Sites and Scenes of the Civil War page 2

John Paulet, fifth Marquess of Winchester, Roman Catholic and a great loyalist, held his house for the King, and held it so fast and worked such harm before all was done that it was nicknamed "Basting House" by the jubilant Cavaliers. Thither, first, came Waller in July and again (in bitterly cold and foggy weather) in November, 1643. He got Basing House neither time, but in the November attack he lost over three hundred men. "What loss the enemy hath," he reported, "we cannot tell, nor what detriment they received, save only one of their cows." Again in the spring of 1644 the place was besieged, and in August of that year came small-pox, a stealthier, more deadly foe, but not until October, 1645, came Oliver Cromwell and the grim end. He posted his Southampton pikemen and troopers in the old chalk-pit, still called "Oliver's Delve"; there was stern fighting in "Slaughter Close" (you will find it by the canal bridge), and then he laid on his guns, battered a breach and on October 14 stormed. In the fury of the assault the house took fire, and men slew each other in the smoke and flames. When all was over some of the Cavaliers were heard "crying in the vaults for quarter, but our men could neither come to them, nor they to us," so the poor souls roasted there till they died.

Vast plunder was taken, to the worth of £300,000; among it the Marquess's state-bed, priced at £1300. He was never to sleep so soft again; his loyalty broke his fortunes, but he kept his heart as high always as on that day, when he answered his captors that "If the King had no more ground in England but Basing House I would adventure as I did and so maintain it to the uttermost. Basing House is called 'Loyalty.'" (Hehad written "Love Loyalty," the translation of "Aimez Loyaute," his family motto, with a diamond ring on every pane in the house.) And he added: "I hope that the King may have a day again."

Battle-places lie in something of a cluster round about Basing; Alton, to the southward, we have heard of, and not far from Alton is Alresford, where, on March 29, 1644, was fought "Alresford Fight," as they called it then, or the battle of Cheriton, as we say, which shut the King finally out of the Surrey and Sussex borders. There were ten thousand a side; the Cavaliers under Lord Forth lying on Tichborne Down to the south of Alresford, and the Puritans under Waller south of them again, between Cheriton Wood and Cheriton. Lamborough Lane - "Lamberry" they call it, down there-ran between the armies. Forth, net much liking the look of things, held his ground, but at eight in the morning young Sir Henry Bard lost patience, without orders charged the Puritan left, and was wiped out.

Sir Edward Stawell followed to rescue him, if possible, but was driven back by the Puritan guns.

Hazelrigg's "Lobsters" (so called from their breast-and-back shell, like the corselet of our modern Life Guards) drove into the gap between horse and foot, and the Cavalier line crumpled, broke and ran, killing their horses to block the narrow lanes. Forth fled for refuge to Basing House-then, as we know, still unfallen-firing Alresford on his way. The Cavaliers lost fifteen hundred men, the Puritans a thousand; so it may well be, as they said, that Lamborough Lane ran blood.

Hazelrigg's "Lobsters" had done bravely before this at Roundway Down, in Wiltshire, where on July 13, 1643, Waller faced Prince Maurice and Lord Whilmot. The Down surges nobly up out of the vale and the Cavaliers were drawn up on the crest of it. The "Lobsters." charged gallantly up the slope, but it was too steep and slippery; they had weaker horse with them, and at the Cavalier counter-charge all broke and fled down the hill, "where never horse went down or up before." The Puritans lost eighteen hundred men and Bristol fell to the King as a result of that fight.

Waller-and the "Lobsters" also-had had better luck a few days before, on July 5, in that gallant fight at Lansdown, above Bath. Waller lay on the hill-top, his cannon behind breastworks, and Sir Ralph Hopton and Sir Bevil Grenville with their Cornishmen on the opposite Tog Hill. In this fight the Cornishmen lost their leader, Sir Bevil Grenville.

When Grenville fell his son, "young John Grenville, a lad of sixteen, sprang, it is said, into his father's saddle and led the charge, and the Cornishmen followed with their swords drawn and with tears in their eyes, swearing they would kill a rebel for every hair of Sir Bevil's head." But they did not; they left, instead, fourteen hundred of their own men upon the field out of two thousand, and where they fell rises a very old unbeautiful monument inscribed with these fine, marching lines to Sir Bevil Grenville:

Where shall the next famed Grenville's ashes stand?
Thy Grandsire fills the Sea and them the Land

The "Grandsire" was the great Sir Richard; blood stirred then still at his fight with the fifty-three Spanish ships in the little "Revenge."

There is another memorial to Sir Bevil, far to the west in his own Cornwall, where, on the wall of the Tree Inn, at Stratton, you find a tablet which tells that " In this place the army of the rebels, under the command of the Earl of Stamford, received a signal overthrow by the valour of Sir Bevil Grenville and the Cornish army on May 16,1643." The "place" was the battlefield on the hill, yet called Stamford Hill, overlooking the little town, whence the tablet was removed to the wall of the inn.

On the high table-land of Naseby, in Northamptonshire, too, there is the monument, set about with oaks, thorns, and birches, marking the place where Charles in truth lost his kingdom on June 14, 1645. His army lay on Dust Hill, the Puritans on Mill Hill, and Broad Moor dipped between them. Sulby Hedge crosses a spur of Mill Hill and dips into the moor, behind it Okey's dragoons peppered Rupert's flank as he charged past them at Ireton on the Puritan left, and thence they issued to set upon the Royalist foot when the charge had whirled by. And there are the hollows marking the graves of the slain in this memorable encounter.

Of the other two great battlefields, little is to be seen on Marston Moor beyond the road from Long Marston to Tockwith along which the armies lay, Cavaliers to the north, Puritans to the south. It was at the Tockwith end that Cromwell and his Ironsides faced Rupert's Cavaliers and drove them from the field " like a little dust " (the first time Rupert had ever been beaten), afterwards sweeping to the other end, where Moor Lane and Atterwith Lane join the road, and routing Goring's horse as it returned from its chase of Fairfax. To the west of Moor Lane is the place where Newcastle's White-coats fell almost to a man.

Edgehill has marks enough. Stand on the towering "edge" and "you seem to take in, on a clear day, the breadth of a kingdom, almost," while from your feet runs a road down into the vale and so north-westerly through Kineton. That is King John's Lane, and where the sham-old Ratley Round House stands below to the left of it the king pitched his banner on Sunday, October 23, 1642, his army across the road in front of him. To the right of the road beyond is a copse of firs in front of Thistle Farm; that is Grave Ground Copse, where five hundred of the battle's dead were thrown into a pit, and eight hundred more were buried in the Grave-fields on Battle Farm to the left of the road. In front of those two farms ran the Puritan line. Where you see hedges now there were none then; all was open common, and there were no trees on the crest of the hill.

Away to the north-east, on Burton Dassett Hill, is the old beacon tower that they fired at night to signal the result of the battle. The flame was picked up by another beacon at Ivinghoe, in Buckinghamshire, forty miles away, and so flashed on through Harrow to London. South-westerly of you is Sun-rising, the beautiful old house-long after a famous inn-where Charles breakfasted on the battle morning. Near it is Tysoe church, where they were holding service when the fight began. The clerk heard the guns, and called out to the parson: "'Ad dam 'em, they're at it!" and thereupon parson, clerk and all the flock rushed out to go and see the show. Sir Jacob Astley, the king's fine veteran, remembered it was Sunday, too, and put up his famous soldier's prayer: " O Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me... March on, boys." To Sunrising was taken Lord Lindsey, the king's general, a prisoner and mortally wounded, at the end of the day. He died there, and there yet is his sword, with other swords, cannon-balls, bullets, armour and other things, all relics of the fight.

Such relics are scattered all up and down the land. In the old church of S. Leonard, in Bridgnorth, is the sword of Colonel Francis Billingsley, killed in the churchyard on March 31, 1646, fighting for the king. That was the time the Puritans drove a tunnel under Bridgnorth walls; the walls have gone, but the tunnel remains. They call it Lavingstone's Hole.

A relic of another sort is the monument in S. Mary's Church, Horncastle, to Sir Ingram Hopton, which tells that he "paid his debt to Nature and duty to his King and Country in the attempt of seizing the Arch-Rebel in the bloody skirmish near Wince by, October 6, 1643." Bloody it was, that Lincolnshire fight; near a thousand Cavaliers were slaughtered there in the lane still grimly called Slash Lane, besides over a hundred drowned in the bogs and fens. The "arch-rebel" was Cromwell.

At Farnley Hall, in Yorkshire, they have a sword of Cromwell's-the one he carried at Marston Moor- and his hat and watch, also the sword of Sir Thomas Fairfax, a right Andrea Ferrara. We know of the portraits at Chequers; there is another of Oliver- the best of them-at Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge, and his rooms there are on the first floor of the north range of the Hall Court, with a bay-window looking on Sidney Street.

In the Stag Parlour of Lyme Hall, in Cheshire, is that famous portrait of Charles at his trial, in a high-crowned Puritan hat, with dark hair as a sign of mourning. In the same room are the six fine early Chippendale chairs covered with bits of the cloak he wore at his death-they were specially made for that; the initials "C.R." are intertwined on the backs-and a pair of his embroidered gloves and an agate-hilted dagger with "Carolus" engraved upon it. In Shropshire, too, is Aldenham Hall, which has his buff-coat and a bed he slept in; and at Wotton House, in Surrey, seat of the Evelyn family, is the Book of Common Prayer he used on the scaffold, given by Archbishop Juxon to Sir Richard Brown, diarist-Evelyn's father-in-law.

England is strewn with the uneasy halting-places of that poor, homeless wraith of a king-first of them the old Saracen's Head Inn at Southwell, where he gave himself up to the Scots on May 5, 1646, with the four-poster bed that he slept in. Thence, after a score of captive wanderings, he came to his own house of Holmby, in Northamptonshire, a princely place then, though now all left of its splendours are parts of the old building and the Long Walk.

There he stayed royally for half a year on the Parliament's allowance of £170 (of our money) a day. That ended on June 4, 1647, when Cornet Joyce came for him, and being asked by the king for sight of his instructions, 'That' (said Joyce) 'you shall see presently'; and forthwith drawing up his troop into the inner court as near as he could unto the king, 'These, sir' (said he) 'are my instructions.' The king took a good view of them and, smiling, told the cornet his instructions were in fair characters, legible without spelling. Thereafter it was prison after prison till the end.

Surely it was one of Time's great ironies that this end should come outside Charles' own "fair Banqueting House" at Whitehall, where an inscribed plate marks the window by which he passed to the scaffold without.