The situation warranted the formation of an army which would serve wherever it was needed and for as long as circumstances required: a force which would receive regular pay and whose commander, instead of desiring a negotiated peace, as was the case with some Parliamentarian generals, would be determined to prosecute the war until victory was attained.
Consequently, on 19 November, the Commons ordered the Committee of Both Kingdoms to conduct an examination of the state of all Parliamentarian armies and, some days later, instructed it to put forward ‘a Frame or Model of a New Militia’ with which the war could be won. On 9 December the committee held a full-scale debate on the reformation of the entire military system. Then, on 9 January 1645, its proposal that a force of 8,000 horse, 1,500 dragoons and 16,000 foot should be established, was submitted to the Commons. Two days later the size of the planned New Model Army, which was to be formed by merging three Parliamentarian armies: that of the Earl of Essex, and those of the Eastern Association and Sir William Waller, was reduced by votes to 6,000 horse (later increased to 6,600), 1,000 dragoons and 14,400 foot.
On 21 January the Commons voted in favour of Sir Thomas Fairfax being appointed commander-in-chief of the proposed New Model Army. Furthermore, on the 28th it passed an ordinance for the creation of the New Model which was then sent to the Lords. After much debate, and some compromise (the Commons for instance conceded that the peers could have a say in the selection of officers), the Lords reluctantly passed the ordinance on 15 February.
Fairfax was an able soldier. Significantly, moreover, he was not a politician. By this date there was a strong feeling that politicians should no longer exercise military command. Indeed, on 9 December Cromwell had stated in the Commons that people were saying that ‘the members of both Houses had got great places and commands’ and would ‘perpetually continue themselves in grandeur and not permit the war to speedily end lest their own power would determine [end] with it.’ Zouch Tate had then proposed that ‘during the time of this war, no member of either house shall have or execute any office or command, granted or conferred by both or either of the Houses...and that an ordinance be brought in accordingly.’ After some debating the resultant bill was passed by the Commons on 19 December.
The Lords however did not share their enthusiasm. Among other things, the ordinance would after all deprive peers of their historic function as military leaders. Thus in early January they rejected the Self-Denying Ordinance and it was not until 3 April that they accepted a modified version which obliged members of parliament to lay down their commands within 40 days, but did not prohibit their reappointment.
By this date a vigorous recruitment campaign was underway. The merging of the three armies referred to above had not provided enough men to fill the ranks of the New Model. Furthermore, at about this time supplies for the force began arriving at the army stores at Reading, for contracts had been made with about 200 suppliers to provide arms etc. Money to pay for the supplies and the soldiers’ wages came from a variety of sources; most notably a loan from the City of London and a monthly assessment totalling £53,436 levied on the counties under parliament’s control which had commenced on 1 February.
And what of the king? In the early spring of 1645 he was at Oxford, the Royalist capital, in sanguine mood. He believed the war could still be won despite recent reverses, (the most important being the loss of Shrewsbury on 22 February), and the formation of the New Model. On 27 March he stated in a letter to his wife, Henriette Marie, who was in France, ‘the general face of my affairs...begins to mend...Montrose daily prospering, my Western business mending apace, and hopeful of all the rest.’
Charles’ nephew, Prince Rupert, who had been appointed commander of the king’s forces the previous November in succession to the Earl of Brentford, was in the west of England, attempting to restore Royalist fortunes following the loss of Shrewsbury which had served as a vital link between Oxford and areas such as Cheshire and North Wales. On 31 March, Rupert was at Hereford. From there he sent a letter to Oxford to the effect that Charles should take the field. But the king did not act with any alacrity, and thus played into the hands of his enemies.
It was undoubtedly in the best interests of Charles’ opponents to prevent him from taking the field during the critical period of the formation of the New Model, and so on 20 April the Committee of Both Kingdoms sent orders to Cromwell instructing him to prevent the king from joining Rupert and the Royalist forces in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Among other things, he was ordered to ‘take all advantages you can against the enemy for the public good.’
He was to do so very successfully at the head of a brigade of horse. On 24 April, for instance, he routed a Royalist force led by the dashing young Earl of Northampton near Islip Bridge and in so doing captured 200 men and many horses. Cromwell then moved against Bletchingdon House, a short distance north of Oxford. The Royalist governor was Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Windebanke, and although as Cromwell himself said, the house was ‘strong and well manned,’ Windebanke surrendered without a shot being fired. It is said that his decision was due to the presence of his young wife and several other ladies. Whatever the reason, Windebanke, who had fought courageously at Cheriton, was subsequently court-martialled and shot on 3 May.
Following the capture of Bletchingdon, Cromwell moved west. While doing so he encountered a Royalist force of some 350 foot at Bampton-in-the-Bush, and after some fighting forced it to capitulate. He then moved against Faringdon Castle. On 29 April he summoned it to surrender. The summons was refused. By now Cromwell had been reinforced by between 500 and 600 foot from Abingdon, and on the following day he attempted to storm the castle. The assault failed, and a few days later, on Saturday 3 May, as the diary of the Royalist Richard Symonds records, ‘Cromwell’s forces removed from before Farringdon.’
Nonetheless Cromwell’s activities had been largely successful, so successful in fact that the king remained in Oxford for he lacked the requisite number of draught horses to move his guns owing to Cromwell’s seizure of all he could find. Instead of Charles moving to join Rupert, he was obliged to summon his nephew to Oxford. The prince arrived on 4 May accompanied by his brother, Maurice. The following day Lord Goring also arrived, after being summoned to join the king with his forces from Somerset. On the 7th, Charles finally rode out of the city, thereby commencing what proved to be the most important campaign of the Civil War.
By this date Fairfax was likewise on the march, having left Windsor on 30 April with the bulk of the New Model: the rest of parliament’s new war machine was in the vicinity of Oxford under Cromwell. On 23 April the New Model had been reported as being 15,000 strong in total, but its strength was now estimated at between 20-21,000 officers and men.
Fairfax moved west, with orders to relieve Taunton. By 7 May he had arrived at Blandford in Dorset. Here he received new orders from the Committee of Both Kingdoms, which had been alarmed by Rupert’s arrival at Oxford. He was now to send four regiments of foot, two of horse, and a train of artillery, to relieve Taunton—which was achieved on 11 May—and was to march with the rest of his men towards Oxford and rendezvous with Cromwell with the aim of investing the city.
Hence, after linking up with Cromwell en route, Fairfax proceeded to besiege Oxford later in the month as the Committee of Both Kingdoms had ordered. ‘We have designed,’ stated the committee, ‘this as the main action, to be prosecuted with all such forces as are not already employed elsewhere, unless any special exigency should require these forces to be otherwise employed.’
Though the king was no longer in Oxford the decision to besiege the city was a good one. Charles’ opponents were perturbed over which way he would strike and generally believed that a full-scale siege of his principal base would compel him to abandon whatever designs he had in order to defend the city and the Royalist womenfolk who had been left there.
As for the king, following his de
parture from Oxford he journeyed to Woodstock where he spent the night. The next day he moved to Stow-on-the-Wold. Here he held a council of war. The combined Royalist forces totalled 6,300 horse and 5,300 foot and opinion was divided over strategy. Rupert wished to head north, partly with the aim of tackling a Scottish army in Yorkshire under the Earl of Leven which had crossed into England in January 1644 and had recently lost some regiments which had been recalled to serve against Montrose. If such a course were adopted the Royalists had a chance of saving besieged garrisons, avenging Marston Moor, and recovering the North where recruits and money would no doubt be forthcoming. Charles seems to have favoured Rupert’s counsel. Others, however, most notably the king’s Secretary of State Lord Digby, and Goring, wished to move against Fairfax and the New Model, known to be moving to the relief of Taunton. A compromise resulted. Goring was sent to harass Fairfax with 3,000 horse, while Charles and the bulk of his men headed north. Lord Clarendon attributed this decision to jealousy on the part of Rupert. The prince and Goring were not on the best of terms and Clarendon states that the former feared that the eloquent Goring, ‘a man of ready wit,’ would undermine his authority and get the better of him in future debates on how best to prosecute the war.
Charles left Stow-on-the-Wold on the 9th. Two days later he arrived at Droitwich. Since leaving Oxford he had moved northwest and the Committee of Both Kingdoms was therefore of the opinion that he was heading ‘towards Cheshire and those parts’ where a number of Royalists garrisons were besieged.
Charles did indeed move north from Droitwich—where he lingered until the 14th—intent on relieving the town of Chester. At Market Drayton, however, he was joined by Lord Byron who informed him that the siege had been abandoned. This news, and intelligence that Leven was moving from Yorkshire into Westmorland, made Charles change direction for he decided to make for Scotland (where Montrose had recently gained another victory) via the eastern side of the country.
He arrived at Burton on Trent on the 25th. Here he heard that Oxford had just been invested. Was it necessary for the king to move against the New Model in order to save the Royalist capital? Rupert thought not. He believed that if Charles moved against a place of importance to parliament Fairfax would probably be drawn away from Oxford in order to respond to the challenge. The council of war agreed. It was thus decided to march against the prosperous town of Leicester.
On 30 May Rupert summoned the town to surrender. The Royalist army may now have numbered nearly 11,000 men, having recently been augmented, most notably on the 28th by Sir Richard Willis, the governor of Newark, at the head of 1,200 horse. In contrast, Leicester, whose fortifications had been neglected, was defended by 2,070 men, 900 of whom were simply ‘inhabitants capable of bearing arms.’ Nonetheless, the summons was refused. Hence at about 3.00pm the Royalists commenced a cannonade. Then, at around midnight, they charged the town’s battered defences and, after some ferocious fighting, Leicester was in Royalist hands. Clarendon tells us that ‘the conquerors pursued their advantage with the utmost license, and miserably sacked the whole town without distinction of people or places to the exceeding regret of the King.’ Two or three hundred Royalists lost their lives storming Leicester, but the number of defenders and townsfolk in general who perished must have been greater.
Charles left Leicester on 4 June at the head of an army which had been depleted somewhat by the losses sustained, the desertion of troops laden with loot, Willis’ departure for Newark at the head of 400 of his horse, and by his own decision to garrison the town. (The bulk of Leicester’s new garrison was made up of local men, but in addition to the raw country recruits the force, over 1,000 strong, included experienced units of Charles’ army).
On the 5th Charles arrived at Market Harborough, for he had decided to move south to the relief of Oxford, a decision which according to his secretary, Sir Edward Walker, was ‘much against the will of prince Rupert.’ The latter believed that the New Model would move north in view of the storming of Leicester.
He was right. The Committee of Both Kingdoms feared that Charles would now move towards East Anglia, a prosperous region of great importance to parliament. Consequently, on 5 June Fairfax abandoned the siege of Oxford and commenced moving northeast to intercept the king. He was pleased to do so. Only the previous day, just prior to receiving new orders, he had lamented in a letter to his father: ‘I am very sorry we shall spend our time unprofitably before a town whilst the king hath time to strengthen himself and by terror to force obedience of all places where he comes....It is the earnest desire of the army to follow the king.’
On the 7th Fairfax arrived at Sherrington, a mile northeast of Newport Pagnell. Two days later he moved to Stony Stratford, a short distance to the southwest, where he halted until the 11th when he advanced north to Wootton near Northampton. By now he had received welcome news from his superiors that the future conduct of the campaign would be left ‘wholly’ to him and his council of war, a decision made by the Committee of Both Kingdoms on the 9th. Moreover, Fairfax had just received permission from the Commons to recall Cromwell from East Anglia, where he had been strengthening its defences since the beginning of June, to serve as his Lieutenant-General of Horse.
By this time Fairfax knew that Charles was not moving towards East Anglia, for he had moved southwest from Market Harborough and had arrived at Daventry on, or by, the 7th. Here the king heard that the siege of Oxford had been raised. This, and the expected imminent arrival of reinforcements under Sir Charles Gerard and Goring who had been summoned to his side from Wales and the West Country respectively, put Charles in a very optimistic mood. On the 8th he stated in a letter to his wife: ‘I may without being too much sanguine affirm that since this rebellion [began] my affairs were never in so hopeful a way.’
That the king was in a relaxed frame of mind is indicated by his decision to send a large number of impounded cattle and sheep, with an escort of 1,200 cavalry, to provision Oxford. Consequently, for some days he remained at Daventry with his weakened army, awaiting the escort, and passing his time by hunting.
The delay played into the hands of his enemies. Fairfax was closing in at the head of the New Model. On the 12th he left Wootton and moved west to Kislingbury, only nine miles from Daventry. That afternoon cavalry patrols skirmished with Royalist outposts—Charles’ days of hunting in the neighbourhood were over.
News of the proximity of the New Model was an unwelcome surprise to the king who had just been rejoined, on the night of the 11/12th, by the escort. As quickly as possible the Royalist army, which had been relaxing, was assembled on Borough Hill just to the east of Daventry, where it stood to arms till daybreak. The Royalists then commenced moving off towards Market Harborough for at this juncture Charles and Rupert did not wish to engage the New Model and had decided to make for Newark, where they could receive reinforcements from that and neighbouring garrisons. They reached Market Harborough after a day’s march of some 20 miles.
Fairfax was in pursuit. He had the upper hand and was determined to retain it. He also knew that Goring was not moving to join the king. At about 5.00am on the 13th (while still at Kislingbury) Scoutmaster-General Lionel Watson had brought him an intercepted letter from Goring to Rupert. This stated that the Royalist commander was not marching to join the king, for among other things, he claimed that ill-health had prevented him from leaving the West Country. Moreover, shortly after receiving this welcome information, and just prior to setting off in pursuit of the king, Fairfax had been joined by Cromwell at the head of 600 cavalry and Joshua Sprigge, the chief Parliamentarian source for Naseby, relates that Cromwell had been received ‘with the greatest joy’ by Fairfax ‘and the whole army.’
The New Model quartered for the night at Guilsborough, some 13 miles from Market Harborough after marching via Northampton. However a strong body of horse under Henry Ireton pressed on, and surprised a Royalist rearguard at Naseby while the men wer
e playing quoits or having supper.
At about 11.00pm, Charles, who was at Lubenham two miles west of Market Harborough, heard of this incident and made his way to Market Harborough to join Rupert. The prince, who was resting in a chair, was roused and a council of war called for midnight.
To fight, or not to fight? That was the question. It was answered in the affirmative by, among others, two influential courtiers, Digby and Sir John Ashburnham: if Charles tried to avoid battle New Model horse could fall upon the retreating Royalists and badly maul them. Rupert, though, was against fighting. He favoured making for Leicester, 16 miles away. He was not alone, but was nonetheless overruled. As Sprigge records in his well-informed account, ‘the Kings Counsel prevailed against the minde of the most of his great Officers, who were of opinion, that it was best to avoid fighting.’ Some comfort, though, could be derived from the fact that the Royalist army was only threatened by the New Model and not by Leven’s army as well which—primarily owing to Montrose’s continued success in Scotland—had not obeyed summonses from the Committee of Both Kingdoms to move urgently south against Charles.
At 2.00am on the 14th the Royalists began mustering at Market Harborough. This took some time for many of the soldiers had to be brought in from neighbouring villages. After several hours had elapsed they moved south a short distance to ‘rising Ground of very great Advantage’ as Walker recalled, between East Farndon and Great Oxendon, and were ‘put in order and disposed to give or receive the Charge.’
Meanwhile, Fairfax had likewise been on the move. Sprigge relates: ‘The General...advanced by three of the clock in the morning from Gilling [Guilsborough] towards Naseby [six miles to the north] with an intention to follow close upon the Enemy....By five in the morning, the Army was at a Rendezvouz near Naseby, where his Excellency received intelligence...that the Enemy was at Harborough.’ At this point, we are told, Fairfax was uncertain about the Royalists’ intentions. ‘But immediately’ Sprigge continues, ‘the doubt was resolved: great Bodies of the Enemies Horse were discerned on the top of the hill on this side of Harborough, which increasing more and more in our view, begat a confidence in the General, and the residue of the Officers that he meant not to draw away, as some imagined, but that he was putting his Army in order, either there to receive us, or to come to us.’
Hastings to Culloden - Battles in Britain 1066-1746 Page 21
