Page 54 - Hindsight Issue 26 April 2020

HeRItAge
The aftermath
the surrender did not reach the ears of all the Royalists, however; either that or some blatantly decided to ignore it. the Parliament men became increasingly angry by the resistance and vented their anger. Captain Francis sawyer on arriving at the spot where his brother had been mortally wounded, attacked the Reverend James Flint, curate of Harrowden, with his poleaxe, splitting his skull to his eyes. By 3-o-clock that afternoon the Parliament dragoons were running riot, looting and plundering. Francis gray’s house was targeted again; this time they took everything except for one bedsheet for his wife and five children.
Besides the unfortunate Mr Flint (being in the wrong place at the wrong time), several other killings occurred, including that of a serving maid. Apparently she was one of two that were caught up in a room of the ‘sign of the swan’, or The Swan Inn. they were resisting being violated by the soldiers, so one was shot and the other was wounded in the wrist. the loss in valuables to the town is estimated at £6,000 (over £700,000 in today’s money) and perhaps cynically it was only when all the looting had finally finished that Colonel norwich put up pamphlets proclaiming looters would be hanged.
Back at northampton an angry pro-Parliament mob tried to force their way into the house where gray was being held. they wanted to string him up. the attack was so surprisingly vicious that it was decided to transport gray to London and, in spite of no charges being held against him, gray stayed locked up in London for a very long time.
After the battle, 40 of the leading Royalists were rounded up and made to walk the 12 miles to northampton. two of these notables were edmund neale and the lame vicar of Wellingborough, the Reverend thomas Jones. Mr Jones was 70 years old, and as you can imagine, a long walk and a lame old man was not going to go well. According to Mercurius Rusticus, a well-known Royalist broadsheet at the time, the officer of his captors was Lieutenant grimes. now, apparently, during their escapades of riot, loot, plunder and murder, the good Parliamentary soldiers had time to kill a barber who owned a vicious bear – that’s right a bear!
Frustrated by the slow progress, Lieutenant grimes and his men thought it would be a wheeze to put the old vicar on the bear – perhaps the bear would rip him apart and save them the job of dragging him back to northampton. But when the old vicar got on the bear’s back, she became as quiet as a lamb. the soldiers seeing this, got bored with the vicar riding and pulled him off, and one of the soldiers tried to mount the bear. At this the bear immediately turned vicious again, ripped the unfortunate soldier to shreds, and disappeared into the woods, never to be seen again.
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