Siege of Reading

The Siege of Reading was an eleven-day blockade of Reading, Berkshire during the First English Civil War. Reading had been garrisoned by the Royalists in November 1642, and held 3,300 soldiers under the command of Sir Arthur Aston. On 14 April 1643, Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex brought a Parliamentarian army of 19,000 men to lay siege to the town, and began bombarding the town two days later.

See also: Battle of Reading (871) and Battle of Reading (1688)

Siege of Reading
Part of First English Civil War
Date 14–25 April 1643 Location Reading, Berkshire Result Royalist garrison surrendered
Belligerents
Royalists	Parliamentarians
Commanders and leaders
Sir Arthur Aston Richard Feilding	The Earl of Essex
Strength
c. 3,300	c. 19,000

Reading

Berkshire and Reading

During the siege, Aston was wounded and command of the garrison passed to Richard Feilding. On 25 April, Feilding requested a truce in order to negotiate the town's surrender. Despite a relief force commanded by King Charles I and Prince Rupert arriving the following day, Feilding held to the truce, and Essex's army was able to repel the relieving army. The surrender terms were agreed on 26 April, and the next day the Royalists left the town for Oxford.

Background

A map of Reading from 1611

In August 1642, King Charles I raised his royal standard in Nottingham and declared the Earl of Essex, and by extension Parliament, to be traitors, marking the start of the First English Civil War.[1] That action had been the culmination of religious, fiscal and legislative tensions going back over fifty years.[2]

In October 1642, King Charles returned to Oxford from the indecisive Battle of Edgehill. He then proceeded cautiously towards London, going via Reading.[3] After being repelled from London, he retired back through Reading, where he left a Royalist garrison of 2,000 soldiers under Sir Arthur Aston, who was appointed as governor.[4] Aston was unimpressed with the soldiers available to him, writing to Prince Rupert that he "could never have a greater affliction light on me than to be put in command of them".[5]

Reading, located on the main route between London and Oxford, was strategically significant both due to its location as a 'frontier' between these two military strongholds, and the fact that it was located at a crossing point of the River Thames.[5][6] Prior to the war, the town had minimal defences, and Aston realised that to have any chance of holding the town, these needed to be improved. Over the winter months, Aston oversaw the creation of a defensive line; a ditch with a raised earthen rampart linking a series of bastions. This form of fortification was known as a "continuous bastioned enceinte", and was common for Royalist defences during the Civil War.[7] The ramparts were topped with stone from Reading Abbey, where they destroyed the church's nave specifically for the purpose. For the construction of the defences, Aston forced civilians from the town to work alongside his soldiers, and was described by Basil Morgan, his biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as "bullying his soldiers and the citizenry alike".[5] Aston maintained strict discipline over his troops, and had several hanged for not meeting his standards.[5]

Aside from the forced labour, the Royalist garrison presented other difficulties for the town: at the time Reading had a population of around 5,000, upon which space had to be found to house the 2,000 Royalist soldiers.[8] Furthermore, the building of the fortifications and the army's expenses were charged to the town. Amongst these expenses were Aston's salary, which was so large that he loaned money back to the town with interest. In Stuart Hylton's 2017 A–Z of Reading: Places–People–History, he claims that: "In any list of unpopular figures in Reading's history, Sir Arthur Aston... must surely feature near the top."[9]

Prelude

In January 1643, the Parliamentarians learnt that Reading was poorly defended, so John Hampden and John Urry led a small force across the Chiltern Hills to scout the town. They only managed to get as far as the River Kennet, which they were unable to cross as it was so swollen.[10]

Over the winter, there were growing calls for peace, particularly on the Parliamentary side, and a compromise was presented to King Charles at Oxford in February 1643. Although the proposals were far less demanding than previously made by parliament, the King was unconvinced and responded with demands of his own for the return of his income and military assets. Further discussion ensued, in which the King demanded more and more, and in early April parliament withdrew from the negotiation process.[11]

Siege

The Parliamentarian army which besieged Reading was led by the Earl of Essex.

The Earl of Essex, commander-in-chief of the Parliamentarian army, marched an army of over 19,000 men (16,000 foot soldiers, 3,000 cavalry plus artillery) from Windsor, and arrived at Reading on 14 April.[12][13] Essex bluffed the Reading garrison, making as though to continue onto Oxford, before he established his army to the south and west of the town, where the defensive works were the weakest, and captured Caversham Bridge, cutting Reading off from the main Royalist forces in Oxford.[14][15] The Parliamentarians held a council of war, in which Essex sought advice on whether to attempt to storm the town, or to be more cautious and lay siege to it. While the cavalry officers favoured an aggressive approach, the infantry commanders preferred the more cautious path. Essex agreed to be cautious, aware that he could not afford to lose many men, as he would need them for his planned subsequent attack on Oxford.[16] Essex demanded that the town surrender, and in response, Aston said that he would rather "starve and die" than give up Reading.[17] Accordingly, the Parliamentarians blockaded Reading, and Essex established his headquarters in Southcote.[18]

By 16 April, the Parliamentarians had set up their artillery, and began to bombard the town.[19] Two days later, around 700 Royalist musketeers commanded by Lieutenant General Wilmot managed to reinforce Reading via Sonning, to the east of the town. The blockade was subsequently tightened, surrounding the town on all sides.[20][21] During the bombardment, falling debris struck Aston and apparently rendered him unable to speak. The Royalist historian, Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon suggested that the affliction might not have been genuine, but rather a way of maintaining his reputation in a lost cause.[5] Command of the garrison passed to Aston's second-in-command, Colonel Richard Feilding, on the basis that he was the most senior of Aston's colonels.[22]

On the morning of 25 April, Feilding displayed a white flag from the town walls, and established a truce in which to negotiate the town's surrender. The same day, a relief force commanded by King Charles and Prince Rupert attacked the Parliamentarian army at Caversham Bridge, but Feilding held to the truce, and the garrison did not join the battle. Feilding was pressured by some of his officers to break the truce and aid the relief force, but he refused, saying that it would be dishonourable, and that he would refuse, even "if the king himself should come and knock at the gate, and command him to do it."[23] Essex's army was able to repel the attack, and the relief force retreated.[23] Feilding negotiated generous terms of surrender; he and his men were granted safe passage to Oxford with flying colours.[22] On 27 April the Royalist soldiers marched from the town to Oxford; despite the promise of safe passage, some of the Royalist soldiers were robbed and disarmed, though Essex had tried to prevent such action by promising his men a reward. [23] According to Morgan, Aston regained his ability to speak during the journey.[5]

Aftermath

On 29 April, two days after leaving Reading, Feilding was court-martialled; charged with "several foul suspicious passages".[24] At this early stage of the war, siege warfare in Britain was largely ineffective; methods that had been developed and refined in the European wars were applied without the skill and experience required. This led to additional suspicion being placed on commanders who surrendered while under siege.[25] Feilding's trial lasted for two days, after which he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was reprieved twice on the scaffold before the intervention of Prince Rupert led the King to pardon him. Despite his pardon, Feilding was still stripped of his regiment and position, and had thereafter had to fight as a volunteer.[26]

The capture of Reading meant the Parliamentarians could challenge Oxford directly, but Essex and William Waller were unable to coordinate their forces for an attack.[19] Reading was held by the Parliamentarians until October, when they evacuated the town and it was retaken by the Royalists, but they in turn evacuated in the face of a Parliamentarian army the following May, and the town remained in the hands of Parliament for the remainder of the war.[27]

Citations

1. Bennett 2005, p. xii.
2. Bleiberg & Soergel 2005, pp. 344–348.
3. Consequences of the battle of Edgehill.
4. Doran 1836, p. 22.
5. Morgan 2004.
6. Barratt 2009, p. 10.
7. Barratt 2009, pp. 10–12.
8. Yarrow 1952, p. 73.
9. Hylton 2017, p. 8.
10. Venning 2015, p. 67.
11. Cust 2007, p. 371.
12. Baker 1986, p. 25.
13. Gentles 2014, p. 100.
14. Gentles 2014, p. 169.
15. Coates 1802, p. 25.
16. Johnson 2012, p. 43.
17. Fletcher 1839, p. 17.
18. Ditchfield & Page 1923, pp. 342–364.
19. Plant 23 March 2006.
20. Doran 1836, p. 24.
21. Emberton 1997, p. 61.
22. Baxter 2016, p. 156.
23. Coates 1802, p. 27.
24. Hopper 2012, p. 185.
25. Burke 1990, pp. 2–3.
26. Manning 2006, p. 223.
27. Marsh 26 July 2018.

References

Baker, Anthony (1986). A Battlefield Atlas of the English Civil War. London: Ian Allan Publishing. OCLC 567989133.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Barratt, John (2009). Sieges of the English Civil Wars. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-84415-832-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Baxter, Ron (2016). The Royal Abbey of Reading. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-78327-084-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Bennett, Martyn (2005). The Civil Wars Experienced: Britain and Ireland, 1638–1661. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-203-98180-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Bleiberg, Edward; Soergel, Philip, eds. (2005). "The English Civil Wars". Arts and Humanities Through the Eras. 5: The Age of the Baroque and Enlightenment 1600–1800. Detroit: Gale. ISBN 978-0-787-65697-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Burke, James (1990). "The New Model Army and the Problems of Siege Warfare, 1648–51". Irish Historical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 27 (105): 1–29. JSTOR 30008799.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Coates, Charles (1802). The History and Antiquities of Reading. London: Charles Coates. OCLC 44593739.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

"Consequences of the battle of Edgehill". UK Battlefields Resource Centre. The Battlefields Trust. Archived from the original on 10 August 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2019.

Cust, Richard (2007) [2005]. Charles I: A Political Life. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-4058-5903-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Ditchfield, P. H.; Page, William, eds. (1923). "The Borough of Reading: The Borough". A History of the County of Berkshire: Volume 3. London: Victoria County History – via British History Online.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Doran, J (1836). The History and Antiquities of the Town and Borough of Reading in Berkshire. Reading: Charles Ingall. OCLC 1062148810.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Emberton, Wilfrid (1997). English Civil War Day by Day. London: Grange Books. ISBN 978-1-8401-3003-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Fletcher, William (1839). Reading, Past and Present. Reading: John Snare. OCLC 23469347.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Gentles, I. J. (2014) [2007]. The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms, 1638–1652. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-582-06551-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Hopper, Andrew (2012). Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing Sides during the English Civil Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-957585-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Hylton, Stuart (2017). A–Z of Reading: Places–People–History. Stroud: Amberley Publishing. ISBN 978-1-44567-036-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Johnson, David (2012). Parliament in Crisis: The Disintegration of the Parliamentarian War Effort During the Summer of 1643 (PDF). York: University of York.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Manning, Roger B (2006). An Apprenticeship in Arms: The Origins of the British Army 1585–1702. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-926149-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Marsh, Simon (26 July 2018). "Reading, its Abbey and the Civil War". Reading Museum. Archived from the original on 11 October 2019. Retrieved 11 October 2019.

Morgan, Basil (2004). "Aston, Sir Arthur". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/823.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Plant, David (23 March 2006). "The Siege of Reading & Chalgrove Field, 1643". BCW Project. Archived from the original on 21 June 2019. Retrieved 9 October 2019.

Venning, Timothy (2015). An Alternative History of Britain: The English Civil War. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-4738-2782-0.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Yarrow, Ian (1952). Berkshire. London: Robert Hale. OCLC 504073613.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Further reading

Barrès-Baker, Malcolm (2004). The Siege of Reading: The Failure of the Earl of Essex's 1643 Spring Offensive. Ottawa: EbooksLib. ISBN 978-1-55449-999-1.

Griffin, Sarah (1996). The Siege of Reading: April 1643. Bristol: Stuart Press. ISBN 978-1-85804-088-2.