After initial assaults drove Blake and his troops back into Taunton Castle, the blockade was conducted from 1–2 miles (1.6–3.2 km) away, and concentrated more on starving the garrison than continued attacks.

Lord Goring, who had proposed the second siege, renewed the blockade for a third time in mid-May, after engaging Weldon's departing army and forcing it back into Taunton.

The Parliamentarian defence tied up Goring and his 10–15,000 troops, who would have otherwise been available to fight for King Charles at Naseby, where historians believe they could have tipped the battle in favour of the Royalists.

Loyalties in Somerset were divided at the start of the First English Civil War; many of the prominent landowners and those living in the countryside favoured King Charles I, but most of the towns, including Taunton, were Parliamentarian, predominantly due to their Puritan beliefs.

[4] In June the following year, Sir Ralph Hopton led his Royalist army, consisting of eighteen regiments equally split between foot and cavalry, out of Cornwall and into Somerset.

His remaining forces retreated back to Dorset, leaving only Plymouth, Lyme Regis and Taunton under Parliamentarian control in the South West.

King Charles I held council in Chard, and shortly after ordered a Royalist force numbering 3,000 troops to set up the first siege of Taunton.

[14] In his record of the siege, Morris claims that the besieging forces were unable to establish a presence in the town, and set up a wide perimeter roughly 1–2 miles (1.6–3.2 km) away.

[16] However, almost all other sources agree that after initial skirmishes, the Royalists broke through the eastern defences and forced Blake's troops back into the castle itself.

He offered generous terms for surrender, and signed the letter "Your well-wishing Neighbour and Country-man"; the pair had served as members of parliament together for Bridgwater in 1640.

[21] Around that time, Lord Goring, the lieutenant-general of the south-eastern counties in the Royalist army, requested troops from the King so that he could mount a "large-scale southeastern campaign".

Grenville did not leave his siege of Plymouth and, coupled with the threat from a Parliamentarian force formed by Waller and Oliver Cromwell combining their armies in Hampshire, the attack on Taunton was postponed.

[27] The besieging army was reinforced soon after with Goring's infantry and artillery units,[28] and so, with a large force, the attackers closed in on the town, establishing entrenchments within musket-shot of Taunton's defences.

[14] Further attacks the following day focused on the east side of the town, first bombarding it with cannon shot, and then storming the earthen redoubt that Blake had established.

After some early success in which they captured one of the earthen forts, the attackers were forced back by a combination of musket shot, stones and boiling water.

[14] Once inside Blake's outer perimeter, the besieging army discovered that there were Parliamentarian musketeers within every house, which prevented them advancing any further, though they did set fire to buildings, hoping to force the defenders to retreat.

His forces pushed the Parliamentarian troops back one building at a time, until they were left with only a small area of land in the middle of the town.

Within the perimeter was the castle, an entrenchment in the market square, St Mary Magdalene Church and an earthen defence known as "Maiden's fort".

[38] Over the course of the siege, Lord Goring had been with the King in Oxford, and on 10 May he returned to Bristol with a royal warrant pronouncing him the Commander of the Royalist Army in the West Country, replacing Hopton.

[41] The regional commander of the Parliamentarian forces, Colonel Edward Massey, was ordered to relieve Taunton in June, but he could only raise 3,000 men; far less than was needed to dispel Goring's army.

[47] In 1660, shortly after taking the throne, Charles II stripped Taunton of its town charter for its part in the Civil War, and had the castle's outer walls removed.

[45] He took no side during the Second Civil War and, three years later, under the Commonwealth of England, he became a general at sea, as one of the three commissioners of the navy, and spent the rest of his life as a naval commander, for which he remains best known.