Killing Fields of Scotland

by R J M Pugh

  The people of Scotland rejoiced in the defeat of the Engagers who had been influenced and led by the nobility – men like the Earl of Lanark and his brother the Earl of Hamilton. Those who governed the Radical Covenanters were drawn from the ranks of the common people – or more precisely, ‘the middling sort’, as the middle class was called at the time. The Marquis of Argyll had joined the middling sort, particularly espousing the cause of Archibald Johnston of Wariston, the Edinburgh lawyer who had drafted the original National Covenant in 1638. In England the Independents demanded that Cromwell bring Charles to trial, arguing that the King alone was responsible for the late Civil War and that he be tried for the crime of high treason. (One has to ask the question: how in all conscience could a king be put on trial for high treason against himself? The answer is simple; in the politics of the day, Charles was seen as a traitor by the people of England, if not Scotland.) Cromwell and his immediate associates wanted blood to wash away the tragedy of the Civil War and the blood could only be that of the King. On 30 January 1649 Charles I was beheaded outside the Banqueting House of Whitehall.

  When news of Charles’s execution reached Scotland on 5 February 1649 the general response was one of utter dismay and anger. Why? The Scots still believed that government – parliament in effect – required a king to head it, a harking back to the old feudal system, when a country without a king was leaderless and atrophied; one might argue that Scotland was the last medieval kingdom in the western world. Memories of the premature and tragic death of Alexander III in 1286 may have taxed the minds of contemporary historians and intellectuals both in the mid-seventeenth century but one must ask the question – why were the common people of Scotland transfixed by the execution of Charles? One can only assume the obvious: the English had killed one of their own, a Scotsman by birth and ancestry. The fact of the matter was that, in killing the King of England, the English had also killed the King of Scotland. Those in Scotland of the opinion that the nation needed a king were incensed by Charles’s death; they conveniently put aside the fact that they desired a Covenanter king, which Charles had never and would never have been. The Scottish parliament proclaimed the late King’s eldest son Charles II King of Great Britain, Ireland and France, the last title being a sop to the time of Mary, Queen of Scots nearly a century ago.

  Scotland was in turmoil. The men responsible for the conduct of government – the Marquis of Argyll, Chancellor Earl of Loudon and Johnston of Wariston – were thrown into confusion. In Ireland the Marquis of Ormonde was at pains to rekindle the Royalist cause in Scotland, while on the Continent, James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose harboured hopes that he might reclaim Scotland for Charles II from Argyll and his Covenanter supporters by his sword. Publicly disowned by Charles but secretly encouraged by him, Montrose sailed from Sweden, making for Kirkwall, Orkney, in March 1650. He was carrying the commission of Charles and by April, had raised a force of 1,200 men; had he attempted his rising a year before he might have gained even more recruits before Sir David Leslie had crushed the Royalist Clans at Balveny, Banff in May 1649.

  Carbisdale

  Royalist hopes of assistance from Ireland were dashed by Cromwell’s Irish campaign in 1649 which resulted in the fall of Drogheda on 3 September that year. (The date would assume a sinister significance in the life of Oliver Cromwell; his victories at Drogheda, Dunbar and Worcester all occurred on the same date in September. Some said that Cromwell had made a pact with the Devil who promised him three victories in exchange for his soul on the anniversary of these triumphs. The propagandists had a field day on 3 September 1658, the day he died.)

  Early in 1649 Charles II looked to Scotland for help; it was Charles’ secret intention to use the threat of another campaign by Montrose in north Scotland to bring the Covenanters to heel. When talks between Charles and the Marquis of Argyll’s commissioners broke down in the spring of 1649, Charles authorized Montrose to take whatever military action he could against the Covenanter party. Montrose responded by despatching the elderly Earl of Kinnoul with 200 Danish mercenaries as an advance guard to occupy Kirkwall, Orkney, in September. During the rest of 1649 and early 1650 Montrose on the Continent unsuccessfully attempted to raise funds for troops to serve in the Royalist cause.

  On 23 March Montrose landed at Kirkwall with about 250 German mercenaries; he was accompanied by his former adversary Sir John Hurry whom it will be remembered changed sides after his defeat at Auldearn in 1645. About 1,000 Orcadians had been recruited by the aged Earl of Kinnoul but his sudden and untimely death had denied the raw recruits any form of training. On his arrival in Orkney Montrose received a letter from Charles, intimating that he would be rewarded by the Order of the Garter for his services. Charles also intimated that he would resume negotiations with the Covenanters at Breda in the Netherlands playing for time while Montrose raised the clans in the north.

  On 9 April Montrose sent Major General Sir John Hurry across the Pentland Firth to secure a route to the south. Montrose followed with the main force on 12 April, declaring for Charles II at Thurso on 21 April. Dunbeath Castle in Caithness surrendered to him but he failed to take Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland; however, Montrose wisely installed small garrisons at various strongpoints to keep open his lines of communication with Orkney. Then he marched inland to Lairg in Sutherland, hoping to obtain recruits that never materialized. Many of the clansmen in the region had suffered at his hands during the campaign of 1644 – 45 so were unlikely to offer any support. Undaunted by this setback, Montrose marched his small force to Carbisdale, where he camped on the southern side of the Kyle of Sutherland. The area he chose was good ground on a flat stretch of land between the deep waters of the Kyle and the wooded hill of Creag a’ Choineachen; at the southern end of his encampment the ground narrowed and Montrose ordered his men to prepare defensive earthworks.

  In Edinburgh the Committee of Estates ordered Lieutenant General Sir David Leslie to march against Montrose from his base at Brechin, Angus. Leslie sent ahead Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Strachan with five troops of horse to Inverness where Strachan was reinforced by a company of musketeers from Mungo Campbell of Lawers’s Regiment. On the road to Tain to link up with the Earl of Sutherland, Strachan was further reinforced by 400 Highlanders. On 27 April Strachan arrived at Carbisdale; his 230 horse, forty musketeers and 400 clansmen were heavily outnumbered by Montrose’s 200 Danish and German mercenaries, 1,000 raw recruits from Orkney and forty horse. Strachan planned to draw Montrose out of his defensive position; he set an ambush for the Royalists, concealing four troops of his horse and forty musketeers in the thick broom. The 400 Highlanders recruited from Clans Munro and Ross were sent off on a wide flanking march over the nearby hills to protect the Covenanter left flank. When Strachan advanced with his single troop of horse Montrose believed this to be the total Covenanter strength, so he left his position, ordering in his cavalry commanded by Major Lisle to begin the attack. As soon as this happened Strachan sprang his ambush. The small Royalist cavalry troop was soon overwhelmed when all five Covenanter troops of horse advanced with their screen of musketeers. Major Lisle was killed and the surviving Royalist horse were thrown back amongst the raw Orcadians who promptly threw away their weapons and fled; 200 were drowned attempting to swim across the Kyle. All Montrose had left to confront Strachan with were his 200 mercenaries who took shelter in the nearby Scroggie Wood; the Danes and Germans fought well until the 400 Munro and Ross clansmen appeared over the hills to join in the attack, whereupon the mercenaries surrendered. Montrose’s casualties were 450, with 450 prisoners taken, among them Sir John Hurry; Strachan’s losses were a mere fifty. Montrose managed to escape on a horse given him by one of his officers; he reached Ardvreck, a few miles south of Ullapool where he was betrayed to the Covenanters by Neil Macleod of Assynt, an ally of the Earl of Sutherland. Montrose was taken to Edinburgh to stand trial for his life. In an ironic twist of fate, Charles II had written to Montrose ordering him to abandon his invasion as favoura
ble negotiations were under way with the Covenanters in the Netherlands.

  On 1 May 1650 Charles and the Covenanters signed the Treaty of Breda, the King disowning Montrose in order to secure an alliance. On 21 April Montrose was hanged at the market cross in Edinburgh’s High Street; Hurry was similarly despatched later. Thus ended the last Royalist campaign in the north of Scotland; Montrose had become a legend in his own time, either worshipped or reviled. Montrose was denied the usual death by the axe reserved for the nobility; he was hanged, his body was dismembered, his limbs put on public display in Glasgow, Stirling, Perth and Aberdeen. With Montrose out of the way, Charles could now make the journey from the Netherlands; on 23 June he set foot on Scottish soil. Unfortunately for Charles that summer, so would Oliver Cromwell.

  The Marquis of Argyll’s government quickly realized exactly what Charles’s arrival in Scotland meant. There was a distinct possibility of a Royalist uprising in support of Charles; also, the Covenanter or Kirk party was riven with division between those of incompatible and uncompromising views. These men were unwilling to forget their differences in the face of adversity in the form of the English parliament which regarded the Scots’ alliance with Charles as a hostile act and a declaration of war. In July the Committee of Estates, acting in conjunction with the standing Commission of the Kirk, began to formulate plans for the nation’s defence. Proclamations were issued for the levying of troops from every shire in Scotland to meet the expected invasion.9

  By order of the English Commonwealth Oliver Cromwell and his capable Major General John Lambert and Colonel George Monck crossed the Scottish Border on 22 July with 16,000 troops comprised of ten infantry regiments, seven cavalry regiments and six companies of dragoons; the artillery train contained between eight and ten siege guns and twelve field pieces. Cromwell’s army was supplied by ships sailing parallel to the coastline along the route of his advance. Cromwell hoped to avoid a battle as he had grown weary of war and had reluctantly assumed command of the parliamentary army after Sir Thomas Fairfax declined the appointment. Cromwell also had considerable respect for his adversary, Lieutenant General David Leslie, who had served with the parliamentarians against Charles I during the Civil War. As the Cromwellian army marched through the Merse they found the Berwickshire villages empty of young men. The Roundheads didn’t rate the Scots as soldiers and found their womenfolk ‘pitifully sorry creatures’ who wailed about their husbands, brothers and sons being forced by ‘the maisters tae gang tae the muster’ [the masters to go to the muster] in Edinburgh, no doubt ordered there by the local baron Home of Wedderburn.10 The English reached Dunbar on 26 July where badly needed supplies of biscuit and cheese were unloaded on the quay of the burgh’s harbour (ever after known as the Cromwell Harbour).

  From Dunbar Cromwell marched to Musselburgh, hoping to engage Leslie but the Scottish general kept retreating, the age-old strategy of the Scots to draw the English farther away from their supply base. However, about 1,300 English horse caught up with Leslie’s rearguard vedettes at Fisherrow, Musselburgh, where a short, sharp fight took place. Cromwell made camp at Musselburgh while Leslie fell back on his defensive line of trenches dug between Arthur’s Seat (Salisbury Crags, south of Edinburgh) and the port of Leith. The weather played a large part in Leslie’s tactical success; the summer of 1650 was wetter and colder than usual. General George Monck’s field guns shelled Edinburgh from Salisbury Crags while Cromwell’s supply ships, unable to land their supplies, bombarded Leith. Attacks were mounted on Leslie’s trench system; in one, 500 of Cromwell’s troops were casualties and Major General Lambert was wounded, briefly taken prisoner, then rescued by his men.11 Further manoeuvering by Leslie took the Roundhead army to the Braid Hills on the outskirts of Edinburgh, then Corstorphine Hill in August. The campaign was assuming all the characteristics of a Scottish country reel or dance. Cromwell’s dispirited army withdrew to Musselburgh, then Haddington where, on 31 August, Cromwell offered Leslie battle on ground of Leslie’s choice. Leslie refused; he knew that Cromwell’s men were short of food and were falling sick with dysentery at an alarming rate. The troops even began to throw away their tents as useless encumbrances. All Leslie had to do was shadow the retreating English to Dunbar, where he expected Cromwell to evacuate his army by sea.

  But all was far from well in the Covenanter army. During the summer recruitment campaign the parliamentary Committee of Estates had decreed that the Covenanter army raised by the shire committees appointed for the task be instructed not to accept any recruits with Royalist sympathies; further, those who had signed the Engagement with Charles I in 1646 were to be debarred. The Engagers, or Malignants as they were known, contained a number of professional, experienced officers and men, particularly NCOs; Sir Edward Walker, an English commentator, thought that the Scots had rejected some of their best men.12 Before battle was joined at Dunbar on 3 September 1650, between 3,000 and 4,000 officers and men had been ‘purged’ from Leslie’s army, an act to which Leslie made no secret of his opposition. One disgruntled reject ruefully commented that the Scottish army was being left ‘to be run by Ministers’ sons, clerks and other sanctified creatures who ever hardly saw or heard of any sword but that of the Spirit’.13 Archibald Johnston of Wariston, the arch-architect of the National Covenant in 1638, that dour, implacable enemy of England and Royalists alike, noted in his diary on 16 August that:

  Wee [we] spent al [all] day in going through al the regiments of Horse and Foote, and purging out and placing in of officers, wherein I [im] pressed upon their consciences … the guilt and blood and mischief that many follow in haveing [having] Malignant, profane[e[ scandalous persons and Ingagers [sic] in our airmy [army].14

  The purging continued up to the very eve of the battle.

  Dunbar II

  On 1 September Leslie occupied a strong position on Doon Hill, about two miles south of Dunbar. His army consisted of about 15,000 foot and 6,500 horse.15 Against him, Cromwell’s army, depleted by sickness, numbered about 12,000, possibly even less.16 On the eve of Dunbar Cromwell was outnumbered by at least two to one. From his strong position on Doon Hill, Leslie could have allowed the deteriorating weather, sickness in the English army and the lack of supplies to do his work for him without a shot being fired. However, he was beset by similar problems himself; it being harvest-time, he expected desertions from his army by men more preoccupied with bringing in the corn. Furthermore, the committee of Covenanter ministers sent to ‘guide’ him insisted that Leslie must follow the tactics revealed to them by the Lord of Hosts, meaning of course, God. The clergy proclaimed to the Scottish army that ‘the Lord has given your enemies the Moabites into your hand’. (The Moabites had been masters of the Jews for many years but, by the time of king David of the Hebrews, they had become subservient to them. The Presbyterian clergy were of course quoting from Judges 3, verse 26 in the Old Testament.) Johnston of Wariston reputedly told Leslie that his orders and those of the clergy had the unqualified backing of the Scottish parliament’s Committee of Estates, members of which were present on the summit of Doon Hill, expecting to witness Cromwell’s defeat. Some historians maintain that the clergy ordered Leslie off Doon Hill but this is suspect; Leslie, an experienced military general, had to face the reality of the situation. He had neither sufficient food nor tents for his men on an exposed hilltop open to the four winds and atrocious rainstorms. To his credit, for the rest of his life Leslie insisted that he had ordered his army off Doon Hill and that he and he alone was responsible for the outcome at Dunbar.

  On the Broxmouth plain below Doon Hill, an apprehensive Cromwell was preoccupied with the prospect of having to evacuate his army from Dunbar Harbour, as Leslie had sent a contingent of troops to Pease Glen, about seven miles south-east of Dunbar to block his escape by road. Before the battle Cromwell wrote to Sir Arthur Hesilrige, the governor of Newcastle:

  The enemy hath blocked up our way at the pass of Copperspath [Cockburnspath’s Pease Glen]. He lieth so upon the hills that we kn
ow not how to come that way without great difficulty and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagining.17

  On Monday 2 September Cromwell was determined not to evacuate his men by sea and thus face a humiliating withdrawal; he made sure his men received a hot meal, then he and his staff retired to Broxmouth House, home of the Duke of Roxburghe to observe the Scottish army through their telescopes, or as they were known then, perspective glasses. That afternoon Cromwell could not believe his eyes. The Scots had begun their descent from Doon Hill, a difficult move for horses and cannon; by 4pm Leslie’s entire army was off the hill. An eyewitness in the English army recalled later that he had seen Cromwell bite his lip till the blood ran down his chin without his realizing it. Some of his staff officers nearby heard him reputedly mutter this to himself: ‘God is delivering them into our hands, they are coming down to us.’ The armies faced each other over the Brox Burn, a small stream now swollen by heavy autumnal rain.

  Both armies spent a miserable night of high winds and freezing, driving rain; the other ranks had little shelter, many lying in the wet corn or grass. It is now thought that Leslie spent the late evening and early morning hours at Spott House, about a mile from the killing field of Dunbar, a view with which this author agrees. Most of his officers took shelter in the nearby farms and hamlets of Pinkerton, Oxwellmains and East Barns, the last nearly a mile from the battlefield. Sir James Holborn, commanding a brigade of troops from Stirlingshire and Clackmannanshire ordered his men to stand down and extinguish the saltpetre matches required to discharge their matchlock muskets a few hours before dawn in case the light from them gave away their positions. This measure, sensible though it was, denied the Scottish musketeers an advantage when battle commenced.