The Siege of Loyalty House by Jessie Childs

Author:Jessie Childs [Childs, Jessie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473523623
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2022-05-18T16:00:00+00:00

Most of the marked passages relate to general wounds, followed by ‘bloody flux’ (dysentery), spitting blood, bleeding, ulcers (a manifestation of smallpox), ‘laske’ (diarrhoea) and ‘women’s courses’, which suggests the book’s perusal by a female practitioner and is a reminder of how difficult sieges must have been for menstruating women.7

Another copy of the Herball is mentioned in the will of a London apothecary called John Thomas. He would take Thomas Johnson’s son as an apprentice after the war, and since he also knew Faithorne and Peake, it’s possible that he served at Basing House himself. His Herball went to his ‘loving friend’ Stephen Fawcett, one of the king’s overworked surgeons in Oxford. When Fawcett was captured by Parliament, two certificates were added to his file pointing out that he had looked after wounded parliamentary prisoners ‘with much care and willingness’ and at his own charge.8 At Basing House, the garrison doctors also recognised a basic humanitarian duty of care. Even after three months of starvation, bombardment and dirty tricks by the besiegers, seventeen ‘dangerously wounded’ parliamentarian prisoners were brought into the house to be dressed after the fighting on 11 September. They were returned safely afterwards for further treatment by their own side.9

Thomas Johnson’s medical knowledge was a great asset to Basing House, and his advocacy of simple remedies over complex compounds would have made treatment more viable.10 He was also used to dealing with the many minor complaints that had been aired in his shop over the years. The manuscript that contains his pre-war lectures gives remedies for sore eyes, ‘stinking breath’ and ‘melancholy fits’, as well as advice on how ‘to keep the smallpox from pitting the face’ (almond oil and spermaceti applied with a feather), how ‘to take away the smell of stinking armholes’ (myrtles, bay leaves and sweet marjoram) and how ‘to make hairs grow on the head’ (tartar oil). More practical tips, such as how to prevent beer from souring and how to snare pigeons (which involved easily obtained dung-water), would have been particularly useful to the garrison.11

Johnson may have had help sourcing supplies from his old friend and collaborator John Goodyer, a Hampshire man and ‘second to none in his industry and searching of plants’. Just before the outbreak of war, Johnson had announced their plan to publish a comprehensive British flora together. Goodyer does not seem to have taken part in any fighting, but under his floorboards, striped with damp and still in existence, was a protection order signed by Ralph Hopton (see plates).12

It was not as a medical practitioner that Thomas Johnson was called to the burned-out village of Basing on 14 September 1644, but as the lieutenant colonel of Sir Marmaduke Rawdon’s foot regiment. This was two days after Gage had left. Norton and the besiegers were still confining themselves to their fort in the park. One hundred musketeers from the garrison had gone to the village to round up more provisions for the house. Still drunk with victory, they soon became drunk indeed.

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