In 1642, a prominent Catholic Marquis left London just before the beginning of the English Civil War, and moved back to his family home, from where he declared for the King and steadfastly refused to surrender. The nearby village was on the main road from London to the West Country, and so the family seat was close to a key route. Large enough to provide refuge for 150 Royalist sympathisers, it was also a convenient base for Royalist raiding parties who preyed on Parliamentary convoys. The Royalists moved a garrison of troops into the House in the summer of 1642, and spent the next year clearing a perimeter, building earthworks and fortifying the house. The Parliamentarians called it a “nest of papists” and eventually attacked late in 1643. Their artillery was ineffective, and they were repelled, and retreated. In the summer of 1644, prodded once too many times by raiding Royalists, the Parliamentarians set up a blockade. The Royalists broke the blockade and brought supplies and support to the house.
In the spring of 1645, the Marquis petitioned the King to remove all non-Catholic soldiers from the house, leaving the Royalists undermanned. Around the same time, the Parliamentarians turned again to lay siege to the house, and this time the general in charge spent several weeks surveying and planning. His bombardment, in late September 1645, was a lot more effective than earlier attempts - a tower and a corner turret on the house were badly damaged. Then Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army, fresh from success at Naseby and determined to defeat as many Royalist strongholds as he could on the way back to London, arrived. More artillery, more soldiers. Cromwell wrote to the Marquis in line with the conventions of the day, and assured the Marquis that, if he did not surrender now, there would be no quarter given. The Marquis declined to surrender, and Cromwell pounded the buildings with his artillery, before attacking the house on the 13th October, Cromwell delivered on his promised - about a third of the Royalist group, between 70 and 100, were killed, with twice as many captured and taken prisoner. Six of the ten priests in the house were killed during the attack, with the other 4 taken away to be hanged. Many of the casualties, Royalists and Parliamentarians alike, will not have been buried in consecrated ground, no ritual, no ceremony, no rest. Such dead as this are doomed to walk the earth.
Allegedly, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman from London, seeing her father attacked shouted at his attacker, who hit her around the head and she was killed. Contemporary reports say that the Parliamentarians stripped her body naked and she was left there for everyone in the World to see.