Hastings to Culloden - Battles in Britain 1066-1746

by Glen Lyndon Dodds

  When describing events on this wing Belasyse comments that the Royalists were ‘routed without any handsome dispute.’ That the encounter was not very prolonged seems certain. Nonetheless, it is reported by others that the Cavaliers fought with vigour and resolution. Walker, for example, opined: ‘I must needs say ours did as well as the Place and their Number would admit, but being flanked and pressed back, they at last gave ground and fled.’ Slingsby felt likewise: ‘Our Northern Horse who stood upon yt wing, & ye Newark horse who was appoint’d their receive [relief] being out front’d & overpoured . . . after they were close joyn’d . . . stood a pritty while, & neither seem’d to yield, till more came up to their flanks and put ym to rout.’

  Hence it is reasonable to believe that the failure of the Royalists on this wing was due to the fact that they attacked uphill against a numerically superior force, and that in the heat of battle the hitherto disaffected Northern Horse generally fought with customary valour. Clarendon, however, after acknowledging that the Cavaliers fought as well as circumstances here allowed, commented that once broken ‘they fled further and faster than became them.’ This was perhaps especially true of the troopers from Newark who were generally not as experienced as the Northern Horse.

  Unlike Rupert, Cromwell did not engage in a headlong pursuit of the defeated. Instead, after detailing four squadrons to keep an eye on the broken Royalists, he turned against the left flank of Astley’s infantry, thereby helping to turn the tide of battle in the centre.

  It was during this phase of the engagement that King Charles decided to play a part in the proceedings. Sir Edward Walker relates what happened:

  the King’s Horse-guards and the King at the Head of them were ready to charge those [i.e. the four Roundhead squadrons referred to above] who followed ours, [the broken left wing], when a Person of Quality, ‘tis said the Earl of Carnwath, took the King’s Horse by the Bridle, turned him about, swearing at Him and saying, Will you go upon your Death?

  We shall continue the story by quoting Lord Clarendon:

  Upon this a word ran through the troops that they should march to the right hand; which was away both from charging the enemy, or assisting their own men. Upon this they all turned their horses and rode upon the spur, as if they were every man to shift for himself. It is very true that, upon hearing the more soldierly word Stand, which was sent to run after them, many of them returned to the king; though the former unlucky word carried more from him.

  By now, as noted, Cromwell had turned on the exposed left flank of Astley’s doughty infantry. It was not just this flank which came under attack. Okey relates how, after seeing that Cromwell had routed the Royalist left wing, he himself, ‘after one houre’s battail’, ordered his men to mount and proceeded to charge against Astley’s right flank.

  At some stage prior to this, Okey states that he and his dragoons had given themselves up ‘for lost men’ and had ‘resolved every man to stand to the last.’ Perhaps they did so upon the collapse of Ireton’s wing. Or they may have thought themselves in dire straits when Royalist cavalry, probably Newark Horse from the king’s reserve, subsequently came against them. However, Okey states that in the entire battle he ‘lost not one man, and had but three wounded,’ and if one accepts this it is evident that whatever they may have feared, Okey and his men engaged in little fighting at close quarters either when ensconced in Sulby Hedges or after charging the right flank of the failing Royalist infantry, 500 of whom Okey declares were taken prisoner by his dragoons.

  Before discussing the final stages of the infantry battle, mention must be made of Prince Rupert’s pursuit. It will be remembered that he quit the field by chasing routed enemy cavalry (a Parliamentarian source, Wogan, relates that many of Ireton’s troopers ‘went clear away to Northampton and could never be stopt’), and Rupert pursued them for about two miles before rallying his men. He then began returning to the battlefield and en route came across the considerable New Model baggage train, located west of Naseby. He summoned it to surrender but was met by fire from its guards, ‘who fired with admirable courage’, states Sprigge, ‘refusing to hearken to his offer.’ Hence Rupert pressed on—Sprigge relates that as the prince did so he was closely followed by some of Ireton’s troopers who had rallied— and joined Charles some time after the king’s abortive offensive action recounted above, while the pursuing troopers joined Cromwell and proceeded to assist in destroying the Royalist foot.

  According to Walker, some of the troopers of the king’s reserve who had rejoined Charles following the debacle attributed to the intervention of Carnwath, ‘made a Charge, wherein some of them fell.’ Not surprisingly, they failed to turn the tide of the battle. And what of Rupert and his men? Walker continues: ‘By this time Prince Rupert was come with a good Body of Horse from the right wing; but they having done their part, and not being in Order, could never be brought to charge again.’

  Thus the Royalist infantry was left to its fate. Many, perhaps most, of Astley’s men had indeed evidently already surrendered. Sooner or later only one tertia continued offering resistance. This probably consisted of Prince Rupert’s Bluecoats and the king’s Lifeguard of Foot, who had advanced from the reserve to support the rest of the Royalist infantry. Of this action, Sprigge comments that the Royalists fought ‘with incredible courage and resolution, although we attempted them in the Flanks, Front and Rear.’ They only broke after Fairfax and Cromwell intervened: the former with his regiment of foot (and it seems his Lifeguard); the latter at the head of his victorious troopers and perhaps some of Ireton’s.

  Bulstrode Whitelocke apparently also refers to this action. He relates how Fairfax, who was ‘riding in the field bareheaded’ after losing his helmet in action, rode ‘from one part of his army to another, to see how they stood’, and in so doing came ‘up to his own lifeguard commanded by [Captain] Charles D’Oyley.’ Fairfax, ‘seeing a body of the King’s foot stand, and not all broken’, asked D’Oyley whether he had charged against it.’ Hearing that he had done so twice, Fairfax ordered him to do so again, stating that ‘he would take a commanded party, and charge them in the rear at the same time.’ The combined onslaught at last prevailed.

  Following the total collapse of Astley’s infantry, Fairfax reformed his army. Sprigge notes, the cavalry ‘were again put in to two wings, within Carbine shot of the enemy, leaving a wide space for the battail of foot to fall in.’ Okey’s dragoons were evidently placed to the front and his men proceeded to fire at the Royalist horse with Charles which, Sprigge comments, had been ‘put again into as good order as the shortnesse of their time, and our near pressing upon them would permit.’ Slingsby recalled that the Royalists were ‘mightily discourag’d’, and so turned about and quit the field. They fled towards Leicester.

  They were pursued by the New Model cavalry. Accounts of the pursuit vary. Sprigge wrote: ‘Our horse had the Chase of them’ to ‘within two miles of Leicester . . . took many prisoners, and had the execution of them all that way.’ In contrast, Wogan states that the troopers resented having to chase the Royalists and thus did so in a ‘disorderly and discontented’ manner: ‘We leisurely continued the pursuit till we came within 2 miles of Leicester, where we found part of the King’s horse drawn up; but they never offered to charge us, nor we them, but stood and looked on each other till night came on. They marched into Leicester, and we were called back again.’ According to Wogan the troopers’ resentment was due to the fact that they had had to ‘leave all the plunder of the field’ to the infantry. Finally, it is interesting to note that according to the Royalist, Richard Symonds, the commander of the king’s Lifeguard, the Earl of Lichfield, charged pursuing Roundheads ‘with half a score’ of men at Great Glen ‘and beate them back.’

  Of Royalist losses at Naseby, Belasyse recalled: ‘Not 200 lost their lives in this battle, so ill it was disputed.’ On the other hand, according to Colonel Thomas Herbert and Colonel Harcourt
Leighton, two ‘commissioners of parliament’ with the New Model, some 600 Royalists were slain while Parliamentarian losses were ‘not above 200.’ However their report was written immediately after the battle (which lasted between two and three hours), and it is certain that even if these figures are correct—and that for Roundhead losses seems rather low—other individuals will have been killed during the pursuit or would have died in the days and weeks to come from wounds they had sustained.

  The number of prisoners taken was substantial. Leighton and Herbert report that the figure was nearly 4,000. Sprigge relates that some 5,000 Royalists were taken, of whom 4,500 were common soldiers. The majority of the captives were marched to London to be triumphantly paraded through the streets.

  The Roundheads also captured all the king’s ordnance, 8,000 arms, a rich haul of colours, and the entire baggage train—which afforded them a much needed supply of cheese and biscuit—as well as some of the treasure taken at Leicester. Furthermore, Charles’ private papers were seized and this provided his enemies with proof that he was, among other things, planning to bring Catholics from Ireland to fight on his behalf and attempting to gain military and financial backing from continental rulers. Parliament soon published this vital correspondence, claiming that the king was a traitor.

  Mention must be made of the fate which befell womenfolk with the Royalist baggage train. Over a hundred were slaughtered by Parliamentarian soldiers, while others had their noses slit and their faces slashed: savage action later defended on the grounds that the victims were whores or Irish papists. It has, however, been plausibly suggested that the women assumed to be Irish were most probably Welsh or Cornish.

  Upon arriving at Leicester, following his flight from Naseby, Charles paused briefly before pressing on that evening northwest to Ashby-de-la-Zouch with the bulk of his cavalry. There he was joined the following day by Sir Henry Slingsby and Belasyse, who had met at Leicester after flying from the battlefield. Slingsby tells us that Ashby-de-la-Zouch’s garrison was ‘well stor’d wth good victuals & a good Cellar.’ Nonetheless Charles and what was left of his army, did not dally there. On the 15th they moved to Lichfield, and then headed southwest to Bewdley where they arrived on the 18th. Charles was intent on joining Gerard and raising a new army in Wales. Hence he proceeded to Hereford and then made for Raglan Castle in South Wales. Moreover, on the 23rd, whilst at Hereford, he wrote to the Earl of Glamorgan, whom he had sent earlier in the year to enlist forces in Ireland, stating that he hoped to receive ‘succor’ from that quarter.

  Instead of moving to Wales (where he spent most of July), it would have been wiser for Charles, as Clarendon later wrote, to have ‘immediately repaired’ to the West Country ‘where he had an army already formed.’

  And what of Fairfax? After Naseby he moved to Market Harborough, where he spent the night. The next day he made for Leicester which he proceeded to invest. It surrendered on 18 June. He then marched south to deal with Goring’s army in the West Country and destroyed it at Langport on 10 July.

  Only some days before this engagement, on the 6th to be precise, Charles wrote at Raglan that he hoped ‘to be at the head of the greatest army within two months that I have seen this year.’ It was not to be and almost a year later, after several other reverses, the Royalists decided that enough was enough and surrendered Oxford on 24 June 1646, thereby bringing an end to the war.

  Naseby was undoubtedly the decisive engagement of the Civil War. It tore much of the heart out of the Royalist cause and was a massive psychological boost to the king’s opponents, whose new war machine had most emphatically won its spurs. That the battle was of unusual significance was immediately apparent to Leighton and Herbert. ‘God Almighty’ they wrote, ‘give us thankful hearts for this great victory, the most absolute as yet obtayned.’

  As William Seymour has commented, ‘Naseby was a battle which need never have been fought.’ The Royalists found themselves committed to an engagement against a numerically superior army owing to mistakes on their part. At the beginning of the campaign the decision to send Goring and 3,000 horse to the West Country from Stow-on-the-Wold was a blunder, as was the garrisoning of Leicester and the decision to let Sir Richard Willis return to Newark on 4 June at the head of 400 cavalry. Sending provisions to Oxford was another mistake. It resulted in Charles’ dalliance at Daventry, something which enabled Fairfax to close in with the New Model and endanger any subsequent Royalist moves. Not for nothing did Symonds lament ‘the unhappy stay at Daventry so long.’

  These errors must be attributed to Charles. Even if the decision to send Goring to the West Country was instigated by Rupert as Clarendon states, Charles could have overruled him, as he reportedly did for instance at the council of war at Market Harborough on the eve of Naseby when, swayed by the advice of courtiers who had a dismissive view of the New Model, he unwisely rejected the view of Rupert and other senior officers that battle be avoided.

  Prince Rupert likewise made mistakes. The most notable was surely the decision to quit the good defensive position between East Farndon and Great Oxendon, either in the belief that Fairfax was retreating or because he thought that he had a chance of falling upon the New Model before it was ready to receive him. It seems that, after his initial reluctance for battle, the young man became rather over excited and that this impaired his judgement somewhat.

  Moreover, Rupert should not have led the right wing. There were other men present—Prince Maurice for instance—who were perfectly capable of doing so. It would have been wiser for Rupert to have been with the reserve, where he would have gained an overall view of the battle, and where he would no doubt have been more effective than was Charles. Perhaps Rupert was ordered to lead the right wing by the king, but if the decision to do so was his own, it was another error on his part.

  Rupert has also been censured for pursuing Ireton’s shattered wing instead of assisting the Royalist infantry. This seems just. If the pursuit were simply due to ill-discipline on the part of Rupert’s cavalry, and occurred against his wishes, then surely he would have returned to the field post haste after rallying his men. Instead, as has been noted, he attempted to secure the surrender of the New Model baggage train. He did not dally long when faced with opposition, but the very fact that he behaved in such a manner indicates that he was not possessed by a great sense of urgency. As Peter Young has observed: ‘It seems extraordinary that a man of his intelligence . . . should have wasted time in this fashion. If he had won the battle the train would be his for the taking.’ Rupert had made the same mistake at Edgehill. That he made it again is amazing. In short, the performance of the commander of the king’s forces at Naseby is not particularly edifying.

  As for Lord Astley and Sir Marmaduke Langdale, they evidently performed creditably. This cannot be said of Goring. True, he was not at the battle. But he should have been. If this brave but increasingly dissolute Cavalier had marched to join the king as ordered following the decision to recall him from the West Country, the outcome of Naseby might very well have been different.

  And what of the New Model commanders? Ireton fought bravely, though his decision to turn against the Royalist foot before ensuring that Rupert’s wing had been routed was a mistake. Skippon’s performance, on the other hand, is faultless, for although seriously wounded he did not quit the field, even when exhorted to do so by Fairfax, anxious not to undermine morale.

  Cromwell likewise deserves praise. That he routed Langdale’s numerically inferior wing is not surprising. Nonetheless, as at Marston Moor, he showed a cool head and a sound tactical brain: he was an inspirational leader and a highly capable one.

  So too was Fairfax, who deserves great commendation. From the outset of the campaign he showed that he intended the New Model Army to be a disciplined force, for it will be remembered that on 5 May he hanged two wayward soldiers near Andover and marched the army past the tree on which they were hung. Throu
ghout the rest of the campaign Fairfax showed himself conscientious and capable. For example, he spent much of the night of 12/13 June, when his army was at Kislingbury, riding from outpost to outpost to ensure that all was well and that any attempted surprise attack by the Royalists would be thwarted.

  At Naseby itself, Fairfax showed that he was prepared to act upon the advice of subordinates, and during the engagement rode from one part of his army to another to encourage his men and ascertain how events were unfolding. Moreover, as he had shown on previous occasions, he was prepared to enter the thick of the fray. Joshua Sprigge records of him:

  when he hath come upon action, or been near an engagement, it hath been observed, another spirit hath come upon him, another soul hath lookt out at his eyes; I mean he hath been so raised, elevated, and transported, as that he hath been not unlike himself at other times, but more like an Angell, then a man. And this was observed of him at this time.

  When his performance and Cromwell’s is compared with that of Rupert and Charles, one has to agree with Maurice Ashley’s comment that: ‘What most emphatically differentiated the two armies was the quality of the generalship.’

  As has been stated, Naseby was the decisive engagement of the English Civil War. Never again was Charles able to raise an army comparable to that so soundly defeated on 14 June 1645. Nonetheless, he remained frequently optimistic in the months and years which followed, hoping that he would emerge triumphant either through a change in his military fortunes or by exploiting the differences of his opponents, differences which became increasingly pronounced. In the end his hopes came to nothing, and he was tried and condemned to death by his most extreme opponents who had tired of his intrigues and held him accountable for all the blood which had been shed.