English Civil War

In Banfield’s history, the English Civil War is remembered through family divisions and a dangerous act of Royalist loyalty. Gerry Fenn’s account connects the conflict to local rivalries and recounts how a village priest helped Charles II reach the coast and escape to France, after which Cromwell had the priest executed. The episode gives the period a sharply personal presence in a history otherwise described as quiet and sparsely recorded.

Local Allegiances and Feuds

Fenn reports that some Banfield families took opposing sides during the Civil War: some supported Charles I, while others remained loyal to Cromwell. He does not identify which families belonged to which faction, so the account establishes the existence of local division without assigning particular allegiances. Fenn speculates that inherited village feuds might have outlasted the conflict, but presents that persistence as a conjecture rather than a documented fact.

The report sits within a longer account of recurring family names in village affairs. Fenn notes that some names appear across centuries and that Southworth, Backshield, and Oswold are represented on the parish council in his own time. The account does not connect any one of these families directly to a Civil War faction; instead, it suggests how local memory places the conflict among the recurring rivalries of a small community.

The Royalist Priest and Charles II

Fenn also recalls a local episode involving Charles II. The Banfield minister, described as a Royalist, helped the king travel across the Downs toward the coast, from which Charles took a boat to France. Cromwell had the priest executed. Fenn offers no name for the minister or precise date for the escape, but the reported outcome makes the priest’s allegiance more than a matter of local opinion: it carries a fatal consequence.

This episode appears in Fenn’s account as an exception within the clergy’s otherwise low-profile local history. He says that the church’s past contains no other recorded scandals or major disruption of comparable kind. The priest’s action therefore gives the English Civil War a distinct place in Banfield’s religious history as well as its political memory.

Historical Memory and the Limits of the Record

Fenn presents these episodes while recounting the village’s past to Monsignor Delgard. His narrative moves between broad local history and striking incidents, but the available church records are limited: they begin in 1565 and concern marriages and deaths. The Civil War material is not accompanied by a detailed account of its documentary source, and the factional divisions remain unnamed. The resulting picture is specific in its central claims—a divided village and an executed Royalist priest—yet incomplete about who took which side and how the conflict shaped the community beyond the reported feuds.