Gideon had remained behind in the New Model temporarily. Colonel Rainborough's regiment was, on Rainborough's appointment as vice-admiral, given to Richard Deane, a change Gideon did not welcome. All the regiment was hostile because Deane had been Oliver Cromwell's preferred candidate for vice-admiral; the men had heard that Cromwell actually made a surreptitious attempt to block Rainborough's appointment. Deane may have been innocent in this; he had served at sea under Rainborough's father and Thomas had been a witness at his wedding, so there was no bad feeling between them. Cromwell held political reservations about Rainborough. Rainborough was no man's protege and open stress appeared between them.
While the Admiralty Committee were discussing the appointment, a captain in Rainborough's regiment overheard a furious quarrel behind closed doors. He came back full of indignation and gossip, so the awkwardness became common knowledge. Gideon already associated Cromwell with the Grandees' opposition to the Levellers. When Deane was given the regiment, he too asked for a transfer. Fairfax was still building up troop numbers in London, so it was allowed. Deane and the regiment went with Cromwell into Wales. Gideon followed his brother to London.
He caught up with the Tower Guard just as they went on forced marches into Kent. After the short, fierce campaign there, Gideon found himself besieging Colchester. The Parliamentarians were in a hard, angry mood. They were sick of war, exasperated that the King had stirred up further fighting while they were trying to make a decent settlement, determined to end the conflict once and for all.
This turned out to be the longest and most terrible siege ever conducted on English soil. It was necessary because Colchester was so close to London. Fairfax dared not leave such a substantial enemy force only two days' march away from the city. The Royalists, who were said to number 5,000, had seized and brought with them, as hostages, Parliament's entire Essex County Committee; the prisoners' fates also had to be considered.
The Royalists had superior numbers and at first they held genuine hopes that uprisings would flourish throughout the country, with the Scots bringing an invasion army south to join up with them. If the Royalists broke out and took London, they stood a good chance of obliterating Parliament, the New Model Army, the Levellers and all that had been won. Fairfax was stuck. He and his men were just as much prisoners of the situation as the rebels. So long as Lord Norwich, Lord Capel, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle held them here, they were prevented from deploying their forces and their artillery anywhere else.
The local situation became deeply unhappy. The fugitives had been admitted to Colchester by the mayor because they swore they would only stay a few days. Besides, Sir Charles Lucas was a Colchester man; it still counted. They had ended up here on the urging of Lucas — a single-minded military man, who was generally thought so unpleasant that the civilians said enduring him was worse than enduring the siege. He had little sympathy with the townspeople, who had raided and plundered his house at the start of the war. Until now Colchester, a prosperous textile town, had loyally supported Parliament although it lay outside the main fields of action and avoided trouble. To have this siege wished upon them at this late stage was cruel. The townspeople were constantly at odds with their unwelcome, frequently boorish house guests.
Outside, the besiegers hated to be forced to impose terrible suffering on their own supporters. Deserting Royalist soldiers were promised an amnesty, yet civilians could not be permitted to leave. The essence of starving a garrison into surrender was to keep as many mouths as possible needing to be fed, to increase the pressure.
A siege was bad enough when hungry soldiers and civilians were on the same side; inside Colchester their antagonism worsened a fraught situation. The soldiers had first call on food, to keep them fit to fight; civilians were just a drain on resources — though they could be a source of supplies. Colchester homes were stripped of thatch to feed military animals. Houses were roughly searched, their pantries and store cupboards stripped bare. As the siege progressed, people congregated outside the commanders' headquarters agitating to share the soldiers' food; to stall a riot, horsemeat had to be handed out to them, but it was clear the garrison took precedence and inflammatory stories circulated that the commanders were dining on beef washed down with good wine every night. Constant tension seethed as those commanders refused to surrender while the townsfolk were all the time begging them to accept Fairfax's terms. Week after week passed while Lord Norwich and the other commanders convinced themselves they would soon be relieved by the Scots or others.
Thomas Rainborough's career with the fleet had not lasted long. He was put off his flagship by navy mutineers and lost the admiral's post. Without a command, he in turn arrived at Colchester.
Fairfax's men believed Royalist snipers inside Colchester were shooting poisoned bullets, which killed both the colonel and lieutenant-colonel of the Tower Guard. The slugs were thought to have been either rolled in sand, which had fatal results in a wound, or else boiled in sulphate of iron, which was used in dyes and ink-making. It was contrary to the rules of war and in retaliation prisoners were killed. Rainborough, fortuitously on the spot, then became the Guards' replacement colonel. He and they were in the thick of events at Colchester. 'Fort Rainborough', on the north side of the city, was the final link built in the besiegers' encircling wall, a position the colonel ran, with his men's eager connivance, as an excitable, rather maverick outpost.
Hunkered down in Fort Rainborough, conditions were bad. Gideon thought he had never known a period when the weather was so terrible, so often, through year after year. The whole civil war had been fought in miserable conditions. Being out in rain, wind and snow would become his abiding memory of his military service. The soldiers, many used to town life, responded badly to lack of shelter. Then crops rotted in the fields and food shortages followed failed harvests. When they did have stints of fighting at Colchester, they had to contend with the River Colne, so swollen that its fords were generally impassable; two men who lost their footing close to Gideon were drowned during a skirmish.
The first few weeks were exhausting while they dug in. Depressingly, they could hear Royalists strengthening and repairing the town walls at the same time. As the rain kept coming, the besiegers' forts provided only meagre and part-time shelter. Their ten forts and fourteen redoubts formed a unique ribbon of earthworks which had to be manned constantly. This was trench warfare, with all its physical penalties. Those on duty did four- or six-hour stints, often in cold, stagnant water as the trenches flooded. They were soon battling vermin and disease. Keeping dry was nearly impossible. As the rain came down for week after week, their shoes and clothes became sodden; they acquired sores and trench-foot; tempers grew short. Sickness was troubling the town, worsening as the population became weaker, but there was serious sickness outside too: Fairfax had his painful gout, while his soldiers succumbed to agues and dysentery, which they vividly called 'running flux'. Morale began to fail. So dismal was the daily grind, some soldiers hired replacements to stand in for them; the going rate was ten shillings a week. Regular batches of Londoners marched out to grab the money. Gideon was tempted, but resisted.
He knew his brother, with an extra fifteen years and developing arthritis, did sometimes give in and hire a man to take his duties. Lambert was hauled before his captain, but once it emerged that he was suffering from the flux, he was designated sick and no more was said. He told Gideon he had applied for discharge.