The Siege of Newcastle: A View from a Scot
- Miriam Bibby
- 3 minutes ago
- 9 min read
From February to October 1644, Newcastle was besieged by a Scottish army while its Royalist defenders held out under Sir John Marlay. Traveller and writer William Lithgow recorded the drama in vivid detail - capturing the chaos, courage and faith that marked one of the most vicious episodes of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Our much loved resident contributor and historian Miriam Bibby explores the siege and Lithgow’s extraordinary life within the turbulent world of seventeenth-century Britain.
From February to October 1644, the city of Newcastle upon Tyne was besieged by a Scottish army. The city was a Royalist stronghold, with a garrison under the command of Sir John Marlay. This siege was part of the conflict often termed “The English Civil War” although scholars now prefer the more accurate description “Wars of the Three Kingdoms”.
Five years earlier, during the course of the conflict known as the “Second Bishops’ War”, a Scottish army had occupied Newcastle. As the name implies, this conflict, and the First Bishops’ War, had arisen from the attempt of Charles I to impose the English Prayer Book on the Scots. The two Bishops’ wars were not taken seriously in England, where they became known as “the King’s northern follies”. They should have been taken more seriously, since the Scots had a well-equipped army, and more than that, were, like most combatants, convinced they had God (in this instance hard-line and Presbyterian) on their side.
Religion, and religious differences played a major part in the continuing conflict, or sequence of wars, and in Scotland those firmly opposed to the religious impositions of Charles I signed a Covenant adhering to their non-Episcopalian beliefs, hence they were “Covenanters”. They were not opposed to monarchy, but during the course of the wars, allegiances shifted constantly. In 1644, the Scottish Covenanters were allied with the English Parliamentarians.
It was therefore a Scottish Covenanter army, led by Lord General Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven, which came over the border at the beginning of 1644. As Leslie continued on a southward march into England, Lieutenant General James Livingstone, 1st Earl of Callender, stayed behind with six regiments in order to lay siege to the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, which had been prepared for siege by the Royalist William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle before he headed south after Leven. The Scots called on the city to surrender; Marlay refused, and the first stage of a lengthy siege began on 3 February as a result.
It was not a total siege throughout the period. Callender also led his troops to Newburn and the surrounding areas, putting down the widespread Royalist resistance around Newcastle. Meanwhile, Leslie’s army headed to the decisive battle at Marston Moor on 2 July. While the Covenanter troops were engaged elsewhere, city governor Marlay managed to send Royalist troops to the battle. Once the smoke had cleared at Marston Moor, the fate of Newcastle and other Royalist centres in the North East seemed inevitable. However, the siege dragged on – Marlay would not surrender.
William Lithgow was one Scot who was present at the siege and recorded and published the events, as he saw them, in a small book, or pamphlet. A small book with a mighty long title: An Experimentall and Exact Relation of that Famous and Renowned Siege of Newcastle, the Diverse Conflicts and Occurrences fell out there during the time of Ten Weeks and Odde Dayes: And of that Mightie and marvellous Storming thereof, with Power, Policie, and Prudent Plots of Warre. Together with a Succinct Commentarie upon the Battell of Bowden Hill, and that Victorious Battell of York or Marston Moore, Never to be forgotten.
Lithgow, from Lanark in Scotland, was an extremely interesting character. I first encountered him during my research into Scotland’s Galloway horse, or Galloway nag. Not only did Lithgow provide a favourable description of the Galloways in Scotland, but he was also a very well-travelled man, having journeyed to Mesopotamia and then on to Cairo in Egypt. He had witnessed the Barb horses of North Africa, and described them; he saw Bedouin tribes and their horses on his journey to Jerusalem.
In Spain, Lithgow had been captured by the Spanish Inquisition and tortured for his Protestant beliefs. He was a staunch Royalist, a Protestant but not a hard line Covenanter, and had supported James VI/I and his plans for a united Britain. When he returned from Spain, he was carried before the king to show the extent of his injuries and was promised redress from the Spanish Ambassador Gondamor, which never seems to have materialised. When Ambassador Gondamor later suggested that Lithgow might have been making the whole thing up, Lithgow punched him, or as he put it, “contrabanded his fistuld with his fist”. Lithgow was carted off to the Marshalsea Prison for nine months. In 1637, when he must have been fairly advanced in age, he set off for the Siege of Breda, riding a “Gallowedian Nag” which might have been lent or given to him by the Earl of Galloway. He didn’t make it to Breda, but recorded his journey in a book nonetheless. He was very well connected and was the guest of Archbishops and James’s daughter Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, on his travels.
Lithgow displayed a rich, even bombastic, style in his writings, and was given to providing all his publications with very long titles. He was also prone to breaking into poetry. His principal claim was always that he was an eye-witness to whatever he wrote about. In describing Leven’s march to Sunderland, he writes of the River Wear as being “Durham’s dallying and circulating consort”. His religious impulses show through in a section of poetry about Marston Moor:
In July last, the second day and more,One thousand, six hundred, fourtie and foure;On Marston Moore two awfull Armies met,Oppos’d then stood one ‘gainst another set,To quarrell for Religion, and that light,Which far excels all humane power and might.
With Marston Moor behind them, the Covenanters marched north again, the armies of Leven and Callender now united and ready to seek out remaining Royalist support in the North East. The army was camped about Lumley Castle, and forays were sent to the towns of Hartlepool (“Hatlepoole”) and Stockton (“Stocktoun”) which were quickly overcome and had Scottish garrisons placed over them. Gateshead (Gatesyde) did not surrender so readily, and the Covenanters met resistance on the “Wynd Mill Hill”. This resistance was apparently chased back over the bridge and into the city, effectively closing it off. The siege proper began in August 1644, with both Newcastle and Tynemouth coming under attack.
Batteries of cannon were set up to bombard the city of Newcastle “which daily annoyed the Inhabitants within the Towne”. The Scottish forces appropriated “keill boats” to make a bridge and attempted to surround as much of Newcastle as they could. Access via one of the keel boat bridges was guarded by Lord Kenmure.
Lithgow describes the city for his readers: “And now before I go any further, I thinke it best to shew the unacquainted Reader how the Towne is situate, from whence such mortalities proceeded; and thus it standeth mainly upon the devalling face of a continuing hill, falling down steep to the bordering River, where one narrow street runneth along from Sandgate to Clossegate. The Sandhill (from which the bridge bendeth over to Gateside) being the pryme market place, whence the two ascending passages, court distinctly High streete, and Pilgrime street, the two chiefest streets of the Towne; to the bowels of which there bee other three market places annexed”.
Lithgow’s Newcastle is still discernible today. He goes on to describe the city walls and the castle, waxing lyrical and somewhat bawdily about the city’s horned appearance: “The Townes main constructure rising upwards, divides it selfe in two corners, the one North at Weavers Tower, the other Southwest at Hatmakers Tower, deciphering two Hornes, like unto Calabrian females with their bogling busks; but indeed more unto like the Novacastrians themselves, who retrogradingly adorne their cuckolds frontespieces with the large dimensions of Acteon’s monsterous-made horns”.
The city walls, noted Lithgow, were extremely strong, more so than those of York. He compared them to those he’d seen at Avignon and Jerusalem. As for the occupants of the city, Lithgow credited them with securing their defences as well or better than most. He described the richest citizens as “seven or eight Common Knights, Aldermen, Coale Merchants, Pudlers [probably ironmasters – MAB], and the like … altogether Malignants, most of them being Papists, and the greater part of all of them, I say, irreligious Atheists”. The mass of the population he saw as “silly Ignorants”.
It has to be said that Lithgow cared nothing for diversity; anyone not a strict Presbyterian (and Royalist) like him was likely to come in for abuse. Ultimately he blamed the governor of the city, Sir John Marlay, for his stubbornness in refusing to surrender. Lithgow even showed shock at the occupants of the city daring to attempt to drown the mines the Scots were laying to bring down the walls. On 16th October 1644 the city finally fell, its military defenders and officials retreating into the Castle Keep.
For Lithgow, Marlay’s behaviour was simply false, pig-headed, and perfidious; he dragged out the siege much longer than was needed. It is true that he wrote a letter to the leaders of the army, including Leslie himself, saying that thought he’d heard something about a man called Leven, but believed him to be dead! Attempts at delays were all ultimately in vain: “That trulie it was more than admirable! to behold the desperat courage both of the Assailants and Defendants: the thundering Cannon roaring from our batteries without, and theirs rebounding from the Castle within; the thousands of Musket balls flyeing at others faces, Like to the droving haylstones from septentrion blasts; the clangour and carving Of naked and unsheathed swords, the pushing of brangling Pykes, crying for blood; and the pityfull clamour, of heart-fainting women, imploring for mercie to their husbands, themselves, and their children”. Lithgow describes the bodies in the streets, the horror, the buildings set on fire, and the eventual surrender, with the white flag replacing the red flag flying over the Castle Keep.
In the aftermath came even more horror as the Scottish soldiers attempted to take the booty they felt, as conquerors, was rightly theirs. When Callender entered the city, Lithgow noted, he showed mercy to its defenders. However, mercy was one thing, and plunder another. For 24 hours, said Lithgow, the soldiers took what they could from the ordinary people, by which no one benefitted; the poor inhabitants of the city lost what belongings they had – “household stuff” such as bedlinens, pots and pans, and even calf skins, and the ordinary soldiers gained very little from taking such everyday items. They should, said Lithgow, have been taking from the “richest malignants”, all of whom were protected. Soldiers need to be rewarded, argued Lithgow, or they will just take anything available.
Lithgow concluded that having seen three sieges now – Breda, York, and Newcastle – it was notable that they all lasted around ten weeks and “odde days”. However, he want on to say that “Yet when I consider here the malicious obstinacie of Newcastle, and thereupon the storming of it, I am ravished with admiration to behold, how in the heat of bloud, and goaring slaughter, they got so soon mercie and quarters; that me thinketh there was not the like mercie shown in such a case, since the deluge of the World”. He concluded that Newcastle should show reverence to the Lord, “Ever acknowledging the great goodness and clemencye of Scots-men, so undeservingly exposed upon you a headstrong and sedicious people”. Newcastle and its coal were now in the hands of the Scots, a fact that even made the English Parliament uneasy.
Lithgow was also pretty disgusted to learn that even as the city was being stormed, a group of citizens were having a party to celebrate the baptism of their child. He took pleasure in the fact that the Scots were able to deprive them of their money and belongings. It was only just, said Lithgow, for such a “malicious misregard”. Oh, those Geordies! Singing and dancing and wetting the bairn’s heed, even with a god-fearing Scots army at the door!
Miriam was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and is a historian, author, editor, and broadcaster. She specializes in equine history and is the co-editor-in-chief of Cheiron, the International Journal of Equine and Equestrian History. She has edited and contributed to many equestrian, archaeology, and history magazines, journals and books. Miriam was a tutor and course developer for the University of Manchester’s networked learning course in Egyptology for twelve years. Her PhD was on the topic of the Galloway horse, and a monograph, Invisible Ancestor: the Galloway Nag and its Legacy was published in 2024. Her most recent book is Working Horses in London and Miriam also has a forthcoming book on the early history and historiography of the Thoroughbred racehorse. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.