1600s

Deaths of Sir Hugh and Sir John Portman, the sons of Sir Henry. They added the park at Staple Fitzpaine and land near West Coker to the family’s estates. These now included property in more than 40 villages in five counties from Somerset to Sussex.

Taunton was a fiercely Parliamentary stronghold. At the beginning of the Civil War the sympathies of Sir William Portman, the 5th baronet, lay with the Parliamentarians. However, he soon decided he must remain loyal to the Crown. The Royalist forces recaptured Taunton in 1643 but a year later it was again retaken by the Parliamentarians. Between October 1644 and May 1645 there followed two more bitter sieges of the town by the Royalists, both of which failed. In each of these struggles Orchard House served as the attacking army’s headquarters while the surrounding farms were obliged to feed several thousand soldiers. Sir William Portman, the 6th baronet, was born at Orchard Portman in August 1644, just before the last siege began, but his father was captured by the Parliamentarians at the battle of Naseby in June 1645 and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he died two months later. Parliament’s sequestration of the family’s estates was lifted in 1649 but only after the Portmans had paid a fine of £20,000.

By the time of Charles II’s Restoration Sir William Portman’s fortunes were once again flourishing. In 1661, aged only 16, he was made a Knight of the Bath and that year he also became MP for Taunton. He went on to extend Orchard House still further and in 1664 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1662 he purchased Bryanston, near Blandford, in Dorset – the Rogers family, who had owned it for more than 200 years, had no male heirs. Sir William did have a distant family connection with Bryanston – his father had stayed there in 1644 as a guest of the recently widowed Anne Rogers when Charles I and part of his army were there – and this may have been one reason for him to make this purchase. After this Bryanston and its estate would become the Portman family’s main home until the 20th century.

In the summer of 1685 the Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II, made a serious attempt to overthrow James II. James had come to the throne in February 1685 on the death of his brother, Charles II, but was a Catholic. Monmouth was popular in the west country and, sailing from Holland with his Protestant supporters, he landed at Lyme Regis in June 1685. Taunton greeted him enthusiastically but most of the country remained loyal to King James, including Sir William Portman. Monmouth and his rebel forces suffered a crushing defeat at Sedgemoor, near Bridgwater, less than a month later, and Monmouth fled towards the south coast. On 8 July, two days after the battle, he was captured by Sir William himself on the edge of the New Forest, where he had been found hiding in a ditch. He was taken to London and a week later executed at Tower Hill.

Judge Jeffreys’s infamous Bloody Assizes held at Taunton Castle in September 1685 were James II’s answer to the rebels: 284 of them were transported and 144 hung, the trees at Taunton being described as ‘loaden almost as thick with quarters as with leaves’. Tradition has it that during the Bloody Assizes Judge Jeffreys either stayed at the Tudor Tavern or was entertained to dinner there by Sir William Portman. This grim connection is commemorated there today by the Hangman’s Bar.
Image credits: Somerset Archaeological & Natural History Society

Portrait of Henry Seymour by Sir Godfrey Kneller, c1715