Keep Your Powder Dry

The County of my birth, and just a few miles away from Château KeepYourPowderDry, so why has it taken so long to get around to writing an entry? Sir Philip Mainwairing's cuirassier armour, St Lawrence's Church, Peover Lyme Hall has already been briefly mentioned in the first part of  Rupert's March North . A National Trust property (so expect lots of Colin Firth memorabilia, travel blankets and expensive boiled sweets for sale in the shop). Let's get Colin Firth out of the way first: yes, Lyme was the location for that lake scene in the BBC Pride and Prejudice. Surprised there isn't a statue of Colin emerging from the lake... The Legh's were staunch Royalists, although didn't really have much to do with the soldiering due to a series of unfortunate events. Peter Legh XI inherited the property from his father just before the outbreak of war. He was elected MP for Newton in 1640, but died from his injuries sustained in a duel in 1642. His son, Frances inher...

Battle of Winnington Bridge, I hear you ask?  'Twas the battle that spelled the end for Booth's Rebellion and the Royalist plans of 1659. Sir George Booth Cue the wobbly cinematic 'go-back-in-time' effect... Richard Cromwell has resigned as Lord Protector due to pressure from the Grandees of the New Model Army. The Rump Parliament has been reinstated. Meanwhile John Mordaunt, and the Sealed Knot have been trying to incite Royalist rebellions.  The planned uprisings were all pretty much nipped in the bud thanks to a combination of incompetence and lack of coordination (on the Royalist side), and the good fortune of intercepting the plans (on the Parliamentarian side). Only one such rebellion gained any real traction. Sir George Booth of Dunham Massey , former Parliamentarian commander of Nantwich garrison, and brother-in-law of Lord Grey of Groby, was to lead the Cheshire rising. Booth appears to have considered cancelling the whole thing at the eleventh hour, but as the...

In a break from things military, the ECW Travelogue adventures into the radical politics that fermented in the  'World Turned Upside Down' and visited the most famous sites associated with the True Levellers, known as The Diggers, and their leader Gerard Winstanley. Don't forget that there is a movie about  Winstanley   and The Diggers, particularly useful if you're suffering from insomnia. (Don't get me wrong, it's a great historical recreation, it's just rather slow.) Gerrard/Gerard Winstanley (it looks like he may have spelled his name Jerrard) was born in Wigan in 1609, a fact that is celebrated in the self proclaimed nation's pie capital with a memorial garden and an annual music festival - The Wigan Digger's Festival. Whilst on the subject of music: Winstanley and the Diggers were immortalised in a seventeenth century ballad, which was reprinted and tweaked in the 1800s. More recently Chumbawamba*, and Billy Bragg both recorded it (Bragg's...