Few royalist commanders illustrate better Dr John Morrill's judgement on 'royalist hard men' who had no time for legal niceties and who 'believed in the efficacy of looting to instil obedience or at least acquiescence from the country' than Sir Barnabas Scudamore, governor of Hereford. Yet he was also described by a friend as 'soe generous and remarkable for his sweetnesse and curtesie'. [1]

Like so many other military commanders, Sir Barnabas Scudamore's life is a paradox, ruthless in the carrying out of his duty, he was both hated and loved, a sign of the divisions which rent England during the civil wars.

He was born in 1609, the youngest son of the Scudamores of Holme Lacy , Herefordshire, one of the most powerful families in the southern marches. His eldest brother John was ennobled as the first Viscount Scudamore and served as Charles I's ambassador in Paris in the later 1630s. The prospects for a younger son were, however, less attractive. While John inherited an estate worth about £ 3,000 per annum, Barnaby's share was a mere £ 50 or so a year, and he sought fame, fortune and excitement abroad in the 1630s, in Ireland, in France as a servant of the earl of Cork, and as a soldier in the Dutch wars.

It was only as the fortunes of King Charles declined that those of Barnaby Scudamore improved. The bishops' wars were another chapter in the catalogue of English military disasters in the early 17th century, but they gave Barnaby the opportunity to display his talents as a soldier. He was a captain in Colonel Sir Charles Vavasour's regiment that marched north in 1640. Like the rest of the army he saw little action beyond the hasty retreat after Newburn at the end of August; in common with many others he lost much in the rout-- he told his brother that 'our march from Newcastle was soe sudaine that many of our officers leftt theyr wagons, horses & trunkes behind them, Myself boare a share in the Losse'. [2]

But he remained with the English army in the north, and in March 1641 joined forty or so other officers in defending the army's conduct to the earl of Northumberland.

The outbreak of the English civil war in August 1642 was another opportunity for Barnaby. He declared early for the king and was soon in the thick of the fighting. On 20 August, two days before the king raised his standard, he was injured in a skirmish at Coventry when the king was refused entry, to the town. With the bones of an arm and hand broken by a bullet, and reports fearing that his arm would have to be amputated, Barnaby was left a prisoner. He was, however, soon back with the king's army, now in Shrewsbury, where his condition was so serious it was feared he would die if he marched with the army. Despite this, he marched to Edge Hill as a sergeant major in Colonel Thomas Blagge's regiment of foot. This was one of five royalist regiments that were cut off and surrounded in the battle, and afterwards Barnaby was among the royalist officers listed as injured and missing. Once more he made his way back to Shrewsbury, however, and by the spring of 1643 he was again on active service, this time as sergeant major to Colonel Henry Hastings in the Midlands, where he survived the battle of Hopton Heath.

For a year Scudamore drops out of view, resurfacing in the records in the spring of 1644 as a major general with Colonel Nicholas Mynne in Herefordshire, distinguishing himself in the defence of

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the town that summer. After the king's defeat at Naseby he had fled to Hereford to raise fresh troops (a command with which Scudamore was partly entrusted); slowly following the king's progress was a Scottish army under the command of the earl of Leven.

On 31 July 1645 the Scots encamped around Hereford even though the king had long since marched on, the town and the Scots prepared for a long siege. For a month the town held out, with Scudamore boasting that he was 'resolved to endure all Mines and Stormes which shall be made against this place, and doubt not by Gods assistance to tender His Majesty a good account of it, the which by my endeavours I shall maintaine to the last'. [5]

The Scots organised a final assault which the beleaguered garrison would surely have been hard put to resist, but on the very morning of the projected attack news of the king's advance from Oxford to Worcester caused the Scots to retreat. As Scudamore reported, the king 'drawing a little neere to us, like the Sunne to the Meridian, this Scottish mist began to disperse and the next morning vanished out of sight'. [6]

The king entered Hereford amid scenes of great rejoicing on 4 September and knighted Barnaby for his defence of the city.

It was one of the king's last triumphs. Within a week, Bristol had surrendered. The royalist cause was disintegrating, but Scudamore remained active to the end, campaigning in Herefordshire and several times sending troops in a vain attempt to relieve the besieged city of Chester. He attempted to storm the parliament's garrison at Canon Frome, showing considerable ingenuity in the construction of a siege tower. John Vicars reported that The Engine was such a one, as the like hath not been known since these wars: The Roysters called it a Sow: It was carried upon great wheeles, and to be drawne with Oxen, it was made with rooms or lofts one over another, musquet proof, and very strong, out of which were holes to play and shoot out. It was so high, that it was above all the Works at Canon-Froom, so that they could discharge over the Works; besides which, a doore opened to bring them into the Works, out of which went a Bridge for their entrance'. Had not the royalists and the siege tower been surprised on their way to Canon Frome by a raiding party 'in all probability this Engine had effected their intended designe'. [7]

With Hereford increasingly isolated by the parliamentarian advance through South Wales, friction between soldiers and citizens, and within the military establishmerit itself in Hereford, increased. The situation was not helped by Scudamore's natural quarrelsomeness. Never noted as a conciliator, as the garrison's financial plight grew worse Scudamore's methods became more and more questionable, seizing goods from those who had earlier been promised royal protection. Moreover, he was plagued by disputes with his junior officers.

Earlier in 1645 he had quarrelled with David Hyde, his deputy governor. Hyde vowed revenge, allegedly swearing 'God dam him but he wold be Revenged uppon the next of the Scudamores he should meete withall'. [8]

He picked a fight with Barnaby's brother-in-law Sir John Scudamore of Ballingham and killed him in the resulting duel. Towards the end of 1645 Barnaby fell out with three more of his officers: Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Hyde's replacement as deputy governor of Hereford, and captains Howorth and Alderne. Additionally, Scudamore's slighting of Wilton House drove its owner, Sir John Bridges, to support the parliament and plot the fall of Hereford in revenge. These quarrels were to have disastrous consequences for Scudamore and the city in his charge.

Bridges, Alderne and Howorth contacted Colonel John Birch, who was always on the lookout for some scheme to bring him gold and glory and together they planned an attack on Hereford. They were abetted by a least one royalist officer within the town who fed them information about the garrison's strength and routine. On Monday 15 December 1645, with the Country in the midst of snow and ice, Birch, Colonel Thomas Morgan, governor of Gloucester, the other plotters and about 2,000 horse and foot set out from Gloucester. They zig-zagged across Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, attempting to disguise their destination, and in the early morning of Thursday 18 December they gathered outside Hereford, 150 firelocks hiding in the ruins of St Guthlac's priory, just beyond Byster's Gate, and the remainder hidden in a depression behind Aylestone Hill.

At daybreak and in thick fog, Byster's Gate was opened. Seven of Birch's soldiers, disguised as a constable and six labourers advanced, on the pretext of having been summoned to work for the garrison. These seven distracted and overpowered the guards, the forlorn hope of firelocks rushed forward and seized the gate, and within half an hour Hereford had fallen. It was a clever if not an original ruse, a similar ploy having been used by the Dutch to seize Zutphen from the Spanish.

The city lost, Scudamore and about 50 others, including his deputy Throckmorton, escaped. Scudamore made his way to Worcester, intending to head for Oxford, but suspicions that he had sold Hereford to the parliament followed him wherever he went. At Worcester he was accused of treachery by Throckmorton, still smarting from his earlier quarrel with Scudamore. He was imprisoned, pending a court of war. He was undoubtedly in great danger, for the sentence for treachery was death: for Surrendering Bletchingdon House to Cromwell in May 1645 Major Francis Windebank was executed by firing squad.

One newsbook actually reported that Scudamore had been found guilty and executed, but in fact the court never met. Scudamore was only released when Worcester itself capitulated in July 1646. Seeking vindication he published the evidence he would have lain before his court martial as Sir Barnabas Scudamore's defence (1646), in which he attempted to vindicate himself while accusing several of his junior officers of treachery and negligence. His evidence makes his innocence plain, but he never quite succeeded in exculpating himself in the eyes of the world and suspicious about his loyalty remained.

Thereafter little is known of Sir Barnabas Scudamore. The outbreak of the second civil war in 1648 again saw him active for the king, attempting to raise forces in Kent and at Newmarket, but he was captured in June 1648. He was released before November when he married Katharine Saunders, who predeceased him. In the summer of 1651 he was arrested for a second time, this time for being in the company of a Couple of suspected Royalist plotters. Again, he was soon released, but the net of sequestration and composition was drawing in around him.

His small estate was sequestered and he was fined, but before he could pay all of his composition he died, early in 1652, heavily in debt.

Sir Barnabas Scudamore remains a shadowy and enigmatic figure. To his enemies, as to many of the ordinary people of Herefordshire, he was a cruel and harsh tyrant who trampled on local customs and sensibilities in the pursuit of victory for a king who claimed to stand for the rule of law. To the royalists he was a vigorous and active commander, the saviour of Hereford in the summer of 1645 but suspected to be the cause of its capture less than four months later. He never managed in his lifetime to shake off the suspicion that he sold Hereford to the Parliament: as one Hereford citizen reported, " all this towne will not otherwise belecue but that hee sould this towne unto ye parlament (though hee should sweare ye Contrarie upon a booke) drinkeing, gameing, Tobbacoe takeinge, watchinge, and wenching is enough to take away care and reason that manic desperate accons hee comitted this present mayor was not privie to... for wininge of money from him in gameing hee had ye Tune'. [9]

Yet it is the memory of Scudamore's troops and their exploits in saving Hereford from the Scots that is only now slowly dying in the folk memory of the southern marches.

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