Fitz
speaker
397 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Fitz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It was built to defend against invasion from France and the Holy Roman Empire by Henry VIII. Brown thought to himself, yeah, I can take that, but I'd better take a trumpeter with me to signal the rest of the fellows back on my ship and let them know when I've done it.
It may sound crazy, but Brown alone, aside from his companion and his trumpet, swam the moat, scaled the walls and took the castle without firing a shot. Brown must have either been incredibly charismatic or terribly imposing, or both, because after infiltrating the castle and catching the defenders with their pants down, they immediately surrendered.
with the port open to parliamentary reinforcement by sea and South Sea Castle taken, as well as, I like to imagine, a healthy dose of fear of the man who could single-handedly capture the aforementioned castle, the Royalist forces remaining in defence of Portsmouth Town mutinied, leaving the town entirely in parliamentary hands.
The capture of Portsmouth was possibly the most audacious of Brown Bushel's activities, but was by no means the last. From Portsmouth, he made his way to Scarborough and was reunited with his cousin Hugh Chumley.
Whilst in Scarborough, Brown was put to work improving the defences of Scarborough Castle, and the artillery platform defending the entrance to the castle is still known as Bushel's Battery to this day.
During this time, the Royalist forces make great gains in the North, including making raids into Whitby, no doubt flustering both Brown and Chumley, who obviously had both family and property there.
Though fighting for the Roundheads, Chumley was apparently less than 100% on board with the Parliamentarian cause, having previously made his displeasure at the lack of willingness to negotiate with the King be known.
Brown's cousin sent him to Hull to retrieve some possessions from the Chumley home, likely fearing that he might lose them otherwise in the tide of battles raging across the country, and Brown duly attended to the task. Unfortunately, however, when Brown arrived in Hull, he was met by Parliament's Governor Sir John Hotham, who placed him under arrest.
You see, whilst Brown was undertaking the journey to Hull, Chumley had secretly made his way to York in order to pledge his allegiance to Queen Henrietta Maria and the Royalist forces. Only it obviously wasn't quite as secret a visit as he had intended, and Brown, related as he was to Chumley and sharing a command, was placed under scrutiny and arrest.
In his paper, Captain Brown Bushel, North Sea Adventurer and Pirate, author Jack Binns is of the opinion that Brown was completely ignorant of Chumley's intention to defect. And it seems that Brown was also able to convince Sir John Hotham of this as well. Brown was released on the promise that he would retake Scarborough for Parliament, but he was to return to a very complicated situation.
Hugh Chumley was once again in York when Brown arrived at Scarborough, and commanding the garrison there instead was James Chumley, another of his relatives. But more importantly, James's second-in-command was Brown's younger brother, Henry Bushel. Instead of facing his cousin in battle, he was now in conflict with his own brother. Henry Bushel, though, appears to have been Brown's salvation.
Ostensibly now on the royalist side, Henry seems to have either had some doubts about the defection or was charmed by Brown into returning to the parliamentary fold, for he aided him in gaining access to the castle and securing it for the Roundheads. In the words of John Legard, Sir Hugh Chumley's captain prior to Hugh's change of allegiance...
At twelve of the clock at night, the captain, Brown Bushel, with four more, was let in through the castle gate by his brother, who had prepared the soldiers, ready enough to revolt from that side they liked not, with beer and tobacco. He, acquainting the soldiers with his intentions, they promised to stick to him. The sergeant who commanded the guard was laid hold on.
The gunners were next surprised, but swore fidelity. There was nothing left now but to get the tower, a place of great strength where the captain was lodged, and where all the ammunition and provisions for the castle were laid.
For the effecting whereof, the sergeant was caused to knock at the gate and tell the keeper of the magazine, who came to know what was the matter, that there was an alarm in the town and the soldiers must be furnished with powder and shot. credit being given here unto and the gate opened bushell entered with his soldiers commanded delivery of the keys and thereby became master of the castle
overcoming the final obstacle of the tower with just this simple subterfuge brown quite literally had the keys to the castle he hadn't needed to swim a moat or scale a wall this time his access had been almost as simple as walking through an open door between henry's preparation and brown's deception another castle fell to brown bushel without a single shot being fired
On hearing of this development, Hugh Chumley rushed back from York and sent a message to Brown requesting to meet at Scarborough's main gate the following morning, to which Brown agreed. Whether he knew it or not at the time, this meeting was to be a choice that would seal his fate. Through appeals rather than threats, Hugh was able to grudgingly swing Brown's support from Parliament to the King.
He opened up the gate and handed the keys and the city over to the Royalists. The Parliamentarian army was already on the way to reinforce Scarborough, and finding it once again in Royalist hands, they assaulted it by land and by sea. Chumley and Bushell were able to repel these assaults, but rather than immediately take up with the Cavalier forces, Bushell set out for Hull.
Seemingly feeling a strong moral sense of responsibility as he had promised to recapture Scarborough from the Royalists to avoid captivity after being arrested on his previous visit to Hull, he set sail directly and surrendered himself.
John Hotham, the parliamentarian governor who had arrested and then released Brown, was impressed enough with his honesty that he put Brown in one of the first groups of prisoners of war exchanged by the opposing forces to be returned to their own sides. So he was free and back with Chumley in very short order.
Showing 181–200 of 397 · page 10 of 20
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