Upon this, colonel Massey resolved to storm the town, by attacking the fortifications in six places at once. The side looking toward Worcester was to be assailed in five places, and a simultaneous charge was to be made at the bridge, from the Bengeworth side. A hundred horse were in the meantime dispatched, to prevent any succour from Worcester during the night. All being thus in readiness, the signal was given at break of day. The colonel with both horse and foot then commenced a furious attack upon the town; they "broke up the palisadoes, filled the grafts with fagots," and having made sundry breaches, they at length gained possession of the parapet. The musqueteers now playing furiously upon them from the town, the assailants were suddenly driven back; but recovering the shelter of the ditch, they in their turn drove back the garrison, mounted the wall "by scaling ladders, and stood firm upon the breast works." From hence some rushed into the town, but being driven back to the rampart, they there for a time kept up a steady fire. The garrison now charged furiously upon them with their horse, so that the assailants would have been again repelled, had not their party, having effected a narrow breach, rushed in with their horse. This reinforcement was increased by meeting the other detachment which had forced a passage near the bridge: "and now," in the words of the contemporary account already cited, "they tumble over the works on all sides, and charge up both horse and foot with equal gallantry, bear down the enemy and master the garrison; after a fiery conflict maintained for almost an hour with much resolution by the enemy." The number of prisoners taken was 550, among whom were seventy officers. The presumed site of the fortifications having been long cultivated as garden-ground, there are at present no vestiges discernible in the direction alluded to. Two stone shot, apparently six-pounders, were, however, dug up, we are informed, in that part called "the sheephouse close," in raising sand, a few years ago. With regard to the whole encounter, the authority alluded to again remarks, that "the gentlemen and officers who charged with [colonel Massey] the governor [of Gloucester], acted their parts with 645 Corbet's Historicall Relation of the Military Government of Gloucester: London, 1645; in Bibliotheca Gloucestrensis, page 147-8. courage, and spurred on the valour of the souldiers; the reserve of foot, devided into three bodies to second the assaylants, performed as became resolved men and the whole action was complete according to the idea and platform of the designe."646 We also find the important service of thus wresting Evesham from the royalists, referred to shortly after by one engaged in recounting the services of colonel Massey, in vindication of his character. "Who," he asks, 66 I was he that went out from the command at Gloucester in such a blaze, to adde glory unto conquest, and crown his actions with a never-dying honour, when he took the strong-garrisoned Evesham, in a storme of fire and leaden haile; the loss whereof did make a king shed tears?-Was it not Massey?" 647 By the storming of Evesham, the whole country from Bristol to the borders of Worcestershire, excepting Berkeley, was subdued to the parliament; and an effectual bar was raised to any further communication between Worcester and the court at Oxford. The house of commons was, therefore, not unmindful of these advantages. On the 29th of May, a letter of thanks was ordered to be addressed by the speaker to colonel Massey and the rest of the officers employed in the taking of Evesham, "in acknowledgment of their great service.” 648 On the same day measures were taken to retain secure possession of the town, by an order that "six guns and five hundred musquets be forthwith furnished out of the publick stores, for the service of the garrison of Evesham newly reduced." On the 18th of July following, colonel Rouse was appointed governor of the town, by authority of parliament; and upon his decease, which took place in the following year, major William Dingley was appointed his successor. 649 On the 21st of July 1645, a further supply of five hundred musquets and bandeliers was ordered by the parliament to be sent to the garrison of Evesham and on the 1st of August following, the house further ordered "that the committee of the army in which Mr. Scawen presides, be desired to lend the committee of Worcestershire five hundred musquets," for the service of the garrison at Evesham. 646 Corbet's Historicall Relation, page 148. 647 Virtue and Valour Vindicated."-London, 1647. The king, who had been quartered at Oxford during the winter, still purposed, notwithstanding his recent losses, to commence a fresh campaign with the spring of 1645. For this purpose, he in the middle of March commanded lord Astley to gather troops out of the few garrisons still in the royal hands, and to concentrate his force at Worcester. From that city he was then to march 2000 strong toward Oxford; to be met upon the road thither by the king with 1500 horse and foot. But all this could not be planned without the knowledge of the parliamentary army. A sufficient force was therefore detached for the purpose from the garrisons of Gloucester, Warwick, and Evesham; and in our immediate neighbourhood they laid in wait for lord Astley's forces, during several days. That nobleman having commenced his march, had crossed the Avon, and evading Evesham bent his course toward Stow; in the vain presumption that he might thus escape his foes. But the parliamentary army seeing him ascend Broadway hill, followed him throughout the night, and on the following day totally routed his followers, taking himself prisoner, with nearly all the other officers who survived. By this result the hopes of the royalists were finally annulled; and thus in the vicinity of Evesham terminated all further struggle between the two contending parties in the field. With reference to that struggle, which had now continued during nearly four years, "it was an appeal to the sword for the settlement of disputed claims;" and, it is thus particularly worthy of remark that, "though the contest was spiritedly carried on, there was honorable abstinence from needless mischief by both parties; as if they felt conscious that they had been and might again be friends. Apart from the actual scene of warfare, the general occupations of the industrious were not interrupted. The land was tilled; manufacturers and handicraftsmen plied their vocation; justice was administered by the judges and magistrates; marriages and funerals were solemnised by the clergy all, in short, that constituted the order and economy of society, pursued the wonted routine. The strife was too limited in time, the proportion of the population engaged in actual warfare too small, and the sense of justice and humanity, growing out of a considerably advanced civilisation, too general, for lasting or irreparable damage to be inflicted." 650 : Of the principal families in the county who identified themselves with this contention, Dr. Nash has given the following names among those on the king's side.-Lords, Shrewsbury and Windsor, Bp. Prideaux, Littleton of Frankley, Sandys of Ombersley; Sirs, William Russell of Strensham, Rowland Berkeley of Cotheridge, John Winford of Astley, John Barrett of Droitwich, John Pakington and Ralph Clare: Esquires, Henry Ingram of Earlscourt, Henry Bromley of Holt, Thomas Hornyold of Blackmore Park, Robert Wylde of the Commanders, John Cockes of Crowle, Thomas Acton of Burton, Henry Townsend of Elmley Lovet, Edward Sheldon of Beoly, Joseph Walsh of Abberley, William Habingdon of Hinlip, Russell of Little Malvern, Edward Penel of Woodson, and Anthony Langstone of Sedgborough; Majors, Thomas Wilde and John Ingram; Colonels, Herbert, and Prior of Pedmore. On the parliament side were sir Thomas Rouse of Rouse Lench, Nicholas Lechmere of Hanley, Daniel Dobyns of Kidderminster, col. William Lygon of Madresfield, Richard Salway of Stamford Court, Thomas Cookes of Bentley, Edward Pytts of Kyre, col. William Dingley of Charlton, governor of Evesham under the parliament, John Edgiock of Feckenham, Thomas Milward of Alvechurch, William Moore of Alvechurch, major Edward Smith, William Colins of King's Norton, William Younge of Evesham, George Symonds of White Lady Aston, John Fownes of Dodford, John Giles of Astley, and "very many others of all ranks and degrees." "651 As for the ill-fated monarch himself,-unable after this defeat to appear again in arms, yet still evading every attempt at adjustment, from the opposing side, his gloomy career soon sadly closed. On the 30th of January 1649, upon a public scaffold fronting his own banquet-hall, the stroke of the headsman terminated his misfortunes, his errors, and his life. It falls not within the humble province of a local historian, to enter upon the casuistical question, either of the justice of Charles's sentence, or of the indefensibility of his death. We, therefore, content ourselves with directing the attention of the inquiring reader to the matured and admirablyexpressed opinion of Charles James Fox, as presented in the introductory portion of his History of the reign of James the Second. 650 Wade's Hist. Mid, and Work. Classes, cap. 8. 651 Nash, Introd. p. 5. CHAPTER XVIII. NAVIGATION-BRIDGES-MILITARY STATIONS-AND ROADS. THAT gently meandering stream that at once irrigates and adorns the Vale of Evesham,-that stream which as having wended round the birth-place of 'Imagination's Child' floats onward a connecting link between the dull realities of earth and the fairy land of vision, -that stream from such association familiar in our ears as the Shaksperian Avon"-rises from an humble spring in the village of Naseby. From that lowly origin silently augmenting, it bends its course toward Warwick; there steals beneath the walls of that baronial fortress and glides to Stratford-a landscape-feature, rather than an important stream. But thence made navigable by art, fed likewise along its course by tributary streams, it flows along through Bidford, Evesham, and Pershore; then, bending toward the base of Bredon-hill, it reaches Tewkesbury; where, embosomed in the Severn, the intermingling waters are swiftly borne along-till mutually engulphed within "the tumbling billows of the main." The river in its downward course from Stratford passes through a rich tract of country, gleaming with peaceful scenery, studded here and there with antique villages and interspersed with calm and solitary nooks. Having passed beneath the elevated church and burial-ground at Bidford, it receives the added waters of the Arrow, and sweeps with augmented current round the abrupt and bosky eminence, known as Marl-cliff Hill. From hence the picture is so fresh, so novel, so exhilarating,—that seen upon a sunny-morn, as we first gazed upon it in the summer of 1836, we people it with the great Poet's fays and fairies and laughter-loving elves, and treasure it within, as a scene to be remembered and called up anew throughout all after-years. |