The Civil War

In 1843, Cromwell marched on Buckingham and swept away the Royal base at nearby Hillesden. Only a few ill-disciplined troops remained:

12 or 14 Cavellyers lye about Thaneswick [Tingewick] and Finmore and constantly rob all that pass by at Baynard’s Greene in the day tyme.

They had moved on shortly before Charles I marched on Buckingham in June 1644 from Oxford, arriving via Finmere. Temporarily, at least, the Buckingham area was back in Royal control.

A year later, Captain Andrewes, an officer in the Parliamentary garrison at Newport Pagnell, was ordered to take 20 troopers to Stowe. His task was to obtain intelligence about Royalist activities in the area. When riding towards Stowe, he was told about a party of Cavaliers at Finmere and he quickly rode to the village and ordered an immediate charge. Taken by surprise the King’s men fled south across the open fields, only to be overtaken at Fringford, where they surrendered.

The routing of the Cavaliers would not have pleased Finmere’s Rector, Richard Horn, who may well have sheltered the Cavaliers. The village was now under Cromwell’s control and he was subsequently, in his words, ‘sacrificed to a three-halfpenny minister.’ A Parliamentarian, Richard Warr, occupied Horn’s ministry from 1647, while Horn remained in the village in miserable destitution. With the end of Civil War, Horn was reinstated in 1662.