Unlike other civil wars in England, which were mainly fought over who should rule, these conflicts were also concerned with how the three Kingdoms of England (including Wales), Scotland and Ireland should be governed. The outcome was threefold: the trial and execution of Charles I (1649); the exile of his son, Charles II (1651); and the replacement of the English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England, which from 1653 (as the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland) unified the British Isles under the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658) and briefly his son Richard (1658–1659). In England, the monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship was ended, and in Ireland, the victors consolidated the established Protestant Ascendancy. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament’s consent, but the idea of Parliamentary sovereignty was legally established only as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688.
The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy took place in 1660 when King Charles II returned from exile in Europe. The preceding period of the Protectorate and the Civil Wars came to be known as ‘The Interregnum’ (1649-1660).
Captain James Duport of Shepshed
Captain James Duport (or Dupont) of Shepshed is described as a gentleman and as a servant of the Royalist Henry Hastings, Lord Loughborough [see below].
He may have been the son of John Duport/Dupont of Shepshed who was either a lawyer or had some legal education. John Duport/Dupont drafted the Shepshed petition about grazing to the Earl of Rutland. He also advised the people of Shepshed on how to riot and what to say when questioned afterwards.
As a captain of horse James Duport or Dupont seems to have done some clerical work for Lord Loughborough. In October 1642 he signed off on a consignment of weapons at Oxford, just as the then Colonel Henry Hastings was about to come back to the county to raise more regiments, establish a taxation system and secure Ashby de la Zouch. In 1643 he was temporary governor of Ashby, but he did not surrender there in 1646. He may have died before 1650 as it was his wife's estate that was seized in 1650 because he had not been encompassed in Ashby's surrender terms.
Henry Hastings 1st Baron Loughborough
Portrait of Henry Hastings
by Robert Grindall, circa 1650/1651.
Photograph by P. J. Hasler,
courtesy of Professor Martyn Bennett.
by Robert Grindall, circa 1650/1651.
Photograph by P. J. Hasler,
courtesy of Professor Martyn Bennett.
Henry Hastings was born on 28th September 1610 at the old Manor House, Sparrow Hill, Loughborough. He was the second son of Henry Hastings, 5th Earl of Huntingdon, and his wife Lady Elizabeth Stanley, daughter of the 5th Earl of Derby, who were married in January 1601.
Young Henry’s siblings included Ferdinando Hastings (who became 6th Earl of Huntingdon), Lady Alice Hastings, Lady Elizabeth Hastings and Lady Mary Hastings.
Young Henry’s father the 5th Earl of Huntingdon was educated at Gray’s Inn and succeeded to the title on 31st December 1604. In 1607, when he was 21, he commanded forces in the suppression of the Midland Revolt, a protest against the enclosure of common land. He subsequently served in a wide range of offices in the counties of Leicestershire, Lancashire and Rutland, including Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire 1614-1642. He was also a member of the Virginia Company and a patron of the playwrights Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. He maintained the family country seat at Ashby de la Zouch Castle and died in 1643.
Young Henry’s mother, a great-great granddaughter of Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, was at one time fourth in line to inherit the English throne. Noted for her learning and piety she was a patron of the arts and also a writer. She was also one of the dancers in Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Queens performed at Whitehall Palace in 1609. She died in 1633.
The young Henry Hastings was educated at Queen’s College, Cambridge, and subsequently became a literary patron like his father.
When the Civil War broke out in 1642 Henry Hastings declared himself as a Royalist (Cavalier) supporter of King Charles I while his older brother Ferdinando joined the Roundheads in the Parliamentarian cause.
By March 1642 Henry had joined King Charles at York and in June carried the Commission of Array proclamation to Leicestershire. He then raised a troop of horse and fought against his brother at the Battle of Edgehill in Warwickshire on 23rd October 1642. In 1642 Henry was also appointed High Sheriff of Leicestershire.
After Edgehill. Henry established himself at his father's house in Ashby-de-la-Zouch and began to build a substantial military force in the area, including placing a small garrison into his family holdings at Bagworth. Together with other posts in the vicinity of Leicester – at Coleorton to the north west and Kirby Bellars to the north east – the satellite garrisons established from early 1643 served to cut-off Leicester from the other parliamentarian-controlled towns in the area, principally Derby and Nottingham. Together with outposts at crossing points along the river Trent, Hastings' garrisons successfully established a corridor along the Trent Valley, between Royalist-held Stafford and the stronghold at Newark, that not only split the Parliamentarian Lord Grey of Groby's Midlands territory in two, but helped maintain Royalist communications between Oxford and the North.
By February 1643 Henry had become so indispensable to the King that he was appointed Colonel General of the East Midlands. He became engaged in various skirmishes between the opposing forces, and saw action at the Battle of Hopton Heath on 19th March 1643. In late April Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland and Hastings laid siege to and captured Lichfield. In October that same year Hastings became not only a Lieutenant General but was ennobled with the title Baron Loughborough.
On 18th March 1644 he fought in a small battle at Cotes Bridge near Loughborough. After the battle he and Prince Rupert headed for Rempstone and on 20th March 1644 encircled and attacked the Parliamentarians who were besieging Newark, winning a great victory.
Later that year, his forces allied with those of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I, captured the town of Burton on Trent. He lost an eye to a pistol shot after an exchange near Bagworth and was thereafter known as Blind Henry Hastings by the Parliamentarians, who refused to recognise his title of Lord Loughborough.
In May 1645 Henry supported King Charles in the siege and the storming of Leicester and was subsequently appointed the governor of Leicester by the king on 2nd June. Following the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Naseby the Royalist garrison at Leicester was itself besieged by the Parliamentarian general Sir Thomas Fairfax. After a brief siege Henry negotiated articles of surrender and the garrison marched out of Leicester on 18th June.
As the war progressed and Royalist fortunes waned Ashby-de-la-Zouch, already the target of action in 1644, was subject to loose and sporadic sieges between September 1645 and its surrender in March 1646. Henry Hastings marched out with the honours of war. The castle was later partly demolished, with the remaining Hastings family moving to Donington Hall near Derby.
In the Second Civil War Henry Hastings and Arthur, Lord Capel, raised troops for the Royalists and joined the Earl of Norwich, Sir Charles Lucas, and Sir George Lisle in Essex before being besieged at Colchester. Henry surrendered with the others on 28th August 1648 and was imprisoned at Windsor Castle before escaping and fleeing to Holland in early 1649. In this he was fortunate as Capell, Lucas and Lisle were all executed for their part in the rebellion.
Upon the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 (for which Henry Hastings had worked secretly as a founder member of the underground organisation the Sealed Knot), Henry was able to return to England. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire in 1661 although he only ever lived in London from then on, in a leased manor house in Lambeth Wick he renamed Loughborough House.
In 1664 he promoted a Bill in Parliament for making the river Effra navigable from Brixton Causeway to the Thames. The Act received the Royal Assent but perhaps because Hastings died two years later no advantage was taken of the scheme.
Henry died on 10th January 1667, aged 56, unmarried. He was buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, although the site of his tomb is now lost. On his death his barony became extinct.
Several streets and a railway station in the Brixton area of London perpetuate his name. The old Manor House in Sparrow Hill, Loughborough, where Henry was born, is now (2021) Caravelli’s Hotel and Restaurant.
Sir Henry Skipwith of Prestwould
Henry Skipwith was born on 21st March 1589 in Prestwould [now Prestwold], Leicestershire. He was the son of Sir William Henry Skipwith of Cotes and Prestwould, Leicestershire, and his first wife Margaret Cave.
Henry was knighted at Whitehall on 19th July 1609 and created the First Baronet of Prestwould on 20th December 1622 by King James I.
He married firstly Amy Kempe, daughter of Sir Thomas Kempe and Dorothy Thompson, at Olantigh, near Wye, Kent, on 18th July 1609. They had four sons (William, Sir Henry, 2nd Baronet; Thomas; and Sir Grey, 3rd Baronet) and three daughters (Elizabeth; Diana, wife of Major Edward Dale, Gent; and Anne). Amy Skipwith died in 1631 in Leicestershire. Henry married secondly Blandina Penwin daughter of John Penwin of Badgeworth, Somerset, at St. Mary's Woolnoth, London, on 2nd May 1639.
Henry Skipwith was a poet and man of letters. He was a high sheriff in 1636, a JP from 1626 and in 1641 became a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.
During the Civil War he was a Commissioner of Array (a committee established by the Royalists to manage taxation, logistics etc in the county). As the Civil War ended he moved from one garrison to another as each surrendered and his final surrender was at Hartlebury in Worcestershire.
Sir Henry Skipwith, 1st Baronet Skipwith died circa 1655 and was buried at Stapleford, Leicestershire.