Page:VCH Rutland 1.djvu/248

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A HISTORY OF RUTLAND the outbreak of war. In February 1 642 the Earl of Exeter was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Rutland on the recommendation of Parliament." During the five months preceding the outbreak of the Civil War the king and Parliament were each endeavouring to obtain the control of the military forces of the country. On 1 7 June the Earl of Exeter was ordered by Parliament to ' put the militia into execution in the county of Rutland on I July, and likewise . . . the Instructions concerning the raising of money, plate and horse,' "* and on i July instructions were sent for preserving the peace of the county." Sir Edward Harington now took the lead among the Parliamentarians of the county, and he w^rote in July that he and his colleagues had taken the necessary steps for securing the magazine at Oakham, and had duly received instructions to call out the militia, but as the king had issued commissions of array to ' men of great power in the county,' they feared that 'the business might receive great prejudice';" and it was reported at the end of the year that ' the Malignants were busy raising horse and foot.' ^' While the king was at Nottingham in August and September he received ' very good recruits of foot ' from Lincolnshire,*" and no doubt from Rutland as well. Jeremy Taylor, then rector of Uppingham, is believed to have taken this opportunity of joining the king ; " an example which was followed, either then or within the following year, by many other Royalists in the county. The most influential and active of these was Viscount Campden. On the outbreak of the war he received a commission to raise 500 horse, and afterwards another for three regi- ments of horse and three of foot, but died before he could fully accom- plish his task.*' His son Baptist succeeded him as a loyal supporter of the king, and was in the course of the year 1643 successively appointed captain of a troop of horse and of a company of foot, colonel of a regi- ment of horse, and a brigadier both of horse and foot.** George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, then only seventeen years of age, and his younger brother William both joined the king at Oxford, and saw some hard fighting under Rupert, the former, who was present at the siege of Lich- field, also taking part in the plot which led to the second Civil War, despite the fact that Parliament had graciously restored to him, on the ground of his youth, the estates sequestrated during the first, while the latter, who held a commission in the King's 6th Regiment, died at Oxford in September 1643 from wounds received during the siege of Bristol.** Amongst other Rutland Royalists who took an active part in the Civil War were Edward son and heir of Sir Robert Heath of Cottesmore, and his brother John, the latter of " Commor.s' Joum. ii, 4.26. '^ Lords' Journ, v, 140^, 142(7. "" Ibid. i-]za. -8 Portland MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com.), i, 43. " Ibid. 79 (17 Dec). 5° Ciarendon, Hist. Rebellion, vi, 21. " Rutland Mag. and Co. Hist. Rec. ii, 58. " Campden's active part in the raising of ship-money in the county has already been mentioned. In 1631 he lent the king ^(^2, 500, which had not been repaid in 1635 (Z)/V/. A'd/. £/i)f.), and he was one of the five lords who in October 1 640 were sent from York to negotiate a loan of ^^200,000 from the city of London, offering their o«ti security and that of the other lords ; they succeeded in raising only j^50,ooo, as the Lon- doners distrusted any security but that of a Parliament; Cal. S.P. Dom. 1640-1, pp. 40, 97, &c. ; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. iv, 525. " Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. viii, App. ii, 59 ; Doyle, Official Baronage, i, 308 ; Diet. Nat. Biog. Edward Noel, Baptist Noel. " Diet. Nat. Biog. Ivii, 337 ; Army List of Roundheads and Cavaliers (ed. E. A. Peacock, 2nd ed.), 13. 188