Once indoors, Rowan and Joseph were staggered by the size of the house, with its great hall, several parlours, dining room and withdrawing room, enormous long gallery, endless corridors and series of bedchambers, cavernous kitchen with wet- and dry-larders, wine and beer cellars and endless stables and outbuildings. Aston Hall sat in lush parkland, created for hunting and for keeping the people at a distance; the house had high Jacobean gables and chimneys, elegant plaster strapwork ceilings, expensive fireplaces, fabulous carved woodwork and a profusion of expensive windows. The quantities of furniture and personal possessions were beyond anything the Tews had ever imagined. Even after large civil war losses, when Sir Thomas Holte died, his belongings would be inventoried on a scroll eleven feet long. The Tews wandered in amazement, sniggering at the Holte family behind their richly clad backs and pilfering small items whenever they could get away with it.
The Parliamentary forces arrived on Boxing Day. This was their reprisal for Prince Rupert's attack on Birmingham and they were hoping for revenge in the form of money and plate. They took up positions in the grounds, planted their standards, then in the language of war sent 'to demand the house for the use of the King and Parliament'.
Sieges had their own chivalry. Once the enemy turned up and formally 'summoned' a town or house — announced that they had come to take you over — it was vital to refuse surrender at least once, and in a robust fashion. To give up too easily meant disgrace and court martial. There was a fine knack to choosing the correct moment to submit with honour, in order to obtain 'terms'. Terms meant the defeated side would be allowed to lay down their weapons, march out and avoid cold-blooded slaughter. If they had fought tenaciously, they might be allowed to keep their arms and leave with their colours flying, though that was recognition of extreme courage. It was rare, and it took a merciful winning commander. More often, if the besieging commander had been seriously annoyed at any point, he would hang a few of his enemies just to relieve his feelings.
At Aston Hall, the Royalists answered the summons by defiantly retorting that they would not yield while they had a man alive. Sir Thomas Holte could be confident a man of his rank would be spared whatever happened.
It took three days for resistance to disintegrate. There were twelve hundred rebels, who had brought artillery. On the first day, Tuesday, the attackers made play with their cannon, doing serious damage to the house's interior, especially the fine dog-leg staircase with its bulbous carved balusters. The cannon-fire terrified the defenders. Amidst the smoke and noise and crashing shot, the Holtes, their servants and soldiers took refuge in the lower rooms. Next day, the attackers assailed the parish church, close to the house, where some of Colonel Leveson's Dudley troops had been out-stationed. Churches made very defensible strongholds, but it was quickly stormed. The Parliamentarians took French and Irish prisoners, including one female camp-follower who, in the enemy's tradition, was viciously abused as a whore.
The Tews heard the shouts and rattle of fire when the church fell. They were already quaking at cannon balls crashing through the house, and the smell of smoke and panic became too much for them. When enemy soldiers broke through the earthworks on the lawns, the young Tews passed their guns to servants and hid together under a great table in the entrance hall. Parliamentary troops soon burst into the house through its tall, elegant windows. As showers of broken glass fell inwards, large booted men swung through window cavities, shouting and brandishing swords. The defenders cried for quarter. It was granted.
Peering out from their hiding place, Rowan and Joseph then saw some trigger-happy Royalist soldiers kept firing anyway. Two rebels were shot in the face. At the sight of stricken comrades with blood pouring from their mouths, the Parliamentarians went mad. They killed and wounded twenty defenders before being brought under control by officers. Joseph and Rowan Tew cringed against the great carved table leg.
'Play dead Rowan!'
'Who needs to act it? We're done for!'
Eventually the shooting stopped. The attackers had better ways to enjoy themselves than wasting ammunition on a cowed foe. They were here to pillage goods and to capture anyone of quality who could be heavily fined and ransomed. Forty useful prisoners were rounded up. As soldiers rushed past their bolthole to stampede upstairs and search the house, the Tew brothers ventured out into the open, two disingenuous mites holding pieces of white cloth (they had sensibly equipped themselves with these tokens). 'Joseph' considered disclosure, but was deterred by how cruelly the woman previously taken was reviled as a whore. Royalist camp-followers risked mutilation and cold-blooded murder, especially if they were believed to be Irish. Women were hanged as rebels and spies almost as often as men. To be in disguise would not win favour.
The Tews instinctively knew how to pose with the typical hangdog relief of surrendering soldiers. They were stripped of weapons, hats, belts, boots, britches and coats — though not deprived of their verminous shirts, or Joseph would certainly have been discovered. While this was happening, they saw Sir Thomas Holte, a furious old man in his seventies, dragged from the house, bare-chested in the December cold as he had been stripped of even his fine cambric shirt. He and his family were taken away for special ransom. Lesser prisoners were strung together in a line, their hands bound behind them with matchcord, and marched to the church. There they were insulted, threatened and starved. Then the abject prisoners were offered the usual inducement: a dungeon in Warwick Castle, for ever — or repent of their Royalist delinquency, turn and fight for Parliament.
Some hung back, genuinely hating puritans. Joseph and Rowan Tew immediately swapped sides.
The new Roundheads were equipped with coats, shirts, stockings, shoes, britches and Monmouth caps, and allocated another daily allowance (threepence a day). Once they had been judged docile and trustworthy, they were armed with swords and guns made in Birmingham. They regarded these weapons as inferior, but for thruppence a day, plus a roof over their heads, they would put up with anything. Rowan could ride. Most horse thieves could stay safely on anything with four legs. He was given a mount, then appointed to be a light dragoon. His diminutive younger 'brother', who lacked the strength even to support a long musket properly, would be allotted camp duties. They were assigned to a new garrison which had recently been created for Parliament under Colonel John Fox.
Fox ran an irregular, roistering, free-ranging, unsupervised organisation that would eventually be disbanded under a cloud. Two guttersnipes could not have found themselves a more congenial position.
Warwickshire in the civil war was mostly held by Parliament, but a Royalist bloc lay to the west, including all of Wales; its rough boundary ran from Chester down through Shrewsbury and Worcester to Tewkesbury and on to the West Country. The district around Stratford-upon-Avon was Royalist, which provided a safe corridor when the King obtained Welsh recruits. The Midlands were constantly crisscrossed by Prince Rupert. His efforts early in 1643 had achieved their objective: the Queen's convoy of soldiers and ammunition wagons left York and passed safely south, bypassing Birmingham, though resting overnight nearby at the Saracen's Head in the Queen's personal manor of King's Norton. The next day Her Majesty arrived at Stratford-upon-Avon, where she was an overnight guest of Shakespeare's daughter, Susannah Hall, at New Place. There Henrietta Maria was joined by Rupert, and four days later met King Charles and progressed into Oxford.