high over the town, then allowed to drop for civilians to pick up. Beset by pleading women and their screaming children, Lord Norwich agreed to open the gates and allow them to leave.
It had happened before. Wives of town worthies had requested Fairfax's permission to depart, and were refused, though word had it the resourceful madams then smuggled themselves out by boat. Fairfax's orders were clear: no concessions. Now five hundred starving women scrambled out through the gates and approached Rainborough's regiment. As they rushed across the leaguer, the colonel had his men first fire blanks over their heads. When the women kept coming, running right up to the mouths of cannon, he sent soldiers to threaten to strip them if they refused to budge. Four were stripped as an example, at which the wretched women finally fled back to the town. The Royalists refused to open the gates to readmit them. As the fugitives huddled between the town walls and the besiegers' fortifications all night, the Tower Guard hunched in their bleak quarters, hating the situation. Fairfax threatened to shoot every man in the Royalist garrison if the women and their wailing children were kept in the leaguer, so they were let back in.
Seventy-five days after the siege started, the Royalists made terms.
Rainborough's regiment was the first into Colchester. Gideon was profoundly shocked by how little of the town remained and by the weak, starving people who still fought one another for the last scraps of animal feed, begging from the soldiers piteously. Not a dog appeared. Houses had their roofs off; some were reduced to rubble; the elegant suburbs had been burned or dismantled; civic buildings had been battered and half destroyed. Fairfax had guaranteed that there would be no plundering, though in order to secure this promise the town had been forced to agree to pay a devastating fine of fourteen thousand pounds, the penalty for admitting the Royalists in the first place. It was unclear how the town would find the money. Colchester was ruined.
The New Model Army moved in and took control quietly. The fortifications, which Fairfax immediately inspected to see just how his efforts had been repulsed for so long, now stood denuded of soldiers though still strong and in good repair. The few surviving horses had been collected up; they stood, heads down and skeletal, in St Mary's Churchyard. Weapons, flags and drums were piled bleakly in St James's Church. Only one and half barrels of gunpowder were left.
Surrender of private soldiers and junior officers was taken at Fryer's Yard by the East Gate. They had been offered fair quarter, though lords, superior officers and gentlemen of distinction had assembled at the aptly named King's Head. Ireton argued fiercely for punitive treatment of the Royalist leaders.
Out of the Parliamentarians' bitterness at being forced to fight again came a long-lasting controversy. They believed the surrender terms were fair: ordinary soldiers and townspeople were granted quarter; when the Parliamentary infantry marched in, no harm was done to them, they were given warm clothing and food. Prisoners of war received miserable rations, but that was still more than the starving people of Colchester had lived on for weeks. In fact few prisoners would make it home safely; for them, they would learn, quarter entailed being shut up in churches, then marched long distances across the country. Many of the three thousand private soldiers would be shipped to the sugar plantations in Barbados or imprisoned in remote prisons from which few ever emerged; their officers were sent to the galleys until friends and relatives ransomed them.
The commanders were treated differently. Nobles were to be sent to be dealt with by Parliament; Lord Capel eventually went to the block, though Lord Norwich, the nominal leader of the revolt, was spared. Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, the so-called Sir Bernard Gascoigne and Colonel Farre were put to the 'mercy' of their opposing general. This was a technical term which meant Fairfax could decide what to do with them. It gave no guarantees. He was famous for chivalry in such situations — though this time he was harder, because Sir Charles Lucas had surrendered to him personally, and given his parole not to fight Parliament again, after the battle of Marston Moor.
An immediate Council of War was held in the Town Hall. Henry Ireton presided. Fairfax did not attend, but left the judgment to his officers. The four Royalist leaders were briskly condemned to death.
Farre escaped. 'Sir Bernard Gascoigne' was discovered to be an Italian citizen; rather than cause diplomatic offence, his life was spared. Lucas and Lisle were shot by firing squad. Fairfax's three most senior officers, Ireton, Whalley and Rainborough, formally witnessed this execution.
Gideon approved the verdict and the deaths of Lisle and Lucas. If assigned the task, he would willingly have been one of the firing squad. Like all the exhausted Parliamentarians, he wanted a brisk end to their trouble. They were tired of endangering their lives and frustrated by having to impose burdens on the civilian population, for whose rights to peace and prosperity they had fought. They hated the King and his supporters for stirring up a revolt when peace had been at hand.
There were military reasons for ordering these executions, reasons sanctioned by the rules of war: the Royalists had insisted on prolonging the siege, causing unnecessary hardship, especially to civilians. Lucas had broken his parole, and was also accused of executing enemy prisoners on more than one occasion; at the Council of War, ordinary soldiers gave evidence against him. Fairfax would always maintain that these men had put themselves in the position of soldiers of fortune. They earned their fate. The severity of their punishment warned others not to take up arms. That only Lucas and Lisle were shot seemed a display of restraint.
But Royalists regarded this execution as cold-blooded murder. It was to have tragic repercussions.
Chapter Fifty — Doncaster: October 1648
A month after Colchester fell, the Tower Guards were ordered north on a special mission. Their colonel initially remained in London, organising pay. Rainborough's regiment had been sent to attend to a last pocket of Royalist resistance: Pontefract Castle. This stronghold, known as 'the Key to the North', had been captured by a group of cavaliers who pretended to be delivering beds to the Parliamentary garrison. They had ensconced themselves with enough food to last twelve months. Since Colchester, the Royalists had no hope of mercy and were dug in for a long, desperate siege.
Their sojourn so far was not entirely miserable. Their besieger was Sir Henry Cholmeley, a snobbish, insular Yorkshire gentleman, an acquaintance of most of them and old friend to quite a few. Although he fought for Parliament, his brother fought for the King; they had remained on civil terms. He posed no serious threat to the Royalists in the castle. He knew them and they knew him. They were more loyal to one another as Yorkshiremen than to any outsiders. They therefore conducted activities like a local fete. They fraternised. They parleyed. They allowed each other to come and go at will. Cholmeley maintained a leaguer around the castle, but it was as loose as could be. It was said that he supplied the castle with mutton throughout the siege.
When Colonel Rainborough caught up with his regiment at Doncaster, he said that on the road between London and St Albans he had survived an ambush by three well-mounted Royalists. He fought them off. As sporadic outbursts of rebellion were put down, some Royalists were turning themselves into highwaymen. However, there was also talk of a death-list against senior Parliamentarians, and for his part in the execution of Lucas and Lisle, Rainborough could have been targeted.
The situation in Yorkshire was extremely tricky. The arrival of six companies of Londoners, led by a seafaring republican, all speaking in Thames-side accents (apart from a significant group from Massachusetts, where Rainborough had relatives), was never likely to go well. They might have felt out of place — had not Londoners believed everywhere belonged to them. In response, the locals adopted their own swagger. Though they should have worked as colleagues, the Tower Guards received no welcome from Sir Henry Cholmeley, who was outraged to find Rainborough appointed his superior — a much younger colonel, even though one who had a serious reputation. As a member of Parliament himself, Cholmeley refused to step aside and could not readily be sidelined. He had told his local County Committee he would accept no one less than Cromwell over him, and they had written to offer Cromwell the job. This undermined Rainborough locally, if not with his men.
The colonel could hardly take the regiment up to Pontefract Castle if Cholmeley was liable to start fisticuffs while rejoicing cavaliers smoked their pipes and gawped from the battlements. Rainborough's men were ready to knock seven bells out of Cholmeley's Yorkshire militia at breakfast, then deal with the cavaliers by dinner time — they regarded both with equal disdain — but for Parliamentarians to fight one another was unacceptable. It would give Rainborough's enemies yet another complaint. He had to tread carefully. His troops were 170 miles from London now and needed logistical support.
This was a wealthy part of South Yorkshire, full of rich men impressed with their own family histories, men
