Description:A number of Sir Thomas Gower’s letters are addressed to his wife’s uncle Sir Richard Leveson (1598-1661) and John Langley, Sir Richard’s steward at Trentham. Many of these letters discuss military and political strategy during the Civil War of 1642-1646.
In 1642 Sir Thomas was in a prominent political position as Sheriff of Yorkshire. His letters are addressed as being from the family’s estates in ‘Stitnam’ (Stittenham, in North Yorkshire). It is significant to note that the Gower family, like Sir Richard Leveson, fought for the Royalist cause in the Civil War. Sir Thomas’s letters to Sir Richard reflect how political news was communicated amongst families from relatives living in different parts of the country during this period. In one letter Sir Thomas writes ‘this week produces nothinge but what you will heare from London’.
Sir Thomas’s letters suggest that he was a perceptive observer of military strategy, making his letters valuable firsthand accounts of poltical events in the 1640s. A number of his letters from 1642 describe the Siege of Hull, one of the earliest major military actions which led to the outbreak of Civil War in October 1642. Parliamentarian forces occupied Hull which at this time was an ammunitions arsenal. In 1642 Royalist forces attempted to overthrow Parliamentarian control of the town through a siege. Sir Thomas Gower’s letters are important documents in terms of Civil War History, providing details about the Siege and its aftermath.
Sir Thomas’s letters are significant to military history of this period, describing in detail the scale and type of ‘forces’ which were ‘quartered about Hull’ at this time. His letters provide a detailed account of the situation in Hull, noting that ‘the forces heer are not 8000, and the towne hath 1000 and more, and this week there are drawne out of severall ships lately come up 700 musketeers, and besides the naturall strengths of the towne there are now [outworks] made, and they still add to them night, & day.’
To learn more about Sir Thomas's Civil War correspondence, click on the images on the left.