Siege of Newcastle

Part of the First English Civil War

Newcastle Castle

Date

3 February - 21 October 1644

Location

Newcastle upon Tyne
(at the time Northumberland)
Kingdom of England

Result

Decisive Scottish victory

Scottish occupation of Tyneside

Belligerents

Scottish Covenanters

English Royalists

Commanders and leaders

Earl of Leven
Lt. Gen. Earl of Callander

Governor Sir John Marlay

Strength

Six regiments

Coordinates: 54°58′19″N 1°36′29″W / 54.972°N 1.608°W / 54.972; -1.608

Decisive Scottish victory

The Siege of Newcastle occurred in 1644, during the English Civil War. A Covenanter army from Scotland under the command of Lord General Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven crossed into England in January 1644. As he moved his army south he left six regiments under the direction of Lieutenant General James Livingstone, 1st Earl of Callander, to lay siege to the city of Newcastle-on-Tyne from 3 February (when the town was formally asked to surrender) until 19 October the same year when the Covenanters took the city by storm. There had been an earlier occupation during the Civil War when the General Leslie had occupied the city following the Battle of Newburn in 1640.

The city was not continually invested in this time. In a complicated situation, as the Earl of Callander diverted his troops to take surrounding towns like Newburn, as the main Covenanter army pressed south. In the meantime, the royalist governor having reinforced his position then committed forces south also where the main Covenanter-Parliamentarian allied armies clashed with the Royalists at the Battle of Marston Moor.

It was the defeat of the Royalist field army at Marston Moor on 2 July that decided the fate of Newcastle and all the other Royalist strongholds in the North East of England, because without the means of relief from an army in the field the capitulation of all such strongholds was only a matter of time.

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Wikipedia