Royalists lost Carlisle in the English Civil War

A notable feature of the English Civil Wars was the war of words which accompanied the fighting. This was waged in the thousands of books, pamphlets, broadsheets and newspapers which were published during the 1640s. Amongst other issues, the propaganda writers of both sides tried to minimise the damage and disruption done by their own troops, whilst drawing their readers' attentions to that caused by enemy soldiers. Sir John Birkenhead wrote in his newspaper, Mercurius Aulicus, that it was 'a common Parliament practice, to set a House on fire, and then to runne away by the light of it'. Stung by criticisms of this kind, a parliamentarian writer, looking back after the end of the second Civil War, reminded his readers of the damage done by the royalists since 1642, especially 'the many streets they burnt downe in the subburbs of the City of York, many streets at Bristoll, Exeter, Worcester, many Townes in Wales, whole Townes in Buckinghamshire, at Banbury, and many other parts', as well as the great numbers of houses burnt down at Colchester and Pontefract.

In fact, both sides had been responsible for the destruction of property, which was a common feature of warfare in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Both from the printed word and the visible evidence of ruined and burnt out buildings, contemporaries were well aware of the physical damage done in the Civil Wars, yet it has been curiously neglected by historians, together with many other deleterious effects of the conflict. The destruction carried out in the continental wars of the period – such as the Thirty Years' War, the French Wars of Religion and the Eighty Years' War in the Low Countries – has, however, received considerable attention. The English Civil Wars have been treated as being in some way separate from European warfare, but Englishmen were made familiar with continental methods of warfare through publications, service abroad and, during the Civil Wars, the arrival of foreign military experts, who introduced sophisticated methods of attack and defence. Many of the methods and techniques of contemporary European warfare can be identified in the Civil Wars, one of them being the deliberate destruction of property.

Buildings were destroyed in the preparation of the defences of a town. The counter to the development of effective siege artillery in the early sixteenth century was the bastion trace, which provided low, squat and broad defences of earth, faced with stone or turf, designed to absorb gun- fire. The bastion itself was an arrow- headed feature projecting forward from the line to allow the defenders to enfilade the face of the defences. On the continent such fortifications became increasingly complex during the sixteenth century, with the bastion trace fronted by wet or dry ditches and a number of additional earthworks. The only English towns with such artillery defences at the outbreak of the Civil Wars were Berwick, Hull and Portsmouth, while the Elizabethan fortifications at Plymouth had been allowed to deteriorate.

A further fifty or so towns still had their medieval walls, in varying stages of repair, but a town surrounded by a stone wall with towers was regarded by contemporaries as enclosed rather than fortified, for such defences could be knocked down with relative ease by even a fairly modest siege train. The existing town walls had, therefore, to be considerably modified, normally under the direction of engineers with experience in the European wars of the period. The defences of many of those towns which lay in that part of the country which was directly affected by the war were brought up-to-date by lining the insides of the walls with banks of earth and adding external bastions and other earthworks. Some of the more important garrisoned towns – such as London, Bristol, Chester, Plymouth and Oxford – had completely new defensive works built some way away from the towns themselves, to protect them from artillery fire.

The renovation and erection of such defences did cause some destruction of property. At London, Exeter and Great Yarmouth, for example, it was ordered that buildings which stood close to or against the walls should be taken down. The earthworks of a bastion trace covered a greater area of land than did the existing upright walls and property had to be cleared at a number of towns in order to make space for the construction of such fortifications. Seventeen houses at Oxford were demolished to allow the 'great sconce' to be constructed at St Clement's, and at Carmarthen, Aylesbury, Barnstaple and Lincoln, too, buildings were removed as the new defences were erected. Generally, such defences enclosed the towns themselves, but excluded the suburbs. The typical early-modern suburb was an elongated ribbon development along one of the main roads into a town, and to include such a district within the works would have involved constructing a long defensive line which, in turn, would have required a larger garrison to defend it. In practical terms, it was preferable simply to exclude the suburbs. This did not invariably lead to the destruction of the property in them and in the early stages of the war, at least, the suburbs were allowed to remain for a time after the defences were built.

As the war gathered momentum, however, many towns were besieged or threatened by an enemy force and the more professional commanders with European experience came increasingly to the fore. It therefore became common for such suburbs to be demolished or burnt down. This was done chiefly for three reasons. If left intact the suburbs provided accommodation for a besieging force and the governor of a town preferred to compel an enemy commander to quarter his troops in temporary huts or tents which were unpleasant (especially in bad weather) and insanitary, leading to sickness and desertion. The condition of the besiegers' billets at the siege of Hull prompted an observer to remark that he thought it probable that the troops would rot before the defenders were starved. Secondly, the buildings contained materials which could be used for fuel and in the construction of batteries and other works if they were left standing, but if they were demolished and the timber and thatch brought into the garrison, the defenders would have the use of it. Thirdly, buildings left intact close to the defences restricted the defenders' field of fire and allowed the besiegers to use them as cover to get close to and perhaps undermine, the fortifications.

Suburbs were cleared from almost all the towns in the war zone that were fortified and defended, and in the second Civil War the same process was carried out at Pembroke and Colchester. Small country towns (like Stafford, Ludlow, Wem, Bridgnorth and Nantwich) which were fortified lost buildings in this way, as well as larger cities and towns. In many cases the removal of extra-mural property destroyed virtually all of the suburbs of a town. At Gloucester 240 houses were destroyed, almost 200 were cleared from outside the defences of Colchester, and perhaps a fifth of Worcester's buildings was burnt or demolished. At those towns which did not sustain a siege the destruction was often less extensive. Some suburbs at Northampton and Coventry were pulled down, but in both cases the loss was less than one-tenth of the houses in the town.

Some towns and villages were not defensible in themselves, but contained a building or group of buildings which could be fortified as a citadel. Lichfield cathedral close, Devizes and Dudley castles provide examples. The commanders of such garrisons viewed the buildings of the adjacent town as a potential danger, but there were, obviously, greater constraints on destroying a town or a village than there were on pulling down suburbs which contained only a part of the total housing. In addition to the discontent which would be aroused amongst the civilian population, there were positive reasons for not undertaking large-scale destruction in such circumstances. The community provided facilities such as quarters for the soldiers and it could be taxed to help maintain the garrison. Only in extremis were the governors of such fortified enclaves likely to try to destroy more than the immediately adjacent buildings, such as a number of houses close to Cambridge castle and the churches of St Nicholas' at Nottingham and St Edmund's in Dudley.

In a number of cases, however, sieges did lead to more widespread destruction. Almost the whole village of Brampton Bryan in Herefordshire, together with the church, was destroyed as a result of the siege of the castle, and the governor of Donnington castle near Newbury burned down thirty houses in the village to prevent the parliamentarian besiegers quartering in them. The largest part of the High Town at Bridgnorth was burnt by the royalist garrison of the castle as it was being occupied by parliamentary forces. Much property was destroyed at Lichfield and Winchester in similar circumstances, while the three sieges of Pontefract castle led to the loss of 200 houses there. After the repeated sieges of Banbury castle it was said of the town that there was 'scarce the one halfe standing to gaze on the ruines of the other'. At Faringdon virtually the entire town was destroyed by the defenders of Faringdon House in 1646; 236 families were made homeless and the losses were valued at almost £57,000.

Similar defensive destruction was also carried out in places which lay some distance from a garrison. Villages and towns within a few miles of a fortified place were regarded by the defenders in much the same way as suburbs, for they too could provide facilities and accommodation for a besieging force. For that reason Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper thought that it was necessary 'to pluck down the town of Wareham' to provide greater security for the parliamentarian garrison in Poole, half-a-dozen miles away. The fact that it was 'extremely mean built', together with the known hostility of its inhabitants, was further justification, in his view, for destruction. His recommendation was not implemented, but the village of Stoborough, across the River Frome from Wareham, was demolished during the war. Property at Monkton was pulled down as part of the arrangements for the defence of Pembroke and the villages of Boughton and Chrisleton close to Chester were destroyed by the garrison there. The Reading garrison burnt down parts of Twyford and Wokingham and Prince Rupert's forces from Bristol destroyed Clifton and Bedminster because of their proximity to the city. Royalist attempts to fortify Beachley, at the confluence of the Wye and the Severn, prompted the parliamentarian governor of Gloucester to des- troy all of the houses in the village. In the most destructive case of this kind, the garrison of Lyme Regis made two raids on Axminster because it was being occupied by the royalists and burned all of it down except for three or four houses and the church, destroying roughly 200 properties.

Numerous country houses and castles were garrisoned at one time or another during the war, controlling large areas of the countryside, but also tying down considerable numbers of troops. Such structures in potentially strategic positions, which were fortified or could be adapted for defence, but could not be held because of a shortage of soldiers, were, in many cases, destroyed or so badly damaged that they would not provide a base for the enemy. Sir John Winter caused his own house at Lydney in the Forest of Dean to be burnt to prevent the parliamentarians from occupying it. Wilton House near Ross-on-Wye and Tong castle in Shropshire were burned down for similar reasons. Camden House in Gloucestershire, belonging to Sir Baptist Hicks, was fortified by the royalists, but when the garrison abandoned it to join the King's field army they set it alight 'wantonly burning the noble structure... which not many years before had cost above thirty thousand pounds the building'. At Chilton House in Buckinghamshire the destruction was less complete, for the directions to the soldiers were 'to pull downe the out Walls, and Doores... the body of the Howse remaininge whole'. Even so, the partial dismantling of the fabric in this way could cause considerable damage.

Churches which stood close to such fortified houses, but were not incorporated in the defences, were also demolished. The governor of Edgbaston House in Warwickshire caused the nearby church to be pulled down and used the stone and timber from it in the fortifications. The churches at Taynton in Gloucestershire, High Ercall in Shropshire and Boarstall in Buckinghamshire were similarly destroyed.

Destruction of the kind described so far was carried out essentially for defensive reasons, to deny to an enemy the use of buildings which he could use in his operations against a garrison. Property was also destroyed in circumstances where the purpose was primarily offensive. This was done in some cases by a bombardment. There were limitations on the effectiveness of such bombardments, however, most of them logistical. One was the amount of ordnance that was available. At the beginning of the Civil War the armies had relatively few cannon suitable for siege operations and although the position improved in the course of the war the numbers of the heavier pieces remained relatively small. Mortars, too, were in short supply and they were potentially the most destructive siege weapons, able to lob their exp1osive grenades over the defences into the buildings inside them. Furthermore, ammunition and gunpowder supplies seem to have been unreliable and were rarely available in large enough quantities to support a prolonged bombardment. One solution to this problem was to use heated shot, with the object of starting fires which could spread and destroy more property than would round shot fired cold. The handling of red-hot shot in a battery had to be carried out with great care, however, and the rates of fire achieved with it seem to have been especially low. There was, too, a high mortality among gun crews at Civil War sieges, for batteries had to be set up close to the defences to be effective and the gunners could be picked off by marksmen in the garrison and it took time to train replacements. As a result of these difficulties the rates of fire of artillery batteries were low. No more than 450 round shot and two dozen mortar grenades were fired into Gloucester during a siege which lasted for almost four weeks, for example. Fire arrows, red-hot musket balls, hand grenades and even fire- ships were also used to attempt to set buildings on fire, with varying degrees of success.

The objective of some besieging forces was to destroy buildings with- in the defences, with the aim of setting the town on fire, making it untenable as a base for the besieged and perhaps, if they were very fortunate, exploding the defenders' magazine. More commonly and realistically the purpose was to cause unrest within the town, for the civilian population was likely to clamour for a surrender in order to save their property. Such anxiety could extend to the garrison itself, because in a typical Civil War garrison there was a high proportion of local men. A royalist officer at the siege of Nantwich threatened the inhabitants with 'fire... day and night, to the terrour of your old, and females, and consumption of your thatcht houses'. His estimate of the efficacy of his artillery proved to be rather optimistic, however, and such fires as were begun in the town were extinguished without causing any considerable damage. At Chester, Lyme Regis and Pembroke, too, 'some buildings were destroyed by the besiegers' batteries without producing a surrender. Fires begun in Bridgwater by the New Model Army's batteries, on the other hand, quickly led to the governor's capitulation and the bombardments of Rotherham and Gainsborough produced similar results. Nevertheless, there were few instances in which a great deal of property was destroyed by artillery projectiles. A commander in charge of a besieging force would, in any case, not wish to destroy all or a large part of a town, preferring to capture it intact so that it could be garrisoned and taxed in the future. To burn it was to destroy valuable resources, hence Shakespeare's reference to towns 'won... with fire – so won, so lost'.

More extensive damage was likely to be caused as a town or citadel was assaulted and in the aftermath of its capture. If a summons to surrender had been rejected and the place was subsequently captured, the victorious troops were entitled, by the accepted usages of war, to plunder and burn it. Although this right was rarely exercised in full, there were several instances during the Civil Wars of considerable property losses in an assault or its aftermath. The royalists attempting to capture Taunton in 1645 were resisted even when they had broken through the defences and in the ensuing fighting many houses, perhaps as many as 250, in 'two long streets' were burned down. Fires begun by the Earl of Derby's army in its attack on Lancaster destroyed ninety houses and almost as many other buildings. It was quite likely that a fire would break out during the sack of a town, as soldiers went from house to house in search of plunder, perhaps using the threat of fire as an inducement to householders to reveal the whereabouts of their valuables and in some cases even blowing up or setting alight premises where they thought that they had not obtained all that they should have done. In such circumstances, the civilians were unable to react to a blaze and it could spread and destroy a number of properties. Most of the eighty or so houses that were destroyed when the royalists captured Birmingham were deliberately set on fire by the troops before they withdrew, in a number of cases picking out those of known parliamentarian sympathisers. There were similar incidents following the successful assaults on Newcastle- upon- Tyne, Marlborough and Cirencester, where the losses included 'the burning of some particular men's houses, which were purposeIy set on fire after the towne was wonne'. Fires broke out as the victorious parliamentarian soldiers began to plunder Abbotsbury House in Dorset and eventually the magazine exploded, destroying the house and killing some of the soldiers.

Punitive burning of property also occurred during some fire-raids. Raids were used by both sides as a means of raising money and supplies. Typically, a force would assess a community to pay a particular sum of money or hand over provisions. In most cases there was no loss of property, for a balance existed in which the soldiers did not levy more than the community could reasonably be expected to pay and the civilians did not resist such demands when they were backed by force. In those cases where resistance was offered – the community refused to pay the sum demanded, or the menfolk had deserted the town or village on the approach of the troops to avoid being impressed into the armies – buildings were often set on fire. Incidents of this kind occurred at Swanbouxne, Chinnor and Amersham in Buckinghamshire and at Woburn in Bedfordshire. Other raids were intended more as punitive than revenue-raising expeditions, designed to unsettle the enemy by destroying property within an area under his nominal control and losing him support among the civilian inhabitants for failing to protect them. A raid on a few towns and villages could spread alarm over a much wider area, forcing the enemy to garrison a district rather than risk losing its allegiance. A well planned and executed raid was a potentially valuable instrument of war. It was unusual for the damage inflicted to be extensive, however. No more than eighteen houses were burnt down at Woburn, for instance, and only four were destroyed in Bishop's Castle.

Fire was an ever-present danger to the early-modern community. The widespread use of combustible building materials, especially thatch, the lack of adequate chimneys, the practice of trades with a high fire risk in unsuitable premises and the stocks of hay, corn and fuel that were kept within the built-up area all contributed to the hazard, and extensive losses as a result of accidental blazes were not infrequent.

Wartime conditions considerably increased the chances of such fires breaking out. The lodging of refugees from destroyed suburbs and the surrounding countryside and the quartering of soldiers led to overcrowding in domestic premises; houses were subdivided and fires for heating and cooking were lit in rooms which were not equipped for the purpose. An influx of people caused a greater demand for food and drink and so an increase in activity by bakers, brewers, maltsters and other suppliers whose premises were potential fire risks, leading in turn to larger stocks of fuel and corn. The military kept powder, match and other combustible materials in their magazines, which were often kept in unsuitable buildings such as churches and even private houses. Both in their management of a magazine and in their quarters it is likely that soldiers were more careless of fire precautions than the resident civilian population, who were protecting their own property, goods and to some extent lives by observing regulations safeguarding against fire. There were several serious outbreaks of fires within towns during the war years. In 1644 an explosion in a gunpowder store in Lincoln started a fire which destroyed a number of houses and St Swithin's church. While the New Model army was quartered at Great Brickhill in Buckinghamshire in the following year, a fire began close to Fairfax's own quarters which burnt down 'divers houses'. A more serious accident followed the discharge of a musket against the gable end of a house in Heaminster as a result of a quarrel amongst the soldiers while Prince Maurice's army was occupying the town. The subsequent blaze left only one street and a part of a second one untouched. Almost 150 houses were gutted and the town appeared to a visitor to be 'a place of the pittifullest spectacle that man can behold, hardly an house left not consumed with fire'. The most serious blaze of the war years was in Oxford in October 1644, when a fire which began on the northern edge of the town, allegedly as a result of a soldier roasting a pig, was driven by a strong wind for nearly 1,000 yards through a densely populated district, destroying perhaps 300 houses and causing damage later estimated at £43,600. The scale of the loss was greater than that caused in any fire in a provincial town since that at Wymondham in 1615 and there were few more destructive fires in the seventeenth century.

The total amount of destruction cannot be satisfactorily quantified, but, in terms of the larger disasters at least, it may be that the scale of the losses in the four years of the first Civil War and the brief renewal of hostilities in 1648 was not greatly dissimilar from that which occurred in accidental fires in all of the other years of the seventeenth century. Not only was such destruction concentrated in relatively few years, but it also coincided with the other problems caused by the war. High mortality, the dislocation of trade and industry, quartering of troops, requisitioning of equipment, supplies and livestock, plundering, greatly increased levels of regular and irregular taxation and impositions and the loss or reduction of civic independence all affected the life of the civilian community, although varying greatly in their effects from place to place.

Recovery from wartime destruction was, therefore, more difficult than from accidental fires which occurred in the more normal conditions of peacetime and which rarely coincided with another disaster of a similar magnitude, such as an outbreak of plague. A fire or other catastrophe often attracted widespread sympathy and the stricken community was aided by charitable collections. After the Civil Wars, with so many places adversely affected by the conflict, such assistance was both reduced in scale and more widely diffused. This was reflected in the much longer delays that characterised post-war rebuilding, compared with the time usually taken to replace property burned down in other fire disasters. There was a very sluggish start to reconstruction after the end of the war and only with the general economic recovery from the post-war recession in the 1650s did it really begin to get under way. The bulk of activity took place in that decade, although rebuilding continued into the 1660s and even into the 1670s in some places; a timespan of almost thirty years. At York and Gloucester the recovery was even more delayed, for neither town had replaced its suburbs by the end of the century. After most accidental fires, on the other hand, rebuilding was usually completed within a few years. Despite the enormous losses in the Great Fire of London, the secular buildings had been replaced within six years, and a similar time scale can be recognised in other cases. Property destruction was only one of the deleterious effects of the Civil Wars, but it was a widespread and visible one from which recovery was slow.