The nameless Parliamentarian remembered Philip Skippon keeping his head:
Notwithstanding Major-General Skippon stoutly urged the condition several times …nor was this the worst, for they hindered us in all our march from provisions, and quarter, on purpose to destroy us: and truly the mercy and providence of God was wonderful to us, that we perished not in our march.
The defeated army had to endure a daily routine of humiliation from their Royalist foes: ‘This was on the Monday, Septemb[er] 2. They made us, after we had laid down our arms, to march through the King’s Army, where the soldiers came upon us in most lecherous manner, moiling our men in the dirt, and kicking them, pulling all from them, doublets, hose and shirts.’ And the army did not suffer alone; the train of women who had followed them were also tormented. A woman who had given birth only three days before was thrown into the river, ‘and there had almost drowned her; the woman died within twelve hours after’. This cruelty influriated the soldier, who wrote grimly that ‘as their swords have made women childless, so shall their mothers be childless among women’.
As the broken army was forced to march on, divisions already present became violent: ‘Also upon Lostwithiel Bridge there met three brethren; two were on the kings party and one for Parliament; the two laid hold on the other brother’s throat; one of them would have killed him, but the other was more merciful; yet they stripped him and beat him, and swore if they ever caught him again, they would kill him.’
But the main torment was being harried on their forced march: ‘It is not five sheets of paper that will contain the stories and tragedies of this kind. They so courted and hurried our soldiers, that many fell down under their merciless hands’, wrote the anonymous Parliament-man. ‘We marched about seven miles from Lostwithiel on Monday, that night we lay in the fields near to a spring, which was some refreshing, having no other provision. This night they stole away divers of our horses; my horse was stolen that night, and I was forced to foot it to Southampton.’
The next night found the captive army of Essex lying in the fields after another long march, ‘it being a bitter rainy night’. A third day followed with no food. The army had not been well provisioned even before its defeat and it was hungry. ‘The soldiers lay this night in the field, but they lay near the town, where you might have heard the saddest moans, and direful complaints for bread, that ever ear heard. That night a penny loaf would have been sold for half a crown, and many thanks besides; I myself offered twelve pence for three ounces of bread, at last I got about three ounces for six pence; I saw some of the soldiers pay six pence for a piece of poor cheese, not weighing three ounces.’ But there was no real relief in sight: ‘On the Thursday, we marched from Okehampton, forth of London Road, that we might avoid the king’s forces, which always lay in our way, on purpose to eat up our provisions from us.’ They were prevented by the Royalists from entering Tiverton, so they marched two more hungry miles to a village, only to find that the enemy was once again ahead of them. ‘Next day, some of our soldiers mistook their way, and went a mile from the army, many of which were most miserably wounded; some were killed within a little of Tiverton … Many that escaped, came to us all blood, and wounded.’
It was not Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, but it was not much fun, either, and some reports said that of the ten thousand or so men that entered the West under Essex, only a thousand saw their homes and families again. What kept the soldiers going was the simple courage of their commander: ‘In all this trouble I observed Major-General Skippon in his carriage, but never did I see any man so patient, so humble, and so truly wise, and valiant, in all his actions.’
But the West was now almost a Parliamentarian-free zone. In 1644 Exeter was taken on 6 September and Dartmouth on 5 October, under Prince Maurice. Then on 27 October 1644 came the second Battle of Newbury, and Philip Skippon had his revenge. Steady as ever, he was probably not thinking of vengeance. Sir Edward Walker saw Skippon’s men advancing against his position singing psalms at Second Newbury. An unnerving sight: John Gwynne was certainly unnerved. In his account of the battle he is anxious to explain his own fear, and the defeat:
The second Newbury fight at Dolman’s House [Shaw House] and my going a volunteer with my worthy friend Major Richard Lloyd, who was upon a commanded party, as worth to my Lord Caulfield his life that day, for just as he came out of the mill, stripped and wounded, a lusty soldier was fetching of a desperate blow with the butt-end of his musket, to make an end of him, which of a sudden I prevented, and made him prisoner on the top of the hill by the windmill. He was examined before the King, and declared he was Lord Caulfield’s son, of Ireland, and a cornet in the Parliamentarian service; and Wemes was severely rebuked by his Majesty for deserting his service, and to come in arms against him.
The day before the second Newbury fight, when the King had made an end of his march, and was encamped about three or four of the clock in the afternoon, within a mile and half (or thereabouts) of Newbury, news came that Banbury was besieged; whereupon his Majesty was pleased to command the Earl of Northampton to go with his brigade of fifteen hundred horse to the relief of it; when, in the meantime, the King, for his own part, I dare swear, knew not in the least, nor did not in the least suspect, that on the other side of the town were three armies, drawn up upon the most advantageous ground they could pitch and choose, to fight him; had his Majesty received but the least hint of this, certainly he would not have so much weakened his impaired harassed army, after the defeating of two armies, soon one after another, and after the loss of so many men killed and wounded, as to part with fifteen hundred of his best horse, when the very next day he was perforce to fight the three armies which waylaid him, and withal was conducted into a trap, which the enemy had laid to do it. Howsoever it came about, for when the King marched with his army fair and orderly through the town, into the spacious Speerham Land there, he drew up, as near as possible could be, in the centre of his enemies; for right before him were posted Essex and Waller’s Armies, drawn up in the enclosures, and in ambushes of hedges and ditches, and fronted with cannon to maintain that pass. On his right wing was Manchester’s army of seven thousand, to wheel and fall upon his rear. On his left wing was the deep river, as considerable as another army, to enclose and hem him in amongst them as he did. His Majesty, being then pinfolded with walls of armed men, every way ready to execute their fury upon him when he did but stir, advanced, with the major part of his army, against the cannon’s mouth, to get to charge the two armies, which were so strongly linked together against him, and at their encounter, there was very hot fiery dispute, that the thundering peals and volleys of great and small guns, were sufficient sign for Manchester and Cromwell to fall on the King’s rear with their army of seven thousand, as they did very boldly, desperately fought it, and were most wonderfully paid off by fourteen hundred commanded men out of his Majesty’s army, as before mentioned. All this while the King was laying on with all eagerness imaginable, to beat through the two armies, which were so wickedly stubborn and obstinate, that they rather made to a head and forced him back further and further into Speenham lands, that both the enemy’s armies were in the open field in close fight with the King and his army, and put them so hard to it, that his Majesty was engaged in his royal person. General Ruthven, wounded fighting by his side, and several persons of quality killed by them. This height of extremity the King was in, did so exasperate the great spirit of his approved brave cavaliers, that they fell on with invincible courage, and pothered them back into their enclosures of hedges and ditches. Then the night drew on, and parted us with a seeming joint consent on both sides, for we marched away with our army all night by them, and they did not in the least disturb us, nor we gave them no occasion in the least for it; and so we came off to admiration. The next morning we marched for Oxford, not without some skirmishing in the rear.
Gwynne’s description is hopelessly inexact, but he fretted over this battle and wrote about it several times: where had it
all gone wrong? He wasn’t sure any more, but he hoped to show the world that it was not the king’s fault. The problem was that Gwynne didn’t have the kind of mind that remembered the details likely to convince others of his own point of view.
The second Newbury fight, we drew up upon the same ground which the enemy fought us upon the first battle. After our long march from Cornwall, and great want of intelligence, we were exposed unavoidably to fight three fresh armies, which waylaid the King to oppose his march, whereupon a most remarkable piece of service was done by the great contrivance of Major-General Lord Astley … these fourteen hundred thus posted, beat off twice Manchester’s army of seven thousand horse and foot; and at their third and last onset, beat them clear out of the field, and stripped abundance of them. Some few hours after, my Lord Astley marched away with us by moonshine, and of necessity, through a narrow filthy pass of puddle and mire, just by the hedge-side that parted us and the two armies, Essex’s and Waller’s, who were as quiet as if they had taken the same opportunity of drawing off too … the King commanded fifteen hundred prime horse to the relief of Banbury, when it was too late to call them back to our assistance, and for us to avoid fighting, being so strangely surprised as we were: but, I presume, that a forced putt [thrust] was never better managed, nor came off with more honour, as to beat one army away, the other two out of the way, and so cleared our way, lodged our artillery at Donnington Castle, and marched for Oxford.
Gwynne was not thinking about strategy or tactics, but honour. Yards more self-justification follows. We can also see the traces of many a post-war conversation among old soldiers:
So when the King could have blocked up all the lane’s end they were to march through with his artillery, face them with his army, and send such conditions as his Majesty should think expedient, which must needs be acceptable, considering his abundant goodness, and their own forlorn desperate condition at that present; they let them go by consent after their foot to recruit, which they did with so much haste and great performance, that before the king, with his army, could march from Cornwall, within little more than a mile of Newbury, the enemy’s armies, all three were come on the other side of the town, and there stayed, lurking in obscurity, till the King marched into their mouths, for he drew up within their arms of pikes and muskets, that he could not stir neither front, flank, or rear, but upon their fire; and had it not been for his great fighting, and more for the great providence that attended him in that imminent danger, he had not come off so well as he did.
XX The Nation’s Nightmares
After Second Newbury, the Royalists felt triumphant. They had managed to hold off a larger army on ground where they had lost many men the year before. On top of the Western campaign, the signs looked bright. Returning to Oxford for a winter pause in battles, the king had to believe in his success. But the victories had made little real difference to his position. While Parliament, immersed in gloom, argued over how the war could be prosecuted, some stories were ending hard and cold. Archbishop Laud was in the Tower, an old man, his Church now destroyed, other bishops impeached. He dreamed he had been released, but if this were so, his dreaming self knew he had nowhere to go; not back to Lambeth, but perhaps to a place of his own. He had been arrested in December 1640. Finally, in March 1644, he was brought to trial at the bar of the House of Lords. Pym had tried earlier to prove that he had discussed reconciliation with Rome, but no one had ever heard him do so. It was part of Laud’s tragedy that by the time he was tried he was no longer part of the mainstream, his trial no longer a big event, but a sideshow, one death among thousands.
But Laud put up a gallant show. The government had a difficult time finding evidence against him; not surprising since most of the charges were of Catholic conspiracies and Laud had actually disliked the Catholic Church as much as anyone. He was tried under the notion of treason that he had himself used against Prynne, that treason included the creation of disunity in the kingdom. This involved a series of minor charges which together amounted to treason. This was a new and controversial legal hypothesis – cumulative treason. Laud’s was made up of acts such as denying that the pope was the Whore of Babylon, and believing in the Real Presence in Holy Communion. Laud’s defenders pointed to the lack of logic in ‘cumulative treason’: ‘I crave your mercy, Master Sergeant,’ said John Herne, ‘for I never understood before this time that two hundred couple of black rabbits would make a black horse.’ Still, everyone knew the outcome. William Lilly consulted the stars to see which day the old man would die. And after some hesitation, Commons and Lords passed the attainder.
Laud produced a pardon from the king. The Commons dismissed it, and wanted to hang, draw and quarter Laud, like a papist. But after repeated petitions, they agreed to have him beheaded on Tower Hill, like Strafford. ‘I most willingly leave this world,’ Laud wrote, ‘being very weary at my very heart of the vanities of it, and my own sins many and great, and of the grievous destruction of the Church of Christ almost in all parts of Christendom, and particularly in this kingdom.’
But at least it boosted London’s morale to see him die. It was a cold day, and the streets were thick with snow, but tens of thousands were there on 10 January 1645 to see him suffer. No one really listened to the old man rambling on about Charles as a true Protestant. One man asked for Laud’s hat, pointing out that he couldn’t take it with him. And Sir John Clotworthy, the indefatigable Ulsterman and destroyer of Rubens’s Crucifixion, was on hand to taunt Laud, to tear the old man’s spirit as he had torn paintings and smashed glass; he asked Laud what the most comforting words were for a dying man. And Laud replied Cupito dissolve et esse cum Christo (I long to dissolve and be with Christ). Clotworthy kept up his heckling. Others were crouched under the scaffold; Laud pointed out that they would get soaked in blood. Finally he laid his head on the block, and at just after twelve the headsman’s axe swept down.
The next day Laud was buried at All Hallows, Barking by the Tower. Nehemiah Wallington wrote joyfully that ‘his little grace the Bishop of Canterbury that great enemy of England, his head was cut off’. Laud’s ghost was sighted in London. Eventually he was to be reburied at St John’s College, Oxford.
His was not the only ominous death in London. On 22 October 1644, a man known as The King of the Beggars had been found dead ‘against Whitehall’. He was a noted malignant, that is a Royalist, and the day before his death had been defying a fast day with a long drinking party. ‘Let all drunkards and mockers that jeer at our fasting and make it their sport consider well of it’, said Nehemiah Wallington, drawing a moral to illustrate God’s providence. Charles might have noticed the omen too. London was willing to contemplate acts that had once been inconceivable.
By 1645, the men of both armies had been under nearly unbearable strain. They had been hungry and they had been cold; they had been under fire and they had been on the march for days. Some soldiers developed anxieties that were less rational than dread of Royalist cannon or sniper fire, less rational, even, than the dread of popery. For the anxious soldier, the worst moments were not the battles, but the days, sometimes weeks, before and after, when small bands would roam through hostile country, searching for food and plunder, likely to chance upon the enemy at any moment. They were isolated and lost in hostile lands. Perhaps those most prone to carry out such expeditions were the godly, who saw themselves as required not only to defeat armies, but to cleanse and renew the entire country.
For some of the civilians of the Eastern Association, a new nightmare was beginning. They had already been levied and taxed. If they were not godly enough they had been assailed, their property stolen and their churches systematically and methodically despoiled. If godly, they had felt engulfed by the forces of darkness, with deeper darknesses menacing: Newcastle’s popish army, the queen and her arms. Now the terrors aroused by the war itself, and its suspension of normal central government, created an opportunity for a new kind of ideological strife. For the godly, it was both an extension and expr
ession of the war they were already fighting; were they not wrestling already against princedoms, against the rulers of the darkness of this world? But now they saw that their enemies were all around them, and believed they were witches, women – and a few men – who were able supernaturally to channel the powers of the Devil to affect and afflict other people.
Both sides felt concerned about witchcraft as a weapon of war and rebellion. Many commentators interpreted the proliferation of witch-trials as a sign of increasing disorder. On the Royalist side, the text ‘rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft’ (1 Samuel 15: 23) was frequently quoted, while the Royalist newspaper Mercurius Aulicus observed that witchcraft is ‘an usual attendant on former rebellions’. James Howell, while wearing his Royalist hat, remarked:
we have also multitudes of witches among us, for in Essex and Suffolk there were above two hundred indicted within these two years, and above the one half of them executed. More, I may well say, than ever this Island bred since the Creation, I speak it with horror. God guard us from the Devil, for I think he was never so busy upon any part of the Earth that was enlightened with the beams of Christianity; nor do I wonder at it, for there’s never a Cross left to fright him away.
Irritated by this kind of remark, The Parliamentary Journal of July 1645 reported that ‘it is the ordinary mirth of the malignants of this city to discourse of the association of witches in the associated counties, but by this they shall understand the truth of the old proverb, which is that where God hath his church, the Devil hath his Chapel’. More ambiguously, a pamphlet entitled Signs and Wonders from Heaven bundles witches together with monsters, thunderstorms, wars, and other signs to argue that
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