Today, 10th February 2015 marks the 370th anniversary of the commencement of the Siege of Melcombe. It lasted for almost a week and followed the surprise attack by Portlanders upon the two main forts of Weymouth. With superior numbers, ordnance and a massive height advantage, the Royalists were determined to bombard the much smaller garrison of Melcombe, commanded by the Parliamentarian Colonel William Sydenham, into submission.

(excerpt from The Crabchurch Conspiracy, by Mark Vine)

Colonel William Sydenham now had a very sizeable problem to wrestle with. He had less than nine hundred men under his command in Melcombe and was faced across the water by an ecstatic enemy now numbering in excess of two thousand troops; an enemy who would not long be content to sit and do nothing. Mourning the loss of Francis, perhaps the two remaining Sydenham brothers present gained an inner strength from his example and resolved…