A Cavalier Cartograpgher
Todd Gray and Mark Stoyle take a look at a map discovered in Plymouth of the sieges of the Civil War.
Of all the long, bloody sieges of the English Civil War, that of Plymouth was the cruellest. Between 1642 and 1646, the beleaguered Roundhead garrison of this important south-western port withstood over three years of incessant Royalist attack, fighting on stoutly even when Parliament's cause seemed lost.
Historians have long agreed that Plymouth's resistance played a vital role in securing Parliament's eventual victory, and the siege is touched upon in every general account of the period. As a result, the plan of Plymouth's wartime defences, drawn up by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1643 and subsequently published in a Parliamentary news pamphlet, has become one of the most familiar images of the mid-seventeenth- century conflict.
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