Siege of Reading
Who Fought
History & Significance
The siege of Reading was an eleven-day blockade of Reading, Berkshire during the First English Civil War. Reading had been garrisoned by 3,000 Royalist troops under Sir Arthur Aston in November 1642. On 14 April 1643, Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex led a Parliamentarian army of 19,000 troops to lay siege to the town, and began bombarding it two days later.
During the siege, Aston was wounded and command of the garrison passed to Richard Feilding. On 25 April, Feilding requested a truce in order to negotiate the town's surrender. Despite a Royalist relief force commanded by Charles I of England and Prince Rupert of the Rhine arriving the following day, Feilding held to the truce, and Essex's army was able to repel the relief army. The surrender terms were agreed on 26 April, and the next day the Royalists left the town for Oxford.
In August 1642, King Charles I raised his royal standard in Nottingham and declared the Earl of Essex, and by extension Parliament, to be traitors, marking the start of the First English Civil War. That action had been the culmination of religious, fiscal and legislative tensions going back over fifty years.
In October 1642, King Charles returned to Oxford from the indecisive Battle of Edgehill. He then proceeded cautiously towards London, going via Reading. After being repelled from London, he retired back through Reading, where he left a Royalist garrison of 2,000 soldiers under Sir Arthur Aston, who was appointed as governor. Aston was unimpressed with the soldiers available to him, writing to Prince Rupert that he "could never have a greater affliction light on me than to be put in command of them".
Reading, located on the main route between London and Oxford, was strategically significant both due to its location as a 'frontier' between these two military strongholds, and the fact that it was located at a crossing point of the River Thames. Prior to the war, the town had minimal defences, and Aston realised that to have any chance of holding the town, these needed to be improved. Over the winter months, Aston oversaw the creation of a defensive line; a ditch with a raised earthen rampart linking a series of bastions. This form of fortification was known as a "continuous bastioned enceinte", and was common for Royalist defences during the Civil War. The ramparts were topped with stone from Reading Abbey, where they destroyed the church's nave specifically for the purpose. For the construction of the defences, Aston forced civilians from the town to work alongside his soldiers, and was described by Basil Morgan, his biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as "bullying his soldiers and the citizenry alike". Aston maintained strict discipline over his troops, and had several hanged for not meeting his standards.
The ground they fought on
The site of Siege of Reading lies on White Chalk Subgroup, bedrock that formed in the Maastrichtian. The rock here is chalk.
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- Siege of Reading · Wikidata
- Siege_of_Reading · Wikipedia