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The Man who captured Berkeley Castle - Colonel Thomas Rainsborough In 1643, Rainsborough took command of the 34-gun frigate Swallow and captured a Royalist vessel carrying supplies and reinforcements to the King. As captain of the Lion later that year, he was active in supporting the Fairfaxes in the defence of Hull. On 11 th October 1643, Rainsborough led 500 musketeers in a raid which captured several Royalist forts and gun emplacements, forcing the Royalists to abandon the siege the next day.

Transferring to the army, Rainsborough commanded a foot regiment in the Eastern Association under the Earl of Manchester. Three of his original officers, Lt.-Colonel Israel Stoughton, Major Nehemiah Bourne, and Captain John Leverett, were all citizens of Massachusetts, and many of the men which served in these officers' companies were also from the Massachusetts Bay Colony (approx. 80-150). In fact, Rainsborough's regiment was the only one to have such a high proportion of men from the colonies of the new world who returned to England to fight in the Civil War. The reason for this was no doubt due to his two sisters being married to the Governor of Massachusetts and his son.

When the regiment joined the New Model Army on 8 th May 1645, it was weak, and was bolstered up to

strength by reducing three other regiments of Manchester's Army into it. These regiments were Ayloffe's, Francis Russell's, and Major-General Lawrence Crawford's. The regiment only numbered about 500 strong before the Battle of Naseby, when it had been at Abingdon in the spring. Although some recruits had no doubt joined the regiment since April 1645, it is unlikely that it had its full strength of 1200 men at the battle, with 800 being more likely instead. With his new regiment Colonel Rainsborough took Gaunt House near Oxford on June 1st, 1645 and fought at Naseby under Major-General Skippon.

During the New Model's march into the west, Rainsborough distinguished himself at the battle of Langport when he led 1500 musketeers in an attack on the Royalist position. The regiment was then at the storming of Bridgwater, and then suffered severely at the siege of Sherborne Castle, where a number of its officers were picked off with birding pieces by two "keepers of parkes", who sniped at them from the towers of the stronghold. A few days later he lead his own and Hammond’s regiments with 2 guns to take Nunney Castle (“a very strong place”), which he did within 3 days.

During the siege of Bristol, Rainsborough’s Brigade consisted of his own, Major-General Skippon’s, Colonel Hammond’s, Colonel Birch’s and Lt-Colonel Pride’s regiments. His regiment beat back a Royalist sally on 24 th August, and helped beat back another on 1 st September, during the assault on the town on 10 th September, as Cromwell tells us:

Colonel Rainsborough, who had the hardest task of all at Priors-hill-fort, attempted it, and fought near three hours for it, and indeed there was great despair of carrying the place, it being exceeding high, a ladder of thirty rounds, scarce reaching the top thereof; but his resolution was such, that notwithstanding, the inaccessibleness and difficulty, he would not give it over. The enemy had four pieces, of cannon upon it, which they plied with round and case shot upon our men: his Lieutenant-colonel Bowen and others were two hours at push of pike, standing upon the palisados, but could not enter…And as this was the place of most difficulty, so of most loss to us on that side, and of very great honour to the undertaker.

When they did eventually break in, Hammond’s and Rainsborough’s regiments massacred most of the defenders who tried to surrender. Rainsborough was one of the three commissioners appointed by Fairfax to sign the terms of Rupert’s surrender of Bristol.

Rainsborough captured Berkeley Castle, and then besieged Corfe Castle for a time, before being sent to blockade Oxford in December 1645.

The regiment then took Woodstock (26 th April 1646). After the surrender of Oxford in June 1646, Rainsborough took over the siege of Worcester, which surrendered to him on 22 nd July. On Fairfax's recommendation, he was appointed

R ainsborough was elected recruiter MP for Droitwich in Worcestershire in January 1647, but still continued with his military duties. In Rainsborough's absence, however, his troops mutinied at Portsmouth in May 1647 in protest at Parliament's plans for the disbandment of the New Model Army without settlement of the soldiers' grievances. The mutineers marched for Oxford, intending to seize the Army's train of artillery, until Rainsborough joined them at Abingdon and succeeded in pacifying them.

Now deeply involved in the Army's political activities, Rainsborough was one of the delegation of officers that presented the Heads of the Proposals to King Charles in July 1647 as a basis for a negotiated settlement. He turned implacably against the King following his arrogant rejection of the Army's proposals. When Presbyterian MPs tried to foment a counterrevolution by raising the City of London against the New Model Army, Rainsborough led the advance guard of the Army's occupation of the city in August 1647.

Rainsborough played a leading role in the Putney Debates of October-November 1647 where he sided with the Leveller radicals, calling for the Army and Parliament to break off negotiations with the King and to force through a new constitution on their own terms. The Grandees Cromwell and Ireton were opposed to this course of action, but within three months the King's intransigence had forced Parliament to adopt Rainsborough's proposal in the Vote of No Addresses. Rainsborough also argued for manhood suffrage ("one man, one vote"):

For really I think that the poorest he that is in England have a life to live, as the greatest he: and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government.

This again clashed with Cromwell and Ireton who regarded the idea as tantamount to anarchy. Ireton replied for the Grandees:

no man hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing of the affairs of the kingdom... that hath not a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom.

At the Vorkbush Field rendezvous in November 1647, Rainsborough attempted to present a copy of the Levellers' manifesto: An Agreement of the People to Lord-General Fairfax, but he was waved aside.

In January 1648, Rainsborough returned to naval service. He was appointed Vice Admiral and given command of a squadron guarding the Solent and Isle of Wight, where King Charles was held prisoner. However, Rainsborough's radical views were unpopular in the Navy. On the outbreak of the Second Civil War in the spring of 1648, the crews of ten of Parliament's warships declared for the King. Rainsborough was seized by the crew of his flagship, the

Constant Reformation , and put ashore. Parliament reappointed the Earl of Warwick in his place to restore the loyalty of the seamen.

With his authority in the Navy at an end, Rainsborough transferred back to the Army and took command of the Tower of London Regiment at the siege of Colchester. He was one of the commissioners who counter-signed the articles of surrender at Colchester and, at the head of his new regiment, was one of the first to enter the town.

After the fall of Colchester, Fairfax ordered Rainsborough to march north to the siege of Pontefract Castle, intending to place him in command of Parliament's forces in Yorkshire, thus keeping him well away from the centre of political power in London. The Parliamentarian commander in the region, Sir Henry Cholmley, bitterly objected to Rainsborough's appointment and refused to accept his authority. Rainsborough and the Tower Regiment quartered at Doncaster while the wrangling continued. On the night of 30 th October 1648, a party of four Royalists from Pontefract gained admission to Rainsborough's lodgings and attempted to take him prisoner. Rainsborough refused to accompany them and in the ensuing struggle, he was run through with a sword and killed. Many believed that Sir Henry Cholmley was implicated in Rainsborough's death because Cholmley's troops had failed to prevent the cavaliers from leaving Pontefract or from entering Doncaster and finding Rainsborough's lodgings. Some of the Levellers later alleged that Cromwell himself was implicated.

As the senior Leveller supporter in the Army, Rainsborough's death was a severe setback for the movement. His funeral in London occasioned a massive Leveller-led political demonstration, with thousands of mourners wearing rosemary in their hats for remembrance and ribbons of sea-green, which colour was thereafter adopted as the Levellers' colour.