The Luttrells took the Lancastrian side in the quarrels of Red Rose and White, and suffered severely for that partisanship; Sir James, who had been knighted for valour at the bloody battle of Wakefield, being mortally wounded at the battle of Barnet, 1471, and his property forfeited to the victorious Yorkists, who granted the Luttrell acres to the Earls of Pembroke. After the battle of Bosworth, however, fourteen years later, they obtained their own again, and held it uneventfully until the beginning of hostilities between Cavaliers and Roundheads, in 1642. Mr. George Luttrell, the then owner, garrisoned Dunster Castle for the Parliamentary party, and held it for a time successfully against the Marquess of Hertford, the Royalist commander in these parts, established at Minehead, who was satisfied, in view of the formidable front made by this hilltop stronghold, in merely keeping a watch upon it, and preventing any offensive movement on the part of the garrison: thus—to use a modern military expression—“containing” the enemy. Luttrell, for his part, was satisfied at keeping the Royalists thus inactive and useless for offence elsewhere; each side thus “containing” the other: a not very stirring method of warfare. In the following year, in consequence of the sequence of Royalist successes in the West, Mr. Luttrell surrendered the castle, which was then held for three years for the King by Colonel Francis Windham. It was at this period that Prince Charles, afterwards Charles the Second, stayed here. The bedroom he then occupied is still known as “Prince Charles’s.” In those years the fortunes of the King declined, and rapidly grew desperate; until at last Dunster Castle became the sole outpost of the cause in Somerset. Finally, in 1645, it was resolved to reduce this remnant, and in November of that year a force was despatched from Taunton to besiege the Castle. The investing force was commanded by Blake, great on sea and on land, and by Sydenham, and a lengthy and stirring siege began. Both sides worked vigorously. Attack and defence proceeded on engineering lines; Blake’s men advancing cautiously by trenches, mines, and batteries; the defenders pushing forth to meet them by the same mole-like methods. On February 5th, 1646, in midst of these laborious operations, when the garrison had come near to being starved out, a column under Lord Hopton relieved them, and Blake’s men were forced to retire from beneath the walls. He kept watch, however, upon Dunster, and in the meanwhile received reinforcements. At length, on April 19th, the sturdy Windham, convinced that, the King having lost everywhere else in the West, it would be futile to hold this one remaining post, surrendered. The victorious Parliament, careful to destroy those places that had held out against it, duly ordered the Castle of Dunster to be “slighted,” otherwise to be blown up; but the order was not enforced, probably for the sufficient reason that the Luttrells, as we have seen,