In 1635 Charles I. visited Derby, and slept at the Great House in the market-place. The corporation and townsmen had very good reason to remember this visit, for they gave the Duke of Newcastle for the King a fat ox, a calf, six fat sheep, and a purse of gold to enable him to keep hospitality, with a further present to the Elector Palatine of twenty broad pieces. The King further improved the occasion by “borrowing” £300 off the corporation in addition to his gifts, as well as all the small arms in possession of the town. At the end of the Scottish War in August, 1641, Charles I. passed through Derbyshire, and was again at the county town on the eleventh of August, when he made Sir John Curzon, of Kedleston, and Sir Francis Rodes, of Barlborough, baronets.
The great Civil War began in the summer of 1642 with the raising of the Royal Standard at Nottingham. The registers of All Saints, the great church of the county town, have the following brief chronicle of this dramatic incident: “the 22 of this August errectum fuit Notinghamiæ Vexillum Regale.—Matt. xii. 25.” The vicar, Dr. Edward Wilmot, who made the entry, was a staunch Royalist, and probably employed the Latin tongue knowing full well the general tendency of the opinions of the townsmen. When the news reached Derby, the response was meagre. Hutton, the historian, tells us that about twenty Derby men marched to Nottingham and entered the King’s service. On September 13th the King marched with his army from Nottingham to Derby, but only made one day’s stay in the town, pushing on from thence to Shrewsbury. Within a few months practically the whole of the counties of Derby, Leicester, Stafford, Northampton, and Warwick were united in an association against the King.
Sir John Gell, of Hopton, at once came to the fore as the local energetic supporter of Parliamentary Government, obtaining a commission as colonel from the Earl of Essex. After rousing the county both at Chesterfield and Wirksworth, he marched with a small force to Derby, which he entered on the thirty-first of October, 1642, where he was joined by one of the leading gentlemen of the south of the shire—Sir George Gresley. It would take far more space than can here be afforded to give even the barest outline of the ups and downs of the sad civil strife that raged throughout Derbyshire, for the most part in favour of the Commonwealth, for the next few years. It must suffice to state that the county, apparently owing to its central position, suffered more in various ways, both in loss of men and property of all descriptions, than any other part of the whole of England. Wingfield Manor House, Bolsover Castle, and such great houses as Chatsworth, Tissington, Sutton, and Staveley, were held first by one side and then by the other; whilst important garrisons at places so near to the county boundaries as Welbeck, Tutbury, and Nottingham, contributed to constant raids over the parts of Derbyshire within easy reach.
In 1645 the plight of Derbyshire was most deplorable, through the frequent marches and counter-marches of the hostile forces through its limits; for, although the Parliament held its own throughout the county during the prolonged struggle, the Royalists now and again gained the victory in a skirmish, and succeeded in maintaining their hold in well-garrisoned places for a few months at a time. Both sides, also, found it essential in their campaigns to cross the county in various directions. In August of this year Sir George Gresley and others wrote to the Speaker as to the miserable condition of the county, which had been successively afflicted by the armies of Newcastle, the Queen, Prince Rupert, Goring, and others, who had freely raided from even the poorest of the people during their transits. The enemy, he stated, had lost all their Derbyshire garrisons, but they had been taken by force and at a great charge to the county. Several garrisons on the confines of the county, such as Newark, Tutbury, and Welbeck, still had power and means to levy contributions on the adjacent parts of Derbyshire, and to ruin those who denied them. Moreover, the Scotch army had been for a time very chargeable to the county, for they not only claimed free quarters, but supplied themselves with what horses they required. And now, to crown all, the King’s army had passed through, and made spoil of a great part of the county. Some of the Parliament forces had come to their help, and more were daily expected; but all of them would at least have free quarters, and the owners of the very few horses left in Derbyshire had now small hope of retaining them. The House of Commons was asked to grant them the excise of the town and county for the present maintenance of their own soldiers.
It must also be remembered in estimating the share that Derbyshire had in this momentous conflict, that it has not only to be gauged from what went on within her borders, but from the prominent share which Derbyshire forces took in the battles and skirmishes that took place in other parts of the kingdom. At the very outset of the struggle, Derbyshire troops played an important part round Lichfield and in other parts of Staffordshire. During the winter of 1644–5, Gell’s forces from this county were busy about Newark, and also in Cheshire. In the spring of the latter year they were engaged before Tutbury Castle; and in July, 1648, Derbyshire horse played an important part in the Parliamentary victory at Willoughby, Nottinghamshire.
In this same month the Derbyshire committee were ordered to send sixty of their horse to Pontefract to help in the siege, and to join in the resistance to the invasion from Scotland. On August 18th came the rout of the great army of the Scots, under the Duke of Hamilton, at Preston. The defeated cavaliers disbanded themselves in Derbyshire, dispersing in all directions. Considerable numbers of the Scotch infantry were gradually arrested, having vainly endeavoured to conceal themselves amid the hills and dales of the wild Peak district. One of the most terrible episodes of the strife in the Midlands occurred in the then large church of Chapel-en-le-Frith. A vast number of the Scotch prisoners were crowded into the church, with the shocking result thus curtly entered in the registers:—
“1648 Sept: 11. There came to this town of Scots army, led by the Duke of Hambleton & squandered by Colonell Lord Cromwell sent hither prisoners from Stopford under the conduct of Marshall Edward Matthews, said to be 1500 in number put into ye church Sept: 14. They went away Sept: 30 following. There were buried of them before the rest went away 44 persons, & more buried Oct. 2 who were not able to march, & the same thyt died by the way before they came to Cheshire 10 & more.”
Space must be found for a far less tragic incident that occurred in connection with another Derbyshire church in the south of the county earlier in this strife. When the Royalists were making a special effort to regain their hold on Wingfield Manor, Colonel Eyre, with his regiment of 200 men, marching from Staffordshire, passed the night in the church of Boyleston. Major Saunders, a local Derbyshire leader on the Parliament side, heard of this night encampment, and with a small troop of horse surrounded the church, and raising a simultaneous shout at all the windows and doors demanded the instant surrender of all the Royalists under pain of immediate fire. Colonel Eyre’s men, startled from their sleep, were compelled to surrender; they were ordered to come out one by one through the small priest’s door on the south side of the chancel, and as each stepped forth he was seized and stripped of his arms—“and soe,” wrote Major Saunders, “we took men, collours, and all without loss of one man on either side.”
As to the general sympathy of this shire with the Commonwealth proceedings, even after the execution of the King, the Commission of the Peace in 1650 shows how large a proportion of the old county gentlemen were content to accept commissions at the hands of the new rulers. It includes such names as Sir Francis Burdett, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Edward Leach, Sir Samuel Sleigh, Sir John Gell, Nicholas Leeke, John Mundy, Robert Wilmot, Christopher Horton, James Abney, Anthony Morewood, and Robert Eyre. Among the High Sheriffs under the Commonwealth after this date were John Stanhope, of Elvaston, George Sitwell, of Renishaw, and John Ferrers, of Walton.
On the other hand there were many staunch loyalists in the county, who compounded heavily for their estates. Such were Sir Aston Cokayne, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Francis Deincourt, Sir Henry Every, Sir John Harpur, of Swarkeston, Sir John Harpur, of Calke, Sir Henry Hunloke, Sir Francis Rodes, Thomas Leeke, Roland and George Eyre, William Fitzherbert, Henry Gilbert, and Jervase Pole, of Wakebridge.