Bolton Massacre

Storming of Bolton

Date	28 May 1644
Location	Bolton, Lancashire
Result	Royalist victory

Belligerents

Parliamentarians

Royalists

Commanders and leaders

Alexander Rigby

Prince Rupert

Strength

ca. 4,000

2,000 cavalry
6,000 infantry

Casualties and losses

78–2,000

unknown

The Bolton massacre, sometimes recorded as the Storming of Bolton, was an event in the English Civil War which happened on 28 May 1644. The strongly Parliamentarian town was stormed and captured by Royalist forces under Prince Rupert. It was alleged that up to 1,600 of Bolton's defenders and inhabitants were slaughtered during and after the fighting. The "massacre at Bolton" became a staple of Parliamentarian propaganda.

In Lancashire, before the start of the civil war, there was social and economic tension between towns which generally supported Parliament, and the landowning gentry and who controlled the rural areas and mostly supported the king as Royalists. There was a religious divide with some towns supporting dissenting nonconformist movements. Bolton was known as the "Geneva of the north", a reference to the city in Switzerland which was a centre of Calvinism.

The major Royalist figure in Lancashire was James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby. He was slow to take measures to secure the county at the start of the civil war in 1642, and after setbacks the following year, including two failed attempts to capture Bolton, he temporarily abandoned the contest in Lancashire to secure the other area in which he held major interests, the Isle of Man. The only threat to Parliamentarian control of Lancashire came from Cheshire, where a Royalist army under John Byron, 1st Baron Byron was formed in late 1643. On 26 January 1644, Byron was defeated at the Battle of Nantwich by Parliamentarians under Sir William Brereton and Sir Thomas Fairfax, leaving Parliamentarians in control of the area.

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