Sir Thomas Fairfax defeated Kentish Royalist insurgents in fierce fighting through Maidstone on 1 June 1648. Barricades and houses turned the town into a difficult urban battlefield. The victory prevented the rebellion from consolidating control over Kent and threatening London.

Maidstone's street fighting generated vivid reports of rain, darkness and combat among civilian buildings. Such writing stripped civil war of chivalric distance and showed violence entering the ordinary spaces of English life.