...I've just taken delivery of "The Civil War in Hampshire" by G. N Godwin,
which I've had my eye on for ages at the Caliver stand at the various wargaming
shows, but had not
been able to afford it up until now. Just before Christmas though, I got lucky
and managed to find it at a more affordable price on AbeBooks...
Like
the recent re-issue of "The War Game" this book is also a 'copy' of the previous
book, so the pages all show a scan of the original book/page - but either way it
is immensely detailed, and more importantly has some more interesting
information on Warblington Castle, the siege, and the other events of 1642 in
the area...
Godwin writes that
~ Henry VIII conferred the
manor/castle on Sir Richard Cotton - who was the controller of his household.
His view is that it was Sir Richard who built the castle, which is Tudor in
design (rather than earlier). So a Tudor style castle...
~ It remained in
the hands of the Cottons until the English Civil War - which we knew..
~
Sir Richard received Edward VI at the castle in 1552, and records show that the
castle was in good repair in 1633 - but shortly after "we know only of a ruined
tower, a broken arch, and a few nondescript mounds, and remains of a moat". So
we now know there was also a moat..
..now the interesting bits - and
we almost have enough for a scenario..
J
Early in the war
(January 1643) the castle (see right for map) had been occupied for Parliament
by a
Colonel Norton
from nearby Southwick (he obviously did well in the war as he went on to be one
of the signatories to the death warrant of Charles I!).
At this time
the castle was described as being brick, faced with stone, about 210 feet
square. "The whole was surrounded buy a "fosse" 10 feet deep"... "Before the northern angle appears to have been an
entrenched camp of five acres".."surrounded by a bank nearly eight feet high,
and a ditch similar to that around the castle".
Norton occupied the castle with a garrison of between 40 & 80 men
(accounts vary, but some of these may have been from another local village -
Hambledon) under the command of one of his officers.
The Warblington
siege needs to be seen against the background of the much larger siege of
Arundel - a noted Royalist stronghold - just a little further down the coast.
This fight was only ever going to be a side show, and was basically
Lord Hopton
trying to distract
Waller who
was with the Parliamentary army before Arundel
Godwin quotes that in
December 1643, Hopton had "sent dragoons to invest Warblington House where
Nortons garrison was doing much damage to the country", further that "after a
long siege and loss of more men than were in the garrison", he took Warblington
Castle. All indications are that the castle only held out for a few days once
surrounded.
It had also had no effect on the siege at Arundel which
fell to Parliament after 17 days December 20th '43 to 6th January.
So
we have a battlefield - the map below is my best guess at fitting the above
(castle and camp) to a slightly larger scale version of the map above...
We
also have an idea of the size of forces involved...
We know that the
garrison was approximately 80 men; we know that the Royalist forces were big
enough that they would take more than 80 casualties and still take the castle -
safe to assume then that they must have numbered at least 250 men minimum, and
were probably all dragoons. There are no references anywhere to artillery being
available to either side...
Good progress and much more understandable...
Last of all (for
this post anyway!) - Happy New Year - I'm solidly of the opinion that the world
is divided into people who like Christmas, or people who like New Year - for the
record I'm in the former camp! J
As usual, I'm staying quietly at home for New Year's Eve . . . in fact, I cannot recall the last time I went out for it . . . decades ago at least.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess that I join you in the "Christmas Camp" because I cannot recall ever neglecting to celebrate Christmas.
Have a Happy New Year anyway.
-- Jeff
PS, I'm enjoying the history of the castle.
It's a good book. However Godwin is very much of the Victorian school of Historians and so often makes his own assumptions and uses common beliefs that are entirely accurate. howevger some good accounts still. another good book to look at is the "Civil War in Hampshire by Tony Maclachlan". Highly recommended
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