The Battle of Stow-on-the-Wold took place during the First English Civil War. It was a Parliamentarian victory by detachments of the New Model Army over the last Royalist field army.

Jacob Astley, 1st Baron Astley of Reading was a Royalist commander in the English Civil War and most famously served during the Battle of Newbury and Naseby. He also was involved in the Dutch Revolt and the Thirty Years War. After the second phase of the Civil War, he was imprisoned and then retired in Maidstone. He died shortly after in 1652.