Who was Peter Mews - the 'warrior bishop' of Winchester?

Soon after 1am on July 6th 1685, royalist pickets spotted movement by the Duke of Monmouth’s rebel soldiers who were launching a surprise night attack.

As musket fire rattled from both sides, Peter Mews, Bishop of Winchester, got out of his bed at nearby Westonzoyland and prepared for the assault.

He had spent the night before dining with the royalist commander Lord Feversham having travelled to Somerset in his coach with four horses.

While the royal forces sprang into action, Lord Feversham slept on and couldn’t be woken until 3am.

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Peter Mews portrait by Circle of Michael Dahl. (Image: Supplied) Bishop Mews, an experienced soldier, quickly realised that their cannons were facing west and not in the direction of the attack which was from the north.

The royal artillery was quickly moved into a new position and soon put the rebels’ cannon out of action.

The gunners then changed from roundshot to canister and pounded Monmouth’s retreating soldiers with shrapnel.

The outcome of the Battle of Sedgemoor was defeat for Monmouth’s ‘Pitchfork Rebellion’ with 1,000 soldiers killed, 500 captured and the duke, an illegitimate son of Charles II, captured. He was executed at Tower Hill soon after.

The role of Bishop Mews, who had been appointed to Winchester from Bath & Wells in the previous year, has been debated ever since.

Some accounts claim that Mews himself had placed the guns and played a leading role in directing the cannon fire.

But three official accounts of the battle don’t mention him at all.

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Peter Mews memorial in Guardian Angel Chapel. (Image: Tom Watson) One historian says this omission was for "professional reasons", namely that praising a 66-year-old bishop who had used his servants and coach horses to move the cannons to a new position for great military effect would be embarrassing to Lord Feversham and the forces of James II.

The Victorian historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, however, credited the bishop for offering his horses and their traces to move the cannons.

Whatever his role at a crucial time in the battle, Mews was wounded again and suffered from it for the rest of his long life.

James II rewarded him with a medal for his efforts.

Mews and Thomas Ken, the Bishop of Bath & Wells, both vainly sought clemency for the Monmouth rebels, many of whom were executed or transported.

So, who was this warrior-bishop who became known as ‘Old Patch’?

Peter Mews was born near Sherborne, Dorset in 1619.

With the support of his uncle, Dr Thomas Winniffe, dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, he went to Merchant Taylor’s School in London before going up to St John’s College, Oxford in 1637.

He graduated with a BA in May 1641 and MA in April 1645.

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Soon after the First English Civil War started, Mews joined the king’s army in Oxford, which was Charles I’s headquarters in 1642, and rose to the rank of captain.

One source says he enlisted in ‘the King’s Guard’ and others claim he was captured at the Battle of Naseby in 1645 when the parliamentarians’ New Model Army defeated royalist forces.

We know that Mews was a front-line soldier as correspondence between Sir Edward Nicholas, Charles II’s secretary of state in exile, wrote about him in August 1653 to Sir Edward Hyde, the exiled monarch’s principal adviser:

"There is here a very deserving Gent. Capt. Mewes, who being a Mr. of Arts and Fellow of St John’s College in Oxford, took arms for the K. (now with God) and serv’d Capt. with a company in His Majesty’s Guards ever since the beginning of the Wars, wherein he hath received at several times nearly 30 wounds, and was taken prisoner at Naseby."

Mews soon recovered from his wounds and was released quickly from captivity as church records show him being appointed as a canon to Lincoln Cathedral in late 1645 and to a Northamptonshire church the following year.

These records also note that he was ordained as a deacon in February 1645 during his service in the royalist army.

Peter Mews, thus, appears to have been a soldier-priest while carrying arms.

There is no information that he was chaplain at this time.

Being a Stuart loyalist, he left England for the Netherlands in 1648 and was known until the restoration of Charles II in 1660 as ‘Captain Mews’.

From 1648 to 1653, he worked secretly in Scotland as a ‘confidential agent’ (spy) for Lieutenant General Middleton who was chief adviser to Sir Edward Hyde (later the Earl of Clarendon).

In true espionage style, he used the code name 757.

Briefly, he served in the continental army of James, Duke of York (later James II) in Flanders and was captured by the French.

James paid a ransom for his release.

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After the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, Mews was again in Scotland and worked with General Monck to restore Charles II to the throne in 1660.

He was appointed as a chaplain to the king and his church career developed quickly with multiple appointments, including vice-chancellor of Oxford University and dean of Rochester.

He became Bishop of Bath & Wells in 1673.

He came to Winchester in 1684 on the death of Bishop George Morley.

The nickname of ‘Old Patch’ resulted from a wound on his left cheek which was covered with a black patch, probably made of cloth.

There is debate whether he received it during the English Civil Wars or at Sedgemoor.

In portraits it is shown as a circular black spot, around the size of a 5p piece, or somewhat larger.

One portrait dated 1685 which is in the National Trust’s collection at Dunster Castle in Somerset shows the smaller version while a portrait attributed to "the circle of Michael Dahl" has the larger spot deep in shadow.

A copy of that painting is in the Hampshire Cultural Trust’s collection.

It is undated but is likely to have been painted during Mews’ service in Winchester when he was Prelate of the Order of the Garter.

Bishop Mews was buried in Winchester Cathedral after he died in 1706.

His memorial is in the Guardian Angel chapel in the eastern part of the cathedral, close to the renowned warrior-bishop Peter des Roches (1205-1238) who led forces into battle during the Magna Carta War (1216-17).

Mews is commemorated on a marble rectangular tablet in a classical setting, with coloured marble pillars under a baroque temple arch.

The style is not at all martial.

There are no regimental badges or crossed swords and rifles as can be seen in the cathedral’s nineteenth-century memorials.

On the tablet, the Latin text (translated) briefly mentions his military service: "who when violently snatched from his academic studies by the wickedness of the times, devoted himself to warfare".

The subdued style of the memorial would not lead a visitor to perceive that Bishop Peter Mews had actively participated on the battlefield of the worst civil conflict in England’s history and had again, in his mid-sixties, been close to the front line of combat.

Professor Tom Watson is co-editor of Record Extra, the online history journal of the Friends of Winchester Cathedral which can be found at wincathrecord.org.