God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  Although the crown had complained about the Trained Bands for much of the three generations prior to 1640, they did nonetheless provide a basis for military mobilization. Some, particularly those in London, were significant forces, well-armed and regularly drilled. Despite local apathy, or hostility, energetic lieutenants had in some places managed to foster a degree of military training. In Great Yarmouth in 1638, and in London the following year, there had been military exercises which gave a taste of what was to come. Of course, the Trained Bands were less than perfectly armed and drilled, had no experience of actual combat and had been the object of governmental concern for years, even generations. Nonetheless, in 1642 they provided a useful stock of arms, and some useful military skills. The King, on his progress from York to Shrewsbury, had tried to muster the bands, or take their arms, and the London Trained Bands provided the core of Essex’s army.7

  Warfare did not come to Englishmen from a clear blue sky, therefore. There was a limited but still significant pool of direct experience, evident in the command of both sides, and a wider pool of second-hand, drilled or theoretical knowledge. This extended to the rank and file, in the form of experience in the Trained Bands. It was some time before these rudiments were transformed into armies to impress the major European powers, but the thousands of men gathered between Kineton and Edgehill in October 1642 were not completely unprepared for what was about to happen. However, although there was enough expertise available to hold a proper battle, the experience that followed was undoubtedly shocking for many participants and observers.

  Edgehill presents a steep scarp face to the plain below, reaching 1:4 in places, and it was below this commanding promontory that Charles’s army took up position to confront the parliamentary army.8 Essex was apparently surprised by the news that battle was about to be joined – he was on his way to church at 8 a.m. on the morning of 23 October when intelligence was brought to him of Charles’s movements. The standard battle formation in the seventeenth century was for infantry to line up in the centre, flanked on either side by cavalry regiments, and this the royalists did at the foot of the hill. But this precipitated the first of many quarrels in the royalist command. The King’s general, Lindsey, favoured ranging his infantry according to Dutch practice, a preference which reflected his own experience of service under Maurice of Nassau. Prince Rupert, although only a cavalry commander, had been granted a commission which meant that he took orders directly from the King, not the general. He favoured the more complex Swedish infantry formation, which had been very successful under the command of Gustavus Adolphus. Others present had experience of these questions – Ruthven, who had served with Gustavus, and Astley, who had served with Maurice. If this exchange reveals a relatively informed expertise among the command it also reveals the problems of command structure which bedevilled both war efforts, but particularly that of the royalists. Lindsey, having lost the argument, told the King that he would prefer to serve as a colonel facing Essex, since the King did not trust him as his general. This he did, and he received a fatal wound in the ensuing battle.

  Essex would have preferred to wait for reinforcements, which were known to be on their way, but could not avoid battle with the royal forces in such close proximity. The parliamentary force was, accordingly, drawn up with infantry in the centre, cavalry and dragoons on either side and, crucially as it turned out, two regiments of cavalry in the rear. They were perhaps caught on the hop, trying to move to reinforce the cavalry facing Rupert but failing to make the manoeuvre before battle was joined. In any case, the battle opened with exchanges of artillery fire which lasted an hour, but did little damage. It was Rupert, commanding the cavalry on the royalists” right wing, who initiated the real fighting, when he led a devastating charge against the parliamentarian cavalry. At almost the same time Wilmot, on the other royalist flank, led a similarly successful charge, and a second wave of royalist cavalry charges joined the pursuit of the fleeing parliamentarians.

  This pursuit was unfortunate, and a sign of inexperience. A royalist victory would have been much more likely had the cavalry regrouped and supported an assault on the parliamentarian infantry. As it was, with the royalist cavalry in exultant pursuit of the parliamentarians through Kineton, Astley was left to lead the royalist infantry forward without cavalry support. The second line of cavalry had disobeyed an order from Rupert not to quit the field, perhaps confused by the shape of the battle, and something similar seems to have happened on the other wing, where it was not immediately clear that the parliamentary cavalry had indeed been scattered.

  The battle of Edgehill

  With the cavalry gone, the infantry battle came to a grim ‘push of pike’. As the infantry closed they faced each other at close range, firing volleys, until hand-to-hand combat was joined. Safety depended on mastering fear and maintaining the ranks, which could also withstand a cavalry charge, since horses would turn away from a solid rank of men. Among these raw recruits, however, that discipline was not easy to maintain and Nathaniel Fiennes remembered many years later the sight of four regiments fleeing their colours without a fight in the face of an intimidating cavalry charge.9 As the two bodies of infantry closed with one another the parliamentarian cavalry regiments that had been held in reserve were able to advance through the gaps in the parliamentary infantry formations and inflict heavy losses on the royalist infantry. These were terrifying moments for foot soldiers, what all the drill was designed to avoid, when they enjoyed little protection:

  when the horsemen fall in amongst the infantry and cruelly hack them; the poor soldiers the while sheltering their heads with their arms, sometime with the one, then the other, until they be both most cruelly mangled: and yet the head fares little better the while for their defence, many of them not escaping with less than two or three wounds through the skull into the membranes, and often into the brain.

  But flight was hardly an attractive option either if the enemy pursued, ‘his hinder parts meet with great wounds as over the thighs, back, shoulders and neck’.10 If Rupert had not belatedly succeeded in rallying some of his cavalry and returning to the field, the parliamentarian cavalry might themselves have secured an outright victory for their army.

  When night fell, however, the two sides had fought themselves to a standstill. They slept in the field and overnight there was a sharp frost. Sir Adrian Scrope was among those seriously wounded. Left for dead and stripped, he spent the night among the fallen. It was common throughout the war for the fallen to be stripped, so that in the morning the field was covered with naked corpses. Waking in the morning he pulled a corpse on top of himself for warmth, and survived. William Harvey, the great anatomist and physiologist, to whom we owe this story, noted that the cold had probably saved Scrope’s life by slowing his bleeding.11 Harvey himself had left London with Charles and at Edgehill was given care of the Prince and the Duke of York (it was the later recollections of the latter that furnish us with important details about the battle). Taking cover behind a bush, he took out a book and read ‘but he had not read very long before a bullet of a great gun grazed on the ground near him, which made him remove his station’.12

  Harvey was probably not the only one to receive a rapid education at Edgehill. The King, shocked by the sight of sixty corpses piled up where the royal standard had flown, huddled over a small fire through the night, unable to sleep because of the moans and cries of the wounded. At Edgehill as elsewhere, the proportion of wounded to dead was higher among officers, probably because they received medical help more promptly. When the two sides faced each other the following morning it was clear that many men had been less fortunate than Sir Adrian Scrope: according to one account ‘the field was covered with the dead, yet no-one could tell to what party they belonged’. Cold and hungry, many witnesses seem to have experienced a kind of lethargy, a numbness that made further action difficult. Sir William Le Neve, sent by the King to demand surrender, was rebuffed, but he reported ‘trouble and disorder’ on the faces of E
ssex and other senior officers.13 Soldiers had not eaten for a day, and the horses were also probably unwatered.14 There was little willingness or capacity on either side to renew the engagement.15 Among the dead was Sir Edmund Verney, committed to the cause against his political judgement, but in gratitude for the patronage he had enjoyed from the King. He died carrying the standard in the royal lifeguard, apparently having killed two men with his own hands, including the man who killed his own loyal servant. He had broken the point of the standard at push of pike. One story had it that the parliamentarian soldiers had to cut his hand off in order to take the standard, and that he was also wearing a small ring with a miniature portrait of the King.16

  About 1,500 men had died, evenly divided between the two sides, and the battle is usually reckoned a draw. But the royalists emerged with a clear advantage since the road to London was now open. Essex had withdrawn northwards to Warwick, allowing the King to move south, securing first Banbury and then Oxford. A rapid advance might have taken him straight to London, with enormous political dividends, but he hesitated, resisting the suggestion that a flying column of 3,000 men be despatched to arrive in London in advance of the regrouped parliamentary forces. This fateful decision may have been taken on the morning after, to allow time to bury the dead, treat the wounded and to take stock, but it seems more likely that the discussion took place some days later. Either way, and although there was perhaps a clear chance to capture London, it is probably an exaggeration to say that it was Charles’s chance to win the war, at least if that is taken to mean his chance to impose his own terms for a settlement. Certainly, a decisive victory at Edgehill, if it had been achieved, would not in itself have ended the war: it is very unlikely that resistance elsewhere would have ceased, or that the Scots would have stood by while the royalists imposed terms on Parliament.17

  In London, news of the battle, and the face-to-face meeting with the horrors of war, affected the political will to fight, partly because reporting was so confused. Three days prior to the battle Stephen Charlton recorded in a private letter reports of a great battle in which, some said, Charles had been captured, and Rupert and Essex (according to varying reports) had been killed. In fact, of course, there had been no battle at all, but Charlton spent an entire morning at Westminster trying to find out more. It was symptomatic of an atmosphere of fevered speculation, of a massive appetite for news which was fed by rumour and flying report. On the day of Edgehill the people of Alveston heard the cannon and, a short while later, saw terrified parliamentarian deserters streaming through the village. Royalist deserters arrived in Oxford the next day, with exaggerated stories of defeat told to excuse their own flight. Two days after the battle villagers of Alveston were able to visit the field to see for themselves and the same day parliamentarian scouts arrived in Oxford, broadcasting news of a crushing parliamentary victory. The reporting in London was understandably confused. Two days after the battle a hurriedly produced pamphlet reproduced a letter from ‘a gentleman of quality’. It claimed a total parliamentarian victory and the capture of Rupert. Two more pamphlets that were no more accurate appeared over the next two days and it was only six days after the battle that firmer news was available in print: a group of parliamentary officers, including Denzil Holles, published their account of the battle. On 2 November a royalist rival was available, smuggled from Oxford.18 In the meantime, it seems safe to assume, rumour was rife.

  Chastened, the Commons agreed with the Lords on 2 November to reopen peace negotiations and Sir John Evelyn and other parliamentary commissioners caught up with the King at Reading. Evelyn was refused access, however, on the grounds that he stood charged of treason, and the royalist advance continued. Rupert stormed Brentford, ten miles west of London, on 12 November, allowing his troops to sack it. Sir Thomas May was later to say that this was the date on which the word ‘plunder’ entered the English language. In fact the word was known during the 1630s from reports of the wars in Germany: it was the experience rather than the word that England was now learning. Brentford made clear what to expect from triumphant troops under Rupert’s command. Although Essex had by this time returned to London, the political and military momentum was with the King. On the day before Brentford was sacked the King had agreed in principle to peace negotiations, and suggested Windsor as a venue, but the military option still clearly appealed as his army advanced on London.19

  On 13 November the royalist army faced London’s citizenry at Turnham Green. Six thousand men of the Trained Bands had mustered at Chelsea Fields the previous day. At Turnham Green the ranks of London’s defenders had swollen to 24,000, comprising members of the Trained Bands of Hertfordshire, Essex and Surrey, as well as willing apprentices and Essex’s army. Supported by enthusiastic camp followers and with much superior numbers, this people’s army successfully outfaced the royalist forces. Essex’s guns fired a few shots but there was no substantial engagement before the royalists withdrew. This non-battle was in some ways as important as the actual battle at Edgehill. The King returned to winter quarters in Oxford on 23 November.20

  Military campaigning was an adjunct to, rather than an alternative to, negotiation. In some places the formation of parties did not really take place until 1643 as an early settlement was sought.21 Peace proposals were more or less continuously in the air, and fighting was undertaken with an eye on the eventual peace. On both sides a significant body of opinion was reluctant to pursue an outright victory for this reason – it would make an honourable peace more difficult to achieve. In fact negotiation had continued almost until the last minute. On 25 August, only three days after raising his standard, Charles sent peace commissioners to Parliament, but they received a very frosty reception. It is hard not to believe that Charles’s approach, and its firm rebuff, reflected a mutual awareness of the disappointing state of the King’s military preparations at that point. Parliament demanded the withdrawal of treason charges and that Charles should take down his standard. These terms were, of course, unacceptable, and the incivility with which the King’s commissioners had been received reflected a fair degree of confidence at Westminster.22 On 5 September, Falkland was sent to Westminster again to canvass peace and holding out the hope of a ‘thorough reformation in religion’, but the approach was once again rebuffed. This seems to have reflected the distrust of Charles among those who remained at Westminster. In its public response Parliament called for the withdrawal of the King’s protection from all those who might subsequently be prosecuted as delinquents, and that his protection be extended to all those who had stood firm to Parliament’s cause. This amounted, more or less, to a public statement that Parliament represented the nation and that Charles’s party was composed of delinquents and traitors.23

  How these approaches had been received, and the improvement of the royalists” military position, seems to have strengthened the hand of hardliners of the royalist camp. Henrietta Maria was particularly influential as an advocate of this hard line, and thought that the message of 25 August had threatened to ruin Charles altogether.24 Parliament’s rebuff may also have been a factor in the King’s increasingly successful recruiting drive.25 In any case, by late September, Parliament had become the suitor receiving rebuffs. On 26 September, shortly after the first and disappointing encounter at Powick Bridge, Essex wrote to the Earl of Dorset asking what kind of approach might be acceptable. The response, although receptive in principle to an approach, presented the same stumbling block – the King would not receive anyone who stood charged with treason. By 20 October, Parliament had become convinced of the futility of this initiative and it was declared dead, only three days before Edgehill.26 Pym took this moment, of the dropping of a peace initiative, to launch a proposal for an oath of association, apparently seeking to cement the coalition now that further fighting was inevitable.27

  These to-ings and fro-ings have a pattern which persisted for much of the war. The Earl of Essex had delayed his departure from London in early September as he sought the tit
le Lord High Constable of England. This was not (or not only) a personal vanity – what he wanted was the power to negotiate with the King independently of parliamentary control.28 The desire to unite military command with negotiating power offers further demonstration that for many participants the main purpose of the fighting was to negotiate from a position of strength. Throughout the conflict, negotiations took place in the light of calculations about military strength – the actual position and course of the war, and the prospect of outside help. In the autumn of 1642 both these calculations played well to royalist hardliners, as Henrietta Maria’s efforts on the continent seemed to offer a further strengthening of their military position. Her reception in Holland had been disappointing, but in late November she was offered money, and there were soon hopes of help from Denmark and even France. She was also trying to recall English soldiers from service in the continental armies, although it is not clear how many returning soldiers fought for Parliament rather than the King. It is certainly true that Parliament was already currying favour with the Covenanters, offering the abolition of episcopacy in response to the General Assembly’s declared view that unity of religion in the two kingdoms was the best way forward. These undertakings about the future of the English church in the event of a parliamentarian victory further strengthened the resolve of royalists in refusing to deal.29