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 LINES OF THE Fig. 2. Map of Hall and Pinnell (1790 edn) showing an unexecuted design for defences 17th-century type mistakenly labelled ‘ (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.