Sieging and besieged: who were the soldiers who fought to control Pontefract Castle?

This weekend Pontefract Castle will once again echo with the sound of cannons and muskets as we take it back to the English Civil War for a fascinating weekend of reenactment – all free for visitors!

On 1st and 2nd June, the castle will be open from 10am to 5pm, with the reenactment running from 11am to 4pm.

Meet the people of the 17th Century! Watch the soldiers storm the castle! Watch a blacksmith, basket-maker, and musketball-maker at work! Try to see if you could scale a castle on the climbing wall! This event is FREE – just come along and join in the fun!

During the English Civil Wars, Pontefract Castle was besieged three times – and the history of these sieges is a fascinating microcosm of the wider conflict. But who were some of the soldiers who defended or attacked its walls?

Colonel Richard Lowther, Royalist governor

Sir Richard Lowther, a former MP from Ingleton in North Yorkshire, seized Pontefract Castle in December 1642 after the Royalist general the Marquess of Newcastle had driven Parliament’s forces out of nearby Tadcaster. Pontefract provided a convenient bridgehead from which to control the surrounding countryside and, during the early stages of the first civil war, Lowther’s forces set out from Pontefract to attack Leeds and Bradford.

The first siege began at Christmas 1644 and the following January Lowther was invited to surrender by the Parliamentarian general Lord Ferdinando Fairfax. His response was: “According to my Allegiance to wch I am sworn, and in pursuance of the trust reposed in me by his  Ma’tie, I will defend this Castle to the uttermost of my power, and doubt not by Godes assistance, the Justnes of his Ma’ties Cause, and the virtue of my Comrades, to quell all those that shall oppose me in the defence thereof for his Ma’ties service, for the blood that is like to be lost in this action, let it be upon their heads who are the Causers of it. This is my resolution wch I desire you Certefie.”

Lowther took advantage of Pontefract Castle’s excellent defences, converting its ancient motte into a gun platform and bolstering the stone walls with earthworks to absorb the impact of cannon balls. Despite near constant bombardment, his men harassed their besiegers, regularly sallying out from the castle to steal supplies and destroy earthworks.

The garrison was relieved in May 1645 when the forces of Marmaduke Langdale broke the siege but the Parliamentarians quickly returned and by July, Lowther was  forced  to  surrender due to near starvation. On July 19th 1645, Lowther – having made an honourable surrender to General Poyntz – led his forces from the castle with their flags flying, the slow match of their muskets lit, and every musketeer with a musketball in his mouth. They were allowed to march to the nearest Royalist garrison of Newark, to join the King’s forces there. Lowther was accompanied by his 19-year-old son, Gerard, and his brother Robert, the castle chaplain. Gerard had been a captain of horse, but with the horses being captured, killed, or eaten by the besieged garrison, he was reduced to a foot soldier.

Richard Lowther never saw Ingleton again for on August 15th 1645, only three weeks after marching his weary troops out of Pontefract, he died of consumption at Newark, aged 43.

Nathan Drake, soldier and diarist

One of the reasons we know so much about the first and second sieges of Pontefract Castle is thanks to one of the soldiers from its garrison, Nathan Drake, who kept an incredibly detailed diary during the period.

Drake listed 183 volunteers in the garrison, in which he served in the section commanded by Sir Join Ramsden, and he went on to record every action on each day, including details about: who died and who was injured; how many shots were fired by the besiegers and how much fire was returned by the garrison; the various sallying parties who went out to raid the enemy’s lines; the comings and goings of messengers and officers; and even the names of the parties who negotiated the surrender of the castle.

This is his description of how the Parliamentarians tried to undermine the castle’s walls: “After that the enemy was weary wth bursting their Gunnes wth Battery of the castle upwards towards heaven & see that they Could not p’vailed that way, then they Came to be p’tners wth Guydo Faulkes to dive downewardes to the divell, to undermine us & to blow us up by their sevrall mines, where of one mine was below Wardes howse under the moate of the Castle towardes the Round tower, another within the Hospitall towardes the Kinges Tower; making their boastes that they would bestow 100 barrells of powder upon us to blow us up, but, we p’ceiving their intentions, we answered them at theire owne weapons and myned as fast as they, sinkinge in s’verall places wthin the Castle & mining from thence and allso without the Castle walles neare to the Castle. We had allso  made 2 sev’all Traverses wthin the Castle yeard very strong & to good purpose wch was volentarely p’formed by the volentary Gentlemen within the Castle, and almost quite finished at the time of our releese when Sir Marmaduke Langdale Came to releeve us. We sunke 11 or 12 Pittes in sevrall places from whence we mined under the Castle walles that we Could have mined from one place to another round about the Castle if neede had required, and so have prevented all their plottes.”

Despite the many dangers he faced, Drake made it all the way through both sieges and left with Colonel Lowther to make their way to the Royalist garrison at Newark.

Colonel William ‘Blowface’ Forbes

Forbes was a Scotsman from Tolmads in Aberdeenshire, who served with the northern Parliamentarian forces of Lord Ferdinando Fairfax and was condemned as an “insolent Scot” by the Royalists who faced him. But by all accounts he was a brave and daring soldier – he was the first attacker to break into Leeds on 23 January 1643, reportedly standing on his lieutenant’s shoulders to scale the Royalist’s fortifications; and he was captured during the siege of Helmsley Castle in late 1644 and freed when the castle surrendered in November. Following the surrender of Pontefract, he returned to Scotland to fight with Parliament’s allies, the Scottish Covenanters, and was killed defending Aberdeen on 14 May 1646.

But how did he come by his extraordinary nickname?

In January 1644, he was standing next to Sir Thomas Fairfax, Ferdinando’s son, in the siege lines around Pontefract Castle when a cannon ball fired by the garrison passed between them. A contemporary newsboy reported that “the wind of it beat them with the ground, and put out one of Colonel Forbes his eyes, and spoiled that side of his face’. Thereafter he was dubbed ‘Blowface’!

Colonel John Morris

While the first two sieges of Pontefract had been far from pleasant, the third was lengthy and rancorous. During the spring of 1648, a number of pro-Royalist uprisings broke out around the country, which became the second English Civil War.

John Morris was a local man and former Royalist who switched sides – he had fought against the Irish in 1642-3 and returned to serve the King in England, even claiming to have distinguished himself at the Battle of Nantwich. However, after Parliament captured Liverpool in November 1644 he changed sides and was quickly commissioned as a colonel by Thomas Fairfax. He had actually participated in besieging Pontefract castle in 1645, but he became disaffected in the New Model Army, was discharged, and was imprisoned in York for allegedly plotting to take the castle in 1646.

He made an unsuccessful attempt to take the castle using a scaling ladder on 18 May 1648 but on 3 June he seized an opportunity to sneak in with a band of Royalist sympathisers. The governor of the castle ordered members of the garrison who were sleeping in the town to return and issued warrants for beds for a hundred men. Morris and William Paulden disguised themselves and, each with four men carrying beds and with three others bringing money, they gained admission to the castle and seized it. The whole garrison was taken prisoner and were placed in the castle’s dungeon in chains.

Morris found the castle well stocked, but also needed supplies so his men conducted raids to provisions. These raids were so successful that they attracted the attention of Oliver Cromwell, as he marched towards Scotland, at about the end of August 1648. The increasingly busy Cromwell did not linger long, but the the siege continued and was inflamed by the murder of Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, who had been sent north to aid the siege, by a party from the castle. Mr Beaumont, vicar of South Kirkby, was then hanged on Baghill in full view of the garrison for passing intelligence to them.

The garrison had held out long after the second civil war had ended, and was the final remaining Royalist garrison, but the execution of King Charles in January 1649 demonstrated that their cause was doomed. The eventual terms of surrender proposed by Morris were patently unrealistic – he demanded that he should be given an armed convoy home and that none of the garrison should be sued or prosecuted for any acts committed since 1641.

Instead, Major-General John Lambert offered a deal on 19 March 1649, from which Morris and five others were exempted. Morris, along with Cornet Blackburn and Ensign Smith, succeeded in breaking out of the castle before it was handed over. Smith was shot in the escape, but Morris, disguised as a beggar, evaded capture for ten days before he was betrayed and eventually delivered to York. He was condemned to death as a traitor and, despite an escape attempt, they were recaptured and executed on 23 August 1649.