Saturday 7 January 2012

Siege of Wells 1978

This is interesting - footage of the Sealed Knot reenacting the siege of Wells.

3 comments:

Fire at Will said...

What "Siege" there was just skirmishing there as Waller's forces withdrew nothwards

Ralphus said...

there was very early in the civil war a sort of siege of Wells when Parliamentarian forces mustered on the Mendips and tried to take the Bsihop's Palace but were repelled by local cavaliers

keith said...

The royalists put Wells under martial law in early August and went round the local villages trying to arrest parliamentarians.

They fought off a relieving column of militia at Ivythorn Hill near Street on 8 August, I think that was the first skirmish of the war. But a few days later there was a far larger muster at Chewton Mendip that descended on Wells.

I think the cavaliers were actually thrown out of town and fled to Glastonbury and beyond. There were then skirmnishes at Yeovil and Sherborne, where the royalists took haven in the castle.

David Underdown has an account of it in his book on Somerset in the Civil War.