“Ride through Sandgate, up and doon,
there you’ll see the gallants fighting for the croon;
and all the cull cuckolds in Sunderland toon;
with all the bonny blew caps cannot pull them doon”
A Newcastle Royalist rhyme supposedly from the time of the Scottish siege in the English Civil War, demonstrating the resentment and rivalry towards Sunderland (the Scottish army wore blue caps). The rhyme first appears in Robert Surtees’ 19th Century history of County Durham although there is a possibility that Surtees made it up.
I've mentioned in other Meanders about how much, over the centuries, the Caledonians loved to visit Newcastle. Even before it was Newcastle and carried the Roman name of Pons Aelius. Many will know that under Emperor Hadrian, the Romans built a wall to deter those visitors. But only a few might know it was one of two walls. The second was built some twenty years after Hadrian’s and called the Antonine Wall (after, you guessed it, Emperor Antonius Pius). It stood much further north, running between the River Forth and the River Clyde.
But history shows that such impediments did not deter those living north of the walls from coming to pay a rampaging call on their neighbours in the northeast of England. And indeed, in the 1600s, they were not just calling but overstaying their 'welcome'.
Thankfully, The Scottish visitors of today come with a more benign purpose. So it was last week, when I welcomed a couple of long-standing Scottish friends to Newcastle.
Stewart, Gill and I first met over 40 years ago. They were then recent graduates who joined the engineering team I supervised. They were already a couple, having met some four years earlier, and it's wonderful that they have gone on to enjoy a long and loving marriage.
Despite being their boss, I was only a couple of years older, so we also became friends. As well as days at work, Stewart and I played football together, and along with Gill, my second wife Veronica and other friends, we often enjoyed various social activities. Indeed, Stewart and Gill were guests at my wedding to Veronica.
Our working lives diverged, but our friendship continued even when Stewart and Gill moved back to Scotland to live in Aberdeen. Our meetings were less frequent and geographically spread in places such as London, Berkhamsted, Bath and even Cordoba (by coincidence we happened to be separately holidaying in Spain). All were always full of conversation and laughter.
So, when Stewart mentioned that he and Gill were passing through Newcastle en route to Huddersfield to see a favourite band of theirs and suggested they stop and take advantage of a 'Watson Tour' of Newcastle, I was extremely happy to oblige. Stewart had vague memories of visiting the city in the 1970s, but it was Gill's first visit, so they were keen to see as much as possible.
In six hours, we covered much. The Romans, the Normans, the Border reivers, the English Civil War, Richard Grainger, Queen Victoria, RS McColl (before he opened his chain of newsagents) and more recently, T Dan Smith. Many of those mentioned have featured in one or more of my past Meanderings. Given my friend's Scottish heritage, I tried to offer a little more on the earlier visits of those Caledonians, and one such prolonged visit is the central theme of today's Meander.
During my tour, we took in many of the scenes and places of which I have previously written, the great fire of Newcastle, the 'New' castle, Dean Street that was once the tree-lined banks of the Lort Burn, Grey Street and the good Earl atop his monument, my favourite admiral, Lord Cunningham as well as Grainger 'town' and market. And I could not leave out Newcastle's third 'cathedral' (and its real ones). We, of course, rested our feet and quenched our thirst on occasion in a hostelry or two. One of which, 'The Old George’ will crop up again later.
During the 17th century, Newcastle was always something of an English Royalist stronghold, even when the rest of the northeast took a different view. The city's loyalty to the crown stemmed from various kings and queens granting Newcastle exclusive trading rights over other northeast towns and cities. Political and royal favour is nothing new.
If you ask most Scots today who they might support (apart from Scotland) in national sporting matters, they often reply, 'whoever England is playing', and so it was through the centuries. Scotland has often teamed up with other nations to battle the English. Indeed, Scotland's 'auld alliance' with France dates to the late thirteenth century.
However, the Scots developed a more novel alliance in the First English Civil War. That was with the English Parliamentarians, who aimed to curb the 'divine right' that the first King Charles thought gave him absolute authority to rule.
This alliance began to form long before the First Civil War itself. Charles was aware of the alliance, giving much money to his loyalists in Newcastle to strengthen the town defences against a likely invasion of the Scots, who he knew were plotting against him.
More robust defences didn't deter those north of the border. Sensing Charles' weakening position an army of some 20,000 Scottish Presbyterian Covenanters under General Alexander Leslie crossed into England on 20 August 1640 and, within eight days, had occupied land overlooking the north of Newcastle. Battle with the English occupants took place west of the town, and the Scots proved victorious with Charles' English army retreating, leaving a now undefended Newcastle to its fate.
And its fate was to fall under Scottish control. Newcastle was a lucrative prize for them, given its expanding coal trade. But the Scots army didn't stop there, going on to achieve complete control of Northeast England by October. Charles had no alternative than to reach a humiliating agreement in the 'Treaty of Ripon' that allowed the Scots to occupy the Northeast and more than that to receive daily 'expenses' from Charles equivalent today of circa £200,000.
After eight months of occupation, the Scots left the Northeast when Charles agreed to pay them the modern equivalent of circa £12M to depart. Once the Scots were gone, Charles set about further strengthening the defences of the northeast towns and cities, hoping that if civil war did come, those places would not fall to a future Scottish incursion.
Come 22 August 1642 came the start of the First English Civil War, and only a brief time later, Sunderland, along with many other Northeastern towns, sided with the Parliamentarians despite Charles’ hopes to the contrary. In contrast, Newcastle remained staunchly Royalist, perhaps not surprising given Newcastle's royal-approved monopoly on trade, especially coal.
Within eighteen months, the Scots, again led by General Leslie, were back outside Newcastle, largely unopposed as they marched through Northumberland. To deter the inevitable assault, the defenders of Newcastle devised an interesting strategy to prevent the Scots from forming a bridgehead on the north bank of the Tyne by burning down part of the town which lay just outside the city wall, near to where the Tyne Bridge arches across the river today. It was an extreme move that worked for at least a while.
The Battle of Marston Moor, the biggest battle of the First English Civil War, occurred on the evening of 2 July 1644 when the Parliamentarian allies, including the Scots, inflicted a heavy defeat on the Royalists, of which three thousand lay dead by its end. Following that battle, many northern towns fell to the parliamentarian allies, but Newcastle remained steadfast in its defiance. The primary focus of General Leslie's Scottish army was therefore conquering the remaining Royalist holdout that he put under heavy siege.
I know how those people of Newcastle must have felt. In 1981 I went to the 'old' Wembley Stadium to watch England play Scotland. We may have been in England's capital, yet, inside the stadium, I was in an enclave of ten thousand besieged England supporters at the then 'tunnel end' while surrounded by an ocean of ninety thousand Scotland supporters who occupied the rest of the stadium.
Loud and relentless whistling and heckling drowned the English singing of ‘God Save the Queen.’ But my goodness, the Scots' passionate rendition of ‘Flower of Scotland’ was something for the ears to behold. The song may only be 60 years old, but to those Scots in Wembley that day it seemed a battle cry to refight the 14th Century battle of Bannockburn.
While I am no hardened royalist, I am happy to sing ‘God save the King’ as the situation demands. But I confess hearing it sung does little to stir my soul. Regarding rallying support for English sporting teams, 'Land of Hope and Glory' is a far better choice than the British National Anthem: that and a passionate rendition of the 'Band of Brothers' speech from Shakespeare's Henry V. The USA may be where one pursues happiness, but England is the land of hope. And given how English sporting teams sometimes perform on the international stage it needs to be.
Anyway, as ever, I digress; let's leave Wembley of 1981 (Scotland won 1:0, by the way - I wrote about it here a couple of years ago) …
But let’s return to Newcastle in October 1644.
For around ten weeks, the resilient population of Newcastle held out against the Scottish siege, but with winter approaching, the Scots, I guess growing increasingly bored, stepped up the pressure with a heavy barrage from batteries of artillery placed around the town's walls. Eventually, the massive bombardment caused a breach, and the Scots surged through the town's 'New Gate' and then 'Pilgrim Gate', overwhelming the defenders by sheer weight of numbers.
With the last vestige of Royalist resistance now gone and the northeast of England under Scottish occupation, the civil war continued for another eighteen months, but it was increasingly clear that the Royalist cause was lost. On 9 May 1646, Charles handed himself over to the mercy of the Scottish army, now encamped in Northern Nottinghamshire. Yep, they'd 'strayed' much further south than the northeast by then. Charles seemed to have chosen to surrender to the Scots, not the English, in the vain hope he might persuade them to change sides and support him. All through his life, that chap showed questionable decision-making.
Four days later, Charles was in Newcastle as a prisoner of the Scots, and given the earlier Royal allegiance of the townsfolk, it is not surprising that he received a warm reception with the sounding of trumpets, the lighting of bonfires and the playing of drums and bells.
Charles was 'imprisoned' with his children and servants in Newcastle for just under ten months in the salubrious 'Newe House', a grand building on pleasant grounds. It's long gone, replaced by a beautiful Richard Grainger building now a Lloyds Bank branch. But falling back four hundred years, Charles shared his 'prison' with General Leslie, the Scottish army commander.
Although always guarded by around three hundred cavalry, the King was given much liberty within the town walls during his time in Newcastle and frequented the Old George that I mentioned earlier. He also strayed outside the city to the east to play golf (or 'goff' as he called it). While indoors, he apparently enjoyed games of chess.
You'll already see by now that the Scots cut a mean deal in their earlier occupation of the northeast of England. They did that again in agreeing a sum, which today would be £34m, with the Parliamentarian commissioners as the price for handing over Charles to them. The payment came in late January 1647, and the Scots duly delivered the King to the custody of the commissioners who arrived in Newcastle from London.
The occupying Scots then left Newcastle and the Northeast to return to their home country somewhat richer and with the satisfaction of seeing the removal of an English king. Albeit it temporarily.
Charles remained in Newcastle with the commissioners for a few more days before travelling to Northamptonshire and his imprisonment at Holdenby House. I think all will be aware of his ultimate fate.
By all accounts, it would be around two hundred years before another British king or queen ventured to Newcastle. It was Queen Victoria, and if you’ve read my,
…. you’ll know that unlike Charles she didn't linger long…
As an American I had to look up Newcastle on Google maps. Newcastle UK came up as being in (northern?) Ireland. Then there’s Newcastle & Newcastle on Tyne …
I gave up
Harry, you always succeed at providing such a rich, detailed, well-researched history. I know next to nothing about English / Scottish / Irish / Welsh history. I remember that there were at least two such classes in our history department, as well as French, Spanish, Italian, and Middle Eastern history, at least. It did take ME. I was so focused on other things that I let these gems past by me. Thank you for bringing this to my life -- a real treat this morning.