A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Arundel, Lady Blanche
ARUNDEL, LADY BLANCHE,
A daughter of the earl of Worcester, and wife of lord Arundel of Wardour, is celebrated for her heroic defence of Wardour Castle, in Wiltshire, England. She was summoned to surrender, May 2nd, 1643, by Sir Edward Hungerford, commander-in-chief of the parliamentary forces in Wiltshire, at the head of about thirteen hundred men; but Lady Arundel, whose husband was then at Oxford, replied, that she had the orders of her lord to keep the castle, and those orders she was determined to obey. On this reply the battery commenced, and continued without intermission for nearly six days, The castle contained bat twenty-five fighting-men; and wearied with exertion their strength began to fail, when the ladies and their maid-servants took their place in keeping watch, and loading their muskets. The women and chidren were repeatedly offered safely if the besieged would surrender, but they chose rather to perish than to buy their lives at the expense of those of their brave soldiers.
At length, reduced to extremity. Lady Arundel was forced to surrender, after making stipulations that the lives of all in the fortress should be spared, etc. The conditions were agreed to, but all excepting that relating to their personal safety were violated. Lady Arundel, and her children, were carried prisoners to Shaftesbury, where her two sons, children of seven and nine, were taken from her. She died October 29th., 1649, at the age of sixty-six. Her husband had died at Oxford in 1643, of wounds he received in the battle of Lansdown, in the service of Charles the First.
Lady Arundel is buried with her husband, near the altar of an elegant chapel, at Wardour Castle. On the monument Is an inscription, which, after giving their titles and ancestry, thus concludes: "This lady, as distinguished for her courage as for the splendour of her birth, bravely defended, in the absence of her husband, the castle of Wardour, with a spirit above her sex, for nine days, with a few men, against Sir Edward Hungerford, Edmund Ludlow, and their army, and then delivered it up on honourable terms. Obit. 28 October, 1649, Etat. 66. Requiescat in pace. 'Who shall find a valiant woman? The price of her is as things brought afar off, and from the uttermost coast. The heart of her husband trusteth in her.'—Prov. 81."