The History of the Cittie of London Trayned Bandes

Secondary Identity, "Tichborne’s Foot"

Taken from:

"Regimental History from Cromwell's Army/Firth & Davies", p571, vol.ii.
"The Cromwellian Gazeteer/Peter Gaunt"
"Historical Atlas of Britain/Falkus & Gillingham"
"The English Civil War/Ashley"
"Irish Battles/Hayes-McCoy"
"Military Engineering during the Great Civil War/Ross"
"Cromwell's Army/Firth"

t some of the events that the Regiment takes part in, we portray a New Model Army Regiment. This is also historically linked to a Regiment of the time. The dress for the New Model Army differs some what to the L.T.B. code of dress, but the main difference is the first appearance of the famous British red doublet, which in later years became respected and feared throughout the world. Once again we will be there to help you with necessary equipment until you have time to kit yourself out.

Background to Tichborne’s Foot

On 6th August 1647 the New Model Army, under Fairfax, entered London and restored the Speaker and the members of the two Houses of Parliament to Westminster. The same day Parliament passed an order making Fairfax Constable of the Tower for the forthcoming year, along with powers to appoint a deputy. On Monday 9th August, Fairfax approached the Tower with his lifeguard and a small element from Pride's Foot. The city guard was marched out, and 300 of Fairfax's party marched in. A deputation from the City asked if Fairfax would consider re-appointing Lieutenant-Colonel Francis West, who had been Lieutenant at the Tower since 26th April 1645. Fairfax replied that he had already chosen "a gentleman of known worth and fidelity, a citizen of good estate, dwelling amongst them viz. Colonel Tichburne".

The beginning for Tichborne's Foot

Fairfax's intention was to raise a separate body of Foot to garrison the Tower, rather than use men drawn from the field army. Lilburne remarks on the forming of the Regiment in his "Second Part of England’s New-Chaines Discovered", albeit in a critical manner. The army's agitators meeting at Kingston furthered the view that it would be right and just that the people of London furnished the cost and manpower of the Tower garrison. This advice was ignored by the senior officers of the NMA, and Fairfax went ahead and raised six companies of Foot, each one hundred strong. The officers, and probably most of the rank and file, were Londoners.

Tichborne's commission is dated 7th August, with William Shambrook as Lieutenant Colonel, Major Timothy Wilkes, Captain Francis Massey, Captain William Billers, and one Captain Gardiner, along with Captain-Lieutenant Richard Stephens. All of these men seemed to have been casualties of the purging of the London Militia of its independent officers. On the 4th October 1647, the House of Commons agreed that the 600 men Fairfax had formed for the garrison of the Tower could continue, provided they were considered as part of the New Model Army and paid as such.

Into 1648 and Military Service

After the London Riots early in 1648, on the 13th April 1648, the House, concerned over the civil disorder, ordered the regiment in the Tower to absorb another 400 men, thereby becoming a full NMA Foot regiment. In May, with the Kent uprisings of Royalist sympathisers, Parliament passed more ordinances, firstly re-appointing Francis West as Lieutenant of the Tower on the 16th May, and then freeing the NMA forces in London for Fairfax to use as he saw fit. Also included in that number were the men of Tichborne's Foot, "the Tower-Guards". Fairfax wanted to march on the 27th May, but was delayed a day. As Tichborne himself was not ready, or perhaps considered too inexperienced for field command, Fairfax appointed Colonel Simon Needham to take the field. The Yorkshire man Needham was a veteran that had gone through the entire Civil War. Beginning as a Captain in Sir William Constable's Foot in 1642, he moved on to become a Lieutenant-Colonel serving under Lord Fairfax at his victory at Selby. In 1646, Needham raised 800 men for service in Munster, but in April 1648 he was at loose ends. He accepted the timely appointment from Fairfax, and marched to Colchester at the head of the Tower Regiment.

The start of the Second Civil War

The Royalist forces of Kent and Essex had fled the advance of the NMA forces, and had retreated back to Colchester. Before the town, on the 13th June, commanding a force of 400 men arrayed in seven companies, Colonel Simon Needham was shot and mortally wounded. His successor, appointed in the field, was the original Lieutenant Colonel, William Shambrook, but sadly, on the 5th July, this officer also fell mortally wounded. Now the men who had witnessed both deaths said that the Royalists were using poisoned bullets, or "chewed bullets rowled in sand", a despised practice that allowed wounds to become infected. Indeed the Royalist generals did later admit to the use of "rough cast slugs". Fairfax now had to appoint a fourth colonel, and he had available another veteran of the war, Thomas Rainborowe. Rainborowe should have been the vice-Admiral in charge of the Downs squadron in the fleet, but that part of the Commonwealth Navy had mutinied and the Earl of Warwick had been given complete command of the entire fleet. Now with Fairfax before the walls of Colchester, and being an accomplished and popular regimental commander from 1644 through to 1647, Rainborowe took over the leading of the Tower Regiment. Busy and involved throughout the siege, Colonel Rainborowe was one of the commissioners that counter-signed the articles of surrender, and at the head of his new regiment, was one of the first to enter the town on the 29th of July.

Treachery and Assassination

Several weeks after the surrender at Colchester, Rainborowe and the Tower Regiment were ordered to march to Pontefract to assist in the siege of the castle there. Fairfax, in addition to the march orders, announced that Rainborowe was to take control of the situation in Yorkshire, and appointed him his regional commander-in-chief. Sir Henry Cholmley, the local commander, objected to this, and while the wrangling continued, Rainborowe and the Tower Regiment halted and quartered at Doncaster. It was here, during a bungled kidnap attempt by a party of Royalists, that Thomas Rainborowe was killed. Some at the time as considered the murder of this popular Parliamentarian commander a sinister act. Sir Henry Cholmley was reported to have laughed at hearing of the death of his soon-to-be commander, and many believed he was implicated in the act. After all, it was Cholmley's troops that had failed to prevent the Pontefract Horse from riding out and through to Doncaster, and his troops that had performed so miserably in their sentry duties at Doncaster the night Rainborowe died.

Another New Commander

In November 1648, by all accounts the regiment had left the Doncaster-Pontefract area, and more than likely returned to the St. Albans area, where the NMA had its headquarters. In late November, it presented a protest to Fairfax himself, against having any treaty with the King. This letter began, "Though the sad sense of the unhappy loss of our highly esteemed Colonel, may cause us to beare low in our reputation, and sink us into a slowness to such high acting’s as the vigour of his noble spirit might have enabled us to". In response to this, the House of Commons answered on 25th November by voting that "the Tower regiment, late under the command of Colonel Rainborough, be forthwith disbanded." Fairfax and the Council of Officers paid no heed to Parliament's ordinances. Instead the regiment changed its name, and command was given over to Colonel George Cooke. For sometime after Rainborowe's funeral in Wapping, the common press continued to refer to the regiment as Colonel Rainborowe's, but by then it had been passed on to the returned emigrant Colonel George Cooke. Cooke had sailed for New England in the ship Defence in 1635, at the slender age of 25. In Massachusetts, on the 3rd March 1636, he was admitted as a freeman. From there he became a representative in its Assembly, and Speaker in 1645. In addition, he was Captain of the Artillery Company, and once returned from an excursion, back to Boston, with nine captured Indians in tow. By 1646, he was back in England assisting Needham in the raising of troops for Irish service. Like Needham, Cooke was one of many spare officers looking for employment following the defection of Lord Inchquin.

It is likely that he followed Needham into service with Tichborne's Tower Guards. Cooke, although relatively a newcomer on the political scene, soon got involved. On the 20th November, several officers presented the House of Commons "the Large Remonstrance" from the Army, declaring against the treaty Ireton had drawn up. One of those officers was Lieutenant-Colonel Cooke. On the 30th November, Cooke led his new regiment to the "Rendevouz" for the 1st December meetings. On 20th January 1649, amidst the King’s trial, Cooke’s regiment and other NMA regiments in and around London, outlining the conduct and behaviour required, received orders. At the beginning of March 1649, Cooke's regiment can be found in Surrey, quartered around Guildford. It was here, after the lots were drawn for service in Ireland on the 20th April, that the regiment learned it was chosen for service in Munster. It marched from Surrey, with arms stacked and carted in wagons, to the west of England in order to embark for Ireland. There it was to play its part and help Parliament to restore the situation worsened by Ormond and his collection of Irish Royalists and traitors.

The Regiment Mutinies

All were due to set sail for the 9th August 1649 from Minehead, but ill feeling among the rank and file erupted into mutiny. Many of the men believed they were owed pay, and with little being offered, few were eager to board ship. The Moderate, a broadsheet from August 1649, featured it as a news item: Barnstable, August 10th:

"Yesterday Col. Cook's regiment was shipped at Minehead, though not without some difficulty the Governor of Dunstar being forced to send 80 men from Dunstar, and to place them in Minehead Church, and at every passage in the town to stop all stragglers; as also to assist Col. Cook if there should be occasion; which indeed there was, being a strong mutiny about two months pay, one being but ordered for them. The Colonel took much pains to appease it and did receive one blow upon the head which fecht blood, but blessed be God he is very well.

"The governor of Dunstar Castle presently sent for his men to come down to the key, intending to fall upon the mutineers, if it could not be otherwise, but when the men came in sight the mutiny was well staid, and they were kept all at seaside till they were all force aboard, and their ships launch into the channel."

Irish Service

Off to Ireland, and after a failed landing at Munster, the regiment finally landed at Ringsend, Dublin on the 15th August, and probably formed up as part of Ireton's division of command, following Cromwell to Drogheda and then onto Wexford. Cromwell now had a large army to back up the existing English forces. After a short siege, lasting from the 1st through to the 11th October, Wexford was taken with bloody retribution exacted on the defending Irish, and Cooke was left as the new Governor. Here it is unclear as to whether the regiment or part of it remained with him as the garrison, or it resumed the march with the rest of the field army towards New Ross and Waterford. From this time onwards, records of the regiment and its movement become sketchy, but it had ceased to have an independent existence. The campaign throughout Ireland was an horrendous trial to the men involved, and the rampant plague all encountered respected neither rank nor position. Ireton passed away from the dread illness on the 26th November, just after taking Limerick and Lieutenant-General Michael Jones died at Dungarvan, a fortnight later. Colonel Cooke, the Governor at Wexford, continued in post for two years, ensuring that the Irish in his area had little chance to cause trouble. Houses and cabins, and stores of livestock and corn were all plundered and burnt. Cooke insisted that this was the only way to subdue the roving parties of Irish, by denying them sustenance and shelter in the region. In April 1652 Cooke and his mounted escort had a running fight with an Irishman, Captain Nash, and his troop on the road from Gowran to Loughlin. The Irish were routed but both Nash and Cooke were found dead after the melee, with Cooke leaving a distraught and pregnant widow to grieve for her loss.

The Closing Campaign

The few remaining companies from his regiment probably now found themselves, dwindling in number, amalgamated with the remainder of Culme's Foot, soon to be taken over by Colonel Thomas Sadler. Culme's Foot, and more than likely Cooke's Foot as well, had taken part in the unsuccessful attempts in storming Clonmel's medieval defences. Both on the 9th and 17th May 1650, Parliament artillery had breached the walls, and the troops had been bloodily repulsed when attacking, Colonel Culme being one of those casualties. Now under the command of Colonel Sadler, the amalgamated infantry captured castle after castle, dispersing all attempts by the remaining Irish to gather up support. In November 1652, six months after Cooke's death, Sadler became Governor of the County of Wexford, and continued his work in purging the region of any dissent. In 1655, Sadler headed a brigade of 2,600 Foot that returned to England, from Ireland, in anticipation of a Royalist uprising. With the threat to the Commonwealth dealt with, he crossed to Ireland again, to take up post as Governor of Galway. In October 1659, Sadler was reinforced with a thousand Foot under the command of William Walker, whom he appointed Lieutenant-Colonel, assisted by a Major Isaac Dobson, whereupon Sadler continued in his duties. Further military service was to come soon, with the officers and men required to assist in putting down Sir George Booth's uprising. A month later, Sadler with some other officers of the "Irish" army, backed the wrong side in Parliaments' wranglings in its final death throes, and he was arrested and stripped of office by Sir Charles Coote. With the Restoration of the Stuarts taking place months later, Sadler's regiment of Foot, like so many other NMA regiments, was disbanded for good.