1640s - Civil War
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The Stuart kings like James I, Charles I, and James II were all just as convinced as their Tudor predecessors of their right to rule as they chose. The rising middle class contested this 'divine right of kings', so Charles I lost his head and James II his crown. During six years of intermittent strife, more suffering and loss were caused by troops of both sides than by battles. There were few setpiece engagements between Edge Hill in 1642 and Naseby '45. Campaign marches by the King and his nephews and by Parliamentary forces, numberless small skirmishes, ambushes, running fights, filled the war years, with many sieges of walled towns and assaults upon strongholds. The Midlands was a battle zone between the Royalist west and the Parliamentary east. Worcestershire was for the king, Warwickshire against. There were no fixed lines. Landowners, nobility and gentry, decided which side their manors should support. This was not a war between autocracy and democracy, but between rival claimants to sovereignty. It is easy to say that the Roundheads were 'right but repulsive' and the Cavaliers 'wrong but romantic' : the issues were less clear-cut, became even less so, and both sides were equally guilty of war crimes. Towns, villages, and the countryside were pillaged and destroyed. Billeting, levies, conscription, foraging and plundering were imposed upon supporting and opposing communities with impartial severity. Most people had little love for either faction. The first recorded skirmish occurred in August 1642. Three Royalist troops of cavalry, retreating from Kenilworth Castle to join Charles at Nottingham, were pursued by irregulars from Coventry. They chose their moment to turn and engage, routing the Parliamentary force. In October of that year Charles moved south with his army, lodging overnight with Sir Thomas Holte in his magnificent newly-completed mansion at Aston (Hall). Next day the king reviewed the motley forces of 'the gentry of Staffordshire and Warwickshire'. As the royal army passed through Birmingham, a stronghold of Puritanism, there was some looting from citizens ; Charles had two captains hanged for this, to show his lack of animosity towards the town. The citizens were not won over, and when the king's baggage train entered the manor it was captured and sent to Warwick. Both sides were arming with all speed, and Birmingham weapons were ordered in quantity. But though Parliament was supplied with 15,000 sword blades, none went to Charles. He moved on to Coventry and demanded admission to the walled city. The citizens agreed to admit him and his retinue but not his army. At this time and later, Parliamentary supporters maintained the fiction that they were not fighting their sovereign but only his advisors: indeed an oath of allegiance to Charles had to be taken by recruits to his opponents' armies. The king retired without engagement, and Coventry was thenceforward the Parliamentary headquarters in the Midlands, as Oxford was to be the Royalist base. St. John's Church in Coventry was to be the hostel for 'malignant' prisoners : permitted freedom within the walls, they were ostracised by the townsfolk - whence the expression 'sent to Coventry'. On October 17th, Prince Rupert's troops were at ease on Kings Norton green when they were surprised by Willoughby's men. 'A great and cruel battle' ensued, according to the lying broadsheets which both sides published through out the war. Another clash took place next day at Hawkesley Farm nearby. When Queen Henrietta Maria brought a convoy of arms and supplies south later, she stayed at the manor house in Kings Norton. On October 23rd 'a blundering together of armies' happened at Edge Hill in south Warwickshire. Both sides claimed victory in an inconclusive engagement. During the first year all the Warwickshire strongholds were in Parliamentary hands except Tamworth Castle. Royalist garrisons held Dudley and Hartlebury Castles, Tamworth and Tutbury, Wolverhampton and Burton, and Lichfield Close. In March of 1643 Prince Rupert was sent to Birmingham. He sent his quartermasters ahead to demand billets. His promise of no reprisals for past misdeeds could not be trusted : he was known as 'Prince Robber, Duke of Plunderland', and his German dragoons were notorious for their excesses. So the officers were turned away and the townsfolk prepared to defend their homes. There were only 200 muskets, and Birmingham was totally without defences, a large sprawling village. The only hope might be to hold up Rupert long enough to persuade him to bypass the place and hurry on to Lichfield. Below the great gorge where several highways met, in Deritend High Street, barricades were erected to prevent approach to the Rea ford. Because the dragoons could not attack in strength, two charges were broken. Rupert established his headquarters in the inn on Kemp's Hill, and ordered that the barricade be outflanked. The dragoons rode down through the meadows behind the houses, forded the Rea which must have been low, and burst through minor defences in Lower Mill Street. Led by the Earl of Denbigh, 'singing as he rode', they stormed up Digbeth 'like so many bedlams, hacking and hewing all they met'. The defenders deserted their barricades and fled : the Battle of Birmingham was over, but the town's anguish had not yet begun. In Corn Cheaping above the church a Parliamentary troop was at readiness : seeing the battle already lost the commander, Captain Thomas Graves of Moseley (for the King), ordered a retreat at the gallop. Hotly pursued by Denbigh, they rode up New Street and then along Dudley Road. On Cape Hill 'between two woods' the Parliamentary troops turned suddenly about and engaged the strung-out Royalists. Denbigh was mortally wounded, his men were routed. With them was Robert Porter, whose Rea watermills had been making weapons for Parliament: next day 'malignants' in Birmingham destroyed his Town Mill in revenge for his support of the king. Rupert was enraged when he learnt of the death of his favourite officer : his men were given freedom to injure, rape, kill, and plunder during a night of terror. Before moving on he had the upper town fired. Eighty houses, a third of the town, were destroyed. A song still sung locally into the mid-C 19th, probably written long after the disaster, is 'The Armourer's Widow'. 'When Rupert came to Birmingham, The sack of 1643 was not the last of Birmingham's troubles. Rupert and his brother Maurice were both in the town later, taking all the cattle and sheep they could round up. In '44 men from the Dudley Castle garrison plundered unhindered, as did another Royalist force later. Birmingham survived only because the demand for its warlike wares was maintained throughout the war. After Rupert's first attack, the anger of the townsfolk was vented upon Sir Thomas Holte, chief magistrate of the district. On Boxing Day 1643 a force of irregular troops and citizens launched an assault on his home at Aston Hall. Forewarned, Holte had borrowed forty musketeers from Dudley, but the issue was never in doubt. The Hall had no moat or stout walls, having been built for show not defence. During a three-day siege and the repulse of several attacks, erratic cannon pounded at the south end of the house, reducing it to ruin. Holte was then forced to surrender : he was imprisoned and the Hall was pillaged. When it was restored a splintered newel-post was left as a reminder of Holte's sacrifices for his king - it is there to this day. The war continued with both sides assaulting each other's strongholds but there was increasing opposition from all sides. 'If they could have peace, they care not what side had the better'. Many of the troops were pressed men and unpaid, they 'had not much mind to fight, but were glad to take any occasion to make haste home to their cows'. In some shires townsmen and farmers banded together as 'Clubmen' to resist further theft and damage. They were ruthlessly suppressed by the Prince. The Royalists were becoming increasingly desperate : they were now opposed by the New Model Army, 21,000 Puritan volunteers whose oath was to Parliament, trained like Cromwell's 'Ironsides'. Rupert was reduced to destroying the houses of the king's supporters like the Lytteltons of Frankley, to prevent their use by the enemy. Two such places were taken over near Birmingham in '44. Thomas Fox, Colonel of Irregulars, turned the Catholic Middlemores out of Edgbaston Hall. This commanded the highways from west and southwest. From it Fox made daring raids, notably capturing Bewdley. His defences, including moat and fishponds with the desecrated church as a strongpoint, were so good that a force sent against him retired without attacking. More Royalist garrisons surrendered in '45 and early '46. They included Stokesay Castle in Salop and then Dudley. The castle had been garrisoned by Colonel Leveson throughout the war and never seriously assaulted. It was given up without bloodshed, and slighted the following year. Hartlebury, Ludlow, Worcester, and Lichfield were still royal. His last armies defeated, Charles ordered surrender. In 1648 the Second Civil War began with the Scots invading England in the name of Charles II. Having passed through Birmingham, with yet more loss to the people, the Scots infantry were destroyed at Warwick. Two years later Charles marched south from Scotland. After losing several engagements he was besieged in Worcester : in a clever attack Cromwell utterly defeated him, and he was hunted through the Midlands, hiding in an oak at Boscobel and a priest's hole at Moseley Old Hall near Wolverhampton, before escaping southward and eventually to France. Parliament ordered the destruction of all Royalist castles so that they could never again be used as 'malignant strongholds'. The great keep of Kenilworth was mined and the huge lake drained. Warwick Castle had been held for Parliament by the family of Lord Brooke and so was not slighted. The restorations of Fulk Greville from 1604 provided a home for the Brookes, Earls of Warwick, until recently. Aston Hall was finely rebuilt for the Holtes, who lived there until 1818. Edgbaston Hall was pulled down in the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1668 : the present Hall was built by Sir Richard Gough of Perry Hall in 1718. 1626 Plague - also in 1631, 1637, 1654, 1665 (Great Plague). Due
to lack of sanitation and hygiene. Serious fire about this time
destroyed much decayed thatch and timber building. Loss of trade.
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