Signing his own Death Warrant:
The 1645 attack on Leicester
and the Trial of King Charles I
and the Trial of King Charles I
Part Two
The Royalist Assault
Royalist foot appeared in strength on the 29 May, approaching Leicester simultaneously from north and south. Initially they occupied houses adjacent to St Sunday's Bridge, on the north bank of the Soar, but these were cleared by Grey's soldiers, who then fired the houses to stop them providing further cover for the enemy. Viewing the defences, it was clear to Prince Rupert that the Newarke's stone walls were a weak-point and by evening he had begun to establish gun batteries on high ground to the south of the town that were well established by daybreak. The following morning Rupert fired two cannon shots as a demonstration of his fire-power before sending a trumpeter into the town to demand surrender. Parliament's committee made such slow work of deliberating Rupert's terms that at three in the afternoon, before they had delivered their answer, Royalist batteries began firing on the town's southern defences. In three hours a large breach had been made in the Newarke's unprotected walls.
Leicester's defence and the royalist assault of the night of 30/31 May 1645. Plan based on that in Agnes Fielding Johnson's Glimpses of Ancient Leicester (1906)
Leicester's defenders had had the foresight to organise teams, “imployed to bring Wooll-Packs, Baggs of Hops, and other necessaries, to stop the breaches”.. When the southern wall partially collapsed these “teames” began to raise a revetment - a second line of earthworks - immediately behind the breach. Royalist gunfire continued as “hundreds workt together to the amazement of the enemy” (An Examination Examined, 3), and although many of them were dismounted troopers more than one source refers to women working in the line under fire (A Perfect Relation, 1; A Narration of the Siege, 4). The Newarke's unprotected stone walls may have collapsed woefully quickly but in the event this worked to the defenders' advantage: with only a single breach in the line it was perfectly clear where the Royalists would drive home an assault and the Newarke was reinforced accordingly.
Impatient to have begun firing on the town that afternoon, Rupert was equally impatient to storm the defences. Accounts vary as to exactly when the attack went in, some writing that it was ten o'clock, others that it was in the early hours of 31 May. The royalists assaulted from three directions simultaneously, intending to stretch the defence to breaking. As the defenders had predicted, the main thrust was against the breach. This was undertaken by Colonel George Lisle's tertio, “tryed Souldiers . . . Edgehill Regiments”, as the royalist news-sheet Mercurius Aulicus described them. Even so, their attack faltered in the teeth of a well-prepared defence: “our best Cannon, drawn thither, and load[ed] with Case-shot, did wonderfull execution upon the Enemy”, was one parliamentarian account (A Exact Relation, 6), while another delighted in reporting the last moments of a royalist officer who “in a bravery, came up to our Cannon, and was by it shotter'd into small parcels” (A Narration of the Siege, 7). The attack was thrown back and subsequent attempts by the royalists to fight their way into the Newarke were similarly ineffective.
On the eastern side of the town, Colonel Grey was less successful in defending his position. Here, the royalists attacked over a much broader front and were able to use ladders to scale the earth ramparts. Though their first attempt was beaten back, a subsequent attack armed with “hand-granadoes” enabled the royalist foot to breach the defences, open the town's gates and allow cavalry to enter the line. Grey was reportedly “wounded on the face, and had two cuts on the fore-part of his head, one of them to the skull, and also a wound in the back with a Pike” (An Examination Examined, 16). Of his three company commanders, one was killed and another wounded. Soldiers of Astley's brigade, fighting their way into the north end of the town, were counter-attacked by Colonel Pye leading a cavalry charge up the High Street, but the parliamentarians were overwhelmed and Pye was captured. There is some account of a fighting retreat being made through St Martin's churchyard as parliamentary resistance began to collapse and it was left to Major Innes, still holding the Newarke against repeated attacks, to agree to surrender. Captain Hacker again showed initiative when he managed to escape from the Newarke with a handful of men, passing unchallenged through the press of attacking royalists after overhearing their password shouted through the darkness. He was later captured some distance from the town.
The remains of the Newarke's wall in the mid-nineteenth century, showing the loop holes made at the time of the defence (thiswasleicestershire.co.uk).
Mercurius Aulicus reported 80 royalist dead (“many whereof were killed at the Breach”) and 120 parliamentarian. A parliamentarian account, A Perfect Relation, put the number of dead higher, at 300. The London paper Mercurius Civicus referred to the action as “The bloudy Massacre” of Leicester, although reports of atrocities following the town's surrender, such as the wholesale seizure and hanging of the town's committee, were subsequently accepted to have been fabrications (Whitelock, I, 441, 443). “give the divell his due”, admitted one London pamphleteer (A Perfect Relation, 3), “I cannot learne of any such order given to destroy all, as is said by some.”
Robert Hodkinson
May 2021
May 2021
Sources:
An Examination Examined: being a full being a full and moderate answer to Maior Innes relation concerning the siege and taking of the town of Leicester by the Kings forces, the last of May 1645 (Thomason E.303[13])
A Perfect Relation of the Taking of Leicester (Thomason E.288[4])
A More Exact Relation of the Siege Laid to the Town of Leicester (Thomason E.286[7])
Mercurius Aulicus, 25 May-8 June (Thomason E.288[48])
A Narration of the Siege and Taking of the Town of Liecester (Thomason E.289[6])
Whitelock, B. Memorials of the English Affairs, vol. 1 (Oxford: 1853)
An Examination Examined: being a full being a full and moderate answer to Maior Innes relation concerning the siege and taking of the town of Leicester by the Kings forces, the last of May 1645 (Thomason E.303[13])
A Perfect Relation of the Taking of Leicester (Thomason E.288[4])
A More Exact Relation of the Siege Laid to the Town of Leicester (Thomason E.286[7])
Mercurius Aulicus, 25 May-8 June (Thomason E.288[48])
A Narration of the Siege and Taking of the Town of Liecester (Thomason E.289[6])
Whitelock, B. Memorials of the English Affairs, vol. 1 (Oxford: 1853)