 Professor David <unk> suggested in The Oxford Magazine of 16 February 1956 that Humpty Dumpty was a " tortoise " siege engine , an armoured frame , used unsuccessfully to approach the walls of the Parliamentary held city of Gloucester in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester in the English Civil War . This was on the basis of a contemporary account of the attack , but without evidence that the rhyme was connected . The theory was part of an anonymous series of articles on the origin of nursery rhymes and was widely acclaimed in academia , but it was derided by others as " ingenuity for ingenuity 's sake " and declared to be a spoof . The link was nevertheless popularised by a children 's opera All the King 's Men by Richard Rodney Bennett , first performed in 1969 . 
