POLITICAL HISTORY 



Trained Bands should be in a readinesse to quell all uproars if it chanced 

 that the Cavalliers should bee over busy.' l 



There was thus another side to the history of the king's cause in 

 Nottinghamshire. Though the gentry of the shire were on his side, 

 Nottingham townsmen and the freeholders were against him, 3 and Clarendon 

 reports how the king ' found the place much emptier than he thought the 

 fame of his standard would have suffered it to be,' for ' at Nottingham 

 (besides some few of the train-bands which Sir John Digby, the active shrieve 

 of that county, drew into the old ruinous castle there) there were not of foot 

 levied for the service yet 300 men.' 8 All the strength on which the king 

 could depend was his horse, about 800 in number, now at Leicester with Prince 

 Rupert, and Essex, with the parliamentary forces, was at Northampton, 

 ready, it seemed, to march on Nottingham. But ' God blinded his enemies 

 so that they made not the least advance towards Nottingham.' * By the end of 

 August recruits were coming in from Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Lincolnshire, 

 Shropshire, and Cheshire, and the hopes of the royal party were rising. Yet 

 Nottingham ' seemed not a good post for His Majesty to stay in,' and on 

 13 September he marched from Nottingham to Derby. Thus Sir Edward 

 Nicholas wrote to Sir Thomas Roe that the king was on that day ' setting 

 forth with his army ... to join with 5,000 foot and 400 horse, which are 

 raised for the king in Wales and the borders. The king's army is much 

 increased within these eight days, and near 2,000 arms have been hither 

 brought in from this and the adjacent counties.' 5 



Meanwhile musters were gathering under the parliamentary commission 

 of array. Three colonels had been nominated : Sir Francis Thornhaugh, 

 Sir Francis Molyneux, and Francis Pierrepoint. Of these Sir Francis 

 Molyneux utterly refused service : Sir Francis Thornhaugh raised a regiment 

 of horse, and Colonel Pierrepoint a regiment of foot, of which Mr. John 

 Hutchinson became lieutenant-colonel. Colonel Pierrepoint seems to have 

 been very half-hearted, for Mrs. Hutchinson tells how he was six weeks 

 before he could be persuaded ' to put on a sword or to enlist any men, which 

 at length he did of substantial honest townsmen.' 8 With the beginning of 

 the association of the counties after the battle of Edgehill, Nottinghamshire 

 was placed with Leicestershire and other counties under Lord Grey, of Groby. 

 Then the royalist gentry, headed by Lord Chaworth, ' finding an opposition 

 they expected not,' seem to have made some vain effort to come to terms 

 with the 'parliament men.' 7 In December, 1642, a meeting of the corpora- 

 tion of Nottingham and ten gentlemen of the county was held at the 

 guildhall, and an agreement was made to invite the gentlemen of the county 



1 B.M. Pamphlets, E. 1 16, No. 3. Nott. Pet. to the King. 



' Mrs. Hutchinson says : ' Although the town was generally more malignant (i.e. Royalist) than wcll- 

 affected, yet they cared not to have the cavalier soldiers quarter with them, and, therefore, agreed to defend 

 themselves against any force which should come against them ; and being called hastily together as the 

 exigence required, about 700 listed themselves, and chose Mr. George Hutchinson for their Captain ' (Memoirs of 

 Col. HutMnion,ed. Bohn, 132). The ill effects on the king's cause of the unscrupulous billeting of the soldiers 

 in the town is shown by the petition of 1642, presented to Parliament by the townsmen. William, earl of 

 Newcastle, the lord-lieutenant, had ' withdrawn himself, with mischievous accomplices, to his own house in 

 Nottingham, billeting his cavaliers and Papistical soldiers in the houses of the most substantial persons of that 

 county,' who were forced to quit their houses and goods, or suffer the indignities imposed on them by ' those 

 enemies of God and the Commonwealth in the ferocity of their barbarous dispositions' (B.M. Pamphlets, 

 E. 84, No. 17). ' Clarendon, Hist, of Great Rebellion, ii, 293. 4 Ibid. p. 299. 



6 Cal. 5. P. Dom. 1642-3, 389. ' Mrs. Hutchinson, op. cit. p. 139. * Ibid. p. 140. 



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