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The Civil War in Ruland
Author: John Harrison Orders of the day, Volume 36, Issue 5, 2004
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Much In LittleRutland is Britain’s smallest county, hence the Latin motto "Multum in Parvo", meaning ‘much in little’. But despite of its size, Rutland has its share of unique and sad Civil War stories. Charles I and his wife Henrietta visited Rutland in 1626 when they were entertained at Burley-on-the-Hill House by the Duke of Buckingham, George Villiers. The King was soon to discover for himself that there was much in little when he was served with a cold pie for dinner as Rutland’s most famous dwarf popped out, much to their surprise and amusement. Jeffery Hudson, the son of an Oakham butcher, so impressed Henrietta Maria that she took him back to London to join the court. He eventually grew to be 3 foot 9 inches high, but his adventurous life was not all peace as he became a Captain of Horse for the King; however whether he actually fought in a Civil War battle is debatable. While it is well known that power struggles in Leicestershire and the Midlands involved Lord Grey and his Royalist enemy Henry Hastings of Ashby Castle, Lord Grey had a personal problem with the Noels of Rutland who were prominent Royalist supporters. Lord Grey was soon reinforced by Captain Wray of the Grantham garrison, and after leaving the garrison at Burley, Grey marched onto nearby Exton Hall to seek out Lord Campden or his son Baptist who had fought for the King at Edgehill in 1642. Baptist was in Newark and his father in Oxford, but Lord Grey was also annoyed to find that arms and ammunition had already been moved to nearby North Luffenham Hall. So the increasingly angry Grey marched onto Luffenham to put the Hall under siege. Henry Noel, brother of Baptist, was heavily outnumbered with his small garrison of 200 but refused to surrender. After a brief siege Grey's men burned the nearby village of Sculthorpe to the ground and their cannon fired on the Hall and village. After some brief musket fire and burning of outbuildings Noel surrendered, but his house was plundered, papers burned, jewels and twenty horses stolen. A monument to Henry Noel’s first wife Susannah was damaged in the church. Catesby, one of Grey's lieutenants, was killed and a common soldier also died in the short skirmish; two Royalist defenders are buried in the churchyard. Henry Noel was sent to the Tower of London as was Henry Skipwith from Loughborough who was also with Noel. Skipwith was a hated collector of the ship tax in the 1630s. Rutland’s second largest town after Oakham is Uppingham where Jeremy Taylor was Rector from 1613 until 1642 and completed his work "Episcopacy Asserted". He was so popular that people came from many miles around for spiritual advice and counsel. Charles I recognised his reputation and awarded him a doctorate of divinity by "royal command”. Taylor couldn’t stay in Rutland when war was declared, and as Parliamentarian troops approached the town he fled to join the King at Oxford. He was also supposed to have been presented with the King’s watch and some jewels after the King’s execution. The pulpit at which Taylor preached is still in Uppingham’s church. A strange local legend from the Civil War says that the Puritan soldiers who entered the town objected to some local inhabitants dancing and they were put up against a wall to be shot by firing squad. They were not buried in Uppingham’s churchyard though, as they were dancing bears! Another sad and violent incident occurred in Rutland in July 1643 as local residents suffered from both sides plundering the countryside. An armed group of yeomen and their sons, known as clubmen, tried to persuade soldiers of either side to leave them alone. But at Tickencote they clashed with a smaller but better-armed party of Parliamentarian horse and two or three soldiers were killed. Reinforcements soon arrived from the nearby siege of Burghley House in Lincolnshire; a violent skirmish took place and it is said that up to fifty civilians were killed. The commander of this siege - a certain Oliver Cromwell - did not attend this slaughter in person though. On June 30th 1644 a skirmish took place near the village of Tinwell as Lord Grey tried to deal with plundering Royalists and five or six were killed and many officers were arrested. Even after the end of the war Rutland was not all peace and quiet as Parliamentarian troops were quartered in villages with no war to fight, bored and waiting to be paid. On April 3rd 1646 a party of ten who were quartered at Lyddington rode to the nearby Leicestershire village of Medbourne and got drunk. They threatened to burn various houses down, tried to steal horses and threatened a woman with a pistol. Eventually a local minister persuaded them to leave but they then attacked labourers in the fields and tried to steal a plough horse. Locals then armed themselves and were attacked by the soldiers, but they were so drunk that one was captured and taken back to the village. The soldiers then returned with reinforcements from their regiment quartered at Caldecott. The terrified villagers were cut to pieces by the rampaging soldiers who had obviously missed the violence of war and turned their bloodlust on civilian villagers. Sixteen were killed in the attack. Five days later as the dead were being buried a party of the same soldiers returned to rejoice from a distance, waving their swords in the air. The following day a large party of soldiers from the garrison in Leicester arrested the renegade soldiers in their quarters at Lyddington. Even the House of Commons heard about the outrage, but history does not tell us the fate of the soldiers who committed such acts of barbarity. Of the 59 signatures on the death warrant of Charles I on January 30th 1649, one man associated with Rutland appears. Thomas Wayte was an MP for Rutland and had been Governor of the Burley-on-the-Hill garrison prior to Grey's men taking over, but is thought to have been born in the nearby Leicestershire village of Wymondham. He was spared execution and died in a Jersey prison in 1668. Burley-on-the-Hill House is not open to the public, but only the 17th century stables remain as after the siege of Leicester in 1645 the fleeing Parliamentarian garrison burnt the original house down. Exton church houses the fine marble monument to Baptist Noel who fought at Edgehill, while at North Luffenham church the damaged monument to Viscount Campden’s first wife can be seen. Rutland has many peaceful rural villages as well as Rutland Water to visit. There certainly is ‘much in little’. John Harrison References
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