In 1639 the troubles had commenced, and 29th June the manor of Rockingham was confirmed to Sir Lewis Watson, who held the castle for the king. In 1643 the tide of civil war flowed towards Northamptonshire. 5th April, the castle had been besieged and taken, and Lord Grey of Groby was in command for the Parliament. He fortified it strongly with palisades, and therein sheltered his troops and certain of the disaffected clergy. 7th May, the castle contained a strong garrison and was used to preserve the peace of the district. 19th May, Sir Lewis Watson was captured by Colonel Hastings and taken to Stoke Albini. The colonel was active throughout the forest. 5th June, Sir John Norwich was the parliamentary governor of the castle, and had engaged and routed the king’s guards. 9th June, 500 horse appeared before the castle, and a party blockaded it while the rest rode to Weldon. The garrison, however, were too strong, and captured nine or ten of the king’s chief officers who came that way from Oxford. 29th December, Lord Grey proposed to dismiss Colonel Horsman, then in charge of the castle, but the Parliament upheld him.
In 1645 Norwich was in command, and took many prisoners, lodging them in the castle. Sir Lewis probably distinguished himself in the field, for, 1st June, he was created Baron Rockingham of Rockingham Castle. 7th June, the king marched from Harborough to Daventry, and on the 14th the battle of Naseby was fought, whence many prisoners were sent to the castle.
In August, 1660, with the Restoration, Lord Rockingham appears, and, finding a scarcity of deer, begs the usual warrants may be restrained. In 1661, at the coronation, Edward Lord Rockingham, as tenant in capite of Little Weldon, claimed to be keeper of the king’s dogs. This was referred to the king. The manor was held by the service of keeping twenty-four buckhounds and six harriers. With the Civil War the value of the castle as a place of strength ceased, and it became the residence of the Watson family, as it has since remained.
Some years ago the late Mr. Hartshorne drew up an account of the castle, which, with copious notices of its descent, and of its connexion with the forest, was printed in the first volume of the “Transactions” of the Institute. Since then, the Rev. H. J. Bigge, for many years rector of Rockingham, has paid much attention to the subject, and has made collections concerning it, for the use of which the present writer is much indebted.
OLD SARUM, WILTSHIRE.
THE Wiltshire Avon, which shares that well-known name with her Somersetshire sister, and rises in part from the same ground,—that “Eastern Avon,” which
————vaunts, and doth upon her take
To be the only child of shadeful Savernake,—
is one of the coldest and clearest streams in the south. Whether its source be taken from the high land of the Devizes, or from the skirts of Savernake, it runs about fifty miles to the sea at Christchurch, and, in that distance, itself, or by its immediate tributaries, traverses a tract very rich in sylvan beauty, and crowded with material traces of the old inhabitants of the land, and of their severe struggle in the sixth century with the fiery deluge by which they were at last swept away, but which brought with it those seeds of civilisation which have nowhere grown more abundant fruit than along the banks of this celebrated stream.