This statue commemorates an incident that took place at
Canons Ashby in Northamptonshire during the English Civil War.
Canons Ashby is the ancestral home of the Dryden family, who
acquired the site not long after the former priory of Augustinian canons had
been evicted during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII.
During the 17th century the Drydens were Puritans
who supported the cause of Parliament when King Charles I declared war on
Parliament in 1642. The Civil War was a long-drawn-out affair that was not
settled until 1648. Only a few pitched battles were fought and much of the
action consisted of minor skirmishes in which pieces of territory were claimed
or reclaimed for one side or the other. The participants were mainly landed gentry
whose private militias took part in these skirmishes.
Families such as the Drydens were therefore always on guard
against an attack from a rival force. That was why, on an occasion when a group
of armed men were being entertained to mutton pies and ale in the kitchen at
Canons Ashby, a local shepherd boy was stationed in the garden as sentry so
that he could sound a warning if any enemy force was seen to approach.
His means of sounding the alarm was to blow his flute, which
he did when a brigade of royalist soldiers came into sight. The men in the
kitchen heard the alarm and rushed off to find somewhere safer, namely the
tower of the nearby church. The royalists saw them escaping and besieged them
in the tower, where they were eventually forced to surrender and were captured.
The incident only led to one death, namely that of the
unfortunate shepherd boy who was left out in the open when the royalists
arrived. The Parliamentarian soldiers were eventually freed but the shepherd
boy was executed for his act of treachery to the king.
His statue has stood facing Canons Ashby ever since 1713.
© John Welford
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