The Siege of Loyalty House: A new history of the English Civil War

Product Information

The Royalists had confidently expected to destroy the New Model Army in the field, not because God was on the side of the Anglicans, but because it was assumed that the army was staffed entirely by scum. Childs is close to her sources – and shows them when she needs to – but most of the hard work is hidden, like complex wiring behind a well plastered wall. Childs has focused more on the men and women involved in defending Basing House, also known as “Loyalty House,” a stronghold for royalists or those who chose to tear down the barricades.

The Siege of Loyalty House - Jessie Childs

Suppose you have read books about the English Civil War and want another unique look into this tumultuous time in English history. In John Venn his former colleague , opposed to episcopacy and also alienated by the Kings refusal to hold a parliament, we see his opposite number . Weighing 63lbs (29kg), the balls from Cromwell’s great cannon were only the latest projectile to batter Basing House. Ainsworth, William Harrison (1880), The leaguer of Lathom: a tale of the Civil War in Lancashire, t=G.The mansion, part of which was a castle, was reputed to be the largest private residence in England. Gaskill also says that with the Restoration, ‘revolutionary England sprang back into royalist shape.

The Siege of Loyalty House: A Civil War Story - Goodreads

Peter Hart was the oral historian at the Imperial War Museum for nearly 40 years, and this fascinating account of one tank regiment’s experiences during the Second World War has been compiled mostly from testimonies given by surviving veterans.It was small compensation for the devastation and deprivation the war had caused to the local population, whose homes had been wrecked and burned, and their farms plundered.

The Siege of Loyalty House by Jessie Childs review — the

Individual voices emerge distinctly and the reader comes away with a vivid sense of what it was really like to serve at the sharp end of war. Many more modest items have been discovered — the leather sole of a child’s shoe, lead shot, the severed skull of a young man — poignant and grim reminders of the two-year siege of the Royalist stronghold during the English Civil War. Charlotte had assembled a militia of seasoned marksmen who were able to inflict significant losses by sniping. Childs addresses the problem of how to realise the horrors of such an old war, muted by costume drama recreations of ‘wrong but wromantic’ Cavaliers and warts-and-all Roundheads.When Waller sensed the potential for mutiny, he withdrew his forces to the nearby town of Basingstoke. Morale among the Roundheads also suffered greatly as the besieged shot soldiers and engineers on the battlefield. At the beginning of the Civil Wars, Hopton reached out to his old comrade, asking if they could meet, but Waller, with infinite regret, declined. In The Siege of Loyalty House the historian Jessie Childs, whose great strength is her ability to deliver first-rate scholarship in really luscious prose, uses Basing as a microcosm through which to view the civil war in all its fog and mess….

The Siege of Loyalty House | Book by Jessie Childs | Official The Siege of Loyalty House | Book by Jessie Childs | Official

By then religious tensions in the mansion had mounted: the Marquis, a Catholic, had petitioned King Charles to remove all Anglicans from his property, including Marmaduke Rawdon, who had played a critical role in Basing’s defence during the first two sieges. A spectacular work of scholarship, this is epic, vital history, sweeping from the great trends and ideas of the time to the individual details of vividly lived lives. Here is a poignant story of the English Civil War, told from the perspective of those who were involved with Basing House, as beseigers or beseiged. The treasures of the house – its jewels, plate and tapestries – vanished in minutes; the quaking inhabitants had the clothes stripped from their backs. His French wife, Charlotte de la Tremoüille, was left in charge of what turned out to be the last remaining Royalist stronghold in Lancashire.

The entry of Scotland into the conflict through the Solemn League and Covenant revived Parliamentarian hopes and the spirits of Waller. A contingent of Rawdon’s troops who came from Snow Hill in the City of London lend the narrative an extra dimension. Beyond the famous battles – Edgehill, Marston Moor, Newbury, Naseby – the typical engagement was something less than a skirmish.