Corfe Castle, Dorsetshire, was bravely held for the Royalists in 1643 by Lady Mary Bankes, wife of the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, “to her eternall honour be it spoken, with her daughters, women and five soldiers.” Being so short of men and arms, the besieged had recourse to stones and hot embers. These missiles they cast over the walls, which the foe were attempting to scale, and greatly diminished the strength of the attack. The siege lasted six weeks, and the leader of the Parliamentarian army was so dispirited that when the news arrived that a party of Royalists were advancing to relieve the castle, he took flight. The next in command, not being disposed to try conclusions with a fresh force, did not even wait to collect his artillery and ammunition, but slipped away at night in a boat. Among other booty he left behind about a hundred horses.
A distinguished Irish lady, Lettice Digby, Baroness of Offaley, displayed marvellous courage during the troubles of 1641, when the Irish rebels stormed her castle of Greashill, in King’s County. Although she was upwards of sixty years of age, she undertook the defence of her home with great vigour. The castle stood in the midst of bogs and woods, and Lady Lettice, relying on the security of her position, closed the gates and refused to listen to any terms for surrender. She was at length relieved by Viscount Lisle and Sir Charles Cook, and, having been supplied with food and firearms, she resolved not to leave the castle, but to take the risk of another assault. This occurred soon after, and on this second occasion Sir Richard Grenville came to her aid. Apparently this valorous lady was then induced to change her quarters. She died in 1658, at Cobs Hill, Warwickshire, one of her estates.
Lady Fanshawe, whose father was an ardent Royalist, endured a good deal both before and after her marriage, which took place in 1644. Sir Richard Fanshawe, who was a connection on her mother’s side, held the post of Secretary of War to the Prince of Wales, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Worcester.
“During the time of his imprisonment,” writes Lady Fanshawe in the “Memoirs” she compiled for her children, “I failed not constantly to go when the clock struck four in the morning, with a dark lantern in my hand, all alone and on foot, from my lodgings in Chancery-lane, at my cousin Youngs, to Whitehall, in at the entry that went out of King-street into the Bowling-green. There I would go under his window and softly call him; he, after the first time excepted, never failed to put out his head at the first call: thus we talked together, and sometimes I was so wet with the rain that it went in at my neck and out at my heels. He directed me how I should make my addresses, which I did ever to their General Cromwell, who had a great respect for your father, and would have bought him off to his service upon any terms.”
After great exertions, she succeeded in getting her husband released on bail.
While in Ireland Lady Fanshawe displayed great courage. She was in Cork with her children, her husband being engaged elsewhere, during the revolt of 1649. The city was in the hands of Cromwell’s army, but “through thousands of naked swords” she conveyed her children and her maids to a place of safety.
During the war women as well as men were called upon to contribute money and arms to the Commonwealth. A letter from Cromwell himself was addressed from Huntingdon, August 2, 1643, “to the Bachelors and Maids.”
“I understand,” he wrote, “by these gentlemen, the good affection of your young men and maids, for which God is to be praised. I approve of the business, only I desire to advise you that your foot company may be turned into a troop of horse, which indeed will (by God’s blessing) far more advantage the cause than two or three companies of foot, especially if your men be honest, godly men, which by all means I desire. I thank God for stirring up the youth to cast in their mite, which I desire may be employed to the best advantage; therefore my advice is, that you would employ your twelve-score pounds to buy my pistols and saddles, and I will provide four-score horses; for £400 more will not raise a troop of horse.”
A typical instance of the straits to which gentlewomen were reduced, and the hardships and injuries which they suffered, may be found in the case of Mistress Joyce Jefferies, a maiden lady of good birth and some fortune, living on her own property in the thoroughly Royalist city of Hereford, which went through many vicissitudes during the Civil War. In 1638 Mistress Jefferies was called upon for ship money. This she paid, and also provided one soldier in respect of her farm and one for her other property in Hereford when the Trained Bands were called out. The ancestral armour which hung rusting on her walls she had taken down and cleaned ready for use. Up to the year 1642 Mistress Jefferies was able to remain unmolested in her own house, but in September of that year the Earl of Essex was advancing rapidly westward and took possession of the city of Worcester. It was felt that Hereford was no longer a safe place for Royalists, so, packing up some furniture and clothes, Mistress Jefferies got into her carriage and drove away.
“I came,” she writes in her diary or account-book, “to Kilkinton, to my cosin penreeses house from heriford for feare of ye parliaments army, September 23d, 1642. The 27 I came from thence to Mr. Geeres at Garnons.”