Although Edward I's conquest of Wales in the late thirteenth century had
effectively ended much of the castle’s original purpose, it had been
kept in good order and was periodically refurbished, especially in the
sixteenth century, when it became one of the seats of the crown’s
Council of the Marches. By the 1640s it was the residence of the aged
Edward, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, who lived in state in a grand stone
and brick mansion he had built twenty years before in the middle ward.
However, the entire castle seems to have been in good order and
defensible at the time of the civil war, and it was described by one of
the parliamentarian commanders, Sir John Meldrum, as ‘one of the
goodliest and strongest places that I ever looked upon’.[l] Yet the
parliamentarians were able to capture the fortress with remarkable ease.
Herbert had refused to allow a royalist garrison to be installed and
instead the castle was held by a small personal retinue, nominally for
the king but in reality as a neutral base. Accordingly, when the
parliamentarians approached the castle and demanded its surrender,
Herbert had no stomach for a fight and swiftly entered negotiations. The
parliamentarians offered as inducement both ‘a large sum’ of money and
assurances that Herbert’s possessions, including all his ‘household
stuff, books, trunks and writings’, would be undamaged and would be
conveyed under guard to Herbert’s London house, if he so wished.[2]
These carrots were backed up by a stick, for during the night of the 5th
the parliamentarians fixed petards to the gates to the middle ward and
demanded the castle’s immediate surrender, though repeating their
pledges that no harm would be done to anyone or anything within the
castle and that Herbert’s books and other goods would not be damaged or
taken – evidently he was particularly concerned about the fate of his
library. By 6 September Montgomery castle was in parliament’s hands.
The new parliamentary garrison, under Myddleton, was probably aware from
the outset that the royalists would not allow parliament unhindered
occupation of such a key stronghold and would attempt to recapture
Montgomery at the earliest opportunity. Indeed, almost immediately,
royalist commanders in the region began preparing a counter-attack,
gathering forces from Ludlow, Shrewsbury and other smaller garrisons
which they held in Shropshire. This combined royalist army, numbering
perhaps 2,500 men and commanded by Sir Michael Ernley, approached
Montgomery on 8 September. They surprised and scattered a large part of
the parliamentarian garrison, which had ventured out on a foraging
expedition. Mytton managed to get his 500 foot back into the castle,
while Myddleton’s horse escaped towards Welshpool. Ernley’s royalists
then set about taking the castle by formal siege, apparently digging
siegeworks – earthwork banks and ditches – around the castle.
It was now the turn of the parliamentarians to react, for they were
unwilling to see their newly won and highly prized possession fall to
the king. Myddleton was instrumental in persuading other parliamentarian
commanders in the region to lend support, and by mid September a
combined force of around 3000 troops, led by Myddleton, Sir William
Fairfax, Sir William Brereton and Meldrum, who was in overall command,
was en route to Montgomery to lift the siege. Meanwhile the royalists
had been reinforced by further troops from North Wales and Cheshire,
including remnants of the forces which had been brought over from
Ireland the previous winter, only to be mauled and dispersed at Nantwich
in January 1644. These reinforcements were led by John, Lord Byron, who
took command of all the royalist forces at Montgomery, now numbering
somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 men.
Like most civil war engagements, the battle which was fought outside
Montgomery on 18 September is quite poorly recorded. As usual, no
contemporary map or plan of the battle survives and instead historians
rely very heavily on the accounts given in the letters of some of the
key commanders – in this case, the parliamentarians Brereton, Myddleton
and Meldrum, and the royalists Ernley and Arthur Trevor – supplemented
by the accounts which subsequently appeared in several of the weekly
newspapers. Sadly, no account written by the royalist commander, Byron,
has been found. From these surviving accounts, it is possible to
reconstruct something of the course of the battle.
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The parliamentary relieving army approached Montgomery from the north on
the evening of 17 September and spent the night ‘in the field that was
most advantageous to us’, probably the low, fairly flat ground flanking
the river Camlad.[3] In the process, they secured an unnamed bridge,
probably spanning the Camlad. Royalist troops had made no attempt to
hold that ground and had instead pulled back. Leaving a small force to
man the siegeworks, Byron had deployed the bulk of his army ‘upon the
mountain above the castle, a place of great advantage for them’[4] –
almost certainly the hill immediately west of and overlooking the
castle, crowned by the remains of the Iron Age hill fort. Battle began
on the 18th when the royalists, noticing that roughly one third of the
parliamentary horse had moved off to forage, swooped down and attacked
their weakened enemies on the plain below. The parliamentary army was
probably drawn up on the low, rolling ground north-north-east of the
town. The remains of Offa’s Dyke and the Camlad offered some protection
to their left wing and rear. Their right wing was more exposed and
vulnerable to outflanking, which might perhaps enable the royalists to
capture Salt Bridge, where the Welshpool road crosses the Camlad, so
cutting off the parliamentarians’ line of retreat. Indeed, several
accounts refer to determined royalist attempts to capture a vital
(though unnamed) bridge, Meldrum writing that the royalists attempted
‘to break through our forces and to make themselves masters of a bridge
we had gained the night before, which would have cut off the passage of
our retreat’.[5]
The initial parliamentary response to Byron’s attack, a volley of shot,
was delivered too soon, the bullets falling short of the advancing
royalists. Unhindered, the king’s men closed on their enemies, firing
their initial volley at closer range and to greater effect. The royalist
horse threw back their opposite numbers and the royalist foot then
gained the upper hand over the parliamentary foot in a close quarter
fight – ‘it came to push of pike’.[6] But when victory seemed assured,
the royalist advance was first halted and then reversed. The
parliamentarian commanders ascribed this change of fortune to the
intervention of God and to the resolve of their men to hold their
ground.
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The River Camlad, shown here running low and slow during
a dry summer, crosses
the low, flat land to the north of
Montgomery.
The rock-cut ditch which guarded the
entrance to the middle ward of the castle.
The original slots for the draw bridge can
still be seen on the far side of the ditch
Beyond, almost nothing now remains of the gatehouse into the middle
ward.
The middle ward of the castle is now
almost bare, for the very lowest courses survive of the various medieval
masonry chambers which once stood within the enclosure. Even Herbert's
stone and brick mansion of the early seventeenth century
has largely gone.
Rather more survives of the inner
gatehouse which guarded admission to
the inner ward. Beyond it, to the left,
stand the ruins of the mural tower which protected the castle's main
well and
water supply.
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According to Meldrum, the parliamentary foot ‘carried themselves more
like lions than men’;[7] other newspaper accounts suggest that it was
the parliamentarian horse regrouping and counter-attacking which turned
the tide of battle. A royalist account alleges that part of the king’s
horse quite unnecessarily turned tail and galloped from the field
through sheer cowardice, an action which understandably unhinged their
colleagues. Possibly the return of that part of the parliamentary horse
which was initially caught away foraging helped turn the tide. Seeing
their colleagues triumphant on the field below, Mytton’s garrison
emerged from the castle and overwhelmed the small royalist force left
manning the trenches. The engagement ended in complete parliamentary
victory and with surviving royalist forces in flight. The
parliamentarians had lost about 40 dead, the royalists 500 dead and a
further 1500 captured. Like most civil war battles, it had been a brief
affair – the engagement lasted barely an hour.
ln some ways the battle of Montgomery was very significant, for it not
only secured parliamentarian control of this key frontier town and
castle but also significantly weakened royalism in the area. Royalist
regiments and garrisons had been greatly depleted to supply Byron’s army
and the crushing defeat, resulting in loss of men and supplies,
undermined the royalist hold on Shrewsbury, Chester, Liverpool and other
bases. For a time Myddleton was left in command of the new garrison at
Montgomery and he used it as a base for capturing Powis castle, outside
Welshpool, in October, and Abbey Cwmhir, in Radnorshire, in December. By
the end of the year Myddleton had established a parliamentary enclave in
this part of mid Wales, centred on the castles of Montgomery and Powis,
strengthened by a handful of other outposts and supported by some of the
local gentry who had abandoned their former royalist allegiance. On the
other hand, the parliamentary high command in London did not accord the
Welsh theatre a very high priority at this stage, perhaps rightly
judging that royalism in the Midlands and the south of England presented
a greater threat. Accordingly, with only limited men and money
available, Myddleton was not able to extend parliamentary control far
into mid or north Wales. Not until 1645-6 did royalist control over most
of Wales falter and collapse.
Neither town nor castle of Montgomery played a significant role in the
closing stages of the civil war. In summer 1645 parliament briefly lost
control of the castle for its then governor, Sir John Price flirted with
royalism, only to return to the parliamentarian fold on hearing news of
the king’s defeat at Naseby. Montgomery played no part in the renewed
civil war of 1648. None the less, in 1649 parliament ordered the castle
to be slighted, selectively demolished in order to render it
indefensible. The operation was approved by Richard, Lord Herbert, who
had succeeded his father a few months before, and he kept a detailed
financial account of the work, one of the most detailed accounts of a
post-civil war slighting to have survived. The account reveals that this
was no crude smash and flatten operation, but rather a careful selective
demolition, in the course of which valuable or reusable materials were
salvaged. Large scale work took place between late June and early
October 1649, employing at its height 150 general labourers as well as
miners and craftsmen. Timber, tiles and glass were carefully removed and
stored. The work cost £675. Although this account does not reveal how
much was made from selling the salvaged materials, similar accounts of
the demolition of Wallingford and Pontefract castles suggest that a
healthy profit could be expected.[8]
Montgomery had not endured heavy sufferings during the civil war. The
town seems to have changed hands quickly, with little fighting or
bloodshed, while the castle had fallen to parliament by negotiated
surrender and an orderly hand-over. However, surviving accounts suggest
that Montgomery had not escaped plunder and financial loss. Some time
towards the end of the civil war Lord Herbert drew up an account
claiming that he had lost something approaching £5000 because of the
war, through the actions of both the royalist and parliamentarian armies
in plundering his estates of livestock and timber and through
non-payment of rents from his tenants who had themselves been plundered
and rendered unable to pay. Herbert’s papers also include a similar
claim drawn up by or in the name of the inhabitants of the town,
claiming losses totalling over £3000. Seventy-five townsmen, from the
bailiffs and rector down to shopkeepers and ordinary householders,
alleged damage to their houses and losses of cash, personal and
household goods, grain and cattle, perpetrated by both the royalist and
parliamentarian armies in September 1644. Although doubtless
exaggerated, the claims give an indication of the level of damage which
could be inflicted in just a few days when rival armies fought for
control of a town and its castle.
The remains of Montgomery castle stand on the lofty ridge above the
town. Recently excavated and consolidated by Cadw, they are open to the
public as an open access site. The castle was built on a long, narrow
limestone ridge, which runs almost due north-south. The site was
protected by steep cliffs to the north and east, and by a shallow valley
to the west. Only from the south could it be approached along fairly
level ground. The castle defences therefore focus upon hindering attack
from the south. An outer barbican, comprising earthworks, a natural
rocky outcrop and some masonry walls, is poorly preserved. Next comes
the middle ward, its southern entrance protected by a rock cut ditch and
a gatehouse. Finally one approaches the inner ward, its southern
entrance again protected by a rock cut ditch which separates it from the
middle ward and its own large gatehouse. The outer walls of the two
wards and their gatehouses are ruinous but survive to a good height. Not
so the internal walls which formed the succession of chambers – halls,
lodgings, kitchens, bakehouses, stores, a chapel and so on – which were
erected within the two wards. Even Herbert’s mansion of the 1620s has
largely disappeared. The slighting of 1649 seems to have focused on
destroying the barbican and other outer works, filling the two rock cut
ditches protecting the middle and inner wards and rendering the two
gatehouses indefensible. The recent excavations included laboriously
emptying the two ditches. In the course of excavating the inner ditch,
several items of obsolete civil war armour were discovered, together
with four human skeletons – three males, one teenage female – who
perhaps were buried and perished by accident in the course of the 1649
demolition and in-filling.
At the same time as he established his new castle, Henry III planted a
new town in its shadow, encouraging traders to settle, in part to serve
and supply the castle and its royal garrison. A royal charter of 1227
allowed the burgesses to enclose the town with a ditch and other
defences. For a time, the main defence seems to have been a timber
pallisade, but in the 1270s it was replaced by a complete circuit of
stone walls, with at least four defended gateways at the principal
entrances to the town. We know from Speed’s map of the town and from
other sources that the wall and gates were ruinous before the time of
the civil wars and today no masonry survives above ground. However, the
earthwork bank and ditch, upon and beside which the town walls stood,
can still be traced encircling the town. Curiously even though the
steeply-sided hill crowned by the castle defended the west side of the
town, the bank, ditches and wall were laboriously built on the west side
as well. Running on a north-south alignment about 100 yards west of the
castle, this is one of the best preserved sections of the earthwork
defences.
The original medieval street plan of the town, clearly shown in Speed’s
drawing, survives almost unchanged today. Although rich in Georgian
brick buildings, notably the town hall and the buildings fronting Broad
Street, in many cases the eighteenth century frontages conceal the
earlier, timber framed buildings behind. Although subsequently altered,
a few of Montgomery’s buildings still clearly show their pre-eighteenth
century origins, including the pair of half-timbered houses, once The
Plume of Feathers, in Arthur Street, and, further along, the seventeenth
century timber-framed Old Bell, now the local museum and exhibition
centre. Even more obviously pre-modern is the Church of St Nicholas
which dominates the townscape. Founded in the 1220s, but with the two
transepts and present chancel added later in the thirteenth century,
most of the church remains in essence medieval, despite several
nineteenth century restorations. The exception is the tower, entirely
rebuilt in 1816. The principal glories of the church include: the
fifteenth and sixteenth century nave roof; the twelve medieval
choirstalls, nine of them with misericords, in the chancel; the two
wooden screens, the western one of the early fifteenth century built for
the church, the eastern one from nearby Chirbury Priory and re-erected
here when the priory was dissolved; the wooden rood loft, again not
original to this church, but probably also saved from Chirbury Priory
and installed here; and the two alabaster recumbent effigies of men in
armour, now resting on the floor of the south transept, probably of Sir
Edmund Mortimer (d 1408) and of an unknown figure dating from c 1500.
But of greater relevance to the story of Montgomery in the civil war is
the magnificent Elizabethan canopied tomb which occupies the south wall
of the south transept. Erected around 1600, it commemorates Richard
Herbert (d 1596) and his wife, who in fact remarried, lived until 1627
and is buried elsewhere; beneath the grand figures of the couple,
Richard reappears in cadaverous form. The couple’s eight children
portrayed in arches behind the main figures include Edward, Lord Herbert
of Chirbury, the feeble defender of the castle in 1644, and his younger
brother George Herbert, the poet. The church, though rather dark inside,
is generally unlocked and open to the public.
Although a modern housing development has begun to eat into the former
open land on the north-eastern fringes of the old town, the land beyond
remains undeveloped, gently rolling farmland stretching to the slight
valley of the Camlad and the rising ground beyond. It was over this land
that the battle of Montgomery was probably fought. As the fortunes of
the two sides ebbed and flowed, with first the royalists and then the
parliamentarians gaining the upper hand, it is likely that fighting
ranged widely over this area, north-north-east of the town and within a
mile of it – that is, in the area between the town and the Camlad. Much
of the battle probably took place around or to the east of the road from
Montgomery to Forden and on to Welshpool (the B4388). The course of this
very prominent, largely straight road probably dates back to late
eighteenth century turnpiking, though it is likely that it superseded an
earlier road or track running away north from the town. From the north
wall of the castle, or the northern end of the promontory upon which the
castle stands, the visitor is afforded a splendid view across the entire
battlefield and surrounding landscape. A Cromwell Association panel,
giving an account of the battle, stands at the northern end of the
promontory, beyond the north wall of the castle.
Notes.
1. J R Phillips, Memoirs of the Civil War in Wales and the Marches (2
vols, London, 1874), II, 206.
2. W J Smith, The Herbert Correspondence (Cardiff, 1963), p. 115.
3. Phillips, Memoirs, II, 203.
4. Phillips, Memoirs, II, 203.
5. Phillips, Memoirs, II, 205.
6. Phillips, Memoirs, II, 201.
7. Phillips, Memoirs, II, 205.
8. M W Thompson, The Decline of the Castle (Cambridge, 1987), appendix
4.
A note on sources.
All the main accounts of the battle – by Brereton, Myddleton, Meldrum,
Ernley and Trevor – are reproduced by J.R. Phillips, Memoirs of the
Civil War in Wales and the Marches (2 vols, London, 1874), II, 201-9.
W.J. Smith, The Herbert Correspondence (Cardiff, 1963), pp. 114-19,
reproduces the accounts of the circumstances in which, and the terms
upon which, Herbert surrendered the castle, together with slightly later
correspondence by or about Herbert and the two accounts of the alleged
losses of Herbert and of the townspeople. Most of the weekly newspapers
give accounts of the battle and its aftermath in their editions of the
latter half of September 1644; they are to be found in the British
Library, Thomason Tracts. Many of the documents concerning the events of
September 1644 were gathered together and printed, with a commentary, in
the journal Montgomeryshire Collections 22 (1888). The financial account
of the slighting of the castle in 1649 is reproduced as appendix 4 of
M.W. Thompson, The Decline of the Castle (Cambridge, 1987). Although
some of its details have been superseded by the recent archaeological
investigation, the standard guidebook by J.D.K. Lloyd & J.K. Knight,
Montgomery Castle (2nd edn, Cardiff, 1981) is still valuable; it
usefully reproduces as appendix 2 extracts from the Herbert
correspondence relating to the 1649 slighting which first appeared in
W.J. Smith’s book. The fruits of the recent archaeological work at the
castle have been published in two substantial articles by J.K. Knight,
‘Excavations at Montgomery Castle, Part I: Documentary Evidence,
Structures and Excavated Features’ and ‘Excavations at Montgomery
Castle, Part II: Metal Finds’, in Archaeologia Cambrensis 141 (1992),
pp. 97-180, and 142 (1993), pp. 182-242 respectively. Two brief, modern
assessments of the battle have appeared: D.E. Evans, Montgomery, 1644 (n.p.,
n.d., c 1984-5), and A. Abram, The Battle of Montgomery, 1644 (Bristol,
1993).
By Dr Peter Gaunt |