The siege of Gloucester took place between 10 August and 5 September 1643 during the First English Civil War. It was part of a Royalist campaign led by King Charles I to take control of the Severn Valley from the Parliamentarians. Following the costly storming of Bristol on 26 July, Charles invested Gloucester in the hope that a show of force would prompt it to surrender quickly and without bloodshed. When the city, under the governorship of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Massey, refused, the Royalists attempted to bombard it into submission. Massey adopted an aggressive defence, and the Royalist positions outside the city were regularly disrupted by Parliamentarian raids. The Royalist artillery proved inadequate for the task of siege work and, faced with a shortage of ammunition, the besiegers attempted to breach the city walls by mining. With Royalist miners about to reach the city's east gate and the defenders critically low on gunpowder, a Parliamentarian army led by the Earl of Essex arrived and forced Charles to lift the siege.
Prelude
Following the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Edgehill in October 1642, King Charles I's control of the south was limited to Cornwall, Wales and the Marches, and a pocket of the Thames Valley around Oxford, where he based his wartime capital. The ruling Puritan elite of Gloucester ensured the city of some 5,000 inhabitants would be from the outset a staunchly Parliamentarian stronghold in the struggle against an anti-Puritan King and his Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria. Possession of Gloucester, along with Bristol to the south, threatened both Oxford and access to the Royalist recruiting grounds of Wales.
An unsuccessful attempt to rally Royalist support in Cirencester in August 1642 prompted Parliamentarians in Gloucestershire to muster the militia, and in November the first regular troops were garrisoned in Gloucester. In February 1643 the Royalist commander Prince Rupert easily defeated a militia garrison at Cirencester, prompting the Parliamentarians to recall their outposts at Berkeley, Sudeley and Tewkesbury. The next day Rupert appeared before Gloucester, but lacked the strength to enforce his demand for the city's surrender. Later that month an army of 2,000 Welshman led by Lord Herbert of Raglan arrived on the west bank of the Severn opposite the city, but lacked the strength for an assault across the river. Its presence caused great consternation in Gloucester until a Parliamentarian army commanded by Sir William Waller defeated it on 24 March.
The defeat of Waller in the Battle of Roundway Down on 13 July by the Royalist Western Army left both Bristol and Gloucester vulnerable, and on 18 July Rupert led another Royalist army out of Oxford to take control of the Severn valley. On 26 July Rupert's Oxford Army, supported by the Western Army, seized Bristol. Royalist casualties were high, and despite Rupert's instructions to the contrary, the victorious troops plundered the city. Rupert was appointed governor of Bristol, but infighting within the Royalist leadership and concerns that an attack on Gloucester would result in the same high casualties prompted King Charles I to travel to Bristol for a council of war. He arrived on 2 August, and over the next five days consulted with his advisers on the best course of action. The strategic situation since Edgehill had improved significantly for the Royalists, with victories in the north of England, the arrival of reinforcements and materiel in June, and an opposition that had fallen into disarray. Rupert's plan to consolidate the Royalist grip on the west by seizing Gloucester faced opposition from those in the King's camp, led by his wife Queen Henrietta Maria, who believed a march on London could end the war.
The capture of Gloucester would give Charles some advantages. It would allow the Royalist garrisons farther up the Severn at Worcester and Shrewsbury to be supplied from Bristol, with consequent benefit to the economy of that city. Gloucestershire – populous, wealthy and Parliamentarian – could be punitively taxed, and Welsh manpower and money could be freely deployed against the King's enemies in the rest of the country. Although it was likely that Rupert would have been able to storm a city that was less well defended than Bristol, Charles was not willing to risk the casualties an assault would incur. On 6 August the Parliamentarian governor of Gloucester, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Massey, refused to surrender the city, but in a secret communication he let it be known that he would do so if the King, rather than Rupert, led the army on Gloucester. Charles decided the next day that this was the best chance of securing Gloucester quickly and without bloodshed. This compromise plan pleased neither the Queen's faction, who saw it as an unnecessary diversion from the more decisive objective of London, nor Rupert, who remained in Bristol in the belief that the Royalist army was not strong enough to allow Massey to honourably surrender without a fight.
Gloucester defences
Gloucester's strength lay in its location. To the west, the River Severn formed a natural defence against an assaulting army. To the north and north-east the marshy ground was unsuitable for siege operations, and the River Twyver and a tributary stream added to the obstacles. This left the higher and drier ground to the east and south as the only feasible directions for an attack. In the preceding centuries the city had grown beyond its medieval defences, of which only the ruined castle by the river and a stretch of wall that linked the south, east and original north gates, the last known as the inner north gate and now well within the city, still survived. From the south gate to the east gate the wall was high but not thick enough to withstand 17th-century artillery or mining operations.
The fall of Bristol prompted the hurried reinforcement of the existing defences. New earthworks and a narrow water-filled ditch completed the line of fortifications from the south gate to the Severn. Another earthwork was extended north from Whitefriars Barn on the north-east corner of the medieval wall to the outer north gate. From there the River Twyver formed a moat as the earthwork followed it north-west to Alvin Gate then on to the river's junction with the Old Severn. This easternmost channel of the River Severn had dried up by the 19th century, but at the time of the civil war it was still a navigable river. The earthwork then followed the Old Severn south-west to a point a short distance north of Westgate Street, from where it was extended the other side of the Old Severn to the River Severn just above the west gate. Inside the city, an earthwork was extended west from the end of the medieval wall at the inner north gate via Gloucester Cathedral to St Oswald's Priory, where it met the new outer earthwork. The outer north gate and Alvin Gate were fortified with earthwork bastions, a drawbridge was installed at Westgate Bridge and the Old Severn was dammed at Dockham, causing the ground to north-west of the city to flood.
The garrison numbered no more than 1,500 troops. The bulk of these comprised two half-strength regiments each of some 600 men: the Earl of Stamford's Regiment of Foot, recruited from London and Leicestershire, and a locally recruited regiment known as the Town Regiment. The remainder comprised a company of trained band, 100 dragoons and a troop of cavalry. The city's dozen or so artillery pieces ranged in size from light cannon to two nine-pounder demi-culverins. Stamford's regiment was experienced and well led, though of uncertain discipline. The Town Regiment lacked experience but was motivated by its ties to the city it was defending, although there is evidence that some of its men would refuse to oppose the King. The city could support itself with basic necessities, but it lacked sufficient gunpowder to withstand an assault or prolonged siege.
Massey was an autocratic military commander, but his authority in the city was shared with the civilian administration. A committee had been established in December 1642 to manage the Parliamentarian war effort in the county, but Thomas Pury, the member of parliament for Gloucester, was the only committee member in the city. Civic authority was held by a forty-member council, though in practice an inner core of some fifteen aldermen, including the mayor, wielded power. As many of these were, like Pury, officers in the city's garrison, political and military command was largely integrated. In the days immediately following the fall of Bristol, morale in the city, both military and civilian, was low. It is possible that this was what prompted Massey to consider surrendering the city, though his message suggesting he would may have been a subterfuge designed to buy some time. There is strong evidence that the conduct and actions of the city elite, including Massey and particularly Pury, did much to stiffen the city's resolve in the days immediately before the siege began. Officers and councillors with Royalist sympathies were given the opportunity to leave, and those who remained were required to restate an oath of allegiance to Parliament. The discipline of the troops was improved by paying them, and civilians were kept busy reinforcing the city's defences.
Siege
As Charles marched north from Bristol, Royalist reinforcements were converging on Gloucester from Oxford, Worcester and Herefordshire. By the afternoon of 10 August the Royalist army, comprising some 6,000 infantry and 2,500 mounted troops, began assembling around the city. Charles set up his headquarters at Matson House. His demand for Gloucester's surrender was unanimously and somewhat insolently rejected, and the Parliamentarians set fire to the suburbs outside the city defences to clear lines of fire and deprive the Royalists of cover. Charles had decided to march on Gloucester in the belief that the city would be quickly surrendered. Now that gambit had failed, he decided to besiege it. His pride had been wounded by the manner of the Parliamentarian rejection. His commanders, assessing the state of the city's defences, supplies and morale, persuaded him the city could be taken within ten days without an assault. Intelligence indicated that even if the Parliamentarians were able to send a relieving force, it could be easily defeated before it could reach the city. Most decisively, the Earl of Newcastle, whose support was necessary in any campaign against London, declared himself unable to march south while Hull remained in Parliamentarian hands, leaving Charles too weak to contemplate such a move.
First ten days
The first shots were fired in the afternoon as Sir Jacob Astley established his forces near Issold's House on the eastern side of the city. Lord Forth, who had been given overall command of the siege, set up a fortified leaguer to the rear of the ruined Llanthony Secunda Priory and established his forces to the south of the city. By dawn on 11 August, a line of trenches had been dug some 130 yards (120 m) from the walls, placing the two sides within musket range of each other, stretching from Gaudy Green on the south side to Issold's House on the east.
Massey responded with spoiling tactics in an attempt to hinder Royalist siege operations and delay the assault he was expecting. At midnight a small raiding party succeeded in disrupting Royalist entrenching operations on Gaudy Green, and a larger raid on the green the next morning, 12 August, resulted in the capture of Royalist men, tools and weapons. By this time, the reinforcements from Herefordshire and Worcester under the command of Sir William Vavasour, 1st Baronet of Copmanthorpe arrived on the west bank of the Severn and began crossing the river to take up positions at Kingsholm, to the north of the city. This force increased the size of the besieging army by another 2,400 infantry and over 300 cavalry. They too were the target of a Parliamentarian raid which inflicted up to fifteen casualties.
Later on 12 August, Forth completed an earthwork square on Gaudy Green, in which he placed two 24-pounders, the largest of the Royalist's eight cannon, along with a 12-pounder to target the south wall. Another artillery emplacement was positioned nearby to target the east wall. With the artillery in place, the Royalists began bombarding the walls, the main effort beginning at 11:00 on 13 August. The cannon were too light to have any significant impact, and of the two mortars the Royalists possessed, one, reputed to be the largest in the country, exploded on its first use. When it became evident the Royalists were focusing their efforts on the south-east corner of the city defences, Massey quickly buttressed the medieval walls with up to 5 feet (1.5 m) of earth, which ensured that the defences held. Meanwhile, the majority of Vavasour's troops completed their crossing of the Severn, leaving behind a small contingent to blockade the west bank.