A recent article in the Evening Sentinel suggested The Staffordshire Regiment can trace their history back to 1705, when the 38th Regiment of Foot was raised in a public house (The Kings Head) at Lichfield by Colonel Luke Lillingstone (Perhaps in the first instance Lillingstones Regiment of Foot).

My friend Anthony Rowland is currently researching a number of regiments involved in the English Civil Wars including one also raised in Lichfield, Tamworth and Cannock by Lord William Paget, (1609-1678) in 1642 around the time King Charles the first was raising his standard in Nottingham to declare war on Parliament.

 

Paget’s Regiment

Lord Paget had come over to the king in May of 1642, having previously been a prominent opponent of Charles I in the years leading up to the outbreak of war. Edward Clarendon wrote of Paget’s change of heart; “The Lord Paget...who had contributed all his faculties to their service and to the prejudice of the King’s.....fled from them and besought the King’s pardon.” 
A letter, stating his reasons for going over to the King, was read in Parliament on 20th June 1642 ;  “It may seem strange that I, who with all zeal and earnestness have prosecuted in the legitimacy of this parliament, the reformation of all disorders in church and commonwealth, should not, in times of great distractions desert the cause....but when I found the preparation of arms against the king under the shadow of loyalty, I am rather resolved to obey a good conscience than particular ends, and am now on my way to his Majesty, where I will throw myself down at his feet and die a loyal subject.”      
Paget was made a Commissioner of Array for Staffordshire and was first commissioned by the King to raise just 30 horse but he quickly set about recruiting a foot regiment for the army, for which he received a commission on 16th August. He provided the money from his own pocket and took a personal interest in its recruitment and in raising money for the king’s cause.

Staffordshire was an area of divided loyalties and in the early part of the war it attempted to remain neutral. First mention of the raising of troops by Lord Paget for the Regiment that became Richard Bolle’s then Sir George Lisle’s, came in a remarkable passage from a Parliament propaganda sheet said.

“From Lichfield The Lord Paget and his followers have gathered 3 or 400  of the scum and refuge of the Countrey and billeted them in Lichfield, a place more plyable to yeeld to wicked men’s designes than most other places by reason of the Cathedrall debaucht fellowes that have infected the town, and the want of powerfull preaching ever since the Reformation, where the cavaliers and their scums have disarmed every man in the town (Master Noble, a Parliament man and the two Bailiffs and Sheriffs not excepted) and seized upon the Magazine of the City, and exercise their souldiers with their arms”.  

“They also on a sudden surprised Tamworth, a great market towne, and have served them in the like manner; caused Master Blake, a godly minister to fly, sent Master Black the schoolmaster to the king, and imprisoned about four or six honest eminent men in the castle there because (as they say) they are Round-heads. All which might have been prevented , had that populous towne stood upon her guards and sent out scouts (as valiant Bermingham doth) For God’s and Parliament’s enemies are stout and couragious, where they are feared, and not opposed: but  feeble and cowardly where manfully withstood. Then be couragious, oh England; let us labour and pray for courage, as well as victory, and God will destroy all those that rise up against his people (because they are such) reproachfully calling them Round-heads. Even so be it. Amen Lord”. Paget entrusted the training and leadership of his regiment to a professional soldier from Theddlethorpe in Lincolnshire, Richard Bolle (1590-1643) who was soon to take command of the regiment. Having initially raised the regiment however Paget seems to have had little more to do with it.

Richard Bolle’s Regiment of Foote

Prior to this in 1640 Bolle was listed as Lieutenant Colonel in the Regiment of Sir Arthur Aston during the Bishops Wars in Scotland where Charles I was forced to back down in the face of the Scottish Army. By 1642 Bolle had been Lieutenant-Colonel in Sir John Clotworthy’s Regiment in Ireland opposing the Catholic uprising which had broken out there in October 1641.

Paget’s / Bolle’s Regiment was completed  in a remarkably short time and 1,000-1,300 men  were able to march out of Lichfield in the second week of September, joining the King’s Army on 13th or 14th September 1642 as it marched from Nottingham towards Derby.

It’s arrival brought the number of foot regiments in the king’s army to six , causing Clarendon to remark that; “The whole made so good an appearance that all men were even wishing for the Earl of Essex (the parliamentary forces commander), and all fears were vanished.”  

The Regiment having now adopted Bolle’s name served under him at the battles of Edgehill, (Oct 23rd  1642) Reading, (April 1643) Bristol, (July 1643) Gloucester, (Aug 1643) and Alton (Dec. 1643), where Bolle was killed and most of his men captured. The Regiment, after prisoner exchange and re-recruitment, passed to George Lisle early in 1644. 

 

Bolle’s Regiment took part in the Battle of Edgehill, 23rd October 1642, as part of Richard Feilding’s Brigade. Feilding’s regiments occupied the centre of the Royalist line. Most of the brigade broke under the charge of parliaments cavalry (Balfour’s). Under this cavalry attack Stradling’s, Lunsford’s and Feilding’s regiment’s all seem to have fled for their Colonels were all taken captive. Bolle’s and Fitton’s men may have fared better, and merely withdrawn behind their artillery. Bolle’s monument in Alton Church claims he performed wonders during the Edgehill battle. Even so the regiment probably suffered severe casualties. A few weeks after the battle, on 16th November, Bolle’s mustered only 534 men, less than half the number who marched out of Lichfield.

After Edgehill Bolle’s regiment probably took part in the King’s advance on London which defeated the force that held Brentford but turned back after the confrontation with the London Trained Bands at Turnham Green. Thereafter they were garrisoned in Reading.

A parliamentarian army under the Earl of Essex began to besiege Reading around the 19th April 1643. Richard D’Ewes, Lieutenant-Colonel of Bolle’s Regiment was killed after losing a leg to a cannon shot during the parliamentarian artillery’s initial bombardment of the town. Colonel Bolle took an active part in Reading’s surrender negotiations;

“They in the town sent forth to parley with us (Parliament), Colonell Bolles Lieutenant Colonel Thelwell and Serjeant Major Gilby......they desired libertie to goe to the King’s Armie to aquaint the Commander in chief with the terms. To that purpose Colonell Bolles and Colonell Russell went together to the King’s Armie, who shortly returned with a letter from Prince Rupert.”

By the terms of the agreed treaty, the whole of the garrison were supposed to keep their arms and march to Oxford. These terms were not entirely honoured however and many of the regiments were plundered of their arms, equipment and baggage.

Richard Bolle’s Regiment, most of whom had previously been in Reading were marched out of Oxford and quartered in a newly fortified standing camp or leaguer at Culham near Abingdon. Here they remained for over a month living in improvised huts of mud and turf in deteriorating sanitary conditions which claimed the lives of many soldiers from typhus or ‘camp fever’. Bolle’s men are recorded as having received a delivery of arms while at the camp on 23rd May consisting of 20 muskets, 20 bandeliers and 20 pikes which were distributed amongst the 8 companies present.

Most of the foot regiments were drawn out of Culham camp by 14th June. Shortly afterwards  119  arms, belonging  to  soldiers of  Bolle’s Rgt who were too ill to march,  (66 pike and 53 musket)  were handed in to the magazine in Oxford  these men were sent to a military hospital established at Yarnton Manor where the burial of ten men and one officer (Ensign Edward Fowler) are recorded between June and September.

During the storming of Bristol on 26th July 1643. Lt Col Littleton (of Bolle’s regiment but serving as Tertia major or staff officer)  ryding along the inside of the line with a fire pike quite cleerd the place of the defendants... Thus the line was cleered.

Once within the city  Wentworth’s tertia (including Bolle’s) advanced  to the docks area where “30 muskettiers annoyed the Enemyes. So that hereabouts the fight was like skolding at one another out of windows.”

After the capture of Bristol Bolle’s regiment formed part of the king’s army at the siege of Gloucester, which began on

August 10

th 1643. After his heavy losses at Bristol the king was reluctant to risk a frontal assault, preferring instead to invest the city by digging siege works and starving the garrison out. Bolle’s regiment’s presence there was recorded on 2-3rd September when a quantity of Match was delivered to“Colonell Bowles at the Trenches” for their stint of guard duty.

After the siege was abandoned on 5th September 1643, Bolle’s regiment seems to have been returned to garrison duty in Reading which had been abandoned by its parliamentarian captors and re-occupied by the royalists in September.

At the First Battle of Newbury Bolle’s Regiment formed part of John Belayse’s Tertia, which occupied the left flank of the Royalist infantry.  Belayse’s regiments advanced in two bodies on Essex’s foot regiments in support of Rupert’s cavalry and became locked in a stalemate for up to four hours before pushing their opponents slowly back. Surviving casualty returns for Belayse’s Tertia however show them to have suffered quite heavy losses indicating that they were heavily engaged. 117 men were wounded  throughout the Tertia of about 1,500 men, 23 being from Bolle’s. The number of fatal casualties is unknown.  The King’s Army had virtually exhausted its ammunition during the battle, the longest of the war, and were forced to withdraw from the field the following day.

Bolle’s Regiment was reinforced with first class experienced soldiers at the expense of some of the other royalist regiments. “Collonell Bowles is chosen to bring on the forces that come from Reading.” Bolle’s force were commanded men, hand-picked from several Reading Regiments not just his own. Col. Joseph Bampfield talks of Bolle’s foot as a brigade  “They were all selected men and two or three files of the most able souldiers in every Regiment were drawn out to make up this regiment a compleat one.”  They also seem to have been newly equipped and uniformed for the expedition- their arms were “very good ones” and “they were all very well habited” This may also suggest the regiment was badly depleted at Newbury and needed major rebuilding and re-equipping.

At the beginning of December 1643, Bolle’s moved to winter quarters in Alton (Hampshire) along with Earl of Crawford’s cavalry and dragoons. The Alton brigade was visited by senior command and warned to be on their guard. “And so the Lord Hopton.....haveing the dangerous quarter of Alton continually in his care, he went thither the next day to visit it, and there to conferr with the Earl of Craford, and Coll: Bolles. Lord Hopton, veiwing the large extent and unsecurity of that quarter, left expresse order with the Earl of Craford and Coll. Bowles, to keep as good guards and intelligence upon the Enemy as possibly they could and that if ever he found that the Enemy moved out of Farnham with a body, they should presently quitt that quarter, and retreat to him.”

Sir William Waller the parliamentarian general had also spotted the vulnerability of the Alton Brigade and on the evening of the 12

th December set out with a force of 5,000 men with 4 light leather guns as if going towards Basing. Waller’s force avoided the highways and, despite Hopton’s warning to Crawford and Bolle, he was able to approach Alton through the surrounding woodland without detection. It was only as they reached the outskirts of the town that Crawford’s patrols finally raised the alarm. Crawford decided his cavalry would be of little use in the confines of the town and he ordered them to make their escape towards Winchester to alert Hopton. They rode straight into a blocking force left to intercept them on the Winchester road and after a clash in which they lost several men killed and taken they headed back into Alton before most of them broke through and withdrew in disorganised groups to Hopton’s Army. Meanwhile Bolle hastily organised as good a defence as he could offer. Rudely awakened many of his men began tumbling out of the houses where they were quartered to form up in the Market Square. But Bolle concentrated his main defence in the NW of Alton around the parish church of St Lawrence the Martyr, manning two large ‘half-moon’ earthworks with breastworks and double ditches he had constructed  in his short time in Alton; one to the west and another to the north of the churchyard Musketeers also defended the churchyard walls and in the church itself wooden scaffolds had been erected so that they could fire out of the high windows. More men were posted in houses and other buildings close to the church. 
Waller first attacked with his cavalry probably hoping to catch the royalists before they could form up. Some of Bolle’s men were caught in the streets but enough were sufficiently well entrenched to beat them off. Waller’s leather-guns were brought into action forcing most of the defenders from the surrounding buildings into the churchyard. Fire from Bolle’s western earthwork held up the advance of the parliamentarian foot; the London Brigade consisting of the Red Regiment of London Trained Bands, the Green Auxilliaries and the Yellow Auxilliaries and that of Samuel Jones’s Farnham Greencoats which attacked from the West. Eventually part the London Brigade outflanked the earthwork by advancing under cover of smoke from some houses they fired, and turned their guns on its rear. Bolle’s ‘half-moon’s’ defenders began to abandon it and fall back towards the church

For the next two hours Bolle’s men made good the earthwork to the North of St Lawrence’s Church together with the churchyard and church itself until, driven on and encouraged by their officers and sergeants, the Parliamentarian foot forced their way through the SW gateway and advanced on the church under heavy fire and fighting hand to hand with sword halberd and musket butt and hurling “hand-grenadoes” through the windows of the church. The defenders of the earthwork realising their position was no longer tenable, rushed in some disorder to join the fight in the churchyard, seeing which the London Brigade fell upon the disorderly crowd before they could form ranks forcing back Bolle’s foremost musketeers onto the weapons of their own pikemen to their rear breaking many of the pikes in pieces and killing and wounding many.

The Roundheads burst through the church doors on the heels of the retreating survivors, before it could be bolted against them, to find the aisle barricaded with dead horses and other debris behind which the remnant of Bolle’s men (80 men according to Bolle’s monument) crouched with pike and musket, ready to receive the final onslaught. Parliament’s Major Shambrook was shot in the thigh as he led his men into the church and Lt Col Birch suffered “a few dry blowes with the musket stockes” Bolle was called upon to surrender but refused, standing in the pulpit he “swore God damne his soule if he did not run his sword through the heart of him which first called for quarter”. Clarendon claims Bolle cut down two or three of the enemy before he was struck down dead with the butt of a musket (or as many as seven according to his monument) Following Bolle’s death many of the defenders began to lay down their weapons and seek quarter but even now a few fought on, who the enemy described as “some desperate Villaines which refused quarter, who were slaine in the church, and some others of them wounded , who afterwards were granted quarter upon their request”

Accounts from either persuasion emphasised the quality of the Bolle’s foot regiment. Lt Col. Birch saying “so many as were living and able, were carried prisoners to Farnum; the choicest men, for so many, that were taken since the beginning of these wars”

Soon after the loss of Alton Hopton wrote to Waller (with whom he had been a close friend before the war)“This is the first evident ill successe I have had : I must acknowledge that I have lost many brave and gallant men; I desire you. If Colonell Boles be alive to propound a fit exchange; if dead that you will send me his corps: I pray you send me a list of such prisoners as you have that such choice men as they are may not continue long unredeemed: God give a sudden stop to this issue of English blood”

Bolle’s body does seem to have been repatriated as he was buried with honours in Winchester Cathedral. In 1689 a relative erected a brass plaque on a pillar there on which the following epitaph was inscribed;

A Memorial

For this renowned martialist Richard Boles of ye

Right worshipful family of ye Boleses in

Linkhornshire: Collonell of a Ridgment of Foot of

1,300, who for his gratious King Charles ye first,

did wounders at ye battel of Edge-Hill; his

last action, to omit all others was at Alton in

this county of Soughthampton was surprised by

five or six thousand of ye Rebells which caused

him there Quartered to fly to ye church,

with near fourscore of his men, who there fought them

six or seven houres

And then ye Rebells, breaking in upon him

 he slew with his sword six or seven of them, and

then was slayne himself with sixty of his men about him.

1641

His Gratious Soueraigne, hearing of his death

gave him his high Commendation in ys pationate expression;

Bring me a Moorning Scarffe, I have lost one of the best

Commanders in this Kingdome.

Alton will tell you of that famous Fight

Which this man made, and bade this World good night.

His Vertious Life fear’d not Mortality,

His Body must, his Vertues cannot die,

Because his Bloud was there so nobly spent,
This is his Tombe; that Church his monument.” 

The epitaph is clearly inaccurate as to the date which should read 1643 rather than 1641 and some of the other details, such as the length of the fight and number of men killed by Bolle, are uncorroborated and perhaps rather exaggerated. The 53 year old veteran commander however died a valiant death. He left a widow and two daughters in their mid- teens 

Parliament claimed surprisingly low casualties at Alton, they buried about 40 Royalists in one grave in the churchyard and claimed to have lost less than 10 men themselves besides about 12 badly wounded. Bolle’s monument (above) says 60 men fell with him. 875 prisoners including 50 officers and about 30 of Crawford’s cavalrymen taken at Alton were tied together in pairs with match-cord and marched to Farnham and from thence to London. By order of the Lord Mayor, they were marched through the streets of London guarded by the City Trained Bands to proclaim the victory to the people. According to Whitelock as many of 500 of them took the covenant and agreed to serve parliament under Waller. On 20th December the House of Commons allocated 400 prisoners from Alton to various prisons in London and  considered what to do with “such Prisoners as shall not be exchanged, or shall not take the Covenant” indicating that the others taken had probably already sworn the Covenant and been released or absorbed into Parliament units  Efforts were made to exchange the remainder especially the officers but some officers taken at Alton remained incarcerated until April 1644 when they were finally granted the liberty to procure an exchange.

Sir George Lisle took over the repatriated survivors of Bolle’s regiment and rebuilt it once again. How many of the original Lichfield, Cannock and Tamworth men were left is open to question.

 

Anthony Rowland edited by Martin Docksey