Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 132 (2014), 159–187

The Civil War Defences of Gloucester

By JOHN RHODES

Introduction A contemporary manuscript plan discovered in 2012 (Fig. 1) has ended speculation about the lost defences of Gloucester during the Civil War. It is folded and pasted within a volume of 17th-century pamphlets which was bought from a London-based dealer by Gloucestershire Archives as deposit D 12862. I am grateful to archive staff for making it available, together with the other sources used in this article. The plan is executed in black ink with touches of green colour on paper measuring 54 × 42 cm, the paper bearing a bunch of grapes watermark. Pin- holes indicate that it was triangulated with compasses.1 It is undated but lettered in an italic hand of the period. The volume is inscribed E Libris B. Newton by Benjamin Newton of Gloucester (1677–1735), curate of St Nicholas 1708–35, minor canon of the cathedral 1708–12 and 1723–35, master of the cathedral school 1712–18 and cathedral librarian 1731–5.2 The pamphlets are by Corbet (1645),3 Backhouse (1644)4 and an account of the proclamation of Charles II at Gloucester, which is printed as an appendix to this article. The plan is inserted opposite Corbet’s description of the defences as cited below. It contains information of three kinds. First, the defences as built, comprising masonry walls and gates in bold outline, crests of earthworks in double outline with coloured infill and internal platforms and external ditches in thin outline. All these are plotted more or less accurately to scale, making it the only scale drawing of Gloucester to survive from the 17th century: the shape and size of the perimeter are within seven percent of those of the Ordnance Survey, while of the towers on the stone wall one appears precisely 78 ft (29 m) east of the south gate, as in a lease of 1663, and another precisely 131 ft (40 m) north of the east gate, as in an excavation of 1969.5 This paper will demonstrate that it shows the defences at their greatest extent, between the completion

1. Malcolm Watkins contributed this and other observations. 2. In the same hand as his signature in the cathedral library register, Dean and Chapter MS vol. 73: inf. from Christopher Jeens, the present cathedral librarian. For Newton’s career, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [ODNB]. 3. J. Corbet, An Historicall Relation of the Military Government of Gloucester from the Beginning of the Civil Warre … (London, 1645), reprinted in J. Washbourn, Bibliotheca Gloucestrensis: a collection of scarce and curious tracts relating to the county and city of Gloucester, illustrative of and published during the civil war (Gloucester, 1825), 1–152. 4. R. Backhouse, A true Relation of a wicked Plot … against the City of Glocester … (London, 1644; reprinted in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 283–324). 5. Gloucester Borough Records [GBR], in Gloucestershire Archives [GA], J 3/4, pp. 785–9; H.R. Hurst, Gloucester: The Roman and Later Defences (Gloucester, 1986), 10, fig. 4. 160 JOHN RHODES of the south-gate bastion in 1646 and the levelling of most bastions in 1653.6 Secondly, buildings of defensive value within the defences, also in bold outline. These are merely sketched, because the distance from the inner north gate of the castle to the outer ditch opposite on the south is known to be c.500 ft (150 m) rather than c.350 ft (107 m) as shown.7 Thirdly, on the north and west sides of the city, an unexecuted design for revised defensive lines and pentagonal bastions in fine dotted outline. This is taken from the same common root as the fivefold outline which appears faintly in Hall and Pinnell’s 1780 map,8 and more clearly in their revised edition of 1790 (Fig. 2). The common root is evidently a plan submitted by an unidentified Dutch engineer to the Parliamentary Committee for Gloucester in July 1646. A rival plan, now lost, was submitted by David Papillon, but Papillon’s surviving key and correspondence show that his defences would have enclosed 60 acres of Little Meadow (north of Q on the present plan) on a different line.9 The plan provides a context for previous studies of Gloucester or aspects of Gloucester in the Civil War.10 It generally confirms Malcolm Atkin’s interpretation of ditches found by archaeology as belonging to bastions of the period,11 and makes possible a fuller review of the defences as follows.

History Construction by the City Council’s Defence Committee, August 1642–September 1643 On 15 August 1642, a week before Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham, the Lords and Commons instructed the deputy lieutenants of Gloucester (the mayor, the recorder, three aldermen, George Bridgeman of Prinknash and Silvanus Wood of Brookthorpe) to fortify the city.12 Anticipating this instruction, the city council had issued orders on 5 August to lock the gates and wickets nightly at 9 pm and to prevent any sudden entrance of horse or foot by fitting chains across the west, south and east gates, the upper and lower north gates, the Alvin gate and the Blind gate; by erecting ten iron-bound turnpikes on the approaches; and by providing pickaxes, spades, shovels and wheelbarrows ‘to make baracadoes by digging of ditches’. The work was delegated to a defence committee of four aldermen and ten councillors and was in progress on 20 September when the council rostered all councillors, three per day, ‘to survey the fortifications’.13 Before

6. M. Atkin, ‘David Papillon and the Civil War defences of Gloucester’, Trans. BGAS 111 (1993), 147–64; GBR, F 4/5, ff. 483v.–484. 7. Hurst, Gloucester, 98, fig. 3. 8. R. Hall and T. Pinnell, A Plan of the City of Glocester (1780), reproduced in L.E.W.O. Fullbrook-Leggatt, ‘Medieval Gloucester: I’, Trans. BGAS 66 (1945), facing p. 16. 9. Atkin, ‘David Papillon’, 161–3. 10. D. Evans, ‘Gloucester’s Civil War trades and industries, 1642–6’, Trans. BGAS 110 (1992), 137–47; R. Howes, ‘Sources for the life of Colonel Massey’, Trans. BGAS 112 (1994), 127–41; R. Howes, ‘A second relief of Gloucester [in April 1644]’, Glevensis 28 (1995), 25–7; R. Howes, ‘The garrison of Gloucester in the Civil War’, Glos. Hist. 23 (2009), 24–31; J.K.G. Taylor, ‘The civil government of Gloucester 1640–6’, Trans. BGAS 67 (1948), 58–118; Washbourn, Bibliotheca; M.J. Watkins, Gloucester: the City saved by God (Gloucester, 1993); J.R.S. Whiting, Gloucester Besieged: the story of a roundhead city 1640–1660 (Gloucester, 1974, rev. 1984). 11. Atkin, ‘David Papillon’; M. Atkin and R. Howes, ‘The use of archaeology and documentary sources in identifying the Civil War defences of Gloucester’, Post-Medieval Archaeol. 27 (1993), 15–41; M. Atkin and W. Laughlin, Gloucester and the Civil War: A City under Siege (Stroud, 1992). 12. Jnl. House of Lords 5 (1642–3), 288–93; also in GBR, H 3/3. 13. GBR, B 3/2, pp. 221–2, 226. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 161 Fig. 2. Map of Hall and Pinnell (1790 edn) showing an unexecuted design for defences 17th-century type mistakenly labelled ‘ LINES OF THE (from a copy in GA, reproduced M. Atkin, ‘David Papillon’, fig. 2). ANCIENT FORTIFICATION’ 162 JOHN RHODES the end of the civic year (29 September 1642) the committee had made tools, installed turnpikes and chains mounted on posts and staples, re-planked gates and generally invested in arms and fortifications at a cost of £93, which was charged to the city stewards.14 On 28 October 1642 the council ordered the committee to cease charging the stewards and to keep its own accounts through its treasurer Jasper Clutterbuck, who submitted an interim statement on 16 February 1643.15 No record of Clutterbuck’s expenditure is known, but the council assigned income to him as detailed below, and on 11 January 1643 despatched ‘a messenger to sollicite the procurement of an order of Parliament for £500 out of the subscription monys towards the charge of our fortifications’.16 The order, obtained on 14 January, provided that ‘the treasurers of the subscription monies in the city and county of Gloucester do detain in their hands £500 of the said subscription monies to be employed for satisfaction of monies expended upon the fortifications and other provisions for the defence of the said city and county’.17 The treasurers were Aldermen Luke Nurse, Thomas Hill and Nicholas Webb, and the subscription money that they held amounted to £3,756, chiefly in plate; they had collected it from Gloucestershire and the city of Gloucester between September and December 1642 under a Parliamentary ordinance of 9 June 1642 ‘for bringing in money, plate and horses … for the preservation of the public peace and the defence of the king and both houses of Parliament’.18 Jasper Clutterbuck’s income from that and other sources can be reconstructed in part as follows:

Entry fines and dues, 1642–3:19 £ 13 September, from Mr Payne and Mr Prichard 100 16 June, from Edward Wagstaffe 120 7 July, from Stephen Clutterbuck 160 less repayment to Mrs Gwillim of Bristol of money lent for powder –26 354

Loans at interest, 1642:20 18 September 100 28 October 200 300

Sales of civic plate, 13 October 1642:21 4 bowls, 1 can, 1 tankard (188 oz) 46 4 old maces, 1 old seal (35 oz) 7 53

14. Ibid. F 4/5, ff. 179–89, printed with some omissions in Atkin and Laughlin, Glouc. and Civil War, 177–82, where ‘putting in the draines’ (p. 181) should read ‘putting in the crampes’, and ‘during 1642–3’ (p. 182) should read ‘during 1641–2’. 15. GBR, B 3/2, pp. 231, 243. Dates have been converted to the New Style. 16. Ibid. B 3/2, p. 238. 17. Jnl. House of Lords 5 (1642–3), 553–7. 18. The National Archives [TNA], SP 28/154; Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642–1660, 6–9. 19. GBR, B 3/2, pp. 223–4, 264, 267–8; F 4/5, p. 224. 20. Ibid. B 3/2, pp. 227, 231. 21. Ibid. p. 230; G 3/SO2, f. 189. See C.H. Dancey, ‘The silver plate and insignia of the city of Gloucester’, Trans. BGAS 30 (1907), 96–9, where he confuses civic and subscription plate. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 163

Contributions from city councillors, 28 October 1642:22 Mayor and aldermen, 12 at 16s. 8d. 10 Sheriffs and equals, 12 at 13s. 4d. 8 Other common councilmen, 16 at 10s. 8 26

Sale of annuities, 1642:23 28 October, from John Keene 180 4 November, from William Singleton, Robert Tyther and Thomas Lugg 400 580

Subscription money, 1643:24 18 January by order of the deputy lieutenants 60 28 January 40 3 February through Mr Purlewent 10 31 March by order of the deputy lieutenants 30 140

Subscription plate, 8–13 May 1643: proceeds of 1065 oz sold in London for £271 by Walter Lane and Henry Ellis to repay loans for the fortifications:25 To Mr Halford of London for William Singleton’s loan 100 To Mr Storry of London for William Clarke’s loan 40 To Mr Nevill of London for Toby Jordan’s loan 40 To Mr Tyther of London for Lawrence Singleton’s loan 60 in which are included premiums at 100% to reflect the risk of repatriating money to Gloucester through enemy lines –120 To Mr Vyner of London for John Harris’s loan 23 Balance due to Jasper Clutterbuck 8 less 10 days’ travel and hire of 2 horses and a packhorse –6 145 1598

The final instalment of the £500 subscription money was not paid until 29 December 1643, when Nurse, Hill and Webb recorded: ‘delivered to the mayor and burgesses at four several tymes in guilt plate 360 oz which they are to accompte for in the £500 given by ordinance of Parliament towards the fortificacion about this citie, [value] £99’.26 By that time Clutterbuck was no longer treasurer of the defence committee, and the fate of the 360 oz gilt plate is unknown. Nevertheless by 10 August 1643, when a Royalist army besieged the city, the committee had completed a defensive circuit of variable quality: The works of a large compasse, not halfe perfect: from the south gate eastward almost to the north port [E–K on the plan] the city was defended with an ancient wall lined with earth to a reasonable height; thence to the north gate [J] with a slender work upon a low ground, having the advantage of a stone

22. GBR, B 3/2, p. 231. 23. Ibid. pp. 231–2, being receipts which do not appear in the stewards’ accounts: F 4/5. 24. TNA, SP 28/154, account of Luke Nurse, Thomas Hill and Nicholas Webb. 25. Ibid. 8 May; GBR, B 3/2, pp. 253, 257–8, 266; G 3/SO2, f. 179. 26. TNA, SP 28/154, account of Luke Nurse, Thomas Hill and Nicholas Webb. 164 JOHN RHODES

barn [Friars’ Barne] that commanded severall wayes. Upon the lower part of the city, from the north to the west gate [J–T], being a large tract of ground, there was no ancient defence but a small work newly raysed, with the advantage of marish grounds without, and a line drawn within from the inner north gate [Northgate Prison] under the colledge wall to the priory of St Oswald’s. From the west towards the south gate along the river side [T–A] no more defence than the river itself, and the meadowes beyond levell with the town; from the castle to the south port [A–E] a firme and lofty work to command the high ground in the suburbs. The ditches narrow but watered round.27 The committee had also built a half moon at the quay, drawbridges at the south and outer north gates28 and pentagonal bastions, described as flankers or sconces, on all sides except the east.29 The works were reinforced daily until the end of the siege, as ‘maides and workemen’ brought in turves ‘in the face of the enemy’ from the Little Mead (north of Q on the plan).30 To pay for their labour the city council doubled the poor rate on 29 August and appointed a committee of three aldermen and three councillors to distribute the surplus to ‘such persons as are employed at worke for the defence of this city’, but that provision lapsed when the siege was lifted on 5 September.31

Construction and Repair by a Joint Council of War, September 1643–August 1644 After the siege, on 18 September 1643, the city council appointed a new defence committee of five councillors to undertake ‘the amendinge and reparacione of all places defective in the walls & workes round about this city and the clensing of the ditches and perfecting of such workes as are already begun, and what els shall be directed by a councell of warr for the further fortificacion of this city’. Before the end of the civic year (29 September) the committee had entertained ‘the countrymen when they came to pull down the [besiegers’] workes without the walls’ and had amassed a stock of materials by paying for ‘helpe at the [Abbot’s] Barton barnes when they were taken downe’.32 The council of war evidently linked the defence committee with the military governor, Colonel Edward Massie, and his staff, notably his treasurer at war Captain Thomas Blayney. Since April 1643 Blayney had collected Parliamentary revenue from Gloucester and from places in the Vale within reach of the governor’s forces;33 henceforth he contributed on the governor’s behalf towards the cost of work on the defences, which was treated in three different ways. First, money for ‘workemen imployed about the fortifications of this citie’, i.e. ramparts and bastions, was paid by the governor to the aldermen. Twenty pounds between 21 and 29 September 1643 went to the mayor and £14 on 15 November to Councillor Henry Ellis, but all other payments were to Alderman Dennis Wise: £10 in October 1643, £75 in November, £85 in December and £19 in January 1644.34 On 3 February work was progressing on three bastions, at the north and east gates and at Rignell Stile (G, H and J) ‘all of very great strength but none as yet finished’. After a further £10 to Alderman Wise between 3 and 10 February the payments ceased,

27. Corbet in Washbourn , Bibliotheca, 42–3. 28. Ibid. 52; J. Dorney, A Briefe and Exact Relation of the … Seige laid before the City of Glocester (London, 1643; reprinted in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 205–32), 214, 219. 29. Corbet in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 47: ‘only [on the east side] could [the besiegers] make battery within pistoll shot of the walls, that wanted flankers.’ 30. Dorney in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 224, 227. 31. GBR, B 3/2, p. 273. 32. Ibid. B 3/2, p. 276; F 4/5, f. 233. For Abbot’s Barton, Victoria County History of Gloucestershire [VCH Glos.] IV, 393. 33. TNA, SP 28/129(5), f. 52. 34. Ibid. ff. 8v., 11v.–17v., 26, 28v.–30. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 165 but workmen returned from 25 March to 6 April for 43 days’ work to dig a ditch at 10d. per man per day.35 If Alderman Wise paid at that rate his workforce peaked at about 30. Secondly, additional drawbridges were ordered and paid for by the governor. An initial order went to Councillor Henry Ellis, whose bill was paid on 20 October 1643, but thereafter the carpentry was entrusted to Cesar Godwin, master carpenter, and his team.36 On 5 February drawbridges were said to be in place at all gates except the west, where one was expected to be ready within ten days, but the report cannot be trusted as the west drawbridge was still unfinished in the following October.37 Godwin’s bills amounted to £6 in November, £6 in February, £14 in April, £11 in May and £7 in June;38 of the blacksmiths who supplied ironwork for the drawbridges John Welstead charged £3 in December and January, John Tomkins £15 between December and August and William Woodward £9 over the same period. John Melle, nailer, charged £3 in June and July for 146 lb (66 kg) of nails.39 Alderman Wise and Cesar Godwin were called upon to certify such bills.40 Thirdly, repairs to the walls and gates were executed and paid for by the city council as described in the second part of this paper. A levy of £60 for rebuilding the south gate was imposed on the city wards on 12 February 1644 and was increased to £88 on 27 May. Other repairs, including work costing £11 on the east gate and £13 on the posterns,41 were financed from normal income.

Construction and Repair by the Aldermen and City Council, September 1644–June 1646 In August 1644 the Parliamentary revenue coming to Captain Blayney ceased to cover the cost of defences, leaving debts of £7 owed to Tomkins and Woodward.42 Accordingly on 18 September the city council asked ‘the former committee appointed for the bulwarkes to reconsider the former rate for the works’, i.e. the rate that had been levied towards the end of the siege. The outcome was that on 24 September the aldermen’s quarter sessions ordered a corvée of unpaid labour for ‘the perfecting of the fortificacions’. Every inhabitant of the city was to work in person or by deputy or to pay 8d. on ‘soe many days as shal be appointed by the gentlemen appointed for the same’. The corvée extended to the ‘county of the city’, i.e. the rural hundred of Dudstone and King’s Barton, which the city council then administered; every owner, tenant or farmer was to work under the same conditions for one day a week for every yardland (c.30 acres) that he held. Payments were to be collected by the constables (or, in the city, by a committee appointed on 16 October) and forwarded to Alderman Wise. On 2 November the aldermen’s court imprisoned Thomas Atkins of Upton St Leonards for refusing to take part.43 Meanwhile on 2 October Alderman Thomas Pury, MP for Gloucester, and William Sheppard of Hempsted succeeded Captain Blayney as treasurers of Parliamentary revenues in Gloucester and Gloucestershire, serving until the end of the month; they forwarded £15 to Alderman Wise in three instalments ‘towardes the payment of the workemen at the workes’.44 Alderman Pury also held on the city council’s behalf £1,000

35. Backhouse in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 308; TNA, SP 28/129(5), ff. 30v., 31; SP 28/228, no. 1/125. 36. TNA, SP 28/129(5), ff. 11, 84. 37. Backhouse in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 308; GBR, B 3/2, p. 317. 38. TNA, SP 28/129(5), ff. 12–13, 32, 39–43, 77v., 84. 39. Ibid. ff. 15v.–16v., 28v., 41–2, 77v., 92, 94, 95v. 40. e.g. ibid. SP 28/228, no. 1/176. 41. GBR, B 3/2, pp. 296, 302; G 3/SO2, f. 34; F 4/5, ff. 243–5. 42. TNA, SP 28/129(5), ff. 94, 95v. 43. GBR, B 3/2, pp. 311, 317; G 3/SO4, 24 Sept. 1644; G 3/SO2, f. 34. For the hundred of Dudstone (the ‘inshire’), VCH Glos. IV, 54, 113. 44. TNA, SP 28/154. For Pury and Sheppard, ODNB. 166 JOHN RHODES received from Parliament ‘for repayment of those that lent money for payment of souldiers’. On 16 October 1644 the council asked him to release £30 to the stewards to satisfy a ‘great want of money for the perfecting of the drawbridge at the west gate’; the stewards received that sum and completed the drawbridge for £47.45 On 19 December 1644 the council appointed Samuel Baldwin as ‘general surveyor for the city workes’ at £5 a year; his principal project was to repair the quay head for £78 in 1644–5. Between 18 November 1645 and 6 June 1646 Richard Fisher also served the council as supervisor of repairs to the lower north gate costing £63.46

Construction by the Parliamentary Committee for Gloucester, May–July 1646 On 12 April 1646, as the city council was not improving and did not intend to improve the defences any further, the military engineer David Papillon reported by request to the Committee for Gloucester. The Committee (to use its full title) for Gloucester and the counties of Gloucester, Hereford, Monmouth, Glamorgan, Brecknock and Radnor had been established on 10 May 1644 under a Parliamentary ordinance for augmenting the garrison; it comprised the mayor, the recorder, the governor, four Members of Parliament (of whom Alderman Pury represented the city) and 13 others from the region. Papillon’s report concerned ‘the defects of the works and the lothsome watters that infest the aire’, i.e. stagnant water in the moat.47 Alderman Pury was particularly interested as chairman of the committee and occupier of land adjoining the moat at Greyfriars.48 By 30 April the committee had put £100 at Papillon’s disposal, and on 4 May the House of Commons authorized it to spend up to £500 on ‘repair of the works and fortifications and draining and cleansing any standing waters about the city’; the money was taken from £1,000 previously allocated to Pury and others for the maintenance of prisoners of war, and was entrusted to Jasper (now Alderman) Clutterbuck as ‘treasurer for the fortifications’.49 At the end of May Papillon had 40 pioneers, three carpenters and three masons working on a culvert, a new bastion and an outer drawbridge at the south gate, which he expected to finish in August. On 16 July he submitted a plan for a complete circuit of similar bastions, in competition with a ‘Hollandie enginier’s plan’ which is probably the source of the dotted lines on Figure 1.50 The fall of Oxford on 25 June, ending the First Civil War, removed the urgency to proceed with such plans.

Repair by the Aldermen and City Council, June 1647–July 1650 On 15 June 1647 the aldermen’s court ordered that ‘whereas the workes about the city are much decayed at this time, and to prevent danger that may ensue, workmen shal bee speedily sett to worke in repayring of the workes about the city where most need is, and £10 shal bee paid by Mr Maior out of certaine mony resting in his hands for the doing of the same’. The mayor paid that money

45. GBR, B 3/2, p. 317; F 4/5, ff. 265, 275. The £1,000, otherwise described as money ‘for billiting of souldiers and wares and moneys lent’, had been obtained by Councillors Thomas Pierce and Robert Hill under instructions originally issued to others on 19 Jan. and 12 Apr.: ibid. F 4/5, pp. 295, 299. They had paid £9 to exchange silver plate for £1,000 in gold: ibid. G 3/SO2, f. 174v. 46. GBR, B 3/2, p. 320; F 4/5, ff. 276–9, 313–4, 320. 47. Atkin, ‘David Papillon’, 157–61; Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642–1660, 428. 48. ODNB, s.v. Thos. Pury. For Greyfriars, VCH Glos. IV, 291. 49. Atkin, ‘David Papillon’, 160; Jnl. House of Commons 4 (1644–6), 534. 50. Atkin, ‘David Papillon’, 160, where Doc. 3 is not dated 18 Apr. as stated, but 7 weeks after his report of 12 Apr. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 167 to Alderman Wise, as was clarified on 28 June, 23 July and 3 August when the court ordered him to pay £30 more.51 Its source was probably a sum of £4,000 allocated on 13 April by Parliament to the city council ‘towards payment of divers sums of money advanced by them for payment of the Parliament forces there employed’.52 Before the end of the civic year on 29 September 1647 the council’s stewards had also spent £62 of the council’s own income to rebuild the city wall, drawing stone from a ‘sentinell house’ on Barbican Hill, and had repaired two drawbridges. They repaired three more in 1647–8.53 On 9 August 1648 the House of Commons ordered that ‘£200 be paid to Mr Pury and be employed for mending and repairing the fortifications of the city of Gloucester’,54 but how it was spent is not recorded. On 7 December 1648 the city council asked a committee ‘to examine what moneys the chamber has layd out towards the fortifications’ and appointed Thomas Hoare as ‘surveyor of the city workes’; he repaired six drawbridges over the next two years.55 Nothing resulted from a proposal by the Council of State on 16 July 1649, to save manpower by building a citadel.56

Reconstruction by the Governor and the City Council, July 1650–July 1651 On 22 July 1650 the Council of State allocated £600 to the governor, Sir William Constable, ‘for repair of the garrison [i.e. fortifications] at Gloucester, with the platforms and carriages’, including an allowance for £50 already spent. On 26 October it ordered the preservators of Dean Forest ‘to provide 80 tons of timber for the platforms at Gloucester’.57 Interpreting ‘platforms’ as drawbridges, the city council forthwith undertook ‘hawling the state’s timber from the kay to the college [i.e. cathedral] churchyard’, employed carpenters and used the timber to renew the outer drawbridges at the east and lower north gates.58

Reconstruction by a Defence Commission, August–September 1651 On 4 July 1651, anticipating invasion by the Scottish army of Charles II, the Council of State appointed a new commission to prepare for the defence of Gloucester, and on 12 August it empowered the commissioners to levy a month’s pay for the militia. They were the mayor, the recorder, the governor, an army major, the town clerk, five aldermen, William Sheppard of Hempsted, Thomas Hodges of Churchdown and George Gwinnett of Badgeworth.59 On 5 August the governor asked the city council to stop using the church of St Mary de Grace as a magazine and let ‘the stones of the said church be employed towards the fortifications’. Although that source of stone may not have been used,60 on 18 August the commissioners ordered members of the city council to serve three at a time by turns as ‘overseers of the workemen at the fortificacions’, and on 19 and 25 August they ordered all inhabitants, except those already enlisted, to report in person or by deputy at 6 am ‘with spades, shovells, mattocks and little baskets, to worke at the fortificacions

51. GBR, G 3/SO2, ff. 47, 50. 52. Jnl. House of Commons 5 (1646–8), 114–6, 139–41; Jnl. House of Lords 9 (1646[–7]), 90–3, 128–134. 53. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 340v., 341, 344–5, 347, 367, 374v., 375v., 376v. 54. Jnl. House of Commons 5 (1646–8), 665–7. 55. GBR, B 3/2, pp. 481–2; F 4/5, ff. 398, 406v.–407. 56. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series [Cal. S.P. Dom.] 1649–50, 232. 57. Ibid. 1650, 248, 399. For the meaning ‘fortifications’, ibid. 583. 58. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 430, 434v.; see below. 59. GBR, H 2/3, pp. 62–4, 105–6; cf. Cal. S.P. Dom. 1651, 276, 320. 60. GBR, B 3/2, p. 628. The church stood until 1653: ibid. p. 700. 168 JOHN RHODES

Fig. 3. Detail from A View along a Canal, oils on canvas, by Jan van der Heyden (1637–1712), showing a drawbridge of the period in Amsterdam (National Loan Collection Trust, Cannon Hall Museum, Barnsley; photograph courtesy of Birmingham City Museums and Art Gallery). all day’. By the 23rd it was ‘to be admired how much hath bin done on the bullwarkes and fortificacions, in regard they were very ruinous’. Henry Fletcher, the commissioners’ ‘treasurer of the moneth’s pay’, paid £10 on the 20th to Thomas Pingrey for spades, shovels and pickaxes, £7 on the 23rd to Major Wade for the ‘extraordinary labour of the 14 companies of foote in the fortificacions for two daies and two nights last past’ and £30 on 25 August and 6 September to Daniel Lysons, city sheriff, for the wages of hauliers, carpenters and other ‘workemen imployed about the bridges & fortificacions’. On 26 August the commissioners ordered that turf be cut in ‘the pasture called the Causeway Ground otherwise the Bell Ground lying between the High Orchard and the causeway leading to Lanthony’, i.e. from the grounds of Llanthony priory, and that teams be pressed to carry it to the fortifications.61 Meanwhile on 25 August the commissioners had persuaded the Council of State to pay £200 towards the cost of the drawbridges recently built,62 and on the 30th they submitted an account

61. W.H. Stevenson, ‘The records of the corporation of Gloucester’, Hist. MSS Com. 12th Rep., Appendix Pt. 9 (1891), 500–3. For 6 Sept., GBR, H 2/3, p. 117. 62. Cal. S.P. Dom. 1651, 368. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 169 with a bill of exchange for that amount payable to their agent Anthony Tyther, citizen of London. As they explained, ‘the drawbridges in the beginning of the first warr were made of elme and were become soe rotten that in going to drawe one of them it fell into the water’. Apart from two ‘horse drawbridges’ there were eight ‘greate drawbridges for waines and cartes’ of which some were ‘in hand’ and three (the west drawbridge and the outer drawbridges at the east and north gates) were already rebuilt and accounted for in detail. Since the ironwork of each of the three comprised four chains, 14 bolts, six staples, four gimbals, two gudgeons and four hoops it may be inferred that the carpentry also followed the pattern of the west drawbridge,63 and that all were bascule bridges operated by overhead levers or ‘swayes’ (Fig. 3). The commissioners claimed that they had spent £139 on the three bridges, including £61 on the west drawbridge, and expected to spend £200 more on the other five, making £339.64 Nevertheless they only claimed £200, which in due course was credited to the city council.65 Despite the commissioners’ report the west drawbridge was then still unfinished, as described under T below. By the end of the civic year on 29 September the city council had spent £109 on it, and it was not installed until the year following.66 Meanwhile the battle of Worcester on 3 September had ended the Third Civil War and made it unnecessary to raise or rebuild the remaining drawbridges, which were left to rest on their abutments.

Slighting by the City Council, April–May 1653 On 17 January 1653 the Council of State ordered that ‘the Scotch and Irish committee consider the manner of slighting the works at Gloucester with speed’. The order was repeated on 22 March67 and was evidently transmitted to the city council, which commanded its stewards on 25 April to ‘make the ways to passe through the gates of this city as formerly they have been’, and on 24 May to ‘make the way without the walls from the south gate to the east gate passable for carts and carriages as it was before the late warrs’, i.e. before the roads were obstructed by bastions. The stewards accordingly levelled five bastions, at the south, east and lower north gates, Friars’ Orchard and St Oswald’s (E, G, H, J and O in Fig. 1) at a total cost of £34.68 The council continued nevertheless to repair the city wall with 16,000 bricks as described at F below.

Further Repair by the City Council, April 1657–April 1660 On 13 April 1657, as the Commonwealth remained disturbed, the city council appointed nine of its members ‘to survey the towne walls’. On 7 December following it appointed three aldermen and seven councillors, ‘for the better defence of this city, to viewe all the decayes of the walls, gates & fences of this city tomorrow morning at eight of the clocke’. Some 9,500 bricks were used in ensuing repairs to the wall and the east gate. In the last days of the Commonwealth, between 22 and 28 April 1660, the council spent £4 more on ‘fortifying the city’, including ‘beare for workemen & women at the bullworks, making up the dam in Dockam and making up the postern gate’,69 but this work was shortly rendered abortive by the Restoration.

63. Below, T: West Gate. 64. Stevenson, ‘Rec. of corp. of Glouc.’, 504–5. For the account, GBR, H 2/3, pp. 108–10. 65. GBR, F 4/5, f. 425v. 66. Ibid. F 4/5, ff. 435v., 458v., 459v. 67. Cal. S.P. Dom. 1652–3, 107, 224. 68. GBR, B 3/2, pp. 703, 708; F 4/5, ff. 483v.–484v. 69. Ibid. B 3/3, pp. 24, 52; F 4/6, pp. 266–7, 303, 353. 170 JOHN RHODES

Slighting by the Lord Lieutenant, July 1662 On 30 June 1662 the king ordered Henry (Somerset), Lord Herbert, lord lieutenant of Gloucestershire and future duke of Beaufort, ‘to cause the gates, walls and fortifications of Gloucester to be razed and demolished and the materials thereof used for the benefit of the town, His Majesty taking on himself the expense’. On 26 July Herbert reported back that he had ‘made great breaches, pulled down the flankers and taken away the gates’, but that the cost of demolishing all the walls and fortifications, previously estimated at £50, was recalculated as £1,204. ‘If the rampart of earth, 15 yards [13.7 m] broad, was to be removed, money’ would have to ‘be sent’. No more was done by the lord lieutenant, but the city council spent £43 on recovering stone from the walls.70

Description Sites are lettered as on the plan (Fig. 1).

A Bastion under The Castle From February to May 1643 fuel was supplied to a guard post at the castle, presumably guarding what was described in August 1643 as ‘a breast-work upon Severn side under the castle’.71 The plan shows a pentagonal earthen bastion occupying an outwork of the medieval castle, between the (inner) ditch towards Llanthony that was mentioned in 125772 and the (outer) ditch towards Llanthony that was dug in 1264.73 Whether the outwork was already pentagonal before the Civil War is unknown. By 1712 it had been levelled and the inner ditch filled in.74 The plan does not show a semi-circular projection at the north-west corner recorded on Hall and Pinnell’s 1780 map, which was therefore not a tower of the castle but a later garden feature.75

B Barbycon Hill At the siege the governor hired Ellis Powell to draw a cannon or demi-culverin to and from Barbican Hill, whence it fired towards Llanthony.76 A guard house there was supplied with fuel from February to May 1643, but was demolished in 1647 when it yielded 19 loads of tile and timber, 62 loads of brick and 36 loads of stone, some of the material coming from ‘taking up of the ground worke at the said sentinell house’. It was rebuilt in 1651 as two or more boarded huts, which were shortly taken down again. In 1660 work was done on ‘the bullworks’ there.77 The plan shows that Barbican Hill was a T-shaped earthwork continuous with the bastion A but

70. Cal. S.P. Dom. 1661–2, 424, 447; GBR, F 4/6, p. 440. 71. GBR, F 4/5, f. 216; Dorney in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 52. 72. Cal. Liberate Rolls 1251–60, p. 360. 73. According to the constable’s accounts, GA, D 4431/2/56/1. For discussion, H.R. Hurst, ‘The archaeology of Gloucester castle: an introduction’, Trans. BGAS 102 (1984), 92–3, 99, where the inner ditch needs adding to fig. 4. For the date, R. Howes, ‘The medieval sieges of Gloucester, 1263–65 (Barons’ War)’, Glevensis 35 (2002), 21. 74. R. Atkyns, The Ancient and Present State of Glostershire (London, 1712), pl. ‘Gloster city’. 75. Hurst, ‘Archaeol. of Glouc. castle’, 101; ibid. 86, pl 4, discussed in M. Richards, ‘Two eighteenth-century Gloucester gardens’, Trans. BGAS 99 (1981), 124–5. 76. TNA, SP 28/129(5), f. 26v.; Dorney in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 218–9, 222. 77. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 216, 344, 347, 435, 438v.; F 4/6, p. 353. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 171 projecting as a spur northwards. The name applied in the 17th century to an arc of medieval outworks extending northwards between the inner and outer ditches of the castle as far as the castle gate,78 but in 1652–5 the present Barbican Road was driven through it and severed it into two parts, which nevertheless ran together until 1815 as part of the Crown estate.79 In 1712 the north part had been levelled but the south part, isolated on the west by diversion of the inner ditch of the castle, remained a prominent hill; its summit was triangular and variously depicted as flat or hummocky.80 It was finally removedc .1819.81 Eastwards from Barbican Hill to the south gate the plan shows a rampart, described in August 1643 (above) as ‘a firme and lofty work to command the high ground in the suburbs’, fronting a rear wall which was described in 1443 as the precinct wall of Blackfriars82 and in 1640 as ‘the stone walle called the towne walle’. The rampart was built within a strip of land which the city had let in 1640, 45 ft (13.7 m) wide at the west end by the ‘Barbycon’, 33 ft 10 inches (10.3 m) wide at the east end by land of Kimbrose hospital and 483 ft (147 m) long; the tenancy passed to Dorothy Dennis, who paid no rent on it from 1644 because it was ‘in the works’.83 In 1663 the strip was re-let at the same dimensions as before, but by 1780 a path had been formed in front of the wall on the line of the present Commercial Road.84

C, D Dams Impounding the City Ditch

E South Gate On the west side of the gatehouse the plan shows the tower of the former chapel of St Kyneburgh projecting diagonally through the city wall, a tower which was used in 1566 as a dovecote and from 1654 as the Cordwainers’ hall.85 The gatehouse appears in conventional outline. Its medieval structure lay behind the line of the city wall and was repaired in 1642 with 500 tiles, 16 quarries of glass and 47 ft (14 m) of boards.86 But on 12 February 1644, ‘the gate being fallen by the batteries of the late siege’, the city council engaged Samuel Baldwin for ‘the new building of the south gate … with battlements … the worke to be finished within seaven weeks’. Some 24 cwt (1,220 kg) of lead was taken for the purpose from St Owen’s church. The final cost, defrayed by a levy on inhabitants of the city, was £90 including ‘the amendment of the porter’s house, the making of two paire of staires with doors and the cutting of the king’s armes, the prince’s and the duke’s and the armes of the city’. By 1653 an inscription had been added: ‘A CITY ASSAULTED BY

78. Hurst, ‘Archaeol. of Glouc. castle’, 80. For an excavation in its outer ditch, M. Atkin, ‘Archaeological fieldwork in Gloucester 1990’,Glevensis 25 (1991), 9. For its northward continuation, GBR, J 3/4, pp. 182–7 (a deed of Marybone House in Bearland dated 1651, describing that property as bounded on the south by ‘the common shoare next to the Barbicon Hill’). 79. GBR, F 4/5, f. 480v.; G 3/SO6, f. 16; Hurst, ‘Archaeol. of Glouc. castle’, 88 (plan), 119–20. 80. Atkyns, Ancient and Present State, pl. ‘Gloster city’; W. Bazeley, ‘Notes on a SW prospect of the city of Gloucester’, Rec. of Glouc. Cath. 2 (1884), frontispiece; Hurst, ‘Archaeol. of Glouc. castle’, 86, pl. iv. 81. T.D. Fosbrooke, An Original History of the City of Gloucester (London, 1819), 63. 82. Terrier of Llanthony priory: TNA, C 115/73, f. 14/12v. 83. GBR, J 3/3, ff. 163–4; F 4/5, ff. 286, 326, 363, 379. 84. Ibid. J 3/4, pp. 769–71; Hall and Pinnell, Plan of City of Glocester (1780). 85. J. Rhodes, ‘The pleas of St Kyneburgh: Gloucester v. Llanthony Priory 1390–2’ in J. Bettey (ed.), Archives and Local History in Bristol and Gloucestershire: essays in honour of David Smith (BGAS, 2007), 31–2 (with plan). 86. A.P. Garrod and C. Heighway, Garrod’s Gloucester: archaeological observations 1974–81 (Western Archaeol. Trust, 1984), 54–5; Atkin and Laughlin, Glouc. and Civil War, 182; GBR, F 4/5, f. 190. 172 JOHN RHODES

MAN BUT SAVED BY GOD’.87 The new gatehouse projected in front of the city wall. Its upper floor, like that of the old gatehouse, was probably part of the porter’s lodge, which in 1509–50 was said to extend ‘by and over’ the gate;88 the other part of the lodge lay behind the city wall on the east, on the site of no. 69 (formerly 62) Southgate Street.89 In 1649–51 the porter lived elsewhere because his house was ‘kept for a guard house [and] ruined by the souldyers keeping guard’; it was repaired in 1655–6 with ‘150 Worcester bricke to mend the chimneys’, new rafters, 41 sq ft (3.8 sq m) of glass and 950 ft (290 m) of elm boards.90 A drawbridge appears in the plan at a distance of 35 ft (10.5 m) from the gate. It was in place in August 1643 when the city council began ‘making a damme of earth against the drawbridge … and lining the houses on each side and the almeshouse between the gate and the drawbridge with earth’. Although the plan omits them, these buildings survived the siege.91 Alderman William Hill’s almshouse had been built in front of the gate on the west under his will of 1636; it was ‘amended’ in 1644 and repaired in 1647–9 with 800 tiles and 66 sq ft (6 sq m) of glass.92 In 1644 the governor repaired hasps and staples on the drawbridge and shortened its chains; in 1645 the city council, having hauled a boat from the quay to the gate, fitted the drawbridge with three iron plates and mended its rails.93 The bastion shown in the plan as enclosing these structures was only begun in April 1646 when the engineer David Papillon reported to the Parliamentary Committee for Gloucester that he had ‘begunne a[n outer] drawebridge, … finished [part of the work] to convay the common shore [i.e. sewer] of this side of the citty into Severne by a brick vault, and raised the new boulwerk traced before the south gate some six foot high’. Parliament assigned £500 to the committee on 4 May 1646 for such works, to include ‘draining any standing waters about the city’; the brick vault was evidently an outfall for what Papillon called ‘the lothsome waters that infest the aire’ in the moat east of the gate, which had insufficient westward fall.94 One thousand additional bricks were used there, presumably on the vault, in 1647. In 1649 a grate weighing 39 lb (18 kg) was fitted to it but it needed scouring annually until 1653.95 The west abutment of the outer drawbridge, flanking a ditch 4 m deep and 10 m wide as shown on the plan, was found by excavation in 1983 and 1989; the east ditch of the bastion, also found in 1989, occupied the line followed earlier and later by Green Dragon Lane.96 The drawbridges needed further repair with new rails in 1648, timbers in 1649 and ironwork in 1651.97 As the main road was diverted past the bastion ditch to the outer drawbridge, the aldermen’s court gave an order in 1647 ‘to secure travellers from falling into the grafte’. The diverted route was paved in 1648 with 67 loads of stone from St Owen’s church, and repaved in 1651,98 but such work became abortive in 1653 when the

87. GBR, B 3/2, pp. 296, 302; F 4/5, f. 242v.; J. Dorney, Certain Speeches made upon the day of the yearly Election of Officers in the City of Gloucester (London, 1653), 10. 88. Atkyns, Ancient and Present State, pl. ‘Gloster city’; GBR, J 5/3; J 5/5; F 4/3, f. 13v. 89. W.H. Stevenson (ed.), Rental of all the Houses in Gloucester AD 1455 … compiled by Robert Cole, canon of Llanthony (Gloucester, 1890), 14; GBR, J 4/12, plan 31. 90. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 411, 438v.; F 4/6, p. 128. 91. Dorney in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 214; Atkyns, Ancient and Present State, pl. ‘Gloster city’. 92. Gloucester Diocesan Records [GDR], in GA, will 1636/120; GBR, B 3/2, p. 302; F 4/5, ff. 365v., 392v. 93. TNA, SP 28/228, no. 1/46; GBR, F 4/5, ff. 280v., 282v. 94. Atkin, ‘David Papillon’, 157, 160; Jnl. House of Commons 4 (1644–6), 534. 95. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 350, 396v., 412, 430v., 458–9, 487. 96. Atkin and Laughlin, Glouc. and Civil War, 56–8, 65–6, 123, with plan and section; also in Atkin and Howes, ‘Use of archaeol.’, 25–6. 97. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 376v., 398, 434v. 98. Ibid. Gb3/SO2, 12 Nov. 1647; F 4/5, ff. 366, 430v. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 173 bastion was levelled and the road returned to its former route.99 In 1656 ‘bricke and irons placed for the makeing of a watercourse neere St. Kymborowes’, i.e. Papillon’s vault, were still on site; the city council ordered the stewards to take them up and to stop up a ditch ‘for that the water is turned into the old course’.100

F Stone Wall Of this wall the Roman plinth and the Roman core survived the siege, although the Roman and medieval facing was heavily damaged.101 The plan shows three projecting semi-circular towers of 13th-century type. The first, east of the south gate, also appears in Speed’s 1610 map;102 in 1663 its site, ‘the place where the half moon stood’, was measured as 78 ft (29 m) east of Southgate Street.103 Its removal has left a scar, patched with 19th-century bricks, in a preserved length of the wall at nos. 71–3 Southgate Street. The second tower, south of the east gate, was mentioned in 1509 as dividing two gardens104 and is shown as lying within the present line of Bell Lane. The third, north of the east gate, was found by excavation in 1969.105 Behind the wall the plan also shows an abutting building 360 ft (110 m) south of the east gate. This was the Anchorite’s Gate mentioned in 1443, which opened from the lane now called Constitution Walk into the north-east corner of the Grey Friars’ precinct.106 In August 1643 the defenders lined the wall between the south and east gates with earth up to the top of the battlements, upon which they set blinds. The besiegers made a small breach on the south, which was stopped with wool-packs; they battered the wall on both sides of the south- west corner, and also nearer to the east gate, but failed to penetrate the earthwork behind.107 After the siege the city council repaired the wall in 1643–4 with 49 loads of stone from Abbot’s Barton manor, in 1646–7 at a cost of £62 with 12 loads of stone from Barbican Hill and 30 loads more burnt in a limekiln, in 1653–4 with 16,000 bricks, in 1655–6 with stones to mend a hole and in 1657–8 with 8,500 more bricks.108 Nevertheless, much masonry displaced or defaced by the bombardment was never reset. The surviving wall on both sides of the corner, as seen in excavation, is faced with brickwork of various dates.109 Finally in 1662 the lord lieutenant ‘made great breaches’ in the wall, and the city council spent £43 on ‘hawling of stone from the town walls and digging them upp’.110

99. GBR, B 3/2, p. 703; F 4/5, f. 480v., f. 484 reproduced in Atkin and Laughlin, Glouc. and Civil War, 130. 100. GBR, B 3/2, p. 870; F 4/6, p. 200. 101. Gloucester Roman Research Committee, ‘Report 1931–2’, Trans. BGAS 53 (1931), 267–84; H.E. O’Neil, ‘1–5 King’s Square, Gloucester, 1958’, Trans. BGAS 77 (1962), 7–11; C. Heighway, The East and North Gates of Gloucester and Associated Sites: excavations 1974–81 (Western Archaeol. Trust, 1983), 58; Hurst, Gloucester, 22 and pll. 9, 17–19. 102. J. Speed, Map of Gloucestershire (with Gloucester) (1610), republished in his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain (London, 1611). 103. GBR, J 3/4, pp. 785–9. 104. Ibid. J 5/3. 105. Hurst, Gloucester, 8–28. 106. Terrier of Llanthony priory: TNA, C 115/73, f. 30/28. 107. Corbet in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 214–7, 221–3. 108. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 245v., 344–5, 350v.; F 4/6, pp. 17, 121, 266–7. 109. Glouc. Roman Research Committee, ‘Rep. 1931–2’, 268–9, 277–8, 280–1, figs. 1, 5; O’Neil, ‘1–5 King’s Square’, 13, 28, pl. 1; Hurst, Gloucester, 93–4. 110. Cal. S.P. Dom. 1661–2, 447; GBR, F 4/6, p. 440. 174 JOHN RHODES

Running in front of the wall from the south gate to the east gate were the city ditch, called the Goose ditch, and an intermediate strip of land which from 1620 was called the Vineyard. The city council let both in 1544 to Richard Edwards, in 1564 to John Woodward and in 1620 to Abel Angell, with an obligation to weed the wall and scour the ditch 18 ft 6 inches (5.5 m) wide. In 1620 ‘olde buildings’ stood in the Vineyard and Angell undertook to extend them with ‘two new rooms for habitacion with a chimney in each of them’; in time of plague the council reserved a right to put infected persons into the buildings and let the invalids use the ground from there to the corner of the wall opposite Rignell Stile. In 1637 the council compensated Thomas Weale, labourer, evidently Angell’s subtenant, for ‘suffering [additional] pesthouses to bee erected by appointment of the justices in the Viniard garden’.111 By August 1643 the ditch had been enlarged to a moat described as 30 ft (9 m) wide and 12 ft (3.5 m) deep, measurements confirmed archaeologically.112 The council renewed the lease for William Angell in 1648 and again in 1663, when the Goose Ditch had been unwatered to become a ‘parcel of ground’; the area was then 51 ft (15.5 m) wide from the south gate to ‘the place where the half moon stood’ and 60 ft (18 m) wide beyond. The council reserved a right to build new houses there for plague victims and give them access to ‘a yard on the north side of the waterpipe going under the ground to the city neare the place where the houses formerly stood’.113 A road, later called Green Dragon Lane or Parliament Street, ran along the south margin of the Goose Ditch but was interrupted by the siege works. In 1645 the city council required the lessee of adjacent land to ‘reserve 30 ft [9 m] from the outside of the moat in bredth for a waine way’. In 1653 it gave orders to ‘make the way without the walls from the south gate to the east gate passable for carts and carriages as it was before the late warrs’, and that was done.114

G The Scons (i.e. Bastion) at Rignell Stile and a Postern in the Stone Wall Adjacent Although the plan does not show it, a ‘posterne agenst Rignore stile’ existed from at least 1509 until 1648, when it was called ‘the sally port in the wall over against Rigny stile’.115 A passage leading to it through the rampart, between stone retaining walls, was found by excavation in 1931. The passage and the postern were offset to the north of the south-east angle of the stone wall, arguably to avoid a semi-circular angle tower which appears on Speed’s 1610 map and was evidently destroyed at the siege; that was most probably the tower which Henry III gave in 1246 to the Grey Friars for use as a school of theology.116 The postern was blocked or fronted by a building before the siege of August 1643, when the defenders made a sally from ‘a door made for that purpose in a brick house adjoining to the towne wall over against Rignall stile’.117 That was one of two brick buildings erected in 1639 by the city council at the high cost of £91, ‘two workehouses in the Vinyard, the one at the corner of the wall over against Rignor style, the other at the other end neere the tower, each to extend from the wall to the ditch 18 ft or 16 ft [5.5 or 4.9 m] in the

111. GBR, B 2/2, ff. 40v.–41, 124–5; J 3/1, pp. 147–8; B 3/2, p. 80. 112. W.A. Day (ed.), The Pythouse Papers (London, 1879), 57–8, quoted in J. Day, Gloucester and Newbury 1643: The Turning Point of the Civil War (Barnsley, 2007), 71; Heighway, East and North Gates, 60, 72–4, figs. 40, 53–5. 113. GBR, J 3/4, pp. 76–9, 785–9. 114. Ibid. B 3/2, p. 337, 708; F 4/6, p. 17. 115. Ibid. J 5/3; J 3/4, pp. 76–9. 116. Glouc. Roman Research Committee, ‘Rep. 1931–2’, 281–2, fig. 6;Close Rolls 1242–7, 447. 117. Dorney in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 213. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 175 height of the wall and of like bredth’.118 Timber was removed from them in 1642–3, and the plan shows that they did not survive bombardment in the siege.119 The council restored the postern in 1646–7 when materials used on the ‘Friers’ wall’ included ‘hooks for the sally-porte’ and ‘planks to make the salliporte door’. The council walled up a postern in 1659, presumably this one rather than the postern at K.120 A sconce or bastion there, ‘at the Fryers’ orchard where the [besiegers’] battery was made at the time of the siege’, was built in February 1644.121 The plan shows that its north-east corner survives as the raised corner site of ‘Ferncroft’ in the angle of Brunswick Road and Parliament Street. Its east ditch, on the line of Brunswick Road, was found by excavation in 1982 and 1990, 3.9–4.5 m deep.122 The bastion was largely composed of gravel, which was quarried from it in 1647–8 and again in 1652–3, when £6 was spent on levelling it and ‘levelling the way at Southgate to go to Eastgate’.123 In 1662–3 the council spent a further £9 on making a ‘gout by Rigney stile’ fitted with an iron grate, evidently a culvert to drain the ditch.124

H East Gate, also called Ailes Gate125 The building which appears behind the town wall south of the gatehouse occupied a plot measuring 72 × 13 ft 6 inches (22 × 4.1 m) bounded on the north by ‘the stayers goeing up into the olde counsel howse’, a plot which the city council let in 1618 to Samuel Cooke with an obligation to build within two years. In 1643 his widow Joan was excused rent because the house which he built was used by the garrison.126 When re-let in 1648 to John Cooke the plot contained two tenements and waste ground on which there had been a third tenement and an enclosed court; when re-let in 1681 to another Joan Cooke it contained a single tenement 72 ft [22 m] long.127 The building which appears behind the town wall north of the gatehouse also belonged to the city and had been described in 1509–44 as ‘the greate tenement on the north syde of the councell chambre’, a tenement rented at the latter date by Humphrey Walkeley and repaired in 1557 with 1,500 bricks. In 1630 it was ‘the howse called bridewell wherein John Knowles now dwelleth and keepeth for the howse of correction: rent payd one third by the citty and two thirds by the county of the citty, £6 13s. 4d.’.128 The bridewell had been established in 1597 at a cost of £124 under the 1576 Act for Setting the Poor on Work and was financed by a special rate.129 It had been housed briefly at no. 38 Northgate Street, which in 1630 was called the ‘ould bridewell’, but it moved to the tenement by the east gate before 1613 when its inmates were barred from using the well in their yard, which was common to an adjacent garden of Mr Beard.130 The council re-tiled the

118. GBR, B 3/2, p. 111; F 4/5, ff. 113–5. 119. Ibid. F 4/5, f. 232; Corbet in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 47. 120. GBR, F 4/5, pp. 344–5; F 4/6, p. 312. 121. Backhouse in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 308. 122. Atkin and Laughlin, Glouc. and Civil War, 129, repeated in Atkin and Howes, ‘Use of archaeol.’, 35; A.P. Garrod, ‘Minor sites recorded’, Glevensis 17 (1983), 31. A stone wall discovered in 1883 lay north of the ditch and is probably Roman: Heighway, East and North Gates, 40 and fig. 23. 123. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 372v., 481–2, 484v. 124. Ibid. F 4/6, p. 470. 125. VCH Glos. IV, 244. 126. GBR, J 3/1, ff. 79v.–80; F 4/5, f. 227. 127. Ibid. J 3/4, pp. 80–2; J 3/5, pp. 643–7. 128. Ibid. J 5/3, J 5/5–6; F 4/3, f. 64. 129. Ibid. J 3/2, ff. 210v.–211; B 3/2, p. 41; G 3/SO1, ff. 18, 34; Act of Parl. 18 Eliz. I, c. 3. 130. GBR, J 5/6; G 3/SO1, f. 17v. For Beard’s garden, ibid. F 4/6, p. 159. 176 JOHN RHODES building in 1643–4 but complained in September 1645 that ‘the bridewell house is imployed to some other use, [for which] John Knowles the late master is to answer’.131 New ‘sleepers for the stayers’, new studs, laths and crests and 150 more tiles were put in place there in 1645–7, but in April 1647 the city quarter sessions ordered that ‘the old howse used as a bridewell for this city and countie shall be continued and repaired at the charges of the city and county and that a master be provided for the same’; in January 1650 the city council asked surveyors ‘to consider how the bridewell may be put into good condicion and repaire to be made use of as it ought to be’, and in 1658–9 it repaired the building yet again.132 After an abortive proposal in 1676 to move the bridewell to the south gate, it was moved before 1681 to ‘the late old counsel house’ in the gate adjacent. By 1704 its former site had become part of a garden.133 The gatehouse, as shown in the plan and found by excavation in 1974–80 and 1990, had a portcullis and a long entrance passage with recessed outward-opening gates between two 13th- century drum towers, the north tower projecting more than the south.134 Behind the south tower, as mentioned above, were stairs climbing to the ‘olde counsel howse’, an apartment which in 1704 was said to measure 25 ft. 6 inches (7.8 m) by 43 ft 6 inches (13.3 m) and apparently ran north–south across the back of the gate passage under a gabled roof.135 Over the front of the gate passage was an ‘outward chamber over Ailesgate’ which in 1595 was let for meetings of trade companies. The council house was still so called in that year, but it was shortly superseded by a council house at the high cross and by 1681 had become ‘the late old councell house now called the bridewell’.136 The rest of the gatehouse was used from the 16th century as a prison and a porter’s lodge, and in 1613 the master of the bridewell was warned not to encroach on ‘the prison called Ailesgate’ by placing looms there.137 In 1633 the council ordered that ‘the dungeon and the roome over it bee made a lodging for the porter’. In 1704, however, the porter’s lodge was said to measure 19 ft 6 inches (6 m) square, dimensions which identify its principal room as the chamber over the front of the passage, and to lie ‘partly over the gate’ but to exclude ‘the dungeon under the said lodge’.138 A deed of 1793 mentions plural dungeons, one of them in the south tower. The gatehouse was demolished in 1778 to widen King Street (on the north-west) and Eastgate Street.139 At the beginning of the siege, in September 1643, the defenders ‘rammed the port [i.e. the gate] with a thicknesse of earth cannon proofe’, while leaving access for soldiers to sally from ‘a port hole in the dungeon’. Later they ‘perfected the lining of the houses over and by the gate’.140 In the ensuing year the council rebuilt 23 perches (52 sq m or 16 cu m) of the gatehouse walls, with ‘a wall which the cannons broke down in the time of the siege’ and ‘a partition between Knowles’s house [Knowles being master of the bridewell] and Bullock’s house which was broke down at the time of the siege’. Materials used on the roof included 500 lath nails and 500 stone nails. In

131. Ibid. F 4/5, ff. 243–4; B 3/2, p. 345. 132. Ibid. F 4/5, ff. 323, 344; G 3/SO4, 19 Apr. 1647; B 3/2, p. 534; F 4/6, p. 303. 133. Ibid. G 3/SO7, f. 184; J 3/5, pp. 643–7; J 3/6, ff. 309–11. 134. Heighway, East and North Gates; P. Greatorex, ‘Observations on the Eastgate Street sewer renewal scheme’, Gloucester, 1990’, Glevensis 25 (1991), 26–9. 135. GBR, J 3/6, ff. 309–11, gives the orientation as E–W, but a N–S orientation suits the excavated plan in Greatorex, ‘Observations’, and a N–S roof appears in Atkyns, Ancient and Present State, pl. ‘Gloster city’. 136. GBR, F 4/3, ff. 302, 308v.; B 3/1, f. 196v.; J 3/5, pp. 643–7. 137. Ibid. F 4/3, ff. 64, 238v., 308v.; B 3/1, f. 246v. 138. Ibid. B 3/2, f. 6; J 3/6, ff. 309–11; plan in Greatorex, ‘Observations’, 28. 139. GBR, J 3/12, pp. 90–5; B 3/12, ff. 104v.–105. 140. Corbet in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 46, 51; Dorney in ibid. 226. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 177

1658–9 the council repaired the gatehouse again with 1,000 bricks, 400 ‘Cotsold tyles’ and ‘a fane for the top of the chimney’.141 The plan shows walls linking the gatehouse to the inner drawbridge. They were demolished before 1662, when a lease of the Vineyard included ‘a little narrow way into the streete at the east gate’.142 The bastion and the drawbridges at the east gate were built in February 1644.143 The bastion occupied the sites of buildings destroyed at the siege, of which six belonged to the dean and chapter and were described in 1649 as ‘lying in or incompassed with the works’: a tenement at the corner of Barton Street and Brunswick Road measuring 16 × 30 ft (4.9 × 9.1 m), a pair of tenements 33 ft (10 m) wide, a stable 9 ft (2.7 m) wide and a pair of stables not measured.144 For the drawbridges the governor obtained ironwork from three smiths, whose bills he paid between December 1643 and May 1644: from William Woodward two ‘chaine barrs’ weighing 172 lb (78 kg), from John Tomkins two ‘hand chaines’ weighing 71 lb (32 kg), four pairs of hinges, two bolts, three hasps and six staples and from John Welstead three pairs of hinges, eight bolts and four locks.145 In 1645–7 one of the drawbridges was broken and was repaired by the city council, which continued in 1649–51 to renew planks in both drawbridges and to pave the causeway between them. In 1651 the council rebuilt the outer drawbridge entirely with 10 tons of timber at a cost of £43, including £13 for ‘swayes’, i.e. levers.146 In 1653, however, it spent £5 on levelling the bastion and £19 on building a wall and a ‘gowte’ (i.e. culvert) there, using stone from the ‘Fryers’, bought stone and 500 bricks.147 The wall evidently retained the north side of a causeway pierced by the culvert, in place of the inner drawbridge. As found by excavation in 1974 the culvert was of brick over stone slabs and the south side of the causeway rested against the wall of a horse-pool built c.1540.148 In 1657 the council spent 12s. more on ‘hawling the earth’ from the bastion.149 Northwards from the east gate to the ‘Sallie Gate’ (K) the city council had in 1617 let to William Sparks a strip of land between the city wall and an extra-mural road later known as Dog Lane, 592 ft (180 m) long, 33 ft 10 inches (10.3 m) wide at the south end, 49 ft 3 inches (15 m) wide a little further north, 50 ft 9 inches (15.5 m) wide in the middle and 41 ft 6 inches (12.6 m) wide at the north end. The strip included the city ditch; Sparks was required to fill it in and to replace it with a stone-lined channel ‘from the [east] gate to the [Twyver] brooke to carrye awaye the water from the [high] crosse and all other the sinkes, kennells and passages which runn out of the cittie into the same kennell or channel so that it may likewayes washe, clense and carry awaye all the soile and filthe which come out of the house of office there’, together with the discharge from a public ‘privie’ which he was required to build ‘on or neere the towne wall’.150 Presumably the ditch was restored as a moat in 1642–3; the lease proves that it was not fed by the brook but

141. GBR, F 4/5, pp. 243–4; F 4/6, p. 303. 142. Ibid. J 3/4, pp. 785–9. 143. Backhouse in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 308. The plan shows that an E–W ditch found by excavation in 1978 did not belong to the bastion but lay further S and may be a breach cut by the besiegers to drain the moat: Heighway, East and North Gate, 61 and fig. 40,contra Atkin and Howes, ‘Use of archaeol.’, 35, and Atkin and Laughlin, Glouc. and Civil War, 122–3 (with section), 129. 144. GA, D 936/E 1, pp. 78–82, 84–5; cf. D 936/E 12/2, f. 329. 145. TNA, SP 28/129(5), ff. 16v., 41v., 42; SP 28/228, nos. 1/173, 1/176, 2/296. 146. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 311v., 340v., 406v., 430v.; H 2/3, pp. 109–10. 147. Ibid. F 4/5, ff. 479v., 481, 483v. 148. Heighway, East and North Gates, 59, 63 (period 12F) and fig. 39.The culvert is not there mentioned but is displayed in situ. 149. GBR, F 4/6, p. 199. 150. Ibid. J 3/1, ff. 75–6. 178 JOHN RHODES by an outfall from the fountain at the high cross.151 Sparks was excused rent in 1643 because two houses which he built there were taken down. The lease was renewed in 1654 and in 1668, when a tenement was ‘newly built … at the upper [i.e. south] end’.152

For I (North Gate), which is lettered out of sequence, see K2

K The Sallie Gate, also called the Postern Gate153 An opening in the curved north-east corner of the stone wall was found by excavation in 1971.154 The plan shows that that was the rear of a postern which projected forwards. The city council repaired the postern in 1642 with 20 ft (6.1 m) of elm boards and a pair of hooks and hinges and in 1643–4 with stone from St Owen’s church, engaging Cesar Godwin to renew the gate and a bridge in front of it with more hooks, hinges and staples, a new crossbar and a new lock at a total cost of £13.155 In 1646 David Papillon described it as a round stone tower and proposed a new bastion in front of it similar to that which appears in dotted lines. In the crisis of April 1660 the gate was temporarily blocked.156

[K1] Friars’ Barn The barn stood at the south-west corner of the Whitefriars precinct, which the city council had acquired in 1603 as trustee of St Kyneburgh’s hospital.157 When let in 1637 and 1641 it was described as ‘a tenement now converted to a barne built of bricke and stone called the Whitefryers or the founders’ lodging’.158 In August 1643 the defenders exploited it as ‘an old barn at a corner point in which was mounted a peece that commanded severall ways, and obliquely looked into [the besiegers’] trenches’. They built ‘works about the Fryars’ barne and imployed [themselves] in lyning the Fryars’ barne on the outside with earth for the preservation of our canon there, and in strengthening of our brestworks there’.159 The plan shows that the Twyver brook was diverted around the barn in a ditch of which the south-east length survived to be plotted by Hall and Pinnell in 1780. It also shows with dotted lines a proposal supported by Papillon to draw a new defensive line behind the barn, which in one place he mistakenly called ‘the old chapel with the ridiculous works about it’,160 but that was not done. In 1657, ‘the barn becoming ruinous, the mayor and burgesses granted [the tenant] liberty for the taking downe of the barne’, with compensation of £5. Much of the earthwork was obliterated in 1662–3 when the council spent £29 on paving and gravelling ‘the way from Northgate to Eastgate’, now Market Parade.161

151. For the fountain, VCH Glos. IV, 244, 250. 152. GBR, F 4/5, f. 226v.; J 3/4, pp. 369–74; J 3/5, pp. 102–6. 153. In 1654: ibid. J 3/4, pp. 369–74. 154. Hurst, Gloucester, 89 and fig. 36. 155. Atkin and Laughlin, Glouc. and Civil War, 178; GBR, F 4/5, ff. 195v., 245. 156. Atkin, ‘David Papillon’, 157, 163; GBR, F 4/6, p. 353. 157. VCH Glos. IV, 292, 355; GBR, J 4/9, plan 10. 158. GBR, J 3/3, ff. 117–8, 177v.–178. 159. Corbet in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 52; Dorney in ibid. 215, 219. 160. Atkin, ‘David Papillon’, 157, 163. 161. GBR, B 3/3, p. 49; J 3/4, pp. 580–3; F 4/6, p. 470. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 179

[K2] lettered I out of sequence on the plan: [Lower] North Gate162 In 1554–50 the porter occupied ‘a tenement or lodge over either side of [this] gate’.163 Fragmentary remains of the east side, truncated by a later culvert for the Twyver brook, were excavated in 1971– 3.164 In 1633, however, the city council let the west side commercially after underbuilding a jetty on the south and reconstructing that side to measure 17 ft (5.2 m) from east to west and 23 ft (7 m) from north to south; it then contained on the ground floor a kitchen and a shop facing south, on the first floor a chamber and a buttery, on the second floor a pair of chambers extending over the entrance passage 23 ft (7 m) square, and on the third floor a cock-loft.165 In 1642–3 the council renewed locks on both the main gate and a wicket and repaired a wicket hinge; in 1645–6 it spent £63 over 13 weeks on substantial repairs to the gatehouse under the supervision of Richard Fisher, using ‘pyles to make good the ground’, 18 loads of stone from Over Vineyard, stone from Brook Street (now Station Road), 2,500 bricks, ‘small coale to rowcast [i.e. roughcast] the east end of the gate’, three loads of timber, 100 boards, a casement, window bars, glass and tiles.166 Some 94 quarrels of glass were used there in 1648–9, ‘an iron frame for a cadgement for the porter’s chamber’ in 1649–50 and ‘Ham bricks’ and a wooden window-frame in 1655–6. In the latter year the west side was occupied by a gardener.167 The Twyver brook, called ‘Wever’ in 1455, ran in front of the gate, impounded by a ‘damme near the gate’ which the city council repaired with ‘greate plankes’ in 1646–7.168 A drawbridge over it had been completed by August 1643, when the defenders ‘imployed [themselves] in lining of the house adjoyning to the north gate with earth’.169 In February 1644 the governor built a bastion in front of the gate; its east ditch, shown in the plan and found by excavation in 1982, was 8 m wide and 2.5 m deep.170 The outer drawbridge was presumably built then also. In 1645–6 the city council renewed a plank in one bridge and in 1647–8 it mended holes in both bridges with 2 inch (5 cm) planks, putting ‘peices of timber under them to strengthen the bridges where the carte wheeles wont to goe on’.171 In 1651 it paved the causeway between the bridges and rebuilt the outer drawbridge entirely with 8 tons of timber at a cost of £35. But in 1653 it spent £14 on levelling the bastion and ‘making the way for waynes to passe’.172 The west side of the bastion occupied the sites of several houses. The first house outside the gate had been extended over the brook to the gatehouse sometime before 1509 under lease from the city council. In 1640 the council re-let the extension to Edward Mitchell as a room measuring 18 ft (5.5 m) by 12 ft 9 inches (3.9 m) with a chamber above and a cock-loft over that.173 In 1643 Mitchell was excused rent because the extension was ‘taken downe’; in 1646 he claimed £500 for

162. The gate actually faces east but is treated as facing north. 163. GBR, J 5/5; F 4/3, f. 4. 164. H. Hurst, ‘Excavations at Gloucester, 1971–1973: second interim report’, Antiq. Jnl. 54 (1974), 17, 30, fig. 10. 165. GBR, J 3/3, ff. 77–8. 166. Ibid. F 4/5, ff. 214, 313–4, 320. For Brook Street, VCH Glos. IV, 365. 167. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 392, 406v.; F 4/6, pp. 130, 157. 168. Stevenson, Rental, 102; GBR, F 4/5, f. 341. 169. Dorney in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 215, 219. 170. Backhouse in ibid. 308; Atkin and Laughlin, Glouc. and Civil War, 55–7, 123 (with plan and section), partly repeated in Atkin and Howes, ‘Use of archaeol.’, 20, 26. Ditches 2/82 and 23/82, there interpreted as separate, are now seen to be linked; ditch 40/85 lay outside the defences. 171. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 314v., 374v., 375v. 172. Ibid. F 4/5, ff. 430, 434v., 484; H 2/3, pp. 108–9. 173. Ibid. J 5/3; J 5/5; F 4/3, f. 4; J 3/3, ff. 173v.–174. 180 JOHN RHODES his destroyed dwelling adjacent.174 Nearby on the same side the council had let a house plot 20 ft (6.1 m) wide and 141 ft (430 m) deep in 1629 with an obligation to rebuild within two years. In 1643 Mrs Chambers was lessee and was excused rent because the house was burnt; in 1658 the property was described as ‘waste ground lying in and about the works’.175 The rampart, shown in the plan as running north-westwards from the gate, was described in 1643 as ‘a small work newly raysed’. Nevertheless it rested on a medieval bank found by excavation in 2004–5.176

L Captain Singleton’s Scons (i.e. bastion) Alderman William Singleton, MP for Gloucester in 1640, was elected on 23 December 1642 by the aldermen’s court as ‘captayn of a company of soldiers of the inhabitants to be trayned for the defence of this city’.177 He and his company became part of Colonel Henry Stephens’s regiment in April 1643 and of the governor’s regiment two months later.178 His bastion was completed in 1643 when the governor paid hauliers for ‘drawing peeces [of artillery] to Mr Shingleton’s sconce’ and commissioned ‘cap squares for the great iron gunn that lieth’ there.179 In 1645–6 the city council spent 9d. on ‘nayles at the breach of Capt. Singleton’s sconce’, and in August 1647 the aldermen’s court ‘ordered that the dame at Capt. Singleton’s sconce shall bee forwith made good and that Mr Maior shall deliver Alderman Wise £10 for the doing thereof & mending the works where it neede’.180 Those were evidently repairs to a dam impounding the Twyver brook in the ditch in front of the bastion, where Alvingate mill may have stood in 1367.181 The course of the brook was found by excavation in 1983.182 The bastion as plotted now lies under the front of nos. 42–50 Worcester Street.

[L1] Allvin Gate The city council owned ‘a cotage buylte over’ the Alvin gate, rented out in 1544–50 but occupied by the porter in 1630.183 In 1642 the council repaired the gatehouse with 4 tons of ‘red stone’, 2 tons of unspecified stone, 6,000 bricks and a new door, rehung the gate, renewed the lock and scoured the brook in front. It supplied fuel to a guard post there from November 1642 to February 1643.184 But in August 1643 the besiegers ‘planted ordnance against’ it, and in 1643–4 the council

174. Ibid. F 4/5, f. 225v.; Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 382. 175. GBR, J 3/3, ff. 10–11; J 3/4, pp. 576–7; F 4/5, f. 225v.; B 3/3, p. 60. 176. Corbet in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 42; A. Hancocks, ‘Recent archaeological work in Gloucester’, Glevensis 38 (2005), 39. 177. GBR, G 3/SO2, f. 27. 178. Dorney in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 229; Atkin and Laughlin, Glouc. and Civil War, 31–2. 179. TNA, SP 28/228, nos. 2/279, 2/325. 180. GBR, F 4/5, f. 318; G 3/SO2, f. 50. 181. Rather than on the site proposed in J. Rhodes, ‘Clay mounds and millstreams in 12th and 13th-century Gloucester’, Glevensis 32 (1999), 13–14. The mill belonged to Gloucester abbey, which in 1518 had a great garden there between the Twyver and ‘Feyte Lane’, i.e. Alvin Street: Glouc. Cath. Libr., Reg. Malvern I, f. 114, no. 124. For the street, VCH Glos. IV, 364. 182. Garrod and Heighway, Garrod’s Glouc., 48. 183. GBR, F 4/3, f. 13v.; J 5/5–6. 184. Atkin and Laughlin, Glouc. and Civil War, 178; GBR, F 4/5, ff. 190v., 214, 217. For red stone from Worcs. cf. J. Rhodes, ‘The Severn flood-plain at Gloucester in the medieval and early modern periods’, Trans. BGAS 124 (2006), 17. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 181 used ‘5 loads of brick for making up the walls of the gatehouse’ and employed a carpenter there. In July 1645 it ordered a survey of it, leading to the employment of ‘pargettors’ and the use of ‘a load of tyle from [Abbot’s] Barton, crests’, boards and ‘nayles to nayle the boards down double’.185 Meanwhile the gate was blocked, and it was not until 1646–7 that the council spent £3 on ‘opening of the gates, throwing the earth from the gate and plankes for the bridge’, with further repairs to the ‘howse’ and its ‘glasse’. In 1649–51 another 12 ft (3.6 m) of planking was renewed and the brook was again scoured.186 In the emergency of August 1651 the gate was blocked again by the governor’s order. Travellers from the north had to make their way to the lower north gate, and for a short-cut the council ordered that ‘the highway be turned over a corner of Mr Brett’s grounds [i.e. Monkleighton, now a council housing estate] into Feate Lane [now Alvin Street] during such time as the said gate shall be stopped up’.187 In 1652–3 the council repaired the bridge with new sleepers, posts and rails and in 1657–8 it repaired the porter’s house with 300 tiles.188 Meanwhile in 1654 it ordered that ‘the passage through the garden of Richard Guy at the Alvin gate for horses and passengers be stopped up and the bank there be cast up’; Guy evidently occupied nos. 2–4 St Catherine Street, now the ‘Coach and Horses’, on the north-west side of the gate.189

[L2] The Small Scons, i.e. bastion This and the adjacent ramparts were built in private gardens. In 1649 a tenement and garden of the late dean and chapter adjacent in Watering Street (now St Catherine Street) were said to be 80 yards (73 m) deep from the street to the ‘Wyver brook’ but to have ‘works or fortifications of the city on the north end’.190 The site is now occupied by a factory.

N The Chapple House The bastion shown here was completed in 1643 when the governor paid hauliers for ‘drawing the peeces to the Chapell House’. Also shown is the medieval chapel of St Thomas, which had been converted after 1603 into four dwellings, bequeathed in 1621 for use as an almshouse and conveyed in 1633 to the city council.191 The council repaired it in 1644–5 with ten loads of stone from Abbot’s Barton, one load of bricks, three loads of laths and two loads of tiles; in 1646–7 with 1,000 bricks, two new doors, 1,500 lath nails and a further quantity of tiles; in 1651–2 with another 250 tiles; in 1652–3 with 615 ft (187.5 m) of rafters, 250 boards and 30 quarrels of glass; and in 1661–2 with another 1,000 bricks and 200 ‘Cottsold tiles’. Meanwhile in 1653–4 the council undertook ‘levelling the way leading by the Chappell Howse to Longford’ (now Dean’s Walk),192 a route which the bastion evidently obstructed. The site of the house, as rebuilt in the 18th century and demolished in 1937, is now occupied by nos. 28 Dean’s Walk and 7–15 Serlo Road.193

185. Dorney in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 216; GBR, F 4/5, ff. 245v., 273v.; B 3/2, p. 333. 186. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 343, 409, 429. 187. Stevenson, ‘Rec. of corp. of Glouc.’, 500–1. For Brett at Monkleighton, GA, D 936/E 12/2, ff. 195v.– 196. For modern topography, VCH Glos. IV, 168, 240, 364. 188. GBR, F 4/5, f. 479v.; F 4/6, p. 267. 189. Ibid. B 3/2, p. 807. Nos. 2–4 were let in 1663 to John Guy, presumably Richard’s heir: ibid. J 3/4, pp. 766–8. 190. GA, D 936/E 1, p. 171. 191. TNA, SP 28/229, no. 2/279; VCH Glos. IV, 317, 355. 192. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 273v., 343v., 461, 486; F 4/6, pp. 16, 472. 193. VCH Glos. IV, 317; GA, D 12792/1; Ordnance Survey Map 1:2,500, Glos. XXV.15 (1886 edn.). 182 JOHN RHODES

O St Katherine’s Scons, i.e. bastion St Catherine’s was the name of the parochial aisle in the former priory church of St Oswald.194 The bastion is shown standing at the end of the priory precinct wall, which with the Colledge Wall (i.e. the cathedral precinct wall) formed part of an inner defensive line running east to the Sallie Gate at K. In front of the bastion was the Dockham ditch, a relict channel of the Old Severn river; a bridge existed there in 1641–2 when the city council paid for ‘placing the bridge which the water had moved at St Katherine’s’.195 The bastion had evidently been built by February–May 1643 when the city council supplied fuel to a guard post at ‘St Katherine’s’, presumably the square building shown. In 1646 David Papillon noticed an ‘old court of garde’ there and recommended building a higher bastion of the kind which the plan shows with a dotted line. But in 1653 the council’s expenditure on levelling bastions included £2 for ‘the sconce at St Oswald’s and making good the way’,196 i.e. the way (now Priory Road) leading over the bridge to St Catherine’s meadow.

P [Bastion at Dockham] The plan locates this bastion on Dockham ditch, midway between the present Mount Street (formerly called Dockham) and Clare Street in what in the 18th century was wasteland (Fig. 2) and is now the front of nos. 26–8 Priory Road.197 The ditch was navigable in 1630 when Sir Richard Catchmay of Bigsweir in St Briavels rented from the city ‘the use of Dockcums & other places for the loding & landing of his millstones’; in June 1645 the council threatened to distrain Sir Richard’s ‘millstones in Docham’ for unpaid rent, and in August 1651 it ordered that ‘Docham shall be digged and levied to make it fitt to be a timber yard’. The construction of the bastion is not recorded, but it was still in place in April 1660 when the council undertook ‘worke at the bullworks at Dockam’.198 In 1642 the council paid for 59 days’ work at Dockham; since the materials used were ‘shydes’, i.e. planks,199 its principal purpose was probably to dam the outfall to the Severn at R by linking up the rampart from P to Q and thereby to flood the verie low ground so labelled on the plan. That area was described in 1646 as ‘the Little Mead and Mean Ham and other grounds being drowned from the beginning of the wars and so remaineth’. In 1646–7 the flood spread more widely and the council hired a boat ‘to send releefe … to the poor people of St Katherine’s parishe, the water being up in their howses’.200 In May 1643 the council tried to exploit the dam by letting ¾ acre (0.3 ha) at Dockham to Anthony Hathway with an obligation to build a grist mill within three years, but the lease was not taken up. In the crisis of April 1660 the council repaired ‘the dam in Dockam’ with planks and 28 ‘shides’.201

194. VCH Glos. IV, 296. 195. GBR, F 4/5, f. 194v. For Dockham ditch, VCH Glos. IV, 64, 68, 132. 196. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 216, 484v.; Atkin, ‘David Papillon’, 163. 197. It is not to be confused with an ornamental earthwork of the same size on which stood the later Mount House, 80 m SE. For Dockham, VCH Glos. IV, 366. 198. GBR, J 5/6; B 3/2, pp. 330, 627; F 4/6, p. 353. For Catchmay, VCH Glos. V, 262, 337. 199. GBR, F 4/5, f. 179v. 200. Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 384; cf. Corbet in ibid. 42; GBR, F 4/5, f. 347. 201. GBR, B 3/2, pp. 260, 262, 264; F 4/6, p. 353. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 183

Q [Rampart behind St Bartholomew’s Hospital] The rampart flanked what is described below as ‘the new ditch in the Little Meade’. It was built within the north ends of private gardens such as that of the former no. 180 (previously 43) Westgate Street, which, as let in 1650 by St Bartholomew’s hospital, had ‘seaven yards [6.4 m] of the length of the said garden for the present taken into the workes’.202 To enhance flooding, that ditch also was dammed. Having on 15 May 1643 commissioned a survey of ‘the stanks in the Little Mead, to certifie in what condicion the same are’, the city council on 7 July ordered that ‘Mr Anthony Hathway shall have £30 with lyme and stone for the making of a dam at the lower [i.e. west] end of the new ditch in the Little Meade next the Pen, hee in consideration thereof undertaking to bee at all the charges for the hewing of stone for the purpose and the making of the said dame durable so as to kepe in all the water which is to come along the said ditch’.203 In 1647–8 the council salvaged ‘a peece of timber that was swimming downe Seaverne, carried off the damme at Westgate [evidently that dam] by a floud’. The dam was dismantled in 1661–2, when the council had in stock ‘a peece of timber being the rayle of the dam at the pen’.204

R [Foreign Bridge] The two openings that are shown between cutwaters are the second and third arches from the west; the first, a flood-arch, had been blocked before 1509 when the city council let the river bank for building.205 In 1712 the second opening was navigable, but the third and fourth were silted and dry.206

S [Chains across the River Severn] These went out of use in 1651–2 when the city council took up ‘a post that was to hold a chayne to locke up the river’.207

T West Gate The turreted gate, as shown, was found by excavation in 1971–3; it was described c.1540 as ‘new builded’, but its upper floor may have been the porter’s lodge that was new in 1509.208 From October 1642 to January 1643 the city council supplied fuel to a guard post there, and in February 1644 the governor paid for construction of ‘a plateforme upon the west gate’.209 In December 1645 the council gave orders ‘to repayre the house next the west gate to be employed for the guard there’; that was a tenement adjoining on the south-east, 11 ft 3 inches wide, which St Bartholomew’s hospital had let in 1641 to a felt-maker.210 In 1645–6 the council ‘made up the

202. GA, D 3269/39(1), ff. 59v.–61; cf. D 3269 Box 30, ‘Plans of houses … within Gloucester’, plan 17. 203. GBR, B 3/2, pp. 260, 267. 204. Ibid. F 4/5, f. 374; F 4/6, p. 459. 205. Ibid. J 5/3; J 4/12, plan 9. 206. Atkyns, Ancient and Present State, pl. ‘Gloster city’; cf. Rhodes, ‘Severn flood-plain’, 14. 207. GBR, F 4/5, f. 458v. 208. Hurst, ‘Excavs. at Glouc. 1971–1973’, 51 (citing Stowe’s transcript of Leland), figs. 18–19 and pl. xiii; GBR, J 5/3. 209. GBR, F 4/5, f. 218v.; TNA, SP 28/129(5), f. 32v.; SP 28/228, no. 2/288. 210. GBR, B 3/2, p. 363; GA, D 3269/39(1), ff. 12v.–13; cf. GBR, J 3/16, ff. 33v.–34, 152v. 184 JOHN RHODES walls’ of the gatehouse with seven loads of stone from Over Vineyard, repaired the leads and renewed the hinges and lock of ‘the door that leadeth to the leads’; it spent £38, including the cost of laying two oaks, oak timbers and planks over a broken arch of the bridge.211 On the north side of the gate the earthwork salient shown in the plan stood in Pen Meadow and was evidently completed before the siege, when the defenders used a cannon or ‘great gunne at the Pen’ from at least 10 August to 2 September 1643. The earthwork had been levelled by February 1654 when the council gave orders ‘to survey the Penn to sett out its bounds from the Little Mead’.212 A drawbridge, as shown, was being built by the governor in February 1644 but was still unfinished in the following October when the city council sought £30 of a Parliamentary contribution towards it.213 The council’s stewards later completed it for £47, using 23 loads of stone from Over Vineyard, 18 loads of sand, 22 horse loads of lime, 18 loads of timber, 15 cwt 24 lb (774 kg) of iron bought from Alderman William Singleton, 128 lb (58 kg) of long spikes bought from John Melle and two ‘horse lockes’, i.e. padlocks; William Woodward and John Tomkins charged £12 for working the iron, Cesar Godwin charged 4s. 6d. for directing them and Robert Rodway charged £1 for masonry.214 In 1645–6 the drawbridge was raised to pass an ‘aple boat & pinnace’, in 1647–8 it was repaired, ‘being otherwise unpassable’, in 1648–9 it was raised to pass trows, in 1649 it needed further repair ‘to prevent danger to travellers’, and in 1649–50 107 ft (32 m) of its planking was renewed.215 Finally in 1650–1 the council repaired its masonry supports with bricks216 and renewed the drawbridge completely. The council’s statement of expenditure, as submitted on 30 August 1651 through the defence commissioners, was as follows:

The charge of the rebuilding the drawbridge at the west gate £ s. d.

Fowerteene tunn of timber for swayes [i.e. levers], the main posts, rowles [i.e. rollers], laces [i.e. braces], foreposts, grown[d] sells, jeyse [i.e. joists] supporters & plankes 18 0 0 For the squaring and sawing of the jeyse & plankes & the charge about it 4 0 0 The carpenters’ worke, for framing & setting of it up as much as concerneth their worke 16 0 0 Pin timber 10 0 Nayles 2 10 0 Fower iron chaynes, 14 iron bolts, 6 iron staples, 4 iron great joints for gim[b]ells, twoe great iron gudge[on]s, 4 large iron hoops 13 6 8 For labourers for carrying of the timber to the place & making scaffolds & other extraordinaries217 6 6 8 60 13 4

211. Ibid. F 4/5, f. 312. 212. Dorney in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 211, 224; GBR, B 3/2, p. 754. For Pen Meadow, GBR, J 4/12, plan 10. 213. Backhouse in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 308; GBR, B 3/2, p. 317. 214. GBR, F 4/5, ff. 265, 275. 215. Ibid. ff. 304, 367, 374v., 387, 407; B 3/2, p. 502. 216. Ibid. F 4/5, f. 435v. 217. Ibid. H 2/3, pp. 108–9 The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 185

In fact this was an estimated account for work in progress, because the stewards’ accounts for the year to Michaelmas 1651 show the cost as £109 including expenditure on ‘brasses’, i.e. brass bearings. The bridge was not erected until the year following, when the council spent a further £11 on 11 tons of timber, £5 on labour, £3 on haulage, £1 on two more ‘brasses’ and £5 on cables and ropes, including ‘ropes that were broken about the reareing of the west drawbridge’.218

[T1] The Key In 1642–3 the city council supplied fuel to a guard post at the quay.219 ‘An halfe moon upon the key head’ was initially built in 1643; the plan shows it after 1644–5 when the city council spent £78 at the ‘kay heade’ under the superintendence of Samuel Baldwin, using 32 iron cramps, 36 lb (16 kg) of lead and 139 loads of stone of which 87 came from Over Vineyard, 17 from Abbot’s Barton and 8 from the cathedral.220 Finally in August 1651 the commissioners for defence ordered that ‘all the draught horses in this city shall be imployed for halling of timber to make a brest worke upon the key’.221

APPENDIX

Gloucester’s Triumph at the Solemn Proclamation of King Charles the Second on Tuesday the 15th day of May 1660: London, Printed by J.C. for H. Fletcher at the Three Gilt Cups in St Paul’s Churchyard, 1660 (from GA, D 12682) (The narrative is interspersed with expressions of the city’s loyalty which are here omitted. Punctuation is modernized.)

Noble Sir, The solemnity used by the city of Gloucester on Tuesday last, at the proclamation of His Majesty King Charles the Second, was accompanied with such demonstration of real affection to the business they went about … that I could not but take the opportunity that is now offered to acquaint you with a true narrative thereof. The manner, thus. In expectation of such an opportunity the mayor of the city, Col. Toby Jordan, gave orders for the erecting of a scaffold before the market- place,222 which could not be finished before the proclamation came down. But being come, on Saturday last he sent for the lieutenants, ensigns and serjeants of his own regiment, and also those of Col Twiselton’s regiment now in the city, together with the drums of both regiments, to give publick notice in every street at market-time by beat of drum, that the Tuesday following was appointed to proclaim the king; and to the same purpose some of the militia troops of the county were also invited to attend the solemnity on the day appointed. By that time the day came, the scaffold was finished, being very large, and parted (as it were) into two rooms, the first being lower than the second by three ascents, and both accommodated with utensils suitable for the more stately sitting of each man according to his quality; and the whole scaffold (both above and

218. Ibid. F 4/5, ff. 435v., 456v., 458v., 459v. 219. Ibid. F 4/5, f. 219. 220. Corbet in Washbourn, Bibliotheca, 52; GBR, F 4/5, ff. 276–9. 221. Stevenson, ‘Rec. of corp. of Glouc.’, 501. 222. Probably at the north end of the wheat market in Southgate Street, where Oliver Cromwell was proclaimed protector in 1657: Stevenson, ‘Rec. of corp. of Glouc.’, 512–14. 186 JOHN RHODES below) was round about hung with yellow cloath, as being the colour of the militia regiment for the city and the county commanded by Mr Mayor. The place behind the mayor’s chair was hung with arras adorned with His Majesty’s atchievement royal. Divers other preparations there were. For the common sort, the water was turned out of the three publick conduits of the city and wine was placed in the cisterns. Besides which, there were runlets223 of wine and cakes provided for each company and troop; both the city and some of the gentry contributed their assistance largely this way. The noise of this publick notice of the day, and the preparations which were made, drew a mighty concourse of people from all parts on the day appointed, men, women and children, many of the gentry, ministry, and people of all qualities, to the number of scarce so few as ten thousand… The day being come, and it being lecture day, and the streets strowed with green, the market- places adorned with garlands and the King’s Boord,224 beside such ornaments, cloathed round about with white cloath, the mayor appointed all the masters and wardens of the several guilds and fraternities with their streamers and trophies belonging to each company to wait upon him, and the aldermen and common council (himself and the aldermen, sheriffs and sheriffs’ peers in scarlet, and all the rest in their several garbs befitting their estate and degree), to the cathedral church with trumpets sounding, and the several constables with the staves of their office walking before, each arrayed with white scarffs tyed with purple and green. Whither when they were come, Mr Bartholomew, minister of Cambden (whose lecture-turn it was) preached an excellent and seasonable sermon on Luke 7. 21, 22, When the strong man keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth the spoile … Sermon being ended, the mayor in the like equipage as before returned home. And a while after, the sheriffs with their tipstaves and the aldermen and others of the common council fetch’d Mr Mayor from his own house to the tolsey; by which time nine companies of foot were marched from the place of their randezvouz into the city and drawn up to the most convenient places for the giving their martial euges225 to this work; and a little after, three troops of horse drawn up with such convenience as the straightness of the place could afford. All things being thus in a readiness, the mayor in the like equipage as before marched from the tolsey to the scaffold (which besides the ornaments before mentioned was now adorned with six garlands after the form of crowns, born up with long white staves in the hands of six virgins of the gentry in six several places), whither and where he was attended by many of the gentry of the county, the aldermen and common council of the city in their respective robes, a very considerable number of grave divines, the city ministers being in their gowns. All being seated or placed as the room would give leave, the trumpets sounded again and again, and at length, O yes being made by Mr Sheriff Scudamore several times, Mr Sheriff Snell read the proclamation, and the senior sheriff recited it again after him with a distinct and audible voice. Which being done, Mr Mayor standing up upon his chair drew his martial sword in the sight of all the people for a token of his readiness to use it in defence of His Majesty, and for a signal to all the rest of the officers and souldiers to do the like in that nick of time, and to the companies in sight to give fire. And they were no whit behind in their duty; for instantly this signal was followed with the like by all in armes, loud acclamations of all sorts, crying out ‘God save King Charles the Second, long live King Charles’, and exact volleys of shot from the several companies and troops in such order as was before devised, and these reiterated; so that we were in the midst of fire and smoak for a long season (but without danger, and with such rejoycings of all sorts as is unspeakable). When things grew somewhat calm,

223. i.e. rundlets, casks. 224. i.e. butter market: VCH Glos. IV, 250. 225. i.e. acclamations. The Civil War Defences of Gloucester 187 another O yes was made, and the declaration of the honorable House of Commons was read, which was seconded with the like acclamations to His Majestie’s welfare, and many volleys of shot, which continued all the while they were on the scaffold, and there they stayed no small time. For unto them were brought wine and cakes, where they rejoiced publickly, whilst much was distributed to gentry and strangers in houses, while the conduits ran claret, and the souldiers in their several companies and troops had their shares brought to them. This done, several companies and troops marched by, giving their several volleys, and the assembly was dismist. By this time the day was far spent, the bells everywhere ringing and bonfires everywhere flaming; in one of which the States’ arms vanished into smoak. All the solemnity was concluded with fireworks, rockets of many sorts, flying and running, an excellent peal of reporters, and at last the wheel went round … The Lord preserve His Majesty long to reign over us, and return him to his Parliament and people with honour, and direct the counsels of both the honourable Houses of Parliament that there may be peace and truth in our days. So prays

Your humble orator.

Gloucester, May 16, 1660.