Civil War - 1600 - 1700

In 1642 Civil War broke out between King Charles I and his Parliament, a war which would tear the country apart and leave a tenth of the population dead over the next decade. The Civil War reached Peterborough in 1643 when Parliamentarian troops arrived in the city to attack Royalist strongholds at Crowland and Stamford. The city lay on the fringe of the Eastern Association of Counties which sided with Parliament, but supporters of both sides could be found here. Horsey Hill fort (between Whittlesey and Stanground) had been built as part of a chain of defences along the border. The fort (right) was a sophisticated gun emplacement and is among the best surviving in the country.

 

Oliver Cromwell spent a month in the city, and an attempt by Royalist troops from Newark to retake Peterborough was driven off. King Charles I spent two nights imprisoned in the former royal lodgings in Peterborough en route to London as a prisoner of the Parliamentary forces in 1646.

The restoration of King Charles II in 1660 led to a new stability and prosperity across the country, and in 1669 the people of Peterborough raised a subscription for the building of public rooms. This building, now known as the Guildhall, was erected on the site of the old Market or Butter Cross. When it was complete, a dinner was held at which turtle soup was eaten, and the shell of this turtle (left) can still be seen on display at Peterborough Museum, painted with the coat of arms of the Orme family, then one of the gentry families in the city. Not all went well for the people of Peterborough, when in 1666 the city suffered one of the last outbreaks of the great plague in England, and many local people died of this dreadful disease.

Although piecemeal drainage plans were carried out in the medieval period, it was not until the 17th century that schemes for the drainage of the whole "Great Level" of the fens were begun. In an agreement of 1630, Francis Earl of Bedford, who owned a large fenland estate at Thorney, joined with other "adventurers" (so-called because they had invested or "adventured" money in the schemes) and the experienced Dutch engineer Sir Cornelius Vermuyden to undertake the work and divide up the proceeds. The original work was to take only six years, in fact this was only the beginning of an engineering project which continues to this day.