"The Whole Country on a Flame"
Lord Grey's Rutland Campaign, February 1643
Lord Grey's Rutland Campaign, February 1643
It is perhaps because Rutland is England's smallest county that it's civil war history remains largely unexplored. Even so, although there were no major battles in this rural backwater, fighting did take place and lives were lost. It is fitting, then, that we examine the actions that took place in Rutland in February 1643 to gain a fuller understanding of the conflict and the people involved.
The cornet of Lord Grey's Horse (Turmile MSS, Dr Williams Library)
In 1642 Rutland's most prominent royalist was Edward Noel, Viscount Campden. Sixty-years-old, Campden had long been a loyal servant of the Crown. A bailiff of the county's royal woodlands, he had lent considerable sums to the Crown during the King's impoverished personal rule and had accompanied the King on campaign in the Bishop's Wars. By early 1643, Campden had been commissioned by to raise troops for the King and his eldest son, Baptist Noel, was serving with royalist forces at Newark. Clearly the Noel family was a focus for royalist support in the county and would need to be subdued if Rutland were to be secured for parliament.
Parliamentarian command in Rutland fell to Thomas, Lord Grey of Groby, who had been promoted to major-general of the north-Midlands only two months after commanding a troop at Edgehill. The leap from captain to major-general is startling, the more so because Grey was just twenty-years-old. Grey's rise was achieved through the influence of his father, the Earl of Stamford, who had himself received a generalship in the south-west on the strength of having served alongside the Earl of Essex in the 1620s. His father's patronage had previously secured Grey a parliamentary seat at the age of eighteen. So, young as he was, Grey was not unused to holding a position of influence.
Opening Moves
In February 1643, Grey requested that Viscount Campden part with £3,000 as a contribution to Parliament's war effort. This may have been intended to provoke Campden, as noblemen of his rank were not expected to pay such a large sum. Campden appealed to the House of Lords, who ordered Grey to withdraw the request. Campden's riposte was to offer Grey £50 in return for protection for his family against marauding parliamentarian troops. Grey took this (perhaps rightly) as an insult, reflecting that, “it was not a bribe I expected from his Lordship”.
The marauding troops to which Campden referred were most likely dragoons from Grantham under the command of Sir Christopher Wray. Wray had made recent incursions into Rutland to requisition horses from the gentlemen of the county, but he had met resistance from the Noels and their neighbours. Campden's second son, Henry Noel, claimed to have been threatened, and that Wray had vowed to “pull my brother and myself out of our houses by the ears”. Believing that the troops would soon return in force, Henry Noel began to fortify his home, North Luffenham Hall. Noel insisted that this defence was not a garrison, nor of a strength that posed a threat to the parliamentarians, merely a group of sixteen or seventeen personal friends and relations who were willing to help him defend his property; they were unpaid and armed only with guns that Noel had in his personal possession.
With Campden's refusal to pay the assessment and reports of his younger son fortifying his home, Lord Grey was determined to act quickly, later writing, “the coals kindle so fast in that country that had I not suddenly quenched them the whole country would be on a flame.” About 19 February, Grey advanced from his base at Leicester and drew several troops of horse into Rutland, along with one or two light guns or 'drakes'. He rendezvoused with Wray's dragoons in the west of the county and their combined force (about 1,300 horse and dragoons, according to Noel) proceeded to Campden's house at Brooke Priory. Campden was absent, however, having joined the King at Oxford. A search of the house revealed no weapons and Grey suspected that Campden had taken them with him. Grey's force therefore pressed on to North Luffenham, six miles east.
Lord Grey's attack on North Luffenham Hall, 20-21 February 1643
The Siege of North Luffenham Hall
Noel's house stood on the south side of North Luffenham, overlooking broad fields and the shallow valley of the river Chater. Although this prospect provided the hall with fine views it also allowed a clear line of fire, and local tradition has it that Grey positioned his guns on the southern slope of the Chater Valley, at just over 1,000 yards distance. He deployed his troops round the hall and sent a trumpeter to summon Noel to surrender.
Noel claimed he was willing to dismiss anyone in the house that was not of his own family and to hand over surplus arms, agreeing to keep “not a gun more in my house than the feeding of my hawks require”. Grey took this response as a refusal to yield and sent the trumpeter back with another call to surrender unconditionally. Noel demurred, claiming his house would not be safe from plundering soldiers if he surrendered now, and that he feared for the safety of his pregnant wife.
Doubtless thinking that these negotiations were getting rather protracted for a short winter's day, Grey offered an exchange of hostages so that an officer could be sent to discuss the matter with Noel face-to-face. Sir Edward Hartopp, Grey's subordinate and an acquaintance of Noel, was sent forward and exchanged for one of Noel's men. Hartopp met Noel at the gate to the hall and they went into the house to talk. When Hartopp emerged it was to tell Grey that Noel's intentions were entirely defensive and that he posed no threat. Grey was wholly dissatisfied with this answer and seems to have dismissed Hartopp, who returned to Leicester.
Having failed to persuade Noel to surrender, Grey now ordered his troops forward; “thereupon we had a skirmish of about an hour”, Grey wrote, during which exchange of fire one of his officers, Lieutenant Castesby, was killed. However, the parliamentarians made little headway against the royalist defence and the fighting was probably brought to an end with nightfall.
Susanna Noel's memorial in North Luffenham Church. Damage to the face and fingers is said to have been caused by Lord Grey's soldiers.
The following day brought a renewed effort from Grey's troops, and it was probably now that the attackers decided that fire was the best weapon at their disposal: “the dragoons set part of the town [sic] and all my outhouses, barns and stacks of corn on fire,” wrote Noel, “which gave occasion to some of my men to shoot”. “A common soldier was shot dead and some others hurt,” Grey reported, but the fire meant Noel was now forced to capitulate to prevent further damage to property. Parliament's drakes (perhaps now repositioned – Noel wrote that one was brought 'close to my house') contributed to the damage and the hall was, in Grey's words, “shot through”.
Although Noel claimed to have fewer than twenty men guarding his home, Grey judged it to be more like 200: “120 armed with guns and the rest with pikes and clubs”. That Noel was able to keep at bay Grey's force, which he calculated to be over 1,000 strong, for over twelve hours suggests that he had far more than sixteen or seventeen men at his disposal, and that Grey's estimate of the garrison's strength was closer to the truth.
Noel later claimed to have surrendered upon conditions, which he said had been agreed to by Lord Grey personally but which were not kept, save for the guarantee that a man would be sent into the hall to protect his wife. “the fire was suffered to burn on,” Noel complained, “some of my men were beaten and taken prisoners and the common soldiers had free plunder.” Noel was arrested and sent as a prisoner to London. “With much difficulty I preserved their lives,” admitted Grey, “but the soldiers were so enraged I could not save their goods”. Noel claimed the loss of his wife's jewels and twenty horses as well as having four barns burned, together with the produce they contained. “not so much as a hawk or dog was left me,” he wrote bitterly. Folk-memory recalls an outlying hamlet to the south-west North Luffenham, called Sculthorpe, that was entirely destroyed by the fire started by Grey's soldiers and never rebuilt. Ironic, then, that having wanted to douse the embers of royalism before Rutland was aflame, Grey ended-up setting a good portion of it alight. Destruction also spilled into the neighbouring church, where the monument to Noel's first wife was reputedly defaced by soldiers eager to avenge their own losses on the local family.
Post Medieval earth work at Morecott Spinney, just under a mile from the site of North Luffenham Hall. Long supposed to be an emplacement for Lord Grey's guns, recent archaeological evidence argues that it is a non-military feature. (Creighton, p. 21)
Preparations for a Long War
Lord Grey's account of the fighting at Luffenham is found in two letters he wrote to the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament, letters that he may have been compelled to write to answer for his actions as part of a subsequent parliamentary enquiry. Henry Noel's version of events survives in a petition to House of Lords, in which he claimed false imprisonment and breech of privilege. The Lords would not agree to grant him bail, however, and Noel died in prison in July 1643. He outlived his father by four months: Viscount Campden died at Oxford, probably following a stroke, the month after the fighting in Rutland.
North Luffenham had suffered a good deal of destruction and theft, though Lord Grey could at least assure his superiors at Westminster that Rutland had been cleared of a major royalist threat. Elsewhere, however, the King's forces were closing in: Sir Charles Cavendish took Grantham on 23 March, threatening Grey's north-eastern flank. To the west, Prince Rupert took Lichfield. Baptist Noel (now Lord Campden following his father's death) was operating out of Belvoir Castle in north Leicestershire. Lord Grey seized Rockingham Castle on 21 March and set about strengthening its defences to secure his position on Rutland's south side. Much like opposing sides entrenching in 1914, north-midland royalists and parliamentarians began, in early 1643, to consolidate positions from which they would fight an attritional war for the next three years.
Robert Hodkinson
February 2023
February 2023
Bibliography
Manuscript Sources
Letter from Lord Grey to William Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons, Portland MSS, 1, 99
Letter from Lord Grey to the Earl of Manchester, Speaker of the House of Lords, Journals of the House of Lords, 5, 631
'The Humble Petition and Remonstrance of Henry Noel, Second Son of Lord Viscount Campden', House of Lords Main Papers, HL/PO/JO/10/1/145
Secondary Sources
Creighton, O., 'Early Castles in the Medieval Landscape', Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, 73 (1999), pp. 19-33
Irons, E. A. 'The Siege of Luffenham Hall', The Rutland Magazine and Historical Record, 2, (1905-06), pp. 201-208
Manuscript Sources
Letter from Lord Grey to William Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons, Portland MSS, 1, 99
Letter from Lord Grey to the Earl of Manchester, Speaker of the House of Lords, Journals of the House of Lords, 5, 631
'The Humble Petition and Remonstrance of Henry Noel, Second Son of Lord Viscount Campden', House of Lords Main Papers, HL/PO/JO/10/1/145
Secondary Sources
Creighton, O., 'Early Castles in the Medieval Landscape', Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, 73 (1999), pp. 19-33
Irons, E. A. 'The Siege of Luffenham Hall', The Rutland Magazine and Historical Record, 2, (1905-06), pp. 201-208