‘I never declined any hazard, travail, or expense, within the compass of my nature or power, in reference to my duty to the royal interest.’ On the outbreak of the civil war he was at Lynn, which his father, the royalist governor, failed to preserve against the parliamentarians' assault. After its fall Roger went to Oxford, and ‘served in Prince Rupert's troup.’ He subsequently removed to Newark, and while there was invited by Norfolk friends to attempt the recapture of Lynn (To … Clarendon … the Humble Apology of Roger L'Estrange, 1661, p. 4). In 1644 he formed a plan for the purpose, and on going to Oxford to communicate his scheme to Charles I, received a commission, signed by John Digby, earl of Bristol, dated 28 Nov. 1644 from the king, encouraging him to proceed. He was granted the appointment of governor in case of success, and he received a promise that any engagement made by him with the inhabitants should be duly respected. But two of his confederates, ‘a brace of villains by name Lemon and Haggar,’ betrayed the plot. L'Estrange was seized near Lynn; the royal commission was found on his person, and he was sent, by way of Cambridge, to London. The House of Commons resolved (19 Dec. 1644) that he should be proceeded against according to martial law. On 26 Dec. he was brought before the commissioners for martial affairs sitting at the Guildhall; Sir John Corbet was president, and on 28 Dec. Dr. Mills, the judge-advocate, pronounced sentence of death; a day was fixed for his execution, and he was removed to Newgate (Rushworth, Hist. Coll. v. 804–7). He asserts that he was not suffered to speak at the trial, but after receiving sentence he threw a paper among his judges, ‘adding withal that it was his defence.’ On 28 Jan. 1644–1645 a certificate of the sentence was read in the House of Commons (Commons' Journal, iv. 34), and a reprieve of fourteen days was soon afterwards granted, with a view to a further hearing of the case. He declined the offer made by two puritan ministers, who visited him in prison, of a pardon if he would take the covenant, and drew up a series of petitions addressed both to the House of Lords collectively, and to the Earl of Essex, and many peers individually (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 6th Rep. 39 a, 41 a and b, 46). No attempt was meanwhile made either to carry out the sentence or release him, and he remained for more than three years in ‘a distressing condition of expectancy.’ Prince Rupert is said to have informed Essex that he contemplated reprisals if L'Estrange were executed (Boyer, Annals, iii. 242). On 22 April 1645 the royalist commissioners of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire called George lord Digby's attention to the harsh treatment to which L'Estrange was being subjected, and urged that he should be exchanged or his ‘better usage’ procured (Cal. State Papers, 1644–5, p. 424). In July it was stated that he was suffering from a fatal and irrecoverable consumption (Lords' Journals, vii. 506–7). On 8 July 1646 L'Estrange issued a broadside called ‘Roger Lestrange to a Gentleman, a Member of the Honourable House of Commons,’ in which he set forth a statement of his case and of his sufferings (Lemon, Cat. of Broadsides, p. 113). On 7 April 1647 he discussed the same topics in a pamphlet entitled ‘L'Estrange, his Appeale from the Court-Martiall to the Parliament.’ He was still in Newgate in the spring of 1648, but at that date the governor connived at his escape, regarding him as ‘one in whom there was no more danger’ (Clarendon, iv. 333).
L'Estrange took refuge in Kent in the house of a young landowner named John Hales of Hales Place, Tenterden, Kent; straightway flung himself into a projected movement for a royalist rising in the county, and urged Hales to place himself at its head. L'Estrange travelled through the county delivering speeches ‘in a style very much his own, and being not very clear to be understood the more prevailed over’ his ignorant hearers (ib.) He wrote declarations on behalf of the king to be read in churches. But the royalists in London heard of his impetuous proceedings with misgiving, and instructed George Goring, earl of Norwich [q. v.], to take Hales's place. L'Estrange's followers mustered only four hundred horse and foot, and he soon found it politic to fly with Hales to Holland (cf. Gardiner, Great Civil War, iii. 382; Clarendon, Rebellion, iv. 333–6). Friend and foe combined to question his conduct, and he published from Holland in 1649 a tract, in self-defence, called ‘L'Estrange, his Vindication to Kent and the Justification of Kent to the World,’ of which he presented a copy to Hyde (Humble Apology, p. 5). He laid the blame of the fiasco on the precipitancy of his supporters, and on their neglect of his advice. While abroad he seems to have been employed by Hyde in the service of Charles II. He wrote later that he had ‘received many, many benefits under Hyde's roof’ (Memento, 1662, ded.) He was in Germany in June 1653, when Hyde wrote to him from Paris denying reports of Charles's conversion to Roman catholicism (Cal. Clarendon State Papers, ii. 212).
In August 1653 L'Estrange returned to
