Astley Castle - English Civil War

English Civil War

Astley Castle was a Parliamentary stronghold during the English Civil War, one of a network of small, troublesome garrisons (to the Royalists) that infested this part of the English Midlands, drawing upon surrounding villages for their support. According to one of the garrison muster lists submitted to the committee of accounts at Warwick, Captain Hunt and Lieutenant Goodere Hunt commanded about thirty five soldiers here in July 1644. Ann Hughes, links Astley to the "rebel towns" described by royalist propaganda broadsheets as governed by low-born tinkers, cobblers and pedlars, pointing out that Hunt was "an illiterate shoemaker" before the war, prosecuted in 1647 for 'requisitioning' a gentleman's horse. The small but active Astley garrison compares with Tinker Fox’s celebrated band of 7 officers and 42 troopers at Edgbaston Hall, George Kendall’s 6 officers and 21 soldiers at Maxstoke Castle and Waldyve Willington’s garrison of around 130 soldiers at Tamworth Castle (including ‘the town company’) in accounts from July 1645 (SP 28/123/part 2).

The size of the Warwickshire garrisons varied, troops being often shifted at short notice and sent out when they were needed for scouting parties, to collect levies and to carry out raids and sieges on royalist garrisons. The muster at Astley on 9 July 1645 which lists 79 officers and 462 “horse troops” under the command of Major Hawkswell, was an unusually large gathering, with the town’s population swollen by the sudden arrival of troops from surrounding garrisons, including Edgbaston and Tamworth. Most of these horse troops were probably quartered in the village, with some of the officers and Goodere Hunt’s foot soldiers occupying the castle. (SP 28/122/part 2)