Jim Butler
16 June 2026
In the mid-17th century, Leicester was a modest town of only about 5000 inhabitants but did you know that it played a significant role on two occasions in the English Civil War? For the first of our three summer outings, Jim Butler (@Hidden Histories of Leicester) led a group of our members on a tour around the key sites in the city centre.
We met in Town Hall Square, where in 1642 the king’s local representative, Henry Hastings, tried to carry out an order to raise a militia. Parliament had proclaimed that the king had no right to make such an order and the citizens of Leicester sent Henry and his supporters fleeing for their lives. This might have been why, on 22nd August of that year, the king was staying at Cavendish House, which survives today as a ruin in Abbey Park. It was here that he met his nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who was an experienced soldier newly arrived from overseas. The same day, the two of them proceeded to Nottingham and raised the king’s standard there to mark the start of the war. The first (minor) military action of the Civil War took place two days later, when Henry Hastings raided the seat of his great rivals, the Grey family, at Bradgate Park.
Leicester then largely kept its head down until 30th May 1645, when the infamous siege of the town was to have great consequences both locally and for the nation. While Charles was on an expedition to the north, the parliamentary army attacked his main base at Oxford. In an attempt to draw them away, the king laid siege to the pro-parliament town of Leicester. Its medieval walls had long since crumbled, except around the Newarke, but some attempt had been made to dig new defensive ditches. Few reinforcements arrived so roughly 2,000 defenders – mostly ordinary citizens – had to face about 11,000 attackers. Although Prince Rupert’s cannons on the Rawdykes eventually breached the Newarke’s walls, most of the defence was focused there and multiple waves of attacks were successfully repelled. However, the chimes of midnight were the signal for the royal army to attack from all sides and the defenders were spread too thinly around the north and east of the town to resist for long. Hand grenades were newly invented and the attackers used them to create confusion, giving them time to scale the embankments and open the gates for the cavalry to enter. After that, there was desperate street-by-street fighting as citizens tried to save their homes and families, but at 3.45am Major Innes offered surrender on condition that the town and its defenders would be spared.
Despite that agreement, the Royalist soldiers sacked Leicester, raping or killing hundreds of citizens and taking away 140 cartloads of goods and valuables, which left many of the survivors destitute. Having sat out the battle at Aylestone, King Charles arrived in the morning to claim his victory and, on seeing the ongoing pillage, he said, “I care not: they are mine enemies.”
The siege did indeed draw the parliamentary army away from Oxford. The two sides met at Naseby on 14th June and the king was soundly defeated. When he was later captured and put on trial, accused of being a tyrant, the words he had used following the Siege of Leicester were a key piece of the evidence that led to his guilty verdict and execution.