King John evidently had a liking for Dorset. He often visited it, having houses of his own at Bere Regis, Canford, Corfe, Cranborne, Gillingham, and Dorchester. In the sixteenth year of his reign he put strong garrisons into Corfe Castle and Wareham as a defence against his discontented barons.
In the wars between his son, Henry III., and the Barons there was fighting again in Dorset, especially at Corfe. Dorset, among other sea-side counties, supplied ships and sailors to Edward III. and Henry V. for their expeditions against France.
The Wars of the Roses seem hardly to have touched the county; but one incident must be mentioned: On April 14th, 1471, Margaret, wife of Henry VI., landed at Weymouth with her son Edward and a small band of Frenchmen; but she soon heard that on the very day of her landing her great supporter, though once he had been her bitterest enemy, Warwick the King-maker, had been defeated and slain at Barnet. This led her to seek sanctuary in the Abbey at Cerne, about sixteen miles to the north of Weymouth; but her restless spirit would not allow her long to stay in this secluded spot, and she started with young Edward, gathering supporters as she went, till on May 4th her army was defeated at Tewkesbury, and there her last hopes were extinguished when King Edward IV. smote her son, who had been taken prisoner, with gauntleted hand upon the mouth, and the daggers of Clarence and Gloucester ended the poor boy’s life.
We hear nothing of resistance on the part of Dorset to the Earl of Richmond when he came to overthrow Richard III. Probably, as the Lancastrian family of the Beauforts were large landowners in Dorset, Dorset sympathy was enlisted on the side of the son of the Lady Margaret, great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt.
Like all the rest of England, Dorset had to see its religious houses suppressed and despoiled; its abbots and abbesses, with all their subordinate officers, as well as their monks and nuns, turned out of their old homes, though let it in fairness be stated, not unprovided for, for all those who surrendered their ecclesiastical property to the King received pensions sufficient to keep them in moderate comfort, if not in affluence. Dorset accepted the dissolution of the monasteries and the new services without any manifest dissatisfaction. There was no rioting or fighting as in the neighbouring county of Devon.
Dorset did not escape so easily in the days of the Civil War. Lyme, holden for the Parliament by Governor Creely and some 500 men, held out from April 20th to June 16th, 1644, against Prince Maurice with 4,000 men, when the Earl of Essex came to its relief. Corfe Castle and Sherborne Castle were each besieged twice. Abbotsbury was taken by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper in September, 1644. Wareham, also, was more than once the scene of fighting. In the north of Dorset a band of about 5,000 rustics, known as “Clubmen,” assembled. These men knew little and cared less for the rival causes of King and Parliament which divided the rest of England; but one thing they did know and greatly cared for: they found that ever and again bands of armed horsemen came riding through the villages, some singing rollicking songs and with oaths on their lips, others chanting psalms and quoting the Bible, but all alike treading down their crops, demanding food, and sometimes their horses, often forgetting to pay for them; so they resolved to arm themselves and keep off Cavaliers and Roundheads alike. At one time they encamped at Shaftesbury, but could not keep the Roundheads from occupying the Hill Town; so they, to the number of 4,000, betook themselves to the old Celtic camp of Hambledon, some seven or eight miles to the south. Cromwell himself, in a letter to Fairfax, dated August 4th, 1645, tells what befell them there:
We marched on to Shaftesbury, when we heard a great body of them was drawn up together about Hambledon Hill. I sent up a forlorn hope of about 50 horse, who coming very civilly to them, they fired upon them; and ours desiring some of them to come to me were refused with disdain. They were drawn into one of the old camps upon a very high hill. They refused to submit, and fired at us. I sent a second time to let them know that if they would lay down their arms no wrong should be done them. They still—through the animation of their leaders, and especially two vile ministers[1]—refused. When we came near they let fly at us, killed about two of our men, and at least four horses. The passage not being for above three abreast kept us out, whereupon Major Desborow wheeled about, got in the rear of them, beat them from the work, and did some small execution upon them, I believe killed not twelve of them, but cut very many, and put them all to flight. We have taken about 300, many of whom are poor silly creatures, whom, if you please to let me send home, they promise to be very dutiful for time to come, and will be hanged before they come out again.
From which we see that “Grim old Oliver,” who could be severe enough when policy demanded it, yet could show mercy at times, for throughout this episode his dealings with the Clubmen were marked with much forbearance.
Charles II., after his defeat at Worcester, September 3rd, 1651, during his romantic wanderings and hidings before he could get safe to sea, spent nearly three weeks in what is now Dorset, though most of the time he was in concealment at the Manor House at Trent, which was then within the boundaries of Somerset, having only recently been transferred to Dorset. This manor house belonged to Colonel Francis Wyndham. Hither on Wednesday, September 17th, came Jane Lane, sister of Colonel Lane, from whose house at Bentley, Worcestershire, she had ridden on a pillion behind one who passed as her groom, really Charles in disguise, with one attendant, Cornet Lassels. Jane and the Cornet left Trent the next day on their return journey, and Charles was stowed away in Lady Wyndham’s room, from which there was access to a hiding-place between two floors. His object was to effect his escape from one of the small Dorset ports. Colonel Wyndham rode next day to Melbury Sampford, where lived Sir John Strangways, to see if either of his sons could manage to hire a boat at Lyme, Weymouth, or Poole, which would take Charles to France. He failed in this, but brought back one hundred pounds, the gift of Sir John Strangways. Colonel Wyndham then went to Lyme to see one Captain Ellesdon, to whom he said that Lord Wilmot wanted to be taken across to France. Arrangements were then made with Stephen Limbrey, the skipper of a coasting vessel, to take a party of three or four royalist gentlemen to France from Charmouth. Lord Wilmot was described as a Mr. Payne, a bankrupt merchant running away from his creditors, and taking his servant (Charles) with him. It was agreed that Limbrey should have a rowing-boat ready on Charmouth beach on the night of September 22nd, when the tide was high, to convey the party to his ship and carry them safe to France, for which service he was to receive £60. September 22nd was “fair day” at Lyme, and as many people would probably be about, it was necessary that the party should find some safe lodging where they could wait quietly till the tide was in, about midnight. Rooms were secured, as for a runaway couple, at a small inn at Charmouth. At this inn on Monday morning arrived Colonel Wyndham, who acted as guide, and his wife and niece, a Mrs. Juliana Coningsby (the supposed eloping damsel), riding behind her groom (Charles). Lord Wilmot, the supposed bridegroom, with Colonel Wyndham’s confidential servant, Peters, followed. Towards midnight Wyndham and Peters went down to the beach, Wilmot and Charles waiting at the inn ready to be called as soon as the boat should come. But no signs of the boat appeared throughout the whole night. It seems that Mrs. Limbrey had seen posted up at Lyme a notice about the heavy penalty that anyone would incur who helped Charles Stuart to escape, and suspecting that the mysterious enterprise on which her husband was engaged might have something to do with helping in such an escape, she, when he came back in the evening to get some things he had need of for the voyage, locked him in his room and would not let him out; and he dared not break out lest the noise and his wife’s violent words might attract attention and the matter get noised abroad. Charles, by Wyndham’s advice, rode off to Bridport the next morning with Mistress Coningsby, as before, the Colonel going with them; Wilmot stayed behind. His horse cast a shoe, and Peters took it to the smith to have another put on; and the smith, examining the horse’s feet, said: “These three remaining shoes were put on in three different counties, and one looks like a Worcester shoe.” When the shoe was fixed, the smith went to a Puritan minister, one Bartholomew Wesley, and told him what he suspected. Wesley went to the landlady of the inn: “Why, Margaret,” said he, “you are now a maid of honour.” “What do you mean by that, Mr. Parson?” said she. “Why, Charles Stuart lay at your house last night, and kissed you at his departure, so that you cannot now but be a maid of honour.” Whereupon the hostess waxed wroth, and told Wesley that he was an ill-conditioned man to try and bring her and her house into trouble; but, with a touch of female vanity, she added: “If I thought it was the King, as you say it was, I should think the better of my lips all the days of my life. So, Mr. Parson, get you out of my house, or I’ll get those who shall kick you out.”
However, the matter soon got abroad, and a pursuit began. Meanwhile, Charles and his party had pressed on into Bridport, which happened to be full of soldiers mustering there before joining a projected expedition to capture the Channel Islands for the Parliament. Charles’s presence of mind saved him. He pushed through the crowd into the inn yard, groomed the horse, chatted with the soldiers, who had no suspicion that he was other than he seemed, and then said that he must go and serve his mistress at table. By this time Wilmot and Peters had arrived, and they told him of the incident at the shoeing forge; so, losing no time, the party started on the Dorchester road, but, turning off into a by-lane, got safe to Broadwinsor, and thence once more to Trent, which they reached on September 24th. On October 5th Wilmot and Charles left Trent and made their way to Shoreham in Sussex. But they had not quite done with Dorset yet; for it was a Dorset skipper, one Tattersal, whose business it was to sail a collier brig, The Surprise, between Poole and Shoreham, who carried Charles Stuart and Lord Wilmot from Shoreham to Fécamp, and received the £60 that poor Limbrey might have had save for his wife’s interference.