Loyalty House: the siege of Basing House

When the Civil War broke out in 1642, Basing House belonged to John Paulet, the 5th Marquess of Winchester: a Catholic, a Royalist, and the owner of a vast Tudor palace that happened to sit on the main road west from London. Neither side could ignore it.

What followed was a siege that dragged on, on and off, for more than two years. It ended on the morning of 14 October 1645, and the ruins in Old Basing are what was left.

1643: Waller tries and fails

At the end of July 1643 the King sent 100 musketeers under Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Peake to garrison the house, and the Marquess set about strengthening the defences. A first Parliamentary attempt to take it by surprise was beaten off.

In November, Sir William Waller arrived with a much larger army and surrounded the house. Over nine days he launched three assaults. All three failed, and only two defenders were reported killed. Waller’s own troops then began to fall apart: a Westminster regiment refused orders and the London trained bands deserted mid-advance. He retreated to Farnham.

1644: blockade, hunger and a relief by disguise

By the summer of 1644 Parliament had changed tactics. Instead of storming the house, it would starve it. Colonel Richard Norton closed in from early June, troops were quartered around Basingstoke, and on 17 June the besiegers occupied and fortified the village church. St Mary’s still has bullet holes from the siege.

The garrison held on as food ran short. The Marquess refused every summons, telling the besiegers the house was held for the King.

Relief came in September from Oxford, under Colonel Henry Gage. His men wore orange sashes, the usual mark of the other side, to get closer before they were spotted. They fought through the besiegers’ lines, the garrison sallied out to meet them, and Gage got ammunition into the house before slipping away at night. The King knighted him for it.

By November the bread, corn and beer had run out, and the officers were already down to one meal a day. Gage came back. This time around a thousand horsemen rode to Basing each carrying a sack of corn, and found the way clear: the besieging army had shrunk through disease and exhaustion and had pulled back to winter quarters.

1645: Cromwell

The end came after Parliament’s victory at Naseby, when Royalist strongholds across the south were falling one after another. Oliver Cromwell was ordered to clear the road to London. He took Devizes and Winchester, and on 8 October 1645 he arrived at Basing with a siege train of heavy guns.

He summoned the garrison on 11 October and warned that there would be no second offer. The defenders refused. By the evening of the 13th the guns had opened two wide breaches in the walls.

At 6am on 14 October, four cannon fired as a signal and the assault began. It was over quickly. Estimates of the dead vary, but of a garrison of around 400, roughly a quarter were killed, including six of the ten priests sheltering in the house. Hundreds were taken prisoner, the Marquess among them. During the looting the house caught fire and burned until little more than blackened walls remained. The plunder was later estimated at £200,000.

Who was inside

The garrison was not only soldiers. Among those caught in the fall were:

• Inigo Jones, the architect, who was stripped and carried out wrapped in a blanket.
• Wenceslaus Hollar, the engraver, who had made a portrait of the Marquess during the siege.
• Thomas Johnson, the botanist who edited Gerard’s Herball, who died at Basing.

The Marquess was spared, though not his clothes. He is said to have declared that Basing House was called Loyalty, and tradition has him scratching his motto, Aymez Loyaute, on the windows. It became the family motto.

What happened next

The day after the storm, the House of Commons ordered what was left of Basing House to be demolished, and offered the stone free to anyone who would carry it away. Local people took them up on it, and bricks from the palace ended up in homes around the village.

Parliament’s losses over the two years of the siege are put at more than 2,000.

See it today

• Basing House, run by Hampshire Cultural Trust, has the cellars, bread ovens, earthworks and the line of the defences. The Sealed Knot stages a siege re-enactment there each year.
• The Great Barn, built in 1534, still shows the war damage on its walls.
• St Mary’s Church in Old Basing still has bullet holes from the siege.
• The Old Basing riverside takes you along the Loddon towards the site.