Qualla: Sieges of Taunton https://qualla.com/sieges-of-taunton en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/f/sieges-of-taunton-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Sieges of Taunton https://qualla.com/sieges-of-taunton Sieges of Taunton: Introduction https://qualla.com/sieges-of-taunton/ Photo credit After Anthony van Dyck, Public domain. Robert Blake was a Somerset merchant's son in his mid-forties when Parliament left him in charge of Taunton in 1644. He had no formal military training. By the time he handed the town back over a year later, he had survived three Royalist sieges, watched two-thirds of Taunton burn around him, and tied up so many of the King's troops in this corner of Somerset that historians still wonder whether King Charles I might have won at Naseby if those men had been free to march north. Blake would later become one of the great admirals of English history. But his reputation was made not at sea, but in the rubble of a Somerset market town that simply refused to fall.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/f/sieges-of-taunton-wp/gcjf-sieges-of-taunton-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Sieges of Taunton: A Town Divided in Loyalty https://qualla.com/sieges-of-taunton/ Photo credit After Anthony van Dyck, Public domain. Somerset's allegiances split along familiar lines at the outbreak of the First English Civil War in 1642. The county gentry and rural landowners leaned Royalist; the towns leaned Parliamentary, predominantly because their merchant classes were Puritan. Taunton had been held by a ...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/f/sieges-of-taunton-wp/gcjf-sieges-of-taunton-a-town-divided-in-loyalty.mp3 0:06 2 full Sieges of Taunton: Robert Blake Takes Command https://qualla.com/sieges-of-taunton/ Photo credit After Anthony van Dyck, Public domain. In summer 1644, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex - Parliament's commander-in-chief - decided to reclaim the West. He retook Dorchester and Weymouth, then pushed toward Chard. The proximity of his army caused the Royalist garrison at Taunton to abandon the town, leaving only 80 men ...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/f/sieges-of-taunton-wp/gcjf-sieges-of-taunton-robert-blake-takes-command.mp3 0:06 3 full Sieges of Taunton: The First Siege: Wyndham's Polite Letters https://qualla.com/sieges-of-taunton/ Photo credit After Anthony van Dyck, Public domain. King Charles ordered a 3,000-strong Royalist force to besiege Taunton, drawing on the Bridgwater garrison under Colonel Edmund Wyndham. Wyndham brought his brother Francis from Dunster Castle and Edward Rodney's infantry regiment. They invested the town on 23 September 1644. Init...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/f/sieges-of-taunton-wp/gcjf-sieges-of-taunton-the-first-siege-wyndhams-polite-letters.mp3 0:06 4 full Sieges of Taunton: The Second Siege: Hopton's Hammer https://qualla.com/sieges-of-taunton/ Photo credit After Anthony van Dyck, Public domain. Over the winter Blake expanded the defences. By late March 1645, Sir Richard Grenville opened the second and bloodiest siege. He was injured on his first day attacking Wellington House and was carried to Exeter; command passed through several hands before Sir Ralph Hopton himself...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/f/sieges-of-taunton-wp/gcjf-sieges-of-taunton-the-second-siege-hoptons-hammer.mp3 0:06 5 full Sieges of Taunton: The Third Siege: Goring's Drinking https://qualla.com/sieges-of-taunton/ Photo credit After Anthony van Dyck, Public domain. Lord George Goring renewed the blockade in mid-May after engaging Weldon's departing army and forcing it back into the town. Goring's siege was lax and often porous, allowing provisions through to the defenders - partly because Goring himself was, by multiple contemporary account...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/f/sieges-of-taunton-wp/gcjf-sieges-of-taunton-the-third-siege-gorings-drinking.mp3 0:06 6 full Sieges of Taunton: What the Town Had Lost https://qualla.com/sieges-of-taunton/ Photo credit After Anthony van Dyck, Public domain. The cost is hard to render in numbers. Some accounts place the destruction at two-thirds of all the houses in the town. Diane Purkiss puts it as high. Compensation payouts were made from fines levied on Royalist supporters - Sir William Portman, the former Taunton MP who had foug...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/f/sieges-of-taunton-wp/gcjf-sieges-of-taunton-what-the-town-had-lost.mp3 0:06 7 full Sieges of Taunton: From Castle Walls to Quarterdeck https://qualla.com/sieges-of-taunton/ Photo credit After Anthony van Dyck, Public domain. Robert Blake's later career is the postscript that makes the whole story land. After Taunton, Parliament sent him to besiege Dunster Castle, which he took after nine months. He was rewarded with £500. After the war he was given command at sea - a role for which he had no prior tr...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/f/sieges-of-taunton-wp/gcjf-sieges-of-taunton-from-castle-walls-to-quarterdeck.mp3 0:06 8 full