Northamptonshire History Group plans to commemorates forgotten English Civil War revolutionary
Captain William Thompson and the Last Stand of the Levellers in Northamptonshire 19th May 1649
In the tumultuous period at the end of the English Civil War, after the execution of King Charles I in January 1649 and the proclamation of the Commonwealth, the Leveller movement campaigned for democratic reform and against Oliver Cromwell’s new regime of wealthy landowners and generals.
The Levellers had a good deal of popular support, particularly in London, and also with the rank and file troops of the New Model Army, many of whom wanted new elections and a more democratic Parliament. The troops were further aggrieved because they were owed arrears of pay. In mid- April, when a number of regiments were ordered by the Council of State to invade Ireland to suppress an uprising, their discontent turned to mutiny. Several rebellions in London were swiftly suppressed, and in early May, Captain William Thompson, the most influential Leveller in the army, encouraged disaffected troops to gather at Banbury, Oxfordshire. Cromwell and his most loyal troops moved quickly to intervene, and agreed to negotiations with the mutineers. Cromwell acted in bad faith, and on the night of 13th May , he led an attack on their main camp near Burford. Quickly overrunning the levellers 300 prisoners were taken and imprisoned in the nearby Church of St.John The Baptist. However, the mutiny was only partially suppressed, as a large group of horsemen led by Thompson at Banbury managed to escape capture, Thompson killing one of his pursuers in the process. On 17th May three Leveller ‘ringleaders’ were executed at Burford. Later the same day, their numbers reduced to a dozen or so, Thompson’s band of rebels arrived at Northampton. Unaware of the events at Burford, they were probably hoping to rally with disparate groups and others who may have escaped Cromwell’s ambush.
The Reverend Thomas Ball of the Church of All Saints (known then as All Hallows), and Mr. Lee the Town Clerk, witnessed and recorded the events that followed.
Thompson released Leveller prisoners from the town jail, and distributed public money to the poor. He then ‘went to the Market Cross and read his declaration, and made a speech to those that came about him, that he would free them from excise, free quarter, taxes and tithes, and exhorted all men to assist him in so good a work.’ He probably realised by noon of the following day that there would be no great rendezvous of rebels at Northampton, and made plans to move on as they knew Cromwell’s troops were hard on their heels. A handful of men were left behind in Northampton. They were soon after chased to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and after a brief fire fight, were taken prisoner.
Possibly heading for the relative safety of Rockingham Forest, their encampment at Walgrave was ambushed early the following morning 19th May by a force led by Major Butler. Thompson had a good horse and could have easily escaped, but he refused to abandon his comrades without horses, and he singlehandedly counter-attacked. He ‘charged several times himself, and led them himself some three miles, but being shot and bleeding, leapt into a wood [Sywell Wood], with his horse and routed those that first pursued him on horseback.’. He attempted to staunch the flow of blood from his wounds with moss and after declining a further offer to surrender, and as he attempting to resume battle, a hidden trooper armed with a blunderbuss sprang from cover and shot him in the back ‘with a brace of bullets, so that he began to stagger, and the fellow, to make sure, gave him a good blow with the end of his carbine’.
Thompson’s body was brought back to Northampton and paraded around a busy Market Square on the back of a horse before being laid to rest in the churchyard of All Saints the following morning.
‘Mrs Thompson, hearing of her husband’s death, being great with child and near her time, fell in labour and both she and her child are dead.’