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By Root 1478 0

outward apparel’. The only point of negotiation was whether the senior officers were to surrender to the mercy of Parliament and the Lord General or to the Lord General alone. The latter was preferred by the defenders since it meant that they remained subject to military rather than civil law. But it made little difference that this was granted since the codicil to the treaty added by Fairfax stated that he had summary power in the short term and that he could hand over the generality to the mercy of Parliament.47

Thorough prosecution of the siege and unforgiving terms had the advantage of discouraging others – the logic of the laws of war in this case was that they discouraged unnecessary loss of life by making adventurous souls aware of the costs of their ambition, and of defeat. The royalists having plunged the country into renewed war, there was some justification for seeing these as appropriate responses. But Fairfax went further and actually executed two of the royalist commanders, reprieving a third at the last moment. Appropriately enough the officers had taken refuge at the King’s Head, from where Lucas, Sir George Lisle, Sir Bernard Gascoigne and Colonel Farr were summoned. Farr escaped but the others were condemned by a court martial. So too were Norwich and Capel, but their fate was left to Parliament to decide. Loughborough, the other senior officer, also escaped.48

Lucas, Lisle and Gascoigne all faced immediate death, however, and despite their pleas that they needed more time to prepare to meet their end. Lucas was a senior officer, responsible for the royalist presence in Colchester in the first place. He was also, arguably, in breach of a previous parole – having surrendered before and received quarter on condition that he did not take up arms again. There were other post facto justifications too, and it may have been significant that he was a local man, brother of Sir John Lucas, who had been the principal target of the rioters in 1642. Lisle was a less clear-cut case, though. He was less senior, but was held responsible for orders to destroy many properties and was a close ally of Lucas. In reality, whatever the arguments in favour of these particular executions, these were in Fairfax’s words ‘Persons pitched upon for this example’. These lives were taken, Fairfax explained, ‘for some satisfaction to military justice, and in part of [sic] avenge for the innocent blood they have caused to be spilt, and the trouble, damage, and mischief they have brought upon the town’. Gascoigne was pardoned at the last minute, perhaps because he was Florentine, and it was feared that his death might lead to reprisals. Lisle and Lucas died, treated firmly and unsympathetically by Ireton.49

These two were memorialized as martyrs, but not necessarily with strong justification.50 In October the parliamentary cause acquired its own martyr of dubious credentials. Pontefract and Scarborough had held out after the defeat of the other risings. Thomas Rainborough was sent north to help with the siege of Pontefract, despite the misgivings at Parliament and the hostility of the Yorkshire county committee, which did not want to find supplies for another 800 men. Based in Doncaster he dispersed his men in order to limit the burden, but this left him vulnerable. On 29 October a party of royalists from Doncaster surprised him in his bed - the guard, John Smith, had not reported for duty, owing either to illness (as he said) or to his being engaged in a local bawdy house (as a press report had it). Once captured Rainborough tried to escape, noting that he was held by only four men. One of his captors tried to drag him down, and Rainborough managed to grab a sword, his lieutenant grabbing a pistol. Rainborough was run through the throat but still resisted, receiving another wound in the body, this time a fatal one. His lieutenant also died. This was not, therefore, cold-blooded murder, but Rainborough was immortalized as a martyr, and the army lined up behind the demand for vengeance. Rainborough was given a hero’s burial in London