Qualla: Siege of Lyme Regis

Siege of Lyme Regis: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leon Howe, CC BY-SA 3.0. A Royalist officer dismissed it as "a little vile fishing town defended by a small dry ditch." That little vile fishing town held out for eight weeks against Prince Maurice and as many as six thousand Royalist soldiers, took everything they could throw at it, and stayed under Parliament's flag until reinforcements arrived to drive the prince off. The siege of Lyme Regis, between 20 April and 16 June 1644, was one of the more improbable Parliamentarian victories of the First English Civil War. It tied up an army that King Charles I urgently needed elsewhere. And it was won, in part, by women who put on men's coats and walked the ramparts to make their tiny town look bigger than it was.

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Image: Leon Howe | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of Lyme Regis: A Puritan Outpost

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris McKenna (Thryduulf) (photographs and merged image), CC BY-SA 4.0. By the spring of 1644, the King held nearly all of the West Country. Plymouth, Poole and Lyme Regis were the only towns of any size still flying Parliament's colours; everywhere else from Bristol to Land's End was Royalist country. Lyme was an unlikely holdout. The town had perha...

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Image: Chris McKenna (Thryduulf) (photographs and merged image) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Siege of Lyme Regis: Robert Blake's Mile of Earth

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. Robert Blake had failed to hold Bristol the previous year, but in defeat he had impressed his superiors. Sent to Lyme as a reward, he proved a brilliant engineer. He recognised that the sea-facing fortifications meant nothing if an attacker came from the hills, so he set about bu...

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Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of Lyme Regis: The Women on the Ramparts

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. When Prince Maurice's army arrived on 20 April, having burned 144 houses in nearby Beaminster a few days earlier in an accidental fire, Lyme had perhaps five hundred soldiers - half the official garrison. Maurice had at least five times that number. He set up artillery batteries ...

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Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of Lyme Regis: The Sea Held Open

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthew Hartley, CC BY-SA 2.0. Maurice's fatal weakness was that he could not seal the harbour. Lyme had its back to the English Channel, and Parliament held the Channel. Ships under Captain William Batten brought in powder, food and reinforcements at need - over a hundred men from the Mary Rose and the Ann an...

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Image: Matthew Hartley | CC BY-SA 2.0