9. Royalist disaster & private grief: 1645-7

On 14 June 1645, the New Model Army – Parliament's new national army – inflicted a decisive defeat on the Royalists at the Battle of Naseby in Northamptonshire.  It was a disaster for the King.  His army was shattered and his private papers had fallen into Parliament's hands.  They published them.  Now people could see that they had been right to fear that he planned to bring an army of Irish Catholics over to fight in England.  He was negotiating to do just that, and he was trying to get money and mercenaries from abroad.  

The last hopes were fading for the Royalists.  In Wensleydale, John Scrope had been holding Bolton Castle for the King.  It had been under siege since the autumn of 1644.  Now, although there was no chance of relief, the garrison held out until all their supplies had been eaten – including the horses and all the animals – and then they surrendered in November 1645.  Parliament ordered the castle to be slighted, and some of it was demolished. 

Bolton Castle

By then Sir Thomas Danby and Lady Danby were back in their own house at Thorpe Perrow.  His estates had been seized by the Sequestration Committee because he had fought for the King, but in each county there was a Committee for Compounding with Delinquents, which could let the men have their lands back if they pledged never to fight against Parliament again and if they paid a fine – a useful way for the new government to raise money.  Sir Thomas's fine was heavy, but by 1645 he had paid up and he and Catherine were at home again.  

She was now expecting her sixteenth child.  Ten of her babies had lived to be baptised but the others were stillborn, Alice remembered, from frights caused by fire in her chamber, by falls and other accidents.  She had been married at the age of fifteen and she was now thirty.  Tender-hearted and sweet-natured, she was badly grieved by the war and the state of the country and she dreaded to think what the future might hold.  She had been left during the war to manage the estate and household while her husband was away in the King's service and only able to come back rarely and she had missed him badly.  She had been vexed and troubled by the many alarms and difficulties caused by the presence of the Scots soldiers quartered on her.  She had been very unwell during this pregnancy and now she went into labour earlier than she expected.  She couldn't get her old midwife because she was in Richmond, which was shut up by the plague.  And the baby was a breech presentation, coming – as Alice said – double into this world.  

At last she was delivered of a fine boy after a long and very hard labour.  He was named Francis after Alice's little godson, his elder brother who had died that summer of smallpox.  Catherine was in dreadful pain, unable to sleep or eat.  The women of her family came to her.  Her sister-in-law Lady Armitage and her aunt Mrs Norton had been with her when Alice came to take their place.  Catherine was making her preparations for the good death which was of such paramount importance at the time, praying for her family and for peace in England, and entrusting her children to her husband's care.  After a week, Alice's grief for Catherine was such that she became ill herself.  Mrs Wandesford came with her careful young servant Dafeny Lightfoote and sent Alice home.  

Catherine loved Dafeny dearly and now Dafeny was always with her.  At last, with her head on Dafeny's breast, she said, "I am going to God, my God now."  Dafeny spoke to her bracingly, saying she hoped God would spare her to bring her children up.  "How can that be," said Catherine, "for I find my heart and vitals all decayed and gone.  No.  I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which is best of all."  She died on 20 September 1645 about a month after giving birth and was buried at Masham two days later.  Her funeral was held at night, according to Alice's recollection, because the Parliamentarian and Scots soldiers would not let a sermon be preached.

On the other side of the country, the Wandesfords' friends in Chester were in trouble.  

Though the Battle of Naseby had left the King with no realistic chance of winning, the fighting continued across the kingdoms.  In parts of the West Country, the Midlands and Wales, men grew so weary of the plundering, ill-disciplined troops that they banded together to try to keep both armies out.  

Chester was still held for the King and had been under siege, off and on, for a year.  In September 1645, as Catherine Danby's life drew to a close, the city found itself under a new assault.  This time, the siege was total and it lasted until February 1646.  By the time the Royalist commander Lord Byron was finally persuaded by the Mayor to surrender, the poor were dying of hunger.  The loss of life, the damage and destruction had been huge.  After the siege was over, plague swept through the city, taking a fearful toll of the starved and homeless poor.  Alice and her mother were profoundly grateful that they had escaped.

Lord Byron (1599-1652)

The King, the Scots and the cancellation of Christmas: 1646-7

Oxford had been the King's capital city since 1642.  The University was on his side – the townspeople were not.  He had returned there in November 1645, hoping to begin again with a new campaign in the spring, but his plans fell through.  Parliamentary troops besieged the city – and then they discovered to their amazement that the King had escaped.   On 27 April 1646, with his hair cut short, wearing drab clothes and a false beard, he had slipped out of Oxford with two companions.  

He had been in secret negotiations for a separate peace with the Scots, but his arrival at their camp outside the siege of Newark took them completely by surprise.  The Scottish general in charge was David Leslie, the man to whom Mrs Wandesford had gone for help against Captain Innes.  Now he needed to get the King away at once to the Scots garrison at Newcastle.  So the King ordered the reluctant Royalist commander of Newark to surrender so that the Scottish army could leave.  On 8 May the Scots broke camp and set off north with the King. 

They kept him as an open prisoner in Newe House, a mansion with extensive grounds inside Newcastle's city walls.

Newe House, see Tyne & Wear Museums blog

From there – when he wasn't playing golf – the King plotted.  He carried on negotiations with both the Scots and the Parliamentarians, trying to exploit the divisions between them, and he intrigued with his exiled Queen, trying to get troops from Ireland and France.  He didn't succeed in any of it.  

The war was over and the Scots were negotiating with Parliament for payment towards the arrears of wages owed to their troops, after which they would leave England.  Abandoning hope of coming to an agreement with the King, the Scots handed him over to Parliament in January 1647.  

Parliamentarian troops took over his custody and the Scots marched out of Newcastle, with the fishwives pelting them and shouting "Judas" because they thought the Scots had sold the King.

In February 1647, Parliamentarian troops appeared in the North Riding, travelling south with the King.  The road lay through Northallerton and they stopped the night there at the house of the Metcalfe family, opposite the parish church.  The grief of people like the Wandesfords can be imagined – for them he was, as Alice said, a holy, pious prince who fought God's battles against his enemies, a nursing father to his three kingdoms.  

The Porch House, Northallerton: where Charles I stayed in 1647

The next grief to strike Alice's poor mother was the loss of her brother Sir Edward Osborne.  In spite of his own cares and sorrows, he had been a constant support to his widowed sister.  He had spent heavily in the King's service and been obliged to pay a large fine to get back his sequestered estates.  He had retired to live quietly at Kiveton with his second wife Ann, never ceasing to grieve for his son Edward, killed in the roof collapse at York in 1638.  It was because of some excellent melons from his gardens at Thorpe Salvin Hall and Kiveton, Alice said, that he was taken ill.  He ate a little too much – the melons were too cold for him – and he was thrown into a vomiting and diarrhoea that exhausted him past recovery.  He died a few days later on 9 September 1647 to the great distress of his family, and was buried in the chancel of Harthill church.  He was fifty-one.

While the grieving Mrs Wandesford was running her household and providing for her children like the skilful housewife that she was – Alice remembered her careful huswifery – constant in her charitable works and always remembering the needs of the newly homeless clergymen and their families who would appear at her door, Parliament was running the country.  This wasn't to everyone's liking.  

Parliament was proving highly efficient at collecting taxes – revenue much needed for the Army, which was getting worryingly radical and deeply involved in politics – and hard times under the King's rule were beginning to fade from memory.  Not everyone greeted the destruction of paintings, statues and decorations in their parish church with joy.  Theatres had been closed since 1642.  And now Christmas was cancelled.  

The English loved Christmas.  The church services were only part of it – all classes in England celebrated the twelve days with food and drink, parties and revels, while the Presbyterian Scots had banned Christmas several years earlier because it was Catholic, superstitious, not mentioned in the Bible and led only to drunkenness and debauchery.  Parliament had established a new pattern for public worship and the Feasts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun were banned.  No more sinful behaviour to bring down God's wrath upon the kingdom – the recent war showed where that had led.  No special church services, everyone to go to work, shops to be open, no hanging up the holly and the ivy, and absolutely no partying.   

The ban probably hardly mattered to the family at Hipswell, in mourning for Sir Edward Osborne.  Tucked away in Catterick, and careful not to draw hostile attention, Mr Syddall was still able to celebrate Holy Communion for them and a quietly held Christmas service could go unnoticed.  But in Kirklington, under the eye of the Presbyterian minister Mr Nesbit, the villagers will have missed their Christmas service and the only safe way to entertain friends in anything like the proper style would be after dark, secretly, fairly quietly and behind closed doors.

News would come to the Wandesfords that in some places across the country there had been riots over the ban.  Armed force was needed to stop the partying in Kent, where the usual Christmas football game was played in Canterbury, and in Westminster the churchwardens of St Margaret's were arrested for failing to stop a Christmas day service.

And at intervals news came of the King.  

First he was held by Parliament, then he was taken by the radicals of the Army.  Then he escaped.  And then, like his grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, when she thought she would find a friendly refuge with Elizabeth of England, Charles made a fatal misjudgment of character.  He didn't go to Berwick and the support of the Scots.  He went to the Isle of Wight, thinking the governor would protect him and help him get to France.  Instead, he found himself imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle.  

Notes

This period of the wars is called the English Civil War 1642-46

The Tyne & Wear Museums blog has more pictures of the Newe House, which was later known as Anderson Place.  It stood just off Pilgrim Street.

Sir Edward Osborne's gauntlets, said to have been worn by him in the war, are on display in Harthill church; his helmet was stolen in the 20th century.  See here 

Next: 10. The Man of Blood & the English Republic: 1648-1650 

8. Mrs Wandesford moves to Hipswell: 1644-1645

In Kirklington, George feared he was a wanted man and he lay low for a while.  His sympathies were with the King, but he reckoned the King's cause was lost, and what would be achieved by involving himself in utter ruin?  So he didn't attempt to go west to join Royalist forces.  He thought it would be prudent for his family if they just stayed quiet.

But the following month, the Wandesfords unintentionally attracted unwanted attention. 

Firstly, on 19 August 1644, Mr Dagget, the kindly Rector of Kirklington, died.  The Wandesfords had always been entitled in law to appoint the next Rector and their choice was Mr Michael Syddall.  They knew about him because he was married to Ellen Hunton, the widow of the late Mr Wandesford's steward, and he was a man of their own views in religion.  They had very much appreciated the sermon he had preached at Mr Dagget's funeral.  

But the decision was now Parliament's, and Mrs Wandesford's attempt to get the help of Sir Thomas Fairfax, a friend in happier days, did not succeed.  A Mr Clarkson was sent to Kirklington instead.  The congregation took badly to him, especially when he preached against the Lord's Prayer – he was a severe Puritan who believed that it was a pattern for heartfelt prayer, that simply reciting it was Popery and so those who did so would be damned.  The people booed and hissed him out of the church and another minister to the liking of Parliament, one Mr Philip Nesbit, was sent instead.  

Now he was twenty-one, George was obliged by Act of Parliament to sign the Solemn League and Covenant made between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters.  George didn't back down from his principles and he refused, because signing it went against his religious beliefs and against his loyalty to the King.  There wasn't a penalty in law for refusing, though Alice says that the Scottish armies stationed in Richmondshire were forcing men to sign under pain of imprisonment or ruin, but the names of men who refused were notified to Parliament.  So although George had tried not to attract attention, it might have been this refusal that got him denounced as a Malignant – a traitor to the Parliament.  

Then George was accused of having taken part in the Battle of Marston Moor.  Two men who had recognised him on the moor were called to York to give evidence against him, but though they wouldn't say that they had seen him engaged in the fighting, and though he was still under age at the time, he was declared a Delinquent and his estates were confiscated from him by the Sequestration Committee.  Alice always thought it was done through some sinister machinations by Mr Nesbit as a way to get himself appointed minister to the choice living of Kirklington, where he announced the sequestration of George's estates in a triumphing manner in the pulpit.

So the family went to live at Hipswell, which belonged to Mrs Wandesford under the terms of her marriage settlement.  This had the consolation that they were now near to Mr Michael Syddall, who had been their choice of minister for Kirklington and who was now vicar of Catterick.  And so they were still able to pray the Lord's Prayer and take Holy Communion, which disappeared in many places because it was contrary to Puritan beliefs, and Mr Syddall was to take baptisms and burials for the family in the years to come.

Hipswell Hall.  [By David Rogers CC BY-SA 2.0]

Scots soldiers at Hipswell & other perils

Unfortunately, Hipswell was much nearer to Richmond, and the town was now garrisoned by the Allies – the castle had been partly in ruins for a hundred years – and Scottish soldiers were everywhere.  And they were billeted on the locals.  Both armies always saved money by doing this because it meant the troops were kept at the civilians' expense.  This was a nuisance and a burden to everybody, but especially distressing if the householder had supported the other side.

For the next year and a half, Mrs Wandesford was burdened sometimes by Scots soldiers and sometimes by Parliamentarians.  She was very short of funds and she had to borrow to cover the cost of keeping her own family, making her monthly payment to the Allies and paying for the upkeep of a troop of Scots horse.  

She wasn't only bothered by worries over money – she also had to keep her pretty 19 year old daughter safe.  So she never allowed the captains and commanders to live in the house with the family.  At last there came one Captain Innes, who commanded a troop stationed at Richmond.

One day, he walked unexpectedly into the house.  Alice was in her mother's chamber when he walked boldly into the room to see Mrs Wandesford, and she had no chance to hide before he saw her.  When he did, he became very determined to stay in the house, promising he would keep to his own quarters out of their way ...  Finally they managed to get rid of him.  All the while Alice was in a tremble of fear because he looked so wild and bloody looking a man and he reminded her of the rebel lords in Ireland.

Captain Innes went back to Richmond and he told Alice's aunt Mrs Norton that he would give all he was worth if she would procure Alice to be his wife, offering £4,000 and saying that his colonel Lord Adair would come with him to speak for him.  Mrs Norton replied that Alice was not to be obtained by him and that she was sure that Alice had given him no encouragement, because she was resolved not to marry.  Then she sent a private message to Alice to warn her that the men were coming and that she should get out of his way.  

Mrs Wandesford was horrified.  She was afraid that they would burn the house down and she sent Alice out of the house to find somewhere to hide.  Very frightened, Alice ran into Richmond and hid herself with a good old woman who was one of the Wandesfords' tenants.  When night came and she could be sure that the men's visit was over, she went home.  All the while, Mrs Wandesford had been trying to placate them by bringing out the best of her provisions, assuring them that she had no idea where Alice was, and sending servants out to look for her.  Captain Innes was enraged.  

At about this time her mother wasn't very well, and so Alice had been sitting up a good deal with her and writing letters for her.  Becoming anxious for Alice's own health, Mrs Wandesford used to send her out in the company of her maids to get some fresh air.  So Alice would take a walk out to Lows – probably low-lying pasture land – and come back refreshed.  One day she was stopped by one of the Scots soldiers.  He didn't want to alarm her too much but he had an urgent warning for her:  

Dear mistress, I pray do not think much if I desire you, for God's sake, not to go out with the maids to Lows.

Alice knew the man – she had treated his hand when it had been badly cut.  He had come to return the favour.  He warned her that Captain Innes, cursing and swearing, planned that very night to come with a great number of men and catch her and take her away by force.  Deeply grateful for this rescue from rape and ruin, she gave the man many thanks and rewarded him for his trouble.  And after that she stayed at home like a prisoner, waiting for Captain Innes to leave Richmondshire.

In June 1645, when the time came for the Scots troops to go, some marching south to Doncaster and others leaving for Scotland to fight against the Scottish Royalists, Captain Innes sent – in a boasting manner, Alice said – to Mrs Wandesford for his pay.  She sent him all that she owed him, but he wouldn't take it.  He demanded double.  She wouldn't pay.  So one Sunday morning he arrived with his company at Hipswell, threatening to break down the doors of the Hall, and sending his men to drive off Mrs Wandesford's cattle.  As he swore and raged, Alice went up onto the leads – the roof – to see what was happening to the cattle.  Looking up, he mistook her for her mother and he cursed her bitterly, wishing that the Devil would blow her blind and into the air.  She had been a thorn in his heel, but he would be a thorn in her side.  And so his men drove off the cattle – a delicate breed of Mrs Wandesford's own – to Richmond.

Mrs Wandesford took the pay that she owed him and set off for Richmond herself.  She went to St Nicholas, the house of her sister-in-law Mrs Norton, where she could find the Scottish commander, General David Leslie.  When she told him the story, he took the money and said he would make Captain Innes accept it.  When Captain Innes left for Scotland he swore that, if the Scots returned, they would burn both the women and all they had.

Sir David Leslie (1600-82)

And besides these dangers, there were natural perils.  

The bubonic plague was close at hand.  In November 1644, it broke out in Richmond and it lasted a year.  About 700 people died.  Unnecessary gatherings and visits to other people's houses were banned, and in muddy and damp weather the people were told to keep their doors and windows shut.  People left the town if they could.  Hipswell escaped the infection, and every day Mrs Wandesford gave out food and money to beggars whose livelihoods had been lost in the outbreak. 

At this time, after the Battle of Marston Moor and the defeat of the Royalists in the North, Alice's sister Catherine and her family were living at Middleham Castle under the protection of Edward, Lord Loftus.  

Sir Thomas was there too, as Alice remembered.  He had commanded a Mashamshire regiment for the King and must have been taken by the Parliamentarians at Marston Moor because it is said that he was imprisoned for a long while.  Lord Loftus, on the other hand, was a Parliamentarian.  Sir Thomas will have known Lord Loftus and his family not only as neighbours but also from his own brief time in Dublin – Loftus's father was Adam Loftus, who had been Lord Chancellor of Ireland until his career was destroyed and he was ruined by Strafford.  Then he had returned to his small property at Coverham and Edward, who had been imprisoned by Strafford for a short while, married the heiress to nearby Middleham and its castle.  Perhaps Sir Thomas and Lord Loftus had always been personal friends – or perhaps it was simply that Loftus was extending a courtesy to a fellow member of the local gentry – and of course Catherine would be a welcome guest as the daughter of a man who didn't make enemies, unlike his friend Strafford – at any rate, there they were, safe inside a castle that Lord Loftus was garrisoning for Parliament at his own expense.  And there she had another baby.

Middleham Castle

Alice was asked to be godmother and so she set out from Hipswell for the baptism.  She was in good health, very hearty and strong, and when she came to the River Ure at Middleham she didn't hesitate to take her horse across rather than disappoint Catherine.  So she followed her mother's servant onto the causeway, which was marked by stoupes – standing posts.  But the river was deeper than they expected.  

She kept up her horse as well as she could but when they were gone so far that she could not turn back, the river proved past riding and she realised that the mare couldn't find the bottom.  With a fervent prayer, when she saw that the mare was swimming, Alice gave her the reins and all the help that she could, and she gripped the mare's mane.  The mare bore up her head and swam – about an eighth of a mile, Alice remembered – and they were saved.  When she reached the castle, she will have been soaked to the skin.

Note

Alice refers to the "river near Midlam, called Swale" – which is a tributary of the Ure.  But it must have been the Ure that she needed to cross because that's the river at Middleham.

Next: 9. Royalist disaster & private grief: 1645-7