The Battle of Birmingham

Toward the Royalist cause Birmingham had a bad record of 'hearty, wilful, affected disloyalty'. In the first months of the war the townsfolk captured the King's baggage train, attacked small troops of his soldiers, sent men to help in the defence of Coventry, and supplied 15,000 sword blades to the Parliament-ary forces, refusing any to Charles. When in April 1643 Prince Rupert approached the town from Henley, on his way to Lichfield, the Brummies were afraid to trust his promises of no reprisals for past misdeeds. They refused to quarter his men, and erected barricades at all the south entrances to the town. Their only hope could be to delay his advance long enough to persuade him to turn aside, by-passing Birmingham by crossing Rea at Duddeston.

Rupert's dragoons were held up for a time in Deritend, but the defenders were soon outflanked and the cavalry rode 'like so many bedlams' through the streets, 'hacking, hewing, and pistolling' all they encountered. A Parliamentary troop, led by Captain Thos. Grevis, was at readiness on the green : seeing the town already lost, they retreated up New Street and out on Dudley Road, hotly pursued. Two miles from town, 'in Shireland Lane between two woods' (probably on Cape Hill), the troop suddenly turned and charged the Royalists, who were led by the Earl of Denbigh. He was mortally woun-ded in the clash that followed, and the Royalists retreated.

Dwellers in our district were used to the smoke pall that lay over Birmingham every working day, but never had they seen anything like the black clouds from the fires started by the dragoons before they left next morning. Twice more were Royalist armies to descend upon the town, unopposed but causing more ruin and de-predation. But the demand for Birmingham's manufactures continued throughout the war, and its people survived these and other disasters.

Edgbaston Hall was strategically placed at the junction of the highways between Birmingham and the west and south-west, and between Royalist Worcestershire and Parliamentarian Warwickshire. Thomas 'Tinker' Fox, Colonel of Irregulars, chose well in seizing the site and making it into a fortress in 1644. This opportunist leader of 200 local men, who was 'always in a passion or a prayer', used stone from the church for his redoubts, sold the bells, melted down the roof-lead for bullets, and used the nave as a barrack.

Steep falls on south and west sides, fishponds on the east, the stout church wall on the north, moat and earthworks, made the site impregnable except against cannon - whose movement the state of the roads rarely permitted. Fox's raids on Royalist strongholds, notably his surprise capture of Bewdley, provoked the sending of a large force to Edgbaston : but finding him so well defended, the Royalists retired 'having done nothing'.

After the war, and the excitement of the search for the fugitive Charles II hereabout following the battle of Worcester in 1651, the town and its neighbours returned to peaceful pursuits. When plague permitted, rebuilding and development continued : growth was largely confined to existing streets and new ones between them, because the 'Borough' was hemmed in by the former demesne and Priory lands, and estates carved out of the great fields.