea of Royalist violence, or Royalist loss. And, in this way, he’s sanitising the experience of siege warfare whilst also showing us that allies are actually attacking each other at this time.
[20.52]
Mike Gibbs: And how loyal were the rank-and-file in the Royalist forces to their leadership in Newark itself?
Jade Jesty: Royalist loyalties across the Civil War were highly dependent on specific local circumstances, and we touched on earlier that I think it’s no coincidence that we see such staunch civic Royalism in the cities where Charles I and Henrietta Maria repeatedly visit, and this is also true of Newcastle and Bristol and Oxford. It appears that this presence of the Monarch on the ground sustains morale amongst the residents, which is different to Colchester where they are much less fervent in their support of the King. So, I think this is really testament to this attachment to the Caroline family, and I do think it’s significant that the physical absence of the Caroline family in Colchester is met with waning support for figures like Charles, Lucas and George Lisle and the Royalist cause more broadly. It seems that the attachment to the King really allows the motivation to be sustained.
[21.54]
Mike Gibbs: And do we have any insights into whether the loyalty of the rank-and-file was primarily to the person of the King, or was it the institution of the monarchy, or even the cause itself?
Jade Jesty: From my research it appears to be all three, and we get a really clear illustration of this in a document written by former MP Sir John Brookes, who offers several ideas as to what he thinks are appropriate punishments for those who had taken arms up against the King. And he identifies this really long list of people who should be imprisoned for treason but he makes a distinction that only the rich should be punished and the poorer sort, or the common soldier, should be forgiven as they had been seduced and tricked into an unnatural war against the Monarch.
So, this demonstrates a loyalty towards Charles himself but also the institution of monarchy and the overall Royalist cause and, as we’ve discussed, this loyalty extended to other members of the Caroline family, with loyalties explicitly expressed towards Queen Henrietta Maria. And the ecclesiastical historian, Peter Heylyn, makes a very clear statement about this when he rejoices that the Royalist victory at the first siege of Newark had taken place on the same day that Henrietta Maria had arrived in England from Holland “because the story of so great a princess ought not to come into the world without some attendant”.
It’s very interesting that Heylyn sees it fit to personify Newark as a Queen’s attendant because that, to me, suggests a close connection between the town and the prominent members of the Caroline family, even as early as the first siege, and it’s clear that there was considerable pride in such loyalty.
There’s another pamphlet entitled “A briefe relation of the siege of Newark”, which refers to the combatants in Newark by a collective noun, the ‘Newarkers’. And further distinction is made between the Royalists in Prince Rupert’s army, the professional soldiers, the professional soldiers of Charles Lucas’s army and the Newarkers, the soldiers in Newark. And it appears that Newark has cemented this kind of local and national reputation for ferocity and bravery by the conclusion of the second siege. And it’s striking, even Parliamentarians begin referring to the soldiers of Newark as ‘the Newarkers’ so they’ve clearly got some kind of reputation that they’re building up throughout the wars.
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Mike Gibbs: And during the siege there were outbreaks of communicable diseases, there was a lack of food. How did the rank-and-file, the ordinary soldiers, react to that?
Jade Jesty: The rank-and-file do suffer quite considerably in Newark. As you say, there was a breakout of disease, they were suffering in terms of food shortages but it’s also very clear that they were suffering injury and trauma. And I think that’s a really important thing to emphasise because injury and trauma that are received in battle, have very long lasting effects on the lives of the ordinary soldier. And we see this emerge in the petitions that come out after the Restoration, and there’s a miller named John Walmisley, who recalls how he had served in Newark and the resultant suffering that he had encountered had rendered him “weak, lame and infirm of body”, to use his own words.
So, there are experiences of starvation and injury, but also of extreme cold. We see petitions referencing being stuck in the extreme cold too, incapacitates men and women to work. And Walmisley then has no property to live in, in 1683, and this is why he petitions for relief. And we must also remember the experience of the Royalist soldier cannot be removed from the concomitant suffering of their wives. And Anne Staunton, the wife of Colonel William Staunton, describes how the Parliamentarians had taken their house, their estate and their money in the form of debts and fines, and she forfeits her jointure on the account of a husband’s service so her and her children are living in poverty. So, there’s this real long term suffering that the siege causes, not only just in immediate response during the siege but many, many years after.
[26.12]
Mike Gibbs: And do you have any evidence that this strengthened or weakened the Royalist resolve?
Jade Jesty: I think the Royalists in Newark were very clever in that they used suffering to demonstrate how loyal they are to the King. So, you find that they often reference this suffering, or this injury, to showcase that they had suffered in extreme for the King and that then made them more loyal and more staunch and more deserving of recognition. So, I think they’re very clever in using this suffering to their advantage, and one anonymous author actually asserts, towards the end of the sieges, that the men and women of Newark had endured “all extremities” of the King, “yielding bold terms for their own towne”, so it’s very clear that they are using it as a way of illustrating their loyalty and their adherence to the Royalist cause.
[27.05]
Mike Gibbs: So, by way of summary, could you comment on what you think was the non-elite experience of people living in Newark and surviving the siege?
Jade Jesty: I think their experience is actually very variegated, and I think the key thing to remember is that they were both conscious in their attachment to the Royalist cause, and willing. So, they don’t just participate, necessarily, because they have to, but we see expressions of royalism that suggest they’re really attached to the person of the Monarch and the monarchy more broadly, as well is the Royalist cause. We do have to remember the extensive suffering and injury and trauma that these men and women experienced at this time, but I think it is key that there is this unyielding commitment of the rank-and-file that sustains ground level motivations for the Royalist cause. And it’s important as well to remember that these ordinary soldiers are quite literally forming the manpower required to defend a city from two sieges.
So, whilst in the immediate sense it might be the decisions of the elite that win major battles or enact laws, but it’s the loyalty shown by these rank-and-file, or popular Royalists, that are establishing momentum for the cause. And the fact that the Royalists are able to hold key cities such as Newark, but also Bristol and Newcastle, for as long as they do, is testament to the conscious choice of these non-elites involved on the ground. They’re engaging with the Royalist war effort but they are also engaging with national politics.
[28.40]
Mike Gibbs: And is there one factor that you think really drives that loyalty?
Jade Jesty: I think it is this attachment to the King as a person. I think, even in other cities where you see an attachment to the monarchy, or the institution of monarchy, or the Royalist cause more broadly, that is where you see loyalty begin to wane when the national cause suffers losses in 1645 and 1646. I think Newark’s attachment, not only to the King but to Newark as a city itself, is really key, and I think that’s the main thing that is driving these motivations ,and I think it’s no coincidence that they become known as ‘the Newarkers’. They’re attached to Newark as a city, as a Royalist city, as much as they’re attached to the King and cause.
[29.28]
Mike Gibbs: Jade, thank you for such a fascinating discussion and congratulations on the new insights and new thinking, which I’m sure your research has brought to this topic and to our understanding, not only of Newark but also of the broader aspects of the Civil War. So thank you very much indeed for your time.
Jade Jesty: Thank you very much for having me.
[30.00]
You can learn more about the sieges of Newark in another podcast, “Living through Civil War sieges in Newark” with Dr Stuart B Jennings which is available now at our website, www.worldturnedupsidedown.co.uk, as well as on our Apple podcast and Spotify channels.
The National Civil War Centre in Newark displays many artefacts from the sieges including examples of the unique siege money. You can find details of the centre at www.nationalcivilwarcentre.com.
And among over 100 programmes currently on our website, you will find much more on the sieges which were such an important part of these conflicts in Britain and Ireland.
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