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| Siege of Pembroke | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of theSecond English Civil War | |||||||
 The Northwest side of Pembroke Castle | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| Royalists | Parliamentarians | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Gen.R. Laugharne  Col.Rice Powell Col.John Poyer  | Oliver Cromwell | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 30+ killed | Unknown | ||||||
  Pembroke Wales | |||||||
Thesiege of Pembroke took place in 1648 during theSecond English Civil War. In the engagement,Parliamentarian troops led byOliver Cromwell siegedPembroke Castle in Wales. The Castle had become a refuge for rebellious Parliamentarian soldiers after the end of theFirst English Civil War.
In April 1648, Parliamentarian troops in Wales, who had not been paid for a long time, staged aRoyalist rebellion under the command of the ColonelJohn Poyer, the Parliamentarian Governor ofPembroke Castle. He was joined by Major-GeneralRowland Laugharne, his district commander, and ColonelRice Powell.[1] After the failure of his pre-emptive strike against the small Parliamentarian army of ColonelThomas Horton at theBattle of St. Fagans, Laugharne retreated with what was left of his army to join Colonel Poyer atPembroke.
Colonel Horton marched his 3,000 well disciplined troops, about half of which weredragoons, west toTenby and laid siege toTenby Castle which was held by about 500 Royalists under the command of Colonel Rice Powell.Oliver Cromwell with another Parliamentarian army consisting of three regiments of foot and two of horse had reachedGloucester on the day that the Royalist army was routed at the Battle of St. Fagans and proceeded to cross the south Welsh border shortly afterwards. He left ColonelIsaac Ewer in command of a small force to besiege the Royalist garrison ofChepstow Castle which was under the command of SirNicholas Kemeys and pressed on to join Horton atTenby arriving on 15 May. Leaving Horton with enough men to deal with Powell, Cromwell marched the rest of the army to lay siege to Pembroke.
Kemeys was killed when Chepstow Castle was stormed on 25 May, and Powell was taken prisoner when he surrendered Tenby Castle to Horton on 31 May, but Pembroke Castle was a very strong medieval fortress which could not be taken as quickly. It stood on a rocky promontory surrounded on three sides by the sea, and on the landward side its defences consisted of a deep ditch and walls up to 20 feet (6.1 m) thick.
Ships carrying siege artillery to Cromwell were forced back up theBristol Channel toGloucester by storms, so Cromwell tried a frontal assault. It failed because the ladders used toescalade the walls were too short. The defenders managed to surprise the besiegers in a suddensortie, killing thirty of the besiegers and damaging thecircumvallation. The siege guns arrived in mid-June but over the next month they made little impact on the thick curtain walls.
Eventually, the siege ended when Cromwell's forces discovered the conduit pipe which delivered water to the castle, and cut off the defenders' water supply. Poyer and Laugharne were forced to surrender on 11 July.
Cromwell then ordered the castleslighted so that it could never again be used as a military fortress. Laugharne, Poyer and Powell were taken to London, tried and sentenced to death, but Poyer alone was executed on 25 April 1649, being the victim selected by lot.[1]