Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  There is no more dramatic and no clearer account of the reasoning which led up to this decision than Cromwell’s own: “we had in consideration whether we should … interpose between the enemy and his further progress into Lancashire, and so southward, which we had some advertisement the enemy intended, and since confirmed that they intended for London itself; or whether to march immediately over the said Bridge … and engage the enemy there, who we did believe would stand his ground …” The crux came in the next sentence: “It was thought that to engage the enemy to fight was our business .. ,”16 So the army spent the night of the i6th encamped in the “field” of Stonyhurst Hall, about twelve miles from Preston, north of the river; it was the home of a Mr Sherbourne, described by Captain Hodgson of Cromwell’s advance guard as “a Papist” (and still today houses such, being a leading Jesuit school).

  The most extraordinary thing about this rapidly moving prelude to the battle of Preston, is that Hamilton and the Scots seem to have had absolutely no idea how close the New Model Army were to their position this despite the boasted efforts of Langdale in the vanguard, whose responsibility it was to gain intelligence. These had certainly brought him into skirmishes with some outriders of the New Model, including a sporting foray with Captain Henry Cromwell’s men near Skipton. On the very day of the i6th Cromwell’s men had captured some Royalist horse at Waddow near Clitheroe, yet the grim truth of Cromwell’s presence in all his accumulated strength still does not seem to have dawned on the other side. Hamilton was therefore left free to make yet another disastrous decision, which on this occasion involved sending the main body of his cavalry under Middleton ahead from Preston, south towards Wigan. This meant that the river Ribble now effectively divided his cavalry off from his main force. By the night of the i6th an ugly suspicion as to the truth does seem to have crossed Langdale’s mind, but it was now too late to recall Middleton. The next day, 17 August, very early in the morning, Cromwell’s men were in the position to descend like the Assyrians on an extremely unprepared fold.

  It was of course the Royalist van, under Langdale, at Longridge on the outskirts of Preston, which the Cromwellians were destined to encounter first. The result was some fierce hand-to-hand fighting, while Langdale himself rode off to warn Hamilton of the attack. The General with his troops on the Preston Moor, just over a mile north of the town, was engaged in the complicated process of getting the rest of his army across the Ribble by the Preston Bridge to follow Middleton’s advance cavalry. Still he would not face up to the demands of the situation and make the most of his numerical superiority by forming up on the Moor to fight. With folly piled on folly, he continued with the crossing, while ordering Langdale and his three-thousand-six-hundred-odd men to hold off what was in effect the whole striking force of the New Model Army. By the time Langdale returned he found his own men ensconced across the Preston-Skipton road, with the open ground of Ribbleton Moor beyond. It was this road, an exceptionally deep narrow lane, sunk down by natural formation and consequently waterlogged from the wet summer, which gave its character to the first stages of the battle.* ( * This lie of the land, still marshy and used for allotments, can be discerned today, despite surrounding town development. The main intersecting road is named Cromwell Rd, and its offshoots, Langdale Rd, Lambert Rd and Hamilton Rd, a tribute to the historical imagination of a nineteenth-century town council.) For before the main body of Cromwell’s troops could draw up, Cromwell ordered his advance guard of two hundred horse and four hundred foot under Majors Smithson and Pownell to clear the lane. Courage was needed and some faith. Hodgson tells us that when Cromwell rode up with the order to move, they asked for a little patience and some time to ready themselves. To which the General merely barked out the word “March” and march they did.17

  By four o’clock in the afternoon, Cromwell considered enough of his men had come up to seize the initiative: “We resolved that night to engage them if we could …” he wrote. The plan was to make use of the lane, “very deep and very ill” Cromwell called it, by first clearing it by musketry and pike, and then sending the cavalry to charge down it; it was a manoeuvre reminiscent of the successful assault at Langport. But the ground was so wet that the cavalry’s tactics in the end proved less important than the desperate hand-to-hand straggles of the infantry to try and clear it. Once more it was “push of pike”and “close firing”, and Cromwell afterwards paid glowing tributes to the gallantry of his own men under Colonel Bright, Fairfax’s regiment, and those of Read and Ashton, who steadily pushed their way down against enemy musketry. Yet in the stubborn determination of Langdale’s men, for all their diminutive numbers, it did seem for a time that they had met their match: “the enemy making, though he was still worsted, very stiff and sturdy resistance” said Cromwell. Hodgson praised the valiant troops of Lancashire: “as stout men as were in the world and as brave firemen”, this despite the fact that the wretched Langdale received no reinforcements from Hamilton in the course of the day beyond a few Scottish lancers. Langdale himself told Sir Henry Slingsby afterwards that if he had had but a thousand men with which to have flanked the enemy, “I doubt not but the day had been sure”.18 As it was, the ratio at this point was reversed into two to one in Cromwell’s favour; yet Langdale held off the New Model for a time estimated between four and six hours (his own and Cromwell’s judgement respectively). It could not last for ever. In the end Langdale’s brave men were beaten down, and retreated, those left alive, into the town in terrible disorder.

  Sweeping into Preston itself, the Cromwellian leaders were able to fall upon Hamilton’s crossing party at the bridge. The manoeuvre had proved long-drawn-out with Callander adamant at its continuation. In the ensuing turmoil Hamilton told his rearguard horse to turn back and try and join the advancing forces of Sir George Monro; as a result of this, they were the subject of a real chase by Cromwell’s men north towards Lancaster, and effectively cleared from the battle. Hamilton himself displayed enormous gallantry in action, to which Sir James Turner attested: “he showed as much personal valour as any man could be capable of”. Beating a man with his sword who refused to rally, he called for his men again and again “to charge once more for King Charles”.19 He himself wished above all things to get back to his own infantry, and with a small party containing Langdale, Turner and some of his own troop, Hamilton demonstrated by his private courage that personal heroism and a grasp of strategy are two quite different qualities. In the end, like Horatius defending the bridge of ancient Rome, Hamilton only got back to his main army by swimming the swollen torrent of the Ribble.

  Once committed to the south bank of the river, Baillie formed up the Royalist infantry above the Ribble Bridge on Church Brow Hill, around Walton Hall, quite a considerable eminence which surmounted the town itself and overlooked the frenzied scene. The Ribble Bridge was now the key to the battle, for here the river was broad quite apart from the effects of the incontinently wet summer. Once again the fighting was exceptionally fierce – “a very hot dispute” said Cromwell. Turner witnessed later that Cromwell’s men did have the advantage of being able to charge down to the bridge by quite a steep descent, while the Royalists hurled down great stones from their high ground. Finally Cromwell’s men gained the day at push of pike, and thrust on farther up the Darwen, that tributary of the Ribble which later inspired Milton to write sonorously: of “Darwen’s stream with blood of Scots imbued”. Taking another small bridge, they also possessed themselves of the northern slopes of the hill and Walton Hall, although Baillie defended the position to his utmost. Night fell on both sides, and both sides it seemed would be glad of respite in a day which had begun early for Cromwell, and contained so much of surprise and unalloyed terror and misfortune for his opponents. Cromwell’s men were exhausted, wet and very hungry; very few of them had any proper shelter; but before sleep overtook them, they had at least had the pleasure of discovering a ducal treasure trove at Walton Hall, in the shape of Hamilton’s gold plate, which spilt out of an overturne
d wagon. The plunder was watched dourly by the Royalists – “having no mind to rescue it” said Hodgson.20

  For the Scots there was to be no sleep. Cromwell’s main anxiety, as has been noted, was to prevent them escaping north. To this effect he had posted his guards, always bearing in mind that the main body of the Scottish army had hardly been involved in the battle and could presumably fight again. But a hasty midnight council of war decided the Scots, weary, soaking and battle-stained as they too felt themselves to be, to fall south in order to join up with Middleton’s cavalry as it returned in answer to their hasty summons on the road from Wigan. Once more it was Callander’s plan and once more it prevailed against the doubts of Baillie and Turner who wondered whether such an intricate retreat could really be carried out. Like all Callander’s plans, it was better in theory than practice. The escape took place stealthily, no drum was heard, no match was lit, and for a time successfully. As Cromwell honestly admitted afterwards: “we were so wearied with the dispute that we did not so well attend the enemy’s going off as might have been …” But then the muddle began. The Scottish ammunition, which was supposed to have been destroyed, was in fact merely abandoned, and thus fell profitably into the hands of the English. Worse still, Middleton actually managed to come back from Wigan on another road from that taken by Hamilton so that the two forces missed each other. It has been suggested that it was the return of Middleton which awoke Cromwell to the midnight flit of Scots which had taken place as he slept; at any rate it was the Roundhead Colonel Thornhaugh sent in pursuit with two regiments of horse who encountered Middleton, not his Royalist allies. There was a tense fight in which Thornhaugh’s men did well, although he himself was slain, gored in body, head and thigh, to expire with these edifying words on his lips – “I rejoice to die, since God hath let me see the overthrow of this perfidious enemy … 21

  The battle for Preston now turned into a prolonged and rain-soaked rout, as Cromwell set off in pursuit of the Scots – “our horse still prosecuted the enemy, killing and taking divers all the way” – rather than a renewed conflict. The Scots wisely refused to turn and fight, particularly in view of the fact that they were now without their ammunition. The next night, 18 August, was spent by Cromwell and his men in the fields outside Wigan, as he himself recorded: “being very dirty and weary, and having marched twelve miles of such ground as I never rode in all my life, the day being very wet”. There was some skirmishing during the night hours, but it was not until three miles off Warrington that the Cromwellians were finally able to engage with the Scots. Once more the fighting Scots sold themselves only at a high price. Indeed at first the battle was more of a holding operation than a strict contest, for Cromwell awaited the main body of his army, while the Scots would have been happy to have continued their disengagement. But ultimately, for all their “great resolution” (Cromwell’s words) in close charges and disputes it was defeat for the Scots. Baillie offered to surrender the town on favourable terms, and Cromwell, in view of the strength of its position, decided to accept them.

  The Duke of Hamilton escaped forward into Cheshire with Langdale, and about three thousand of his horse, but Cromwell did not pursue him. Quite frankly, he and his men were utterly exhausted: “if I had five hundred fresh horse and five hundred nimble foot, I could destroy them all”, he wrote on 20 August, “but we are so weary, we shall scarce be able to do more than walk after them”.22 It was hardly surprising considering the ground that Cromwell had covered since he left Knottingley, first hard over to Preston, then an immediate desperate engagement, and then a running fight down the coast of Lancashire. Altogether in nine days he covered 140 miles of more or less continuous warfare. In any case, for all his weariness, Cromwell could rest assured that he had effectively put an end to “the business of Scotland”. The teeth of the Scottish campaign were drawn. Hamilton got down through the Midlands as far as Uttoxeter in Staffordshire, where he was obliged to surrender by the Governor of Stafford, abetted by the arrival of Lambert. Langdale was captured in a tavern in Nottingham. Of the three commanders, only Callander with good fortune he had not deserved, escaped altogether to the Continent.

  The battle of Preston is to the Second Civil War as Naseby is to the First. Afterwards there was no ground for any proper Royalist hopes. As a Cavalier newsletter of the time wrote with sarcastic despair: “Nothing is heard now amongst the brethren but triumph and joy, singing and mirth for their happy success (thanks to the Devil first and next to Nol Cromwell’s nose) .. ,”23 There were two thousand Royalists killed and thousands more captured, as against less than a hundred of Cromwell’s men. It was a crippling piece of work, a pre-emptive strike from the beginning; indeed, even Cromwell’s wildest hopes cannot have envisaged quite such a success, since luck and Scottish failure certainly contributed much to his victory.

  Langdale’s inadequate intelligence, Callander’s determined and wrongheaded advice, Hamilton’s weakness in command, to say nothing of the initial failure of his mounting delays – the Scottish army was “ruined in an instant and all by misgovernment” wrote Guthry 24 – none of these can be ignored in estimating the praise and blame for their defeat at Preston. Without these additional factors, Preston might well have been a more limited triumph for Cromwell, from which the Scottish army might have withdrawn in much better order – although they would still have had to withdraw south. As against that, it was Cromwell the strategist who had brought about the whole confrontation: without his own speed and decision, there would certainly have been no battle at that point. The gambler who makes the lucky throw must at least be given credit for having the nerve to roll the dice. And that Preston was a great victory cannot be doubted. Yet it is interesting to note that Cromwell himself, in his account of the battle and his allusions to it afterwards, seems to have been more than usually conscious of the workings of divine Providence, as though for once he was aware that he had been aided by what some might term good luck as well as good judgement.

  He thought it worth recounting in a letter the story of a “poor godly man” on his deathbed in Preston on the eve of the battle, who when he heard that Cromwell’s army was coming after the Scots, called for the woman who looked after him to bring him a handful of grass. Would it wither or not, now it was cut? he asked her. Yes, it would wither, she said. “So should the Scots do and come to nothing,” he replied. And immediately died. The whole tale fits in with the lyrical quality of Cromwell’s report on the battle, in which the messianic strain is more pronounced than ever. Addressed to the Speaker and printed afterwards in the form of a pamphlet like most of his reports, it speaks rapturously of the hand of God proving yet again that whatever of this world exalts itself will be pulled down.

  In a more personal letter to his cousin St John, written on I September, he ruminated again on the glorious nature of God who provided such signs – “Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord”, while to his “dear brother” Sir Henry Vane, he sent a special message on the subject, hoping that Vane would not make too little of such outward dispensations (as he Cromwell must beware of making too much of them). And he commended to Vane a special chapter in Isaiah which commented at length on the vain nature of the desires of the wicked – “And many among them shall stumble and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.” Vane certainly understood the point. Some years later, when he had fallen out with Cromwell, he referred back to the incident in a letter, how Cromwell had sent him a message that he was “as much unsatisfied with his [Vane’s] passive and suffering principles” as Vane was with Cromwell’s own more active ones.25

  Cromwell now carried his active principles northwards once more. Turning towards Yorkshire again, he intended to interpose himself if possible between Monro’s retreating army and Scotland. In the meantime in the South the projected naval attack of the Prince of Wales was abandoned. The news of the Preston victory also effected the surrender of Colchester into Fairfax’s hands. Although the defenders gave themselves voluntarily to
the mercies of Parliament, these mercies proved rather strained. Fairfax showed himself infuriated by what he believed to have been wanton shedding of blood; two of three Royalist commanders were shot, on the grounds that their intervention in the Second Civil War had been a negation of the oaths of composition which they had sworn at the end of the First. Only Sir Bernard Gascoigne was spared, for the rather surprising touristic reason that as he was Florentine by birth, his killers or their descendants might find themselves subject to persecution during future visits to Italy.

  It was all characteristic of the deep animosity felt by the Army towards these authors of their new troubles. Cromwell showed much practical concern for the “sad widow” of the gallant Colonel Thornhaugh, who would now, he felt, be the concern of the Commonwealth, and Hamilton at his trial paid tribute equally to Cromwell’s courteous concern for the “poor wounded [Scots] gentlemen” he had left behind – “he [Cromwell] performed more than he promised”. Former Parliamentarians could expect no such civilities.26 Parliament itself, on the other hand, exhibited very little enthusiasm for the whole subject of Preston. The reaction of the House of Commons to the news of victory contrasted not only with the Army’s own, thus emphasizing the growing gulf between them, but also with its behaviour in like circumstances in days gone by. And the difference in attitudes was hammered home still further when, the next day, the Commons deliberately repealed the Vote of No Addresses to the King. Preston after all had helped neither the Psesbyterian cause nor that of a personal settlement with Charles. As Cromwell trekked north, the Parliament in the South at whose feet he had still ostensibly laid his victory, were preparing to approach yet again in terms of a treaty the man he regarded as personally responsible for the situation leading up to the battle.