Thursday, 2 April 2020

The Aftermath of the Siege of Newark

Newark Castle



When the various armies packed up and marched away from Newark in May 1646 they left Newark in a mess. Many houses and other buildings in the town had been damaged or destroyed by artillery and mortar fire - the scars of cannon balls can still be seen on the castle walls. The Muskham Bridge had been destroyed along with Winthorp Church and dozens of outlying houses and farms. The River Trent was in even worse condition. It was blocked in several places by the fallen Muskham Bridge, the Parliamentarian dam and the banks were strewn with sharpened stakes.
All this had to be repaired and cleared before life returned to normal for Newark. For many, of course, life could not return to normal. Hundreds of people had died from battle or disease, and the deaths continued for hunger had weakened the old and young so that they fell victim to diseases they might otherwise have survived. Nor was the material damage to the town over. In 1648 the Parliamentarian army returned to blow up sections of the castle and reduce it to ruin so that it could never again be used to defy them.
The economy of the town was also devastated. Unable to export their yarn and cloth, the merchants had gone bankrupt, and those who survived found that their overseas customers had turned elsewhere for supplies. Money to repair the damage was hard to come by.
It would take years for Newark to regain its prosperity and its population. Some marks of the siege still remain. The castle ruins still stand on the banks of the Trent. After generations of neglect they were restored in the 1840s. The grounds are now public gardens and a museum and a local history museum stands in the ruins.
If Newark took time to recover from the fighting, at least it did recover. King Charles did not. Although he had come to a deal with his Scottish subjects and was in the process of negotiating a peace with the English Parliament, he decided to start a new Civil War in the spring of 1648. That war was over quickly, having achieved nothing but the deaths of many brave men in a lost cause.
Parliament then began a debate on how to deal with a king who, quite clearly, could not be trusted. The Parliamentarian army had no doubt about what Charles deserved. Led by Cromwell the army marched into London, threw out of Parliament any MP they did not trust and put Charles on trial for treason. The verdict was a foregone conclusion. Charles was beheaded on a scaffold erected in Whitehall on 30 January 1649.
Thereafter England was ruled by the Parliamentarian army, which in effect meant by Oliver Cromwell. After Cromwell’s death Charles II returned to the throne having reached an agreement with Parliament that settled many of the issues over which the Civil War had been fought. 



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