Hastings to Culloden - Battles in Britain 1066-1746

by Glen Lyndon Dodds

  Control of the army which needed to be raised to crush the revolt (and of the militia at home), now became a major political issue, for the king’s opponents such as Pym believed that he would use force to achieve his objectives here instead. (Plots to forcibly dissolve parliament had been uncovered earlier in the year). Thus parliament raised money by voluntary subscription to send its own forces to deal with the rebels.

  Mistrust between Charles and his adversaries was now profound. He believed that they wished to end monarchical authority: they, that he had absolutist and papalistic designs. Polarization was taking place at an increasing level. For instance, some of the king’s former critics were now going over to his side believing that constitutional reform had gone far enough and that Puritan measures to reform the Church, such as the proposed abolition of episcopacy, were too extreme.

  Emboldened by his growing support, and alarmed by rumours that the queen was to be impeached for supposedly encouraging the Irish rebels, Charles went to parliament on 4 January 1642 to arrest the five MPs referred to earlier. Following this unprecedented breach of parliamentary privilege, Charles left Whitehall and subsequently headed north. Both sides now began preparing for civil war. For several months the king’s position was weak. His behaviour on 4 January had cost him support. Aware of its strength, parliament sent commissioners to York in June with peace terms, ‘the nineteen propositions,’ which demanded among other things that Charles accept parliament’s claim to appoint ministers, control the militia and castles. Not surprisingly, the king refused to become a mere figurehead and once again his support began to increase. As John Kenyon has commented: ‘Parliament’s intransigence, its insistence on terms which no man of honour would accept, began working against it.’

  So preparation for war continued, with both sides endeavouring to gain control of the militia. It had always been the monarch’s right to control the militia (through Lords Lieutenant of counties and their deputies), but in March the Commons had passed a militia bill as an ordinance and by means of it the king’s opponents had replaced the majority of lieutenants with men they trusted. Initially, the new Lords Lieutenant did not call the trained bands to arms, but in early June they had commenced doing so. In response, Charles now resorted to the archaic practice of issuing commissions of array to groups of Royalist gentlemen, including expelled Lords Lieutenant, empowering them to summon the militia. Thus both sides tried to rally the militia to their cause, (parliament already enjoyed the support of the London trained bands, some 8,000 men in all), but in general the response was poor due to political divisions within the trained bands and a widespread desire to remain neutral. Hence both parties resorted to issuing commissions to individuals instead and so men of substance began recruiting volunteers for the cause they had espoused. Furthermore, others did likewise on their own initiative.

  Though more peers rallied to the king than to parliament, it would be wrong to view the Civil War as primarily a class war for the most numerous section of the upper-class, the gentry, was about evenly divided (slightly more gentry may have supported the king than parliament), and inevitably the stance of landowners affected that of their tenantry. In short, as Maurice Ashley has commented: ‘Serious work that has been completed on county histories shows that no clear-cut picture is to be found of class conflict.’

  On the other hand, marked regional divisions did exist. In general the North, Wales, and western counties of England, were areas where Royalist sympathies were dominant while the parliamentary cause was more highly favoured in the rest of the country, including its wealthiest regions.

  Finally, and not surprisingly, religious divisions also existed. Catholics and Anglicans mainly supported the king, whereas Puritans and other nonconformists generally favoured parliament.

  Though Charles unfurled his standard at Nottingham on 22 August 1642 his forces were too weak to confront those of parliament and so he moved to Shrewsbury to augment his strength before marching towards London. Thus the first battle of the Civil War, Edgehill, was fought several weeks after the king’s standard had been raised. Both sides had expected the engagement of 23 October to be decisive. It was not, and so the war dragged on. During the following year the Royalists generally had the better of things and consequently, in September 1643, parliament secured Scottish assistance.

  An army over 21,000 men strong, under the Earl of Leven, duly crossed the Tweed at Berwick on 19 January 1644. The commander of the Royalist forces in Northumberland, Sir Thomas Glemham, fell back to Newcastle upon Tyne from Alnwick before the formidable host. On 2 February the king’s commander-in-chief in the North, the Marquis of Newcastle, joined Glemham after hastening up from Yorkshire with part of his army. The following day Leven appeared on the scene and proceeded to invest the town.

  Later in the month, however, Leven decided to head south to effect a junction with Parliamentarian forces. On the 28th he crossed into County Durham, leaving six regiments north of the Tyne, and moved towards the port of Sunderland, ‘the fittest place for receiving of Intelligence, and supplying our Army’ as one of his soldiers observed. Sunderland was occupied on 4 March.

  Newcastle followed with his numerically weaker forces and fighting ensued in the vicinity of Sunderland. The most serious clash occurred in the Hylton/Boldon area on the 24th. It began at about 5.00pm and continued until around midnight and one contemporary source, The Taking of the Fort at South Shields (the fort had been captured by the Scots on the 20th) relates that: ‘Many officers, who have been old souldiers did affirm they had never seen so long and hot service in the night time...the number of [Royalists] slane did very farre exceed ours, as wee understood by the dead bodies we found the next day.’

  Then, on 12 April, when Newcastle was at Durham he received dreadful news from Yorkshire. The previous day the forces he had left there to hold what had been won in 1643 had been soundly defeated at Selby by a Parliamentarian army led by Lord Fairfax and his son, Sir Thomas. Upon hearing this, Newcastle decided to return post haste to prevent York—widely considered the second city in the land—from falling into enemy hands. On 14/15 April he entered York.

  The Scots likewise moved south, though with less despatch. On the 16th they occupied Thornaby on Tees before moving on to Wetherby where they linked up with the Fairfaxes. On 22 April the combined armies invested York. Initially the city was only partially besieged. The situation worsened for the Royalists when the allies were joined by the Earl of Manchester and the army of the Eastern Association (drawn from East Anglia) on 3 June.

  In view of York’s importance, and what remained of the Marquis of Newcastle’s army to the Royalist cause, it was deemed vital that the city be relieved. On 22 March the king’s nephew, Prince Rupert, had brilliantly relieved the strategically important town of Newark and thus the task of saving York fell to him. In general the state of the Royalist war effort had taken a turn for the worse, and on 25 April Rupert attended a council of war at Oxford in which he successfully proposed a sensible defensive strategy for Charles, based on the ring of fortified garrisons protecting that city: something which he hoped would prove sufficient to defend the Royalist capital while he dealt with the situation in the north.

  On 6 May Rupert arrived back at his own headquarters at Shreswbury, and a few days later began marching towards Lancashire with his army of 2,000 horse and 6,000 foot. There were a number of reasons why he made for Lancashire. For one thing, the county was on the whole sympathetic to the king and Rupert wished to gain men, money and supplies. Furthermore he was anxious to strike at the Parliamentary forces in Lancashire, aware that they could otherwise conduct serious raids into Cheshire and Wales while he moved to the relief of York.

  A Parliamentarian force was routed at Garstang on 14 May, Stockport was subsequently secured, and Bolton stormed. Rupert then moved to Bury where he was joined on the 30th by Lord Goring and Sir Charles Lucas at the head of horse and 800 foo
t. The cavalry, numbering 5,000 according to one source, although they were probably not quite that strong, belonged to the Northern Horse and had been sent to Newark by Newcastle upon his arrival at York rather than have them pent up in a soon-to-be beleaguered city. After entering Wigan, where the streets were strewn with flowers for his arrival, Rupert laid siege to Liverpool on 7 June and entered it on the 11th.

  Within a week or so of taking Liverpool, Rupert received a letter from his uncle, the king, written at Tickenhall on 14 June. Since Rupert had left Shrewsbury, Charles’ position at Oxford had been threatened by the armies of the Earl of Essex and Sir William Waller, closing in from the east and west. In the face of such a strong threat the king had hurriedly left the city on 2 June with a small army and had hastened to the west midlands with the Parliamentarians in pursuit. By the time Charles wrote to Rupert the situation had eased somewhat for Essex, after ordering Waller to continue pursuing the king, had marched off to relieve Lyme and recover lost ground in the west. Even so, Charles’ letter had an urgent tone. In part it reads:

  If Yorke be lost I shall esteeme my Crown little lesse, [than lost] unlesse supported by your suddaine Marche to me, & a Miraculious Conquest in the South before the effects of the northern power can be found here; but if Yorke be relieved, & you beate the Rebelles Armies of both kingdoms, which ar before it, then...I may possiblie...spinn out tyme, untill you come to assist mee; Wherefor I command and conjure you...(all new enterpryses laid aside) with all your force to the relief of York

  Shortly after receiving the letter Rupert set out across the Pennines at the head of a force which had been augmented by levies from Lancashire, Cumberland and Derbyshire. He first made for Preston and then headed up the Ribble valley towards Skipton, where he arrived on 26 June. Here he halted for three days, partly no doubt to prepare his new recruits for battle. He then marched via Otley to Knaresborough which he reached on the 30th. He was just 14 miles from York.

  By now the commanders of the allied army besieging the city were well aware of his approach. Hitherto they had rejected messages from the Committee of Both Kingdoms that they should send a strong force to intercept him in Lancashire, for they wished to maintain the pressure on York. Now however, they rightly felt obliged to oppose Rupert’s advance. They held the mistaken view that his army numbered around 18,000 men (it was not that strong), and so on the 30th they reluctantly abandoned the siege and marched six miles west to the vicinity of Long Marston with their more powerful army to bar the approach from Knaresborough. The position also blocked any advance via Wetherby.

  It was a wise move. But unfortunately for the allies Rupert had other plans. After sending out a cavalry screen to deceive them, he moved north on 1 July and crossed the Ure at Boroughbridge before pressing on to Thornton Bridge where he crossed the Swale. He then moved southeast and scattered a force of dragoons guarding a bridge of boats over the Ouse to Poppleton near York, thereby securing the crossing after a brilliant day’s march of 22 miles.

  The prince’s army quartered for the night in the vicinity. Rupert was determined to confront the allies as soon as possible with the combined Royalist armies. Hence he sent a message to Newcastle ordering him to have his men ready to march by 4.00am the next day. Furthermore, he sent some horse across the bridge of boats to reconnoitre the enemy position. For his part, the marquis sent Rupert a congratulatory letter which stated: ‘You are welcome, Sir, so many several ways, as it is beyond my arithmetic to number, but this I know, you are the Redeemer of the North and the Saviour of the Crown...I am made of nothing but thankfulness and obedience to your Highness’s commands.’

  And what of the allies? How did they react to the relief of York? They had been completely outmanoeuvred and left in the cold and so at a council of war (in which a proposal to give battle was overruled), it was decided to march via Tadcaster to Cawood and Selby to secure crossings of the Ouse, thereby barring Rupert’s route south and cutting off supplies from the East and West Ridings.

  Early the next morning the allies began moving towards Tadcaster, led by the Scottish infantry. The rearguard, which comprised ‘three thousand Horse and Dragooners’ according to the Parliamentarian Scoutmaster-General, Lionel Watson, remained in the vicinity of Long Marston to cover the retreat. But at about ‘nine of the clocke’ Royalist horse arrived in strength on Marston Moor (some had appeared earlier but had then ridden off out of sight), and this changed everything. It was clear that Rupert was intent on giving battle. The allied generals’ dispatch records that the van of their army was ‘within a mile’ of reaching Tadcaster when ‘notice was sent us by our horsemen...that the Prince’s army...was ready to fall upon them.’ The senior allied general, Leven, gave the order to about-face and the march back to the vicinity of Long Marston commenced.

  Following the arrival of the Royalist van at about 9.00am—the hour is not only mentioned by Watson—conflict occurred between the allied and Royalist horse, for the latter were intent on securing the ridge to the south of the Long Marston/Tockwith road. This they failed to do and so Rupert was forced to deploy on Marston Moor to the north of the road, leaving the allies to form up on the higher ground, and the Royalists were no doubt anxious for Newcastle’s army to arrive soon.

  The Marquis of Newcastle was against giving battle and made this clear when he met Rupert. Just where and when the two generals met is uncertain. According to The Life of... William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, (written in later years by Newcastle’s wife under his direction), upon Rupert’s relief of York the marquis had ‘immediately sent some persons of quality to attend his Highness, and to invite him into the city to consult with him.’ It seems that Rupert declined the invitation, for Newcastle ‘went himself the next day in person to wait on his Highness’ and urged him ‘not to attempt anything as yet upon the enemy; for he had intelligence that there was some discontent between them, and that they were resolved to divide themselves.’ Moreover, the marquis expected the arrival of Sir Robert Clavering ‘within two days...with above three thousand men out of the North, and two thousand drawn out of several garrisons.’ However, Rupert replied that he had a letter from the king ‘with a positive and absolute command to fight...which he was bound to perform,’ and upon hearing this Newcastle stated that he was prepared ‘to obey his Highness in all things.’

  Some believe that this discussion actually took place on the evening of the 1st. Others hold that it occurred when Newcastle arrived at Marston Moor and that he did so at about 9.00am on the 2nd, the time Sir Hugh Cholmeley (who heard eyewitness accounts of events within a day or two of the battle) gives for the marquis’ arrival in his Memorials touching the battle... written some years after Marston Moor.

  However, according to an account written shortly after Marston Moor by a participant, Sir Henry Slingsby, and another Royalist source, the Diary, which seems to date from after the Restoration and be the work of someone who had been with Rupert during the Civil War, the prince had to send for Newcastle following his own arrival on Marston Moor urging him to come with all speed. Admittedly, neither source mentions when Rupert arrived on Marston Moor. When it is borne in mind, though, that the Parliamentarian accounts of Watson and Thomas Stockdale—written shortly after the battle—relate that the prince’s men began arriving in strength on the moor at about 9.00am it seems reasonable to conclude that Newcastle arrived later than Cholmeley believed, for as noted, both Slingsby and the Diary show that some time elapsed between Rupert’s arrival and that of the marquis. Cholmeley himself records that this was so. He wrote that upon Newcastle’s arrival on the moor with his Lifeguard, which consisted of ‘all the gentlemen of quality which were in York’ (including Slingsby), Rupert commented, ‘my Lord, I wish you had come sooner with your forces, but I hope we shall yet have a glorious day.’

  All things considered, its appears that Newcastle arrived when the morning was well advanced (by which time much of the allied army
must have been back from its abortive march), and it is thus reasonable to conclude that Newcastle advised Rupert against seeking battle at an earlier hour elsewhere.

  Though Newcastle did not have a penchant for exertion he could behave with promptitude when occasion demanded, and it seems likely that at about dawn on the 2nd he rode out of York ‘to wait on his Highness’ and argue against acting hastily. Then, upon hearing that Rupert had orders to engage the enemy, returned to rally his forces before setting out for Marston Moor with his Lifeguard later in the morning leaving Lord Eythin, a veteran soldier, to bring on the foot. A seemingly garbled reminiscence of such a meeting was recorded by the Royalist historian Lord Clarendon in later years. He was informed that Newcastle caught up with Rupert en route to Marston Moor and that after both alighted and exchanged salutations, they ‘went again to horse’ after which the prince commented, ‘My Lord, I hope we shall have a glorious day.’ Whereupon, Newcastle asked Rupert whether he was intent on giving battle, and after hearing that he was, ‘urged many reasons against’ doing so.

  What is certain is that not all was well with Newcastle’s army, a fact which no doubt contributed to his decision to counsel against an engagement. Cholmeley relates that on the evening of the 1st the marquis had received orders via Lord Goring to have his forces ready to march by 4.00am the next day. Newcastle gave instructions to this effect ‘and accordingly all the foot were at 2 o’clock that night’ drawn up in readiness to march but then ‘quit their colours’ and dispersed, unwilling to march until they received their pay. Cholmeley continues by stating that other informants told him that ‘there was not half the foot, for many of them being plundering in the enemy’s [abandoned] trenches...could not be drawn together so soon.’