The Civil War was a prolonged conflict with dissention in the Parliamentary army once the King had been defeated but the conflict between King and Parliament lasted three years until the defeat of the Royalists at Naseby.

After the King was defeated, hope was not lost by the Royalist supporters who whipped up the ill-feeling of rural inhabitiants of Dorset and Wiltshire against the Pariamentary army - the ill-feeling born of three years of turmoil in their lives brought by whichever army was passing through.

Rumour numbered the rebels, armed with whatever weapons or implements they could find (hence "clubmen" as some 10,000 pledged to 'protect' their farms and villages against the army.

The Parliamentary army gathered at Sherborne under Fairfax and Cromwell and Fairfax marched his infantry Dorchester. The leaders of the Clubmen met Fairfax at Dorchester and the general explained to them the illegality of forming an army and acting by force. The rebels were undaunted and continued to gather on hilltops in their thousands.

Cromwell's response to the large assembly of Clubmen on the hilltop of Shaftesbury was to capture fifty of their leaders which only incensed the rebels who gathered at Shaftesbury again, vowing to rescue their leaders from imprisonment.

Cromwell sent a squadron of cavalry to deal with the rebels but they fired upon the soldiers and made their disdain of the Parliamentary general clear in no uncertain terms. Despite the rebels' feelings, a Mr. Lee descended from the hill and was sent back to his fellow rebels to "desire them to peaceableness" and "to submit to the Parliament". The Clubmens' response was to fire on the troops again and Mr. lee was again sent to them to assure them that "if they would lay down their arms no wrong should be done to them".

The Clubmen remianed adamant and Cromwell ordered them dispersed by force. Some three hundred were captured of whom the general wrote "many of which are poor silly creatures, who say they will be hanged before they come out again."