The siege of Basing House near Basingstoke in Hampshire, was a Parliamentarian victory late in the First English Civil War. Whereas the title of the event may suggest a single siege, there were in fact three major engagements. John Paulet, 5th Marquess of Winchester owned the House and as a committed Royalist garrisoned it in support of King Charles I, as it commanded the road from London to the west through Salisbury.
The first engagement was in November 1643, when Sir William Waller at the head of an army of about 7,000 attempted to take Basing House by direct assault. After three failed attempts it became obvious to him that his troops lacked the necessary resolve, and with winter fast approaching Waller retreated to a more friendly location.
Early in 1644 the Parliamentarians attempted to arrange the secret surrender of Basing House with Lord Edward Paulet, the Marquess of Winchester's younger brother, but the plot was discovered.
Parliamentary forces continued the siege by garrisons on the static approaches to Basing House to stop the Royalists from foraging and relief convoys from getting through. Then on 4 June 1644, Colonel Richard Norton of Southwick Park, using Parliamentary troops from the Hampshire garrisons, closely invested Basing House and attempted to starve the garrison into submission. This siege was broken on 12 September 1644 when a relief column under the command of Colonel Henry Gage broke through parliamentary lines. Having resupplied the garrison he did not tarry but left the next day and returned to Royalist lines. The Parliamentarians reinvested the place but by the middle of November threatened by a Royalist army and his besieging force decimated by disease Waller ended the investment. Five days later on 20 November Gage arrived with fresh supplies.
The final siege took place in October 1645. Oliver Cromwell joined parliamentary forces besieging the House with his own men and a siege train of heavy guns. They quickly breached the defences and on the morning of 14 October 1645 the House was successfully stormed. As the garrison had refused to surrender before the assault—during the two years of the siege, upwards of 2,000 Parliamentarians were slain.—the attackers, who had little sympathy for those they perceived to be Roman Catholics, killed about a quarter of the 400 members of the garrison, including ten priests (six of whom were killed during the assault and four others held to be executed later).
During the assault the House caught fire and was badly damaged. What remained was "totally slighted and demolished" by order of Parliament, with the stones of the House offered free to anyone who would cart them away.
Prelude
Sir William Paulet, created Baron St. John of Basing by Henry VIII, and Earl of Wiltshire and Marquess of Winchester by Edward VI, "converted Basing House from a feudal castle into a magnificent and princely residence."
A good description of the House as it stood before the siege is found in the Marquess's own Diary. Basing House stood on a rising ground, its form circular, encompassed with brick ramparts lined with earth, and a very deep ditch but dry. The lofty Gate-house, with four Turrets, looking Northwards, on the right hand thereof, without the ditch, a goodly building containing two fair courts; before them was the Grange, severed by a wall and common road, etc. Some idea of the magnitude of the place may be found when it is remembered that from a survey made in 1798 the area of the works including gardens and entrenchments, covered about fourteen and a half acres.
The siege, which has rendered the name of Basing House famous, commenced in August, 1643, when it was held for the King by John Paulet, 5th Marquess of Winchester, who retired hither in the vain hope that "integrity and privacy might have here preserved his peace" but in this he was deceived, and was compelled to stand upon his guard, which with his gentlemen armed with six muskets he did so well that twice he repulsed the attempts of the "Roundheads" to take possession. On 31 July 1643, the King, on the petition of the Marquess, sent 100 musketeers, under Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Peake, to form a garrison. Within a few hours of the arrival of these troops, colonels Harvey and Richard Norton attempted a surprise attack, but were beaten off and retreated the same night to Farnham.
The Marquess, who had taken out a commission as Colonel and Governor, at once set to work with the aid of Colonel Peake (appointed Governor of the House under the Marquess) directing Peake's troops, and a reinforcement of 150 men, to strengthen the works, as rumours had reached him that Sir William Waller was marching towards the House with a strong force.
Among the inhabitants of the House during the siege were a number of notable men of letters and the arts, some of them were Royalist soldiers and others as Royalist refugees from London. William Faithorne, a pupil of Robert Peake's father was one of the besieged, and has left a clever satirical engraving of Hugh Peters (an enemy at the gate), as well as many other fine portraits. Another, still more famous engraver in the House, namely Wenceslaus Hollar, (see Virtue's Life of him) engraved a portrait of the Marquess. Other inmates were Inigo Jones, the great architect, and Thomas Fuller, author of the "Worthies of England" who is said to have been engaged on that work at the very time of the Siege, and to have been much interrupted by the noise of cannon.J. Jefferson, Sketch of the History of Holy Ghost Chapel, at Basingstoke in Hampshire, 2nd edition (J. Lucas, Basingstoke 1808), p. 19 (Google). Another man of letters found shelter at Basing House, where he lost his life, viz. Lieut.-Colonel Thomas Johnson, M.D., the editor of Gerard's Herbal, and author of several botanical works. Captain William Robbins, a prominent comic actor in the Jacobean and Caroline eras, was killed during the siege.
There is little doubt that a scarcity of ammunition, as well as of provisions, was the cause of some embarrassment to the Marquess in his defence of the House. In the first year of the siege (12 October 1643) the King issued a warrant to the following effect :
This having been communicated to the Marquess he wrote as follows:
Sir William Waller, who was more active than the Earl of Essex, was at that time the favourite of those in the Long Parliament who believed that greater energy would produce more successful results. On 4 November 1643 he placed at the head of a new South-Eastern Association, comprising the counties of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire. What supplies could be procured were hurried forward to his headquarters, and on 7 November he set out to besiege Basing House—Loyalty House, as its owner loved to call it—the fortified mansion of the Catholic John, Marquess of Winchester, now garrisoned by a party of London Royalists. Basing House commanded the road to the west through Salisbury, as Donnington Castle, now garrisoned for the King, commanded the more northern road to the west through Newbury.
First siege
On 6 November 1643 Waller, with 7,000 horse and foot surrounded the House, where they remained for nine days, during which time they made three ineffectual attempts to carry the place by storm, but were each time beaten off with heavy losses. During these assaults only two of the garrison were slain.
Waller's first attack upon Basing House was frustrated by a storm of wind and rain. His second attempt came to nothing from a cause far more ominous of disaster. His troops had long remained unpaid, and a mutinous spirit was easily aroused amongst them. On 12 November a Westminster regiment refused to obey orders, and two days later the London trained bands, bidden to advance to the assault, shouted "Home! home!", and deserted in a body. It was impossible to continue the siege under such conditions, and Waller was compelled to retreat to Parliamentary controlled Farnham. At this juncture the King's troops, under Lord Hopton, marched to the House and assisted in strengthening the works.
Nothing of importance appears to have occurred during the winter months which followed. The House was still short of arms and on 2 February 1644 the King despatched a second letter containing a warrant for the same amount of "powder and match, proportionable" as before, together with sixty "brown bills". A third letter from the King, similarly addressed, dated from Oxford, 13 May 1644, gave orders for a thousand weight of match and forty muskets, "to be delivered to such as shall be appointed by the Marquess of Winchester to receive the same, for the use of our garrison at Basinge Castle".
1644 plot In early 1644 Basing House was in the custody of Lord Charles Paulet, the brother of the Marquess of Winchester, and it was believed in London that Paulet was prepared to betray his trust.
Amongst those who took part in the council of war was Sir Richard Grenville, a younger brother of Sir Bevil. In the historian S.R. Gardiner's opinion "A selfish and unprincipled man, [who] had gone through the evil schooling of the Irish War", and, falling into the hands of the Parliamentarians upon his landing at Liverpool, he had declared himself willing to embrace their cause. His military experience gained him the appointment of lieutenant-general of Waller's horse. He was not a man to feel at home in an atmosphere of Puritanism, and on 3 March 1644 he fled to Oxford, carrying with him the secret of Paulet's treachery. Grenvile's name was attached with every injurious epithet to a gallows in London. While at Oxford he was regarded as a pattern of loyalty.
Paulet was arrested and sent before a court-martial. Eventually, however, he received a pardon from the King, who, as Gardiner conjectured, was unwilling to send the brother of so staunch a supporter as the Marquess of Winchester to an ignominious death.
Second siege An extract from a letter sent by Waller to Hopton, who had been his companion in arms abroad, relative to the part he was to take in these wars, may to some extent account for his want of success in his three attempts upon Basing House, he says:
In the spring of 1644, the Parliamentarians, having met with so many reverses in trying to take the place by storm, set themselves to the task of starving the garrison out, and for this purpose strong bodies of their troops were quartered at Farnham, Odiham, Greywell, and Basingstoke, who patrolled the adjacent country to prevent the taking in of provisions.
Matters appear to have continued in this condition until 4 June, when Norton came a second time upon the scene with a force drawn from the neighbouring Parliamentarian garrisons, and closely invested the place, he having, by means of information received from a deserter, two days previously defeated a party of the besieged at Odiham. This force consisted at first of a regiment of horse (his foot not having arrived), and were quartered in Basingstoke at night, all avenues by which food could be taken into the House being closely watched.
On 11 June, Colonel Morley's regiment of six colours of blues, Sir Richard Onslow's of five of red, with two of white from Farnham, and three fresh troops of horse, fetched in by Norton's regiment, drew up before the House, on the south towards Basingstoke, and in the evening some were sent into quarters at Sherfield and others to Andwell and Basingstoke.