Siege of Stafford 1643
Who Fought
Parliamentary forces under Colonel William Brereton besieged a Royalist garrison holding Stafford Castle under Lady Isabel Stafford; Colonel Hastings led a Royalist relief column which arrived on 5 June 1643.
History & Significance
Stafford Castle is an ancient Grade II listed castle situated 2 miles (3.2 km) west of the town of Stafford in Staffordshire, England. From the time of the Norman Conquest and as recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 it was the seat of the powerful Anglo-Norman Stafford family (originally de Tosny, later via a female line de Stafford), feudal barons of Stafford, later Barons Stafford (1299) by writ, Earls of Stafford (1351) and Dukes of Buckingham (1444). The 14th-century stone keep was demolished in 1643, during the Civil War, having been held for the Royalists by Lady Isabel Stafford. The castle was remodelled in the early 19th century by the Jerningham family in the Gothic Revival style, on the foundations of the medieval structure, and incorporates much of the original stonework. Today the A518 Stafford-to-Newport Road passes next to it and it is a prominent local landmark visible from the M6 motorway and from the West Coast inter-city mainline.
The early historian of Staffordshire Robert Plot cited the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (104) for evidence that Æthelflæd, the Saxon warrior-princess and ruler of the Mercians, built a castle at Stafford in the year 913, along with an adjacent burg (meaning a fortified town). However, the exact site of this first castle, probably made of wood, is now unknown.
Shortly before the castle was built the Saxon Eadric the Wild had led a failed rebellion which culminated in the defeat of the Saxons at the Battle of Stafford in 1069.
A wooden castle was built on the site at some time in the 1070s by the Norman magnate Robert de Stafford (c.1039–c.1100) (alias Robert de Tosny/Toeni, etc.) who arrived in England during or shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066 and was awarded by King William the Conqueror 131 manors in his newly conquered kingdom, predominantly in the county of Staffordshire. Thus he was able to control and extract taxes from the native Anglo-Saxon community and to prepare for the Norman invasion of Wales in 1081. The castle was originally a timber and earth fortification, built on modified glacial deposit. The first castle was built in the usual form of a motte and bailey.
Ralph de Stafford, 1st Earl of Stafford, one of the King's leading commanders in the first phases of the Hundred Years' War, sealed a contract with a master mason in 1347, ordering a stone castle to be built on the castle mound. The rectangular stone keep originally had a tower in each corner, but was later adapted, with a fifth tower being added on in the middle of the north wall (actually facing west).
The stone castle reached its heyday during the time of Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1402–1460), who was killed at the Battle of Northampton in 1460. His grandson Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1455–1483) had become a ward of the Yorkists and was initially a supporter of Richard III, but later rebelled in favour of the aborted invasion of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) in 1483, and paid with his life. His son Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham (1478–1521) escaped and was later restored to his lands by a grateful King Henry VII. In 1511 the 3rd Duke built himself a further grand residence at Thornbury Castle in Gloucestershire, effectively a fortified manor house. His royal blood made him a threat to Henry VIII, who had him executed in 1521, when the family's estates, including Stafford Castle and its deer parks, escheated to the Crown. The king's auditors commented favourably on the deer to be had in the parks and thought the castle might be a suitable stop-off on one of the King's progresses.
The ground they fought on
The site of Siege of Stafford 1643 lies on Triassic Rocks (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Triassic. The rock here is mudstone, siltstone and sandstone.
Lady Isabel Stafford, a staunch Roman Catholic and steadfast Royalist, defied Colonel William Brereton's demand for surrender from behind the walls of Stafford Castle, and when Parliamentary troops set fire to the outhouses to break her spirit, the garrison responded by shooting several of the besiegers' men and horses, so enraging the Parliamentary force that they burnt nearly all the surrounding buildings to the ground before a relief column under Colonel Hastings arrived on 5 June to raise the siege.
- Several Parliamentary soldiers and horses were shot by the castle garrison during the siege; Parliamentary forces burnt almost all the surrounding dwelling houses and outhouses to the ground.
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