The English Civil Wars 1642–1651

This extract taken from the chapter entitled ‘The Fighting: The English civil war, 1642–46.’

In autumn 1644 local parliamentarians stormed a royalist garrison in the manor house at Abbotsbury in Dorset. It turned into a desperate, six-hour fight, though eventually the parliamentarians got close enough to the main house to throw in blazing furze and set the building ablaze. Fire, smoke and heavy gunfire induced the royalists to seek to surrender, but the parliamentary commander ordered that no quarter be given. Worse still, once the parliamentarians had entered the burning house to kill and plunder, a spark ignited the royalist magazine and over 50 royalists and parliamentarians perished in the explosion.

The overall death toll in this bloody though ultimately successful operation was probably over 100 and the Elizabethan mansion was completely wrecked. A year later, in autumn 1645, Oliver Cromwell led part of the New Model Army against Basing House in Hampshire. The Marquis of Worcester’s massively fortified palace, comprising a medieval and a Tudor house within very strong earthwork, stone and brick defences, had served as a major royalist outpost throughout the war. Long a thorn in parliament’s side, it had resisted earlier sieges and attacks, and Cromwell was determined to end resistance once and for all. He arrived with a large force and heavy artillery on 8 October and, once his summons had been refused, his guns quickly opened up two breaches in the outer defences.

A little before dawn on 14 October Cromwell stormed Basing House, his 7,000-strong force quickly overwhelming the 300 or so troops defending the base, smashing their way in and laying waste to the house in a brief and bloody assault. Although quarter was at last given to some of the garrison and to many of the pro-royalist civilians who had taken shelter in Basing, over 100 of the defenders were killed – ‘many of the Enemy our men put to the sword, and some officers of quality’, Cromwell wrote later that day – and around £200,000-worth of goods were plundered.

The house was reduced to charred ruins, not only because of the bombardment from Cromwell’s artillery but also through ‘a fire which fell upon the place since our taking of it’ and it never again served as either a military stronghold or an elite residence.