HOOKE'S CASTLE
A Scenario for the Siege Rules in The Portable Pike & Shot Wargame
And – before we start – there’s review of this system in the Recce section of this very issue! Ed.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HOOKE’S CASTLE
“A wooden motte and bailey castle was first erected on the rising ground overlooking the village by Odo de Huque, a Norman knight who had fought with Duke William at Hastings and been rewarded with the lordship of the manor of Firely. One of his descendants, Henri de Huque, rebuilt the castle in stone towards the end of the following century. As a result of marriages to local English women and the idiosyncratic spelling of the Firely parish clerks the family name had become Hooke (or Hoke) by the 15th century, and so their ancestral home became known as Hooke’s Castle.
“The Hooke family, having retained possession of their lands by judiciously supporting both Yorkists and Lancastrians throughout the Cousins’ War, prospered from the expansion of the wool trade during the reigns of the Tudor monarchs and were able to erect a new, Flemish brick manor house adjoining the mediaeval keep, which had long since ceased to serve as a fortress.
“The family remained true to the Church of Rome until their mounting fines for recusancy imposed in the reign of Elizabeth persuaded them to adhere to the new Church of England, but their preference for Arminian practices and admiration for Archbishop William Laud led them to declare for the King on the outbreak of the Civil War, which was the cause of Hooke’s Castle being besieged in 1643 by the forces of Parliament…”
From An Antiquarian History of the Hooke Family, with Supplementary Remarks upon the Architecture of Hooke’s Castle, Revd. William Collins, 1817.
SCENARIO & PERSONAL BRIEFINGS
Lady Henrietta Hooke: Chatelaine of Hooke’s Castle Hooke’s Castle is the sole stronghold loyal to King Charles in the area, close to the Welsh border, the nearest other Royal
garrison from which you might request aid in the event of attack, Bourne Hall, being at least a day’s march away. You hold the castle and adjoining house in the absence of your husband, Colonel Sir Montague Hooke, who is with His Majesty’s Army in Oxford, with the help of your loyal manservant, Allen, Hytche the gamekeeper, Margaret the cook, and your maids, Prudence, Patience and Chastity – though the last has been a source of great concern to you since the arrival of a small garrison of thirty of the King’s soldiers…
They are commanded by one Captain Dafydd Williams; most of them, like their officer, come from Wales, speak with a strange accent and nearly all of them seem to be called Jones...
Your family home is comprised of the surviving mediaeval tower keep, which has fallen into some disrepair in recent years, an adjoining brick manor house with a tiled roof, a few wooden out buildings with thatched roofs, and some remnants of the old stone bailey curtain walls. Close by is the small village of Firely, whose open fields, common land and forest surround the castle mound.
As soon as the King raised the Royal Standard and declared war upon the Rebels in Parliament, Sir Montague enlisted the labourers of Firely Parish to raise earthwork ramparts, after modern principles of warfare, to cover the approaches to the castle, but not all of these had been completed when he had to depart to wait upon His Majesty at Oxford. You have armed yourself and your servants with muskets and pistols, in the use of which Hytche is instructing you, and are determined to hold the castle for His Majesty King Charles, whatever force the Puritan Rebels may bring against it...
Captain Dafydd Williams: Hughes’ Regiment Of Foote You command thirty men – a sergeant, a drummer and twenty-eight musketeers – sent by Colonel Hughes to garrison Hooke’s Castle for the King, while the rest of the regiment – save Captain Broomhedde’s company, the garrison at Bourne Hall, twelve miles away – marches to join Sir Ralph Hopton’s army. The castle, a mediaeval keep, has fallen into some disrepair but is still defensible against all but artillery. Next to it stands a new house, built of brick with a tiled roof that could also be held by some of your men in the event of an attack.
Lady Henrietta Hooke, a formidable but still handsome woman, has assembled a motley collection of halberts, muskets, pistols and rusty old pieces of family armour, with which she proposes to arm herself and her servants. She is adamant that she will hold Hooke’s Castle for King Charles as resolutely as her husband would have done, had he been but here, and expects you and your soldiers to be equally determined.
The gamekeeper, Hytche, an excellent shot who can hit a rabbit – or a poacher – at a hundred yards with his rifled snaphaunce, has been endeavouring to train Lady Henrietta, her manservant Allen and her maids, in the use of firearms, but has had but little success with Chastity, who prefers to disport herself wantonly with your drummer…
Before he departed to join the King in Oxford, Sir Montague Hooke had caused the labourers on his estate to begin building earthworks to protect the castle and the adjoining brick manor house; you have continued to encourage and supervise them in this task, though the work is not done with much enthusiasm for the King’s cause, nor very diligently. Life at Hooke’s Castle has been quiet and you had congratulated yourself on being posted to such a congenial garrison until this morning, when the man you had posted in the tower of Firely Church to keep watch comes panting in: “R-r-roundheads, Sir, thousands of them, look you...”
Captain George Broomhedde: Commanding Garrison of Bourne Hall You and your company of forty-five musketeers and eighteen pikemen have been left to garrison Bourne Hall for the King, while Colonel Hughes leads the regiment to join the Army of Sir Ralph Hopton in the West Country. The Colonel has sent another detachment, a ‘forlorn hope’ of musketeers commanded by Captain Williams, to garrison Hooke’s Castle, a mediaeval keep in a sorry state of disrepair, some twelve miles away, and has ordered you either to march to support Captain Williams should he be attacked there, or to order him to withdraw to Bourne Hall if it is your opinion that the Castle cannot be defended.
You are all too aware that Colonel Hughes has left you behind because he has but little regard for your military ability and only contempt for your familial origin – a purveyor of household cleaning devices, as evidenced by your name – and is reported to have said that if you were one of his horses, he would not breed from you! Should the chance present itself, you
would dearly like to prove yourself in battle against the Rebels but are all too aware of your lack of any actual military experience, and so rely upon the advice of Serjeant Dalton, an old soldier who served in the Low Countries. His advice on the modern principles of fortification has proved invaluable in rendering Bourne Hall defensible by digging earthworks and in constructing gabions and chevaux de frises.
Major Denys Folbigge: Commanding Local Parliamentary Forces You were an actor, and one of the better ones, too, in a troupe of players before this terrible war began, whereupon those canting Puritans closed the London playhouses and deprived you of your livelihood! You left the City in search of gainful employment performing in the shires, only to discover that all there was also in turmoil, both sides busy recruiting men and raising local armies for King or Parliament.
What were you to do? Luckily, you had but a few months since played Captain Fluellen in Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, and found that your perfect recollection of your part enabled you to pass, among the country bumpkins, for an experienced officer, lately returned from the wars in the Low Countries. So, you are now Major Folbigge, no less, of Baker’s Blew Coat Regiment in the Army of the Parliament! armed with a partisan and a well-thumbed copy of Raynford’s The Young Soldier, which you peruse secretly when none of the men in your company are watching...
You have been ordered to march with three companies – Captain Daneman’s, Captain Kernan’s and your own – about one hundred pikemen and two hundred musketeers, from Burton to the village of Firely, to summons the Royalist garrison of nearby Hooke’s Castle to surrender by a show of force. Should they refuse, you are to occupy Firely Village and send a messenger back to Burton to summon Master Gunner Van Den Berg and his trayne of artillery to join you. Then, as they say, the siege must go on…
Master Gunner Gert Van Den Berg A Dutch veteran of the war with the Spanish, you are an expert in the use of artillery on the field of battle and in a siege, whose Calvinist religion has compelled you to offer your services to the English Parliament, rather than to King Charles and his Papist French Queen. You don’t quite know what to make of the English officer, Major Folbigge, but suspect that, for all his talk of service in the Low Countries, he is but an amateur in the military arts – and possibly a lying poltroon, too! Two demi-culverins and a mortar comprise your artillery trayne. There is sufficient powder and shot in the supply waggons for a bombardment of ten days or thereabouts, together with a petard and tools. Upon arriving at Firely Village, you soon realise that the high ground by Firely Church is the only suitable place on which to position artillery pieces, the meadowland and farm fields being too low and their soil too soft – unless the guns are mounted upon wooden platforms – to permit them to recoil. The church tower will provide an excellent vantage point from which you may observe the target through your glass, whilst the branches of the trees nearby can be used to make gabions to cover your gun crews. You will advise Major Folbigge accordingly and supervise the bombardment of Hooke’s Castle.
MAPS & DIAGRAMS
All players should be given an accompanying map of Hooke’s Castle and its Environs, showing the location of the castle relative to Firely village. Copies of part of this map, overlaid with a grid of either squares or hexes have also been provided for the game organiser (and may be downloaded as PDFS.) The gridded enlargements of the area of Hooke’s Castle and Firely Village can be used by the latter to help create suitable tabletop displays for the face to face game. They can also assist the players taking the roles of Lady Henrietta and Captain Williams to plan and mark any additional earthworks, palisades and barricades, which the game organiser can then add to their model display. The Parliamentarian players can use the enlargement of the area around Firely Church to determine where to position the artillery pieces and batteries, and how best to attack the castle and its outworks.
PRE-GAME PREPARATION
Distribute the necessary briefings, maps, plans of the castle and details of troops to the appropriate players, who can communicate with each other by text, telephone or email if co-located either in Hooke’s Castle or in Firely Village. The game organiser can also provide additional information about the food and ammunition available to the garrison, which cannot be replenished once the siege begins. The Parliamentarians, however, will have no difficulty in extorting food from the local population, and can request more gunpowder from Burton, though this will take several days to arrive. Once they have agreed how to dispose of their troops etc., they should inform the game organiser, who will act as umpire.
THE WARGAME
The game organiser should create two gridded displays, one of Hooke’s Castle and its immediate surroundings, showing the castle, other buildings and earthworks, barricades etc., erected by the garrison, on which the Royalist players will place their personality figures, servants and troops; the other depicting the high ground upon which stands Firely Church, where the artillery will be positioned. The two displays should be placed some distance apart so neither side can see the positions of troops etc. on their opponents’ display easily or clearly.
The player taking the role of Captain Williams may decide to send a message to Captain Broomhedde at Bourne Hall, carried either by one of his soldiers or Hytche the gamekeeper or one of Lady Henrietta’s maids. The game organiser can throw dice (modified according to who has been chosen to deliver it) to discover whether the message is safely delivered; if it is, then a player who has been standing by to play Captain Broomhedde can decide how to reply and whether he will march with all, or part, of his company to reinforce the garrison of Hooke’s Castle. Should Broomhedde march to Williams’s aid, it may be necessary to fight a skirmish with Parliamentary scouts when his troops approach the Castle: if he is successful, his surviving troops are added to the garrison; if he fails, they will retire to Bourne Hall and play no further part in the siege, in which case the player who has taken the role of Broomhedde may be given another role in the Castle garrison. The game organiser will find the Siege Flowchart of the progress of a siege provided in Portable Pike & Shot Wargame [hereinafter PP&SW] rule system useful in running the game.
The artillery bombardment can then be wargamed, using the principles and siege rules from PP&SW, the game organiser visiting the Hooke’s Castle display to inform the defenders of any ‘hits’ on the buildings or garrison; the players then dice to discover the effect and any casualties.
Major Folbigge may at any time, but definitely when he thinks a practicable breach in the defences has been created, ask for a parley with Lady Henrietta – or Captain Williams if she is indisposed – to discuss surrender terms. Such negotiations should be
conducted between the players in front of the game organiser and a document setting out the terms of the surrender drawn up. If a surrender is agreed without the besiegers having to storm the castle, the garrison will usually be allowed to march out with ‘the honours of war’, colours flying and drums beating, free to join their comrades – at Bourne Hall, for example – elsewhere, but sometimes giving their parole not to fight again for a specified period of time.
If, however, the besiegers have to storm the castle, the action moves to the Hooke’s Castle display and the close-quarter fighting must be resolved, using the appropriate PP&SW rules. Should the storm be unsuccessful, the survivors retire to their own Firely Church display to decide what to do next.
If the storm succeeds, the survivors of the garrison must surrender ‘at discretion’: the common soldiers will be at the mercy of the besiegers and will certainly be plundered, abused and imprisoned, but may be offered the chance to escape death from gaol fever by joining the enemy’s army; they may even be massacred, as was the Parliamentary garrison of Hopton Castle. The game organiser can resolve these matters by dicing for ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ at each appropriate stage of the Siege Flowchart within PP&SW.
REMOTE GAMING OPTION
Run the progress of siege, from the arrival of Parliamentary forces at Firely Village, via Folbigge’s summons to surrender, the erection of siegeworks, artillery bombardment, sallies etc., by following the Siege Flowchart in PP&SW up to the actual storming of the castle as a map kriegsspiel, as described in Napoleonic Wargaming For Fun [Paddy Griffth, Ward Lock, 1980; republished in The History of Wargaming Project], but suitably adapted to suit the era of the First Civil War.
Then, when it is possible for the game organisers and players to meet, set up a tabletop display of the castle and its immediate surroundings and wargame the storming using the principles and rules from PP&SW. Alternatively, the game organiser may be able to run the storming wargame via Zoom or Skype. But if that is not possible, the grid areas of PP&SW make it easy to communicate troop positions and movements, areas hit by gun or mortar fire, and damage to the castle buildings and outworks by text, telephone or email to bring the siege to a successful conclusion – for the players, not necessarily the besiegers!
HISTORICAL NOTE
The castle was afterwards ‘slighted’: demolished by the besiegers to prevent it being of further use to the enemy. Much of the stone was subsequently used in the building of the large farmhouse, stables and barn that now occupy the site. As a result, the producers of the popular Channel 4 archaeology programme, Time Team, thought the site unworthy of exploration when approached by Simon
Hook, the present owner, preferring to excavate the siegeworks of Hopton Castle instead.
A member of another, humbler branch of the family, which had migrated to Surrey in the reign of Edward VI and had become staunch Puritans by the Civil War, described as ‘a vinegar man’ by trade, was Captain Hook of the Tower Hamlets Regiment of the London Trained Bands. The spelling ‘Hook’ may have been deliberately adopted by him and his Puritan relatives to distance themselves from the Royalist branch of the family, who retained the ‘e’ to disguise this Rebel connection, but it was later dropped, sometime in the eighteenth century. The Hooke family’s fortunes never recovered after the Civil Wars: hardship may even have reduced some members of the family to crime. An eighteenth century descendant is reputed to have been a notorious pirate [see James Hook, The Life and Crimes of a Buccaneer by J.M. Barrie, but note that the Times Literary Supplement reviewer complained that it ‘reads more like a fairy story than a serious nautical biography!’]
There appears, however, to be no genealogical justification for the family tradition that Henry Hook, who enlisted in the 24th Foot and won the Victoria Cross for his bravery in the defence of the hospital at Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu War of 1879, was also a distant relative. Nor, alas, is there any conclusive proof that Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, the commander of B Company, 24th Foot, at Rorke’s Drift, was a descendant of Captain Broomhedde of the Royalist garrison at Bourne Hall.
Following the Battle of Dorking [see Reminiscences of a Volunteer by Edward Tomkyns Chesney, 1871], during the German Invasion [see When William Came by Hector Hugh Munro, 1913], Hook’s Farm was the scene of a small engagement in which Brigadier-general Hubert Wells defeated the German advance guard commanded by Generalleutnant Johan K. Johan in a close-fought fight [vividly described in the Brigadier’s memoir, quoted verbatim in Little Wars, 1913]. ■