Loyalty, Loss and Rebellion – the story of John Penruddock
In the uneasy years after the English Civil War, loyalty to the Crown had not vanished from Wiltshire. From the quiet Vale of Pewsey to the streets of Salisbury, Colonel John Penruddock gathered supporters for a desperate gamble against Cromwell’s rule in 1655. What followed was a bold march, a brief flicker of rebellion, and a story that would end in capture, trial, and execution.
Thomas Poulton of Pewsey and the Penruddock Uprising, 1655.
For King and Country
In the quiet heart of Wiltshire, where the chalk downs rise like ancient guardians, stands a house whose stones have witnessed centuries of loyalty, loss and rebellion. A Royalist safe house lies at the centre of a forgotten uprising.
Among the men drawn into the cause was Thomas Poulton of Pewsey.
By 1655, England was a nation under military rule. Oliver Cromwell’s protectorate governed through major generals, martial law, and a network of informers. Royalist sympathies still simmered: especially in the West Country.
The commonwealth knew where rebellion brewed. Inns and ale houses, the beating heart of rural England were shut down or heavily restricted. No gatherings. No meetings. No whispers of the King.
Hidden in the Wiltshire countryside, a royalist safe house served as a quiet centre of resistance. Here trusted men gathered under cover of darkness, sharing news, planning routes and preparing for a rising they hoped and prayed would restore the monarchy.
Thomas Poulton of Pewsey was a farmer, a husband and a father. A man of simple existence centred on his home and the land. He believed the monarchy had been unlawfully torn down. His widow later lamented that he had joined ‘John Penruddock Esq and other of his majesty’s loyal subjects in the late engagement in the West’.
To understand why ordinary men rose in 1655, we must understand the belief that shaped their world: the divine right of kings. For generations, English monarchs had been seen not merely as rulers, but as God’s appointed rulers on earth. To many Royalists, to resist the king was to resist God himself. Even after Charles 1st was executed, this belief endured, especially in the countryside. For men like Thomas Poulton, the fall of the monarchy and the interregnum was not just a political crisis, it was a spiritual rupture.
28 miles to the south of Pewsey lay Compton Chamberlayne, the ancestral seat of the Penruddock family. For generations it had been a place of influence, land and unwavering loyalty to the crown. Although the uprisings operational planning took place elsewhere due to the danger involved, Compton Chamberlayne remained the symbolic heart of Penruddock’s world: a reminder of heritage, duty and the family’s long standing Royalist identity. Messengers moved between the family seat and the safe house, forming part of a wider Royalist network.
Before sunrise on the 11th of March 1655, Penruddock and his men stormed into Salisbury. First they struck at one of Cromwell’s symbols of power: Fisherton Anger gaol. Penruddock and his men, including Thomas Poulton, forced their way inside, overpowering guards and breaking open the cells. Royalist prisoners were freed into the night. In Salisbury itself, they seized the judges, proclaimed Charles 2nd the rightful king, and called the people to rise. They did not rise. The commonwealth crackdown on Inns now took its toll. Where Royalists once found support, shelter, food and fresh horses, they now only found locked doors.
The uprising swept across the West Country in a desperate arc: a journey marked by hope, exhaustion and the closing jaws of Cromwell’s forces. The men pressed on through Blandford, Sherborne, Yeovil, South Molton and their final hope was to go on to Exeter. On March 14th at South Molton, the rebellion met its end. A single troop of commonwealth cavalry overwhelmed the weary Royalists. Many fled. Many were captured. Thomas Poulton was among them.
The prisoners were held in Exeter. Here under Cromwell’s authority, justice would be swift and merciless. Cromwell decided that beheading was the only option for the instigators of the uprising. Four men including John Penruddock, Hugh Grove and Francis and William Jones lost their heads in Exeter and were branded as traitors to the commonwealth, although they were actually tried for treason.
Some of the men were given a reprieve from death and sent to Barbados to work as indentured labourers and some were hanged in Salisbury and Devizes. Thomas Poulton undertook his final journey in Exeter. Here in a city that had once stood proudly for the king he served, he met his end. He hanged far from the fields of Pewsey: a man executed for loyalty to the monarchy.
The stark list of names, each annotated with a symbol of their fate, brings the brutality of the crackdown into sharp focus. The marks beside the condemned, a face for those beheaded, a cross for those hanged: turn the page into a ledger of lives ended under the Protectorate’s justice. It’s a chilling reminder of how swiftly rebellion was punished, and how Thomas Poulton’s name became one among many.
This site was witness to many hangings including Thomas Poulton, Richard Reeves, Edward Davey, William Horsington, Edward Willis and John Giles. They were all interred in St. Sidwell’s Churchyard on the 7th of May, 1655. Captain Hugh Grove and John Penruddock were beheaded at the castle.
After the monarchy was restored, widows of executed Royalists sought relief. Among them was Elizabeth Poulton, left with four young children and no means of support. Her plea was heard and she was granted £5 in way of compensation. A token sum. A gesture of recognition, but far from justice. Elizabeth Poulton raised her children alone. Their names do not appear in the records again but their father’s story survives: in a single petition, a £5 reward and the memory of a man who died for a lost cause.
More than a century later, Fyfield Manor in Pewsey entered the Penruddock family through marriage. By the late 18th century, the Penruddock’s held land at Fyfield and their name can be seen on early maps, marking their additional family seat. The large manor house in Pewsey became part of the Penruddock inheritance. A quiet echo of a turbulent past.
Centuries have passed since the uprising faded into silence. The fields have been ploughed a thousand times. The names of the fallen have slipped from parish books and family memory. In the quiet lanes of Pewsey, in the shadowed corners of the old Royalist safe house, and in the village that once whispered of rebellion, the story endures. Their uprising failed. Their cause was lost but their courage and their conviction remain part of the deep unspoken history of the valley.
