103 



' C|e ^ogalt0t ^biitg tit 1655. 



[From the Original Thurlob State Papers in the Bodleian.] 

 By SiE G. F. DucKETT, Bart., F.S.A. 



^HE Rising in the West, known also as the "Penruddock 

 Rebellion/' for which Colonel John Penruddock, of Compton 

 Chamberlayne, and Hugh Grove, of Chisenbury, near Enford, were 

 executed at Exeter, 16th May, 1655, has been ably and exhaustively 

 treated in vols, xiii., xiv., and xv., of this Magazine, by W. W. 

 Ravenhill, Esq. ; still, as he himself confesses in a foot-note to the 

 first page of his paper (the " Records of the Rising'^) , that he " can 

 scarcely hope to have compassed all existing materials in so large a 

 field,'' coupling the observation with the wish, that further par- 

 ticulars may be forthcoming from readers of the same, the following 

 ''Informations," among the Thurloe State Papers, respecting persons 

 concerned in the Rising, may be consequently thoiight an acceptable 

 addition to the narrative of that event. This we assume from the 

 fact that none of these appear to have been noticed by the above 

 writer, save the examination of Robert Rowe, of Horningsham, an 

 omission caused probably by their having been taken subsequent 

 to the main feature of his account — the execution at Exeter. 



As is well known, the chief scene of the Rising in the West was 

 at Salisbury, where the insurgents, under Sir Joseph Wagstaffe, 

 after liberating the prisoners in the gaol, and committing other 

 excesses, seized the judges then holding the assizes in the town, 

 together with the sheriff, Col. John Dove, of New Sarum. Other 

 risings took place simultaneously elsewhere, viz., in Shropshire, 

 Nottinghamshire, and the North, to which Lord Wilmot (Earl of 

 Rochester), and others, directly or indirectly conduced, but all proved 

 equally abortive. 



In the subjoined extracts, the orthography of the original entries 

 has been strictly followed. 



