Civil War in Marston

The English Civil War in Marston

On 29th October 1642, Charles I entered Oxford to make it his capital, and the city and the surrounding area became the nerve centre of the Royalist war effort.

Marston had its brief period at the centre of the final crisis of the war three years later, in the spring and early summer of 1646, when Parliament's New Model Army besieged the city. The village filled with Parliamentary soldiers as Sir Thomas Fairfax, Captain General, made his headquarters in the Mansion House, owned by Union Croke, a successful Parliamentarian lawyer, and effectively squire of the village. Part of this is now known as Cromwell's House, a typically inaccurate C19th label, for almost certainly Oliver Cromwell, Fairfax's second in command, was based at Wheatley, though he may well have ridden over at times to consult with Fairfax.

He was also likely to have been present when one of the Army chaplains, William Dell, preached a fiery sermon, probably from the pulpit of St. Nicholas Church, and later printed. On 7th June, 1996, the 350th anniversary, we re-enacted part of this sermon in St. Nicholas Church, though the congregation was spared the full two hours of it, and the Vicar skilfully reduced it to some 20 dramatic minutes.

By the spring of 1646, the King was in the hands of Parliament's allies the Scots. With no army or money, he sent orders to the remaining garrison in Oxford to negotiate the surrender. Negotiations took place in the Mansion House*, so there must have been much coming and going of Fairfax and his leading officers, and the Royalists.

On 24th June the remains of the Royalist army marched peacefully out of the city and laid down their arms. No further damage was done in Oxford and the neighbouring area. Marston presumably emptied of soldiers as they marched in to occupy the city.

It is likely many of them were cavalry troopers - a stirrup of the correct date was found in the churchyard some 30 years ago, and is now in the Ashmolean. Another was found by Mr and Mrs Harley in the garden of their house called the Orchard - opposite the new building which replaces the village shop and Post office. They also found a small cache of robinett balls (a robinett was a small type of cannon) -perhaps lost by a careless trooper? - and many fragments of C17th tobacco pipes as well as later ones, mainly in the part of the garden where there used to be a pond, and, it is thought, a blacksmith's forge nearby.

Villagers - and soldiers - may have sat round the pond smoking while they waited for horses to be shod. Similar fragments or pipes are still sometimes dug up in other Marston gardens.

We have one further glimpse of the effect of the war on this small village. At the time of the restoration of Charles II in 1660, a petition was submitted (amongst many others) for some redress for the suffering of wartime:

And the complainants showed that the town of Marston lay low in a very dirty waterish soil ...and in the time of the late wars, and by reason of the garrison of Oxford, the said fields and lands did for the most part lie fresh and fallow, and could not be husbanded to any prof it...and their houses were much ruined and decayed, and wasted, and their trees cut down and employed for the use of the said garrison, and a great part of their meadows spoiled by the digging of the turfs for the making of bulwarks... and the complainants cattle plundered and taken away by the Parliament soldiers....

*see History of Marston above.

Adapted from a talk given to the Civic Society in 2007 by Rosemary Kelly

Published in Marston Times January 2008

Reprinted by kind permission Jan Sanders, Editor