Captain Thomas Steele's Company of Foot

Parliamentarian volunteer foot company serving in Cheshire

• December: Company marches to Derby to meet with Sir William Brereton's Brigade on it's way to Cheshire.

• Summer - Autumn: Garrison of Beeston Castle
• December 12th-13th: Royalists capture Beeston Castle.
• December: Steele court martialled and shot

There is currently no hard evidence that the Capt. Steele who led his volunteer company to meet Brereton and the Capt Thomas Steele who garrisoned Beeston were the same man (Thomas' elder brother Richard who was buried at Sandbach in 1645 is a possible alternative for the first). However as these are the only known actions of a “Capt Steele” in Cheshire, they will be treated here as the same man.

Thomas Steele was before the war a cheese-factor in Nantwich. Nathanial Lancaster the Chaplain of Brereton's army decribed him as “a rough-hewn man; no soldier”, and that his charge at Beeston was “more to see it repaired, victualled and live quietly there, than the safe custody of it”. Following his death sentance he confessed to a long term illicit relationship with a maid at an inn he frequented on his business trips. His nephew William Steele was a leading lawyer during the Commonwealth and Protectorate.

A single company of around 60 men. The only known member was one Thomas Gravner who was wounded at the taking of Beeston and died of his injuries sometime later.