The English Civil War: A People’s History (Text Only)
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He also looked after their faith. He liked to recruit godly men, and he liked to promote them, especially. In abandoning promotion solely on grounds of social rank, Cromwell was breaking with tradition; he still preferred his officers to be gentlemen and godly to boot, but if he had to choose he put godliness before gentility. But he also needed supportive subordinates, and here he turned to the people he could trust most: his own family. His first Ironsides were led by his son Oliver, his nephew Valentine Walton, his cousin Edward Whalley, his brother-in-law John Desborough and his future son-in-law Henry Ireton. ‘Better plain men than none,’ he said, ‘best to have men patient of wants, faithful and conscientious in the employment.’
Cromwell also needed to be a supportive subordinate himself. He served under William Waller for a time, who remembered that ‘although he was blunt he did not bear himself with pride or disdain. As an officer he was obedient and did never dispute my orders nor argue upon them.’ He also served under Thomas Fairfax for five years. Royalists liked to portray Fairfax as the dim-witted tool of scheming Cromwell, but this is nonsense; there is no reason for such a view.
Cromwell’s first real job was given to him in early January 1643, when he was sent to East Anglia from London to support Lord Grey. In April Grey and a force of 5000 horse and foot left to join Essex in the Thames Valley, and Cromwell was left more-or-less in charge of the entire eastern area: Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire. He had to suppress any insurgence, and to defend the area against Royalist attack. The Royalist garrison at Newark, just over the border in Nottinghamshire, was especially menacing, and Newcastle’s army of papists was marching south.
Cromwell did his best to clean up the area. He and his troops swept through Norfolk intimidating and arresting anyone suspected of being none too firm for Parliament. The key towns were garrisoned. The northern border was secured after some sharp skirmishes. At Winceby, in October, Cromwell’s Ironsides found themselves fighting desperately hand-to-hand against straggling outriders from Newcastle’s army. It was then that his successes caught the attention of the London press, desperate to shore up the flagging morale of the capital. An image was born, but an image with substance.
Cromwell had to sustain a series of defeats and setbacks in 1643 that might have sunk a lesser man. In May 1643, for example, he was supposed to join forces with Lord Grey to stop a convoy of ammunition obtained by Henrietta Maria being sent south from Bridlington to Oxford. Another convoy led by the queen herself in June got through unopposed. By now Cromwell could offer little opposition because he was in such dire straits for money to pay his men. Local subscriptions were supposed to finance Parliament’s army; they were inadequate, and by summer 1643 his men were on the point of mutiny. The situation was not helped by the fact that Royalist general Ralph Hopton was hammering William Waller’s Parliamentarians in the West, while Essex was unable to drive the Royalists out of the Thames Valley. ‘See how sadly your affairs stand’, Cromwell wrote to the Cambridge committee on 6 August 1643. ‘It’s no longer disputing, but out instantly all you can. Raise all your hands; get up what volunteers you can; haste your horses.’ To the Essex lieutenants he wrote, furiously, ‘Lord Newcastle will advance into your bowels.’ To Oliver St John he wrote that ‘Weak counsels and weak actings undo all’. When he reached Boston and found no monies from Essex, he wept, and by the end of September 1643, his troops were on the verge of mutiny again. Desperate, he went to London and was there from mid-January to mid-February 1644.
Denzil Holles led a peace group of MPs who had given up all hope of winning the war, but he was opposed by a faction who felt equally strongly that the king must be defeated militarily before peace negotiations could begin. John Pym had been a key member of the latter, and had forced tough taxation legislation through. His death in late 1643 left a gap, but Oliver St John, Lord Saye and Sele and others took on his role. And it was this group that Cromwell initially joined. He pushed for a central committee to control money raised from the Eastern Counties at new levels, 50% higher. It was after a series of successful political moves that Cromwell was promoted in January to Lieutenant-General of the Eastern Association. So by the time the war moved north, he was poised for action.
The war in the north was a different story, a drama with a new cast of actors. What linked it to the events in the south was the dynamic Prince Rupert. Rupert’s sheer speed and energy seemed to his enemies almost diabolical. His power to terrify was itself a weapon.
Rupert set out for the north on 16 May 1644; he had only a smallish force, about 2000 horse and 6000 foot, including the remnants of the Irish army that had been led to misery by Byron. He marched accordingly to Lancashire, hoping to pick up reinforcements. He took Stockport, and so alarmed the besiegers of Lathom House that they rushed to Bolton for shelter under their commander, Alexander Rigby.
Rigby had already been rather embarrassed by Lathom House. It was the Royalist equivalent of Brilliana Harley’s Brampton Bryan, a besieged house defended by its mistress, in this case a Frenchwoman, Charlotte de la Tremoille, Countess of Derby. It had no strategic significance, but Rigby was determined to reduce it, despite its massive walls. Fairfax inspected it in February of 1644, but had decided it didn’t matter much and couldn’t be helped anyway. Rigby’s cannons had made no impression on the walls, so he brought up a huge mortar, which fired an eighty-pound stone ball. He tried to get the Lord to help, too, holding a four-day prayer meeting. But his intercessions were met by a sortie from the castle, which captured the great gun and jammed it with rubbish, forcing Rigby to move his own artillery back. Maybe he was glad that Rupert’s coming gave him an excuse to abandon the siege. In any case Rupert did his work for him; the prince gallantly ordered the countess to abandon the castle, and replaced her with one of his own captains, who surrendered in September 1645.
Rupert reached Bolton only the afternoon after Rigby arrived. The town fell after a short defence, and as rain poured down, the Royalists flooded in, and the streets were soon awash with something darker than rain. The notorious slaughter began: 1600 Parliament-men fell, some killed after they had surrendered. Rigby himself escaped by posing as a Royalist officer, having learnt the codeword of the day.
This was a clarion call for Royalist recruitment, and Lancashire men flocked to Rupert’s banner. Reinforcements also arrived. He took Liverpool on 11 June, and Charles ordered him to relieve York at once. ‘If York be lost,’ he asserted on 14 July, ‘I shall esteem my crown little less,’ but he added, perhaps confusingly, ‘but if that be lost . . . you immediately march to Worcester, to assist me.’ Rupert carried his uncle’s letter till his dying day. He felt it proved he’d done as his king told him.
The locals in the north were paying lavish amounts of tax towards the upkeep of the Royalist army. They were not delighted to see more soldiers. York was a tough nut for Parliament to crack; it had stout walls, and behind them were Newcastle and a solid, resolute garrison of 4500 foot. Newcastle ran the town with a firm hand; all staple food went into a central store, and everyone got a pint of beans, an ounce of butter, and a penny loaf every day. In front of York was the large Scottish army of Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven, and Fairfax’s 5000, and the Earl of Manchester’s forces, around 30,000 besiegers.
The cordon was so tight ‘that a messenger could hardly pass’. Henry Slingsby wrote that ‘they kept so strict guards, as I could not get any either in the night or day to go to Red House and bring me back word how my children did, but were taken either going or coming’. So the defenders used fire signals from the Minster. They didn’t work very well, because the signallers remained unaware that Rupert was coming to their aid, and with his usual speed: by 30 June he was at Knaresborough, only fourteen miles from York. Parliament, on the other hand, was expecting reinforcements, but Rupert was, as always, quicker, so that the besiegers had to march away from their siege lines to face his oncoming army. They drew up on Marston Moor, about five miles west of the city.
But the Parliamentarians outnumbered Rupert by about 10,000 men. As often, haste was his glory and his undoing. As often, too, the other commanders were not overjoyed at being hastened along by an impatient young prince. Newcastle, who didn’t appear until 9 a.m., five hours after Rupert’s men had been on the move, tried to reason with the young man: why fight at once? The Parliamentarians and the Scots might divide if left to themselves, and in a few days more reinforcements would arrive. Rupert said, simply, that he had orders from the king: attack.
Newcastle gave way, and Marston Moor began to fill with armies. Eventually, about 46,000 men stood by, ready for battle.
Rupert’s forces drew up on low flat country, guarded by a ditch that ran along the side of the road. Parliament and the Scots were deployed on rising ground, with a wide field of fire between the armies; there was a cornfield in front of the allied infantry, and it was July, so the corn was high, but otherwise it was open country.
Leven at once spotted that Rupert was outnumbered. He knew all about warfare; he had served under Gustavus Adolphus, just as Rupert had fought against him. He knew they must attack before Rupert could reinforce.
On the left of the allied army was the powerful cavalry, under Oliver Cromwell and another veteran of the Swedish wars, David Leslie. In the centre were the Scots and English infantry, which far outnumbered the Royalists, on the right more cavalry, Fairfax’s men and the Scottish horse. Opposite Fairfax was the Royalist left, with cavalry led by Goring, a man who’d never been able to accept an order from above, or keep his troops in order below, and who was soon to be the most hated man in the West of England. And behind a low hedge were the Royalist musketeers, interspersed with the cavalry in Swedish style. Beside them were the foot, and beside them, facing Cromwell and his Ironsides, were Rupert’s own cavalry; in front of them was Lord Byron – the poet’s ancestor – with more musketeers, as a ‘forlorn hope’.
The Royalist army’s deployment was agonizingly slow for Rupert, who had hoped initially to launch an attack while the enemy was still forming up. Newcastle’s men had finally arrived, having been persuaded grumblingly to leave York after a minor mutiny in which they insisted on being paid before going anywhere. The minutes crawled by. Lord Eythin arrived, too, and he was cranky; he dampingly reminded Rupert that ‘your forwardness lost us the day in Germany, when yourself was taken prisoner’.
Rupert was not made more amiable by this sally. He fretted while the armies slowly drew up; the deployment took until four o’clock. There was an exchange of cannon fire at about two o’clock, but even over a short distance the guns were too feeble to throw their small three-pound balls with any accuracy.
The two armies were drawn up at very close range, with the extreme flanks within a musket-shot of each other, less than four hundred yards apart. Rupert could hear the Scots army singing their metrical psalms, across the lines. It was haunting; it was ominous. It was comforting for the Scots, though; they could remember the armies of the Hebrews as they stood in the grey twilight, exposed to their enemies’ fire. It was by now so late that Rupert, perhaps influenced by the unenthusiastic responses of Newcastle and Eythin, decided not to attack until the following morning. It was plainly about to rain, and the field, clay soil, would be slippery when wet.
Newcastle sneaked off to his coach for a quiet smoke. Rupert sat down to his supper. He was ‘set upon the earth at meat’. His army began to relax; his own men, who had been in the field since early morning, were tired. They dismounted and ‘laid upon the ground’.
Leven noticed the Royalists relaxing. He at once gave the signal to attack, and the entire allied army, horse and foot, ran towards the Royalist position in the hedge. As they did so, the lowering storm broke. Thunder crashed, seven great peals. Rain put out the Royalist musketeers’ matches, so some of their guns did not fire. The armies ‘made such a noise with shot and clamour of shouts that we lost our ears, and the smoke of powder was so thick that we saw no light but what proceeded from the mouths of guns’. ‘Our army’, thought Simeon Ash, ‘was like unto so many thick clouds.’
The allies broke through the cornfield, at a fast run; the Royalist drakes fired, but didn’t stop the dead weight of Parliament-men, who pushed on into the centre. As he himself was later to describe, Fairfax charged on the right, but his progress was impeded by ‘the whins [thorns] and ditches which we were to pass over before we could get to the enemy, which put us into great disorder’. The deadly fire of Goring’s musketeers, interspersed with his cavalry, was a barrier too. Laconically, in good Yorkshire style, Fairfax notes his own refusal to quit; ‘I was necessitated to charge them. We were a long time engaged with one another, but at last we routed that part of their wing.’ He rallied his men, and managed to defeat the left wing of Goring’s front line, which he pursued towards York.
Fairfax remembered that first charge as a bloody affair. His brother Charles had been mortally wounded, deserted by his men. Fairfax noted that he had ‘at least thirty wounds’. Fairfax himself, rejoining the battle, had his face laid open by a sabre cut. The captain of the troop was shot in the arm, and Fairfax’s cornet had both his hands cut ‘that rendered him ever afterwards unserviceable’. So the second line broke, and Fairfax’s third line, the Scots, were then routed by Goring’s and Lucas’s men.
The muddle and misery of the running cavalry battle are not always well conveyed by the orderly accounts of military history. Sir Philip Monckton, who saw it at first-hand, gives a much better idea of what it was like to be there:
At the battle of Hessy Moor I had my horse shot under me as I caracoled at the head of the body I commanded, and so near the enemy that I could not be mounted again, but charged on foot, and beat Sir Hugh Bethell’s regiment of horse, who was wounded and dismounted, and my servant brought me his horse. When I was mounted upon him the wind driving the smoke so I could not see what was become of the body I commanded, which went in pursuit of the enemy. I retired over the glen, where I saw a body of some two thousand horse that were broken, which as I endeavoured to rally I saw Sir John Hurrey, major general to the prince, come galloping through the glen. I rid to him and told him, that there were none in that great body, but they knew either himself or me, and that if he would help me to put them in order, we might regain the field. He told me, broken horse would not fight, and galloped from me towards York. I returned to that body. By that time it was night, and Sir Marmaduke Langdale having had those bodies he commanded broken, came to me, and we stayed in the field until twelve a clock at night, when Sir John Hurrey came by order of the Prince to command me to retire to York.
Goring’s men, notorious for their lack of discipline, went on to loot the baggage-train and to pursue the fugitives, but Lucas managed to get his men together and to launch an attack on the infantry’s right flank, naked without Fairfax’s defeated cavalry.
Cromwell had been luckier, on the left. He was opposed by Byron, who was in charge of a ‘forlorn hope’, the term for a group deployed in advance of the main army whose job was to harass and disrupt an enemy attack before it could reach the main body of the army. Byron understood the principle, but mistimed his counterattack, masking the fire of his own musketeers and floundering in a patch of marsh that should have been part of his defence. Rupert had positioned his army on rough ground with ditches and hedges. Byron’s men had begun with a ditch in front and hedges on their flanks, lined (as always in this war) with musketeers. By advancing, Byron lost these advantages. Cromwell drove his first line from the field, and perhaps part of his seco
nd line too. Rupert mounted in haste, and at once saw that the centre was holding, but that Byron’s left was in real trouble. So he set off, personally, to shore it up. As he rode forward, he was passed by scores of men running the other way. ‘Do you run?’ he cried. ‘Follow me.’ He charged Cromwell’s horse.
By now Cromwell had been slightly wounded, perhaps by the sword of a colonel in Byron’s front line (who later eagerly claimed to have done it), perhaps by the pistol of one of his own troopers, a not uncommon occurrence with the unreliable Civil War handguns. He may have left the field to get his wound dressed, though only those who didn’t like him ever said so. But he came back into action later, when it was vital. ‘Cromwell’s own division’, said Parliamentarian soldier Leonard Watson, ‘had a hard pull of it, for they were charged by Rupert’s bravest men both in front and flank; they stood at the sword’s point a pretty while, hacking one another, but at last (it so pleased God) he brake through them.’ Rupert cut down several of the foe in person, but his gallantry and dash ended ignominiously with him crouching at twilight in a beanfield while his routed forces crept back towards his own lines. The Royalist cavalry ran for York.
In the centre, Newcastle’s Royalist Whitecoats – so called because of their woolly coats, undyed lambskin – had stood like rocks, while their stalwart opposition gave a cavalry brigade a chance to charge against the allied infantry; they ran right through them and reached the crest of the ridge. The allies, already dismayed, were then attacked by Lucas and his men, and the whole front almost caved in, with even Leven and Fairfax leaving the field, in something of a hurry. A Royalist victory seemed imminent.