Most military successes were on the King's side too. In the north, Lord Newcastle raised the siege of York, occupied Pontefract and Newark, locked in the Parliamentary arsenal at Hull, then heavily defeated Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas at Adwalton Moor. In the south-west, Sir Ralph Hopton cleared Cornwall and Devon, and moved on Wiltshire and Somerset. He was seriously injured when a careless tobacco pipe exploded a cart of gunpowder, but survived to annihilate Sir William Waller's Parliamentary army at Roundway Down. In July Prince Rupert stormed Bristol, England's second city and a vital port, although he took heavy casualties. The King's main army faced the Earl of Essex between Oxford and Reading, hoping for news that Newcastle and Hopton had overcome all opposition and were marching to join in a grand assault on London.
They never came. Their local levies were refusing to leave their home districts. In the west too, further advances were impossible while Gloucester and Plymouth held out for Parliament. Lord Newcastle was turned back by heavy Parliamentary resistance at Gainsborough, so diverted himself to a siege of Hull. But Royalists were cheered when the Queen at last reached Oxford.
So far there were no grand military sweeps or major battles. The area between the royal capital at Oxford and the King's constant goal of London saw endless manoeuvring. Towns were garrisoned, castles were fortified; they were abandoned for strategic reasons, or taken by the enemy; then they were reinvested or rescued; later, their fortunes often changed again. Small groups of soldiers moved in and then moved on, jostling for possession of local garrisons, farmhouses and market towns. Vital objectives changed hands repeatedly.
For Parliament, the Earl of Essex was criticised for indecision, although he was rarely free to take the initiative: if he moved away, he would leave London undefended. Essex successfully captured Reading, but while he occupied it his men were decimated by camp fever.
At that time the King was very close to recapturing his kingdom. The shifting boundary of Royalist control was little more than forty miles from London as the crow flew. A bird had the advantage. If they came, Royalist soldiers would have to advance on carriageways and byways which for years had been neglected or inconsistently maintained by their parishes and which, as well as being famous for broken bridges, flooded fords and missing signposts, were generally overgrown with trees and hedgerows, choked with mud, and carved up and criss-crossed with ruts like the face of a cheese-grater. Still, both sides kept careful watch on one another. Parliament issued an order that no one might travel from Oxford to London without a pass. Their own scouts and spies were active in the Royalist-held areas. Meanwhile, Royalist spies took detailed notes of the Lines of Communication around London; some were arrested as they scanned the fortifications.
With the King encouraged by his generals' successes and Parliament correspondingly depressed, this stalemate continued to late summer. Then Prince Rupert's capture of Bristol turned royal eyes to the west. Bristol surrendered in just three days, though the defenders under Nathaniel Fiennes were sufficiently brave for Rupert to allow them to march out with full honours. Parliament was angrier at Fiennes's conduct and court-martialled him for dereliction of duty; he was only spared through the intervention of the Earl of Essex.
Meanwhile the Parliamentary commander William Waller sustained a grave defeat. Waller's previous string of local victories had made him a hero to Parliament; perhaps fatally, he saw himself as a hero too. He made vainglorious boasts and even procured a wagon-load of leg-irons for anticipated Royalist prisoners. But at Roundway Down he failed to post scouts and fatally lost the advantage. Hopton's Royalists obtained reinforcements and charged gallantly uphill; they pushed some of the Parliamentary cavalry over a precipice and then bloodily routed the infantry. Waller fled to Bristol, unaware of the scale of the damage; his few surviving men were so dispirited they deserted. Waller then took himself to London where he was nonetheless welcomed as 'William the Conqueror'. Church bells rang and he made a stirring speech in Middle Temple Hall. The Earl of Essex, who loathed Waller — especially for having lost a fine army — was outraged. He fumed even more when Parliament decided it was now necessary to recruit a new national army — which Waller would lead.
Attempts to negotiate peace with the King in Oxford had failed. Essex's troops were broken by lack of resources and disease. He struggled to convince Parliament to give him financial aid but all available funds were about to be siphoned off to Waller. Then in August, before Waller's new army was ready, the King personally besieged the city of Gloucester. This was to prove a turning point.
Gloucester's position was perilous. Far up the River Severn, with the enemy now controlling the Bristol Channel on both sides, it was a puritan merchant city holding out alone in the heartland of Royalist control. It constantly threatened the King's recruiting operations in South Wales, his supply route by sea and his ironworks in the Forest of Dean. When Charles decided to remove this annoyance, he was full of confidence. He believed that his headquarters at Oxford and numerous Royalist garrisons in the surrounding area shielded him. It was inconceivable that the Earl of Essex could bring through any relief.
Gloucester seemed likely to fall as easily as Bristol. Charles was convinced its young military governor, Colonel Edward Massey, would capitulate. Even Royalist merchants in Gloucester viewed the coming Royalist army with such fear — in the light of events at Birmingham — they offered the King a fortune in return for reassurance that only supporters of Parliament would have their property ransacked. Charles promised a free pardon to everyone, if the town immediately gave up. He declared that Gloucester had no hope, for 'Waller is extinct and Essex cannot come'.
As the Royalist guns began to thunder and as siege engineers set about undermining the city walls, Gloucester sent desperate pleas for help from London.
Londoners were filled with fear and gloom. If Gloucester fell, London must soon be picked off too. Pamphleteers did their work; false rumours flew that the King was bringing an army of twenty thousand Irishmen. All suburban shops situated outside the Lines of Communication were ordered to close. The Common Council petitioned Parliament; Parliament instructed the lord mayor to take steps to quell the tumults that were once again disturbing the streets. A group of 'civilly disposed women' petitioned the Commons about their hardships and were put off with soothing words. A letter was sent to encourage Gloucester to hold out, while a Parliamentary committee ordered the Earl of Essex to prepare a relief force. Crucially, when Essex mustered his main army on Hounslow Heath, he knew he was to have nearly fifteen thousand men. To beef up his infantry, he would be supported by some of the London Trained Bands.
Chosen by lot were the Red Regiment, which recruited inside the city wall near the Tower, and the Blue Regiment, which drew its members from west of the Walbrook — Lambert Jukes's regiment. They sent a thousand men each. Also to go were three thousand auxiliaries, drawn from the Red, Blue and Orange regiments. On the first night of their march, they camped at Brentford; there some members' eagerness ebbed. They realised they faced weeks away from their homes and businesses, which many had never left before in their lives, not to mention deprivation, hard marching and possible death. They were permitted to find substitutes. Gideon Jukes, who was a member of the Green Regiment which would remain guarding London, received an urgent note from his brother to inform him of this opening. Urged on by Robert Allibone, who wanted him to write reports for the Corranto, Gideon volunteered to change places with a worried woollen draper from the Reds. So both Jukes brothers set out on their first adventure in the field.
The journey west was close on 150 miles. Choosing a long route to avoid the buzzing nest of Royalists at Oxford, the march took twelve days. The London Brigade formed up on the Artillery Ground and had marched for six days before they caught up with the regular army at Aylesford. Then they travelled with the main force, sometimes ahead, sometimes parallel, sometimes behind. Occasionally they sheltered in barns or were entertained at private houses, but mostly these supposedly sof
t city lads ate only what they could gather from the countryside, drinking brackish water, bivouacked out of doors, sleeping on the ground, lucky if they could make campfires with hedgerow branches or wooden palings and gates. They remained in good spirits, treating it as a duty and an adventure.
They safely bypassed Oxford to the north. As they passed Banbury, they were harried by Royalists under Lord Wilmot. When they entered Northamptonshire, Essex doubled the pace of their march. On the 2nd of September they were twenty-five miles from Gloucester. Royalist skirmishing increased. Prince Rupert met them with around four thousand cavalry at Stow-on-the-Wold. Great squadrons of Royalist horse began to surround the London Brigade, but were beaten off by the main force, using light cannon and dragoons. It was unsafe to halt at Stow so they marched on into the uplands until midnight, sleeping out in the fields where they dropped.
Gideon was anxious. By now they had no provisions. The countryside had been stripped by the enemy of all food, fuel and horse fodder. Everything Gideon had hastily packed in his snapsack had been used up days ago. Bread and beer were a dream; a sour windfall apple, scrounged from an orchard, was a luxury. Unwashed and with shirt and stockings unchanged, his skin was itching and uncomfortable; his own smell was offensive and his comrades repulsed him. Occasionally on the march he caught sight of his brother among the pikemen; set-faced, they conserved energy and exchanged no greeting. Both had learned to tramp ever onwards in a kind of daze, letting hours and miles pass unnumbered. In the damp wolds above Stow, as he lay down stiffly on bare ground with his stomach rumbling, Gideon wondered how much longer the men could continue in this fashion. For him, there was certainly no chance of sitting each evening with a rushlight and writing-slope, to pen a diary for the Corranto. A writer needs a good memory. But he was so weary and famished, he thought it unlikely he would ever remember details of the hardships he now experienced.
He had been sorely afraid when Prince Rupert's cavalry threatened to cut them off at Stow. Worse must lie ahead. By this time the Londoners all understood that, even if they were able to help Gloucester, their chances of returning home were slight.
On the evening of September the 5th, they marched over the Cotswolds and from a high point glimpsed Gloucester below. It lay too far off for the town garrison to hear the salvo of ordnance that Essex fired to announce that help had come. His troops had to spend the night up on the heights, famished, in tempestuous wind and rain, drenched and completely without shelter. When they descended the steep incline, wagons ran adrift, horses were fatally hurt and the men of the London Brigade found that by the time they reached level ground, all the houses where they had hoped to find refreshment were already filled up with other soldiers.
Rest and recuperation would be at hand, however. Alarming smoke turned out to be the enemy's quarters burning, set on fire as the King withdrew at their approach. After a month's siege, only sporadic fire came from the city, where stocks of ammunition had reached a critical low. Gloucester had survived only because incessant rain had flooded mines dug by the Royalists under walls and gates. The governor had sent out nightly raiding parties to sabotage the enemies' works; it was said he plied them with as much drink as they wanted to encourage their bravery, but there were many tales of energy and daring among those who volunteered for night-time missions. Bowmen had fired arrows from both sides, carrying written insults and threats. Fierce resistance by the city troops, together with the staunch mood of the townspeople, had helped Gloucester hold out, although by the time Essex and his army finally marched in, every commodity was stretched and they were down to their last three barrels of gunpowder.
The relief force found terrible scenes. Physical damage ran to thousands of pounds. Sixty-pound shot had torn up the ground. Fiery bombs with sizzling fuses had shot through the air at night like comets, only to whiz through stables too fast to set light to the straw and fall onto house-tops where they melted the lead and caused roofs to collapse. The city defences had been mined and counter-mined. The moat was partially blocked up with timber faggots and with the collapsed remains of experimental moving towers, modelled by some gentleman-scholar on ancient Roman siege-machines, for carrying parties of musketeers up to the city walls. The devastation particularly impressed itself on the Londoners, the Trained Band members, who were thinking hard of home.
The starving relief force was welcomed, fed and housed either in the city or surrounding parishes. They stayed for four days. Gloucester was reprovisioned, refortified, rearmed. The troops could rest and revive, but they knew the King was skulking close by, watching their moves, ready to cut them to pieces when they tried to make their journey home.
By now they were all experts. They knew their position.
'We're screwed!' muttered Lambert Jukes to his brother, picking up the old merchants' complaint about the injustice of the Ship-Money tax.
'Utterly screwed and wrung,' groaned Gideon in reply.
The relieving troops had done their duty, but were caught in a fatal trap.
Chapter Twenty-One — Gloucester, Newbury, London: 1643
The Earl of Essex, Old Robin, received insufficient credit for his cat-and-mouse Gloucester campaign. Getting there had caught the Royalists on the hop; extricating his army, if he could do it, would be an even greater feat.
First, leaving behind his artillery and baggage, he moved north to Tewkesbury. He ordered a classic bridge of boats over the River Severn. Villages on the west bank were scoured for food and fodder, while recalcitrant locals were swingeingly fined and the cash used to reprovision Gloucester. Then Essex sent across an advance unit as if he proposed to march on Worcester. The King immediately moved north, to block the way towards London via Evesham and Warwick.
Under cover of a dark night, Essex suddenly plunged his army south again. They travelled twenty miles across the Cotswolds and gained a day's advantage. Their rapid departure confused Royalist scouts and commanders, including Prince Rupert — though Rupert afterwards claimed he had warned what was happening but was disbelieved. At two o'clock in the morning, Essex reached Cirencester. There he captured forty wagon-loads of food intended for the King's troops and guarded only by newly raised recruits. These provisions crucially fortified his men for the perils ahead. Hunted by Prince Rupert's flying cavalry and pursued by the King with his infantry and ordnance, the Parliamentarians raced for home.
They almost made it. Prince Rupert had orders to find them and force them to make a stand at Newbury, where it was thought the superior numbers of Royalist cavalry could inflict mortal damage. He harried them at Aldbourne, trying to delay them while the main Royalist army caught up. The next day they slowed almost to a standstill as bad weather churned roads to a morass. They were hungry again, for although they had picked up a thousand sheep and sixty cattle as they marched, Londoners did not see themselves as shepherds so the animals had scattered while the soldiers gave their attention to an attack. By this night they were unsure where the enemy now was. As Essex's men approached Newbury their quartermasters rode in to establish billets, only to discover that Prince Rupert had occupied the town ahead of them. Forced to flee, they abandoned all the food they had collected. So the Parliamentarians faced yet another wretched night in wet, frosty fields, with nothing to eat or drink. Prince Rupert blocked their passage at Newbury; he and his men settled into the town in comfort and waited for the King. The royal infantry arrived. Out in the countryside, the Parliamentarian troops were fatigued and full of anxiety. The King had put himself ahead of them. They had to fight their way through. It would be the first time that the London Trained Bands experienced a pitched battle.
Gideon Jukes's experience that night was of utter misery. They had seemed so near to home, yet now they were once again trapped in filthy conditions, knowing that they had to batter past the Royalist army — assuming they could. The enemy were relaxing in town, snug and warm in friendly houses, with full bellies and good supplies of beer. Gideon had only eaten a handful of maggoty blackberries
all day. He was wet through, yet thirsty, trying to catch rain in a pannikin to drink. They had left behind the towering clouds that scudded up the Bristol Channel, bloated with heavy Atlantic rain, but here in the interior they were still being soaked by incessant showers and tonight they had to endure a hard frost. He could feel that frost beating up from the ground while the evening air chilled him to the bone.
He had marched for a month; he remembered how the first bad weather had run off his clothes, then eventually runnels had trickled inside his shirt and over his collarbones, water dripping from his hat onto his face, water making his shoes squelch, drips hanging permanently from his nose and ears. Once he became wet through, weeks ago, there had never been any way to dry off, even when temporary fine weather gave some respite. The insides of his britches and his buff coat remained soggy; the oil sealing his oxhide buff coat could no longer resist water. His stockings were perpetually damp and his shoes sodden. Whenever he stood still, he shifted from leg to leg, arms slightly akimbo, trying to keep free space between his heavy clothes and his skin, which was now sore, reddened and peeling. One night he had found his left shoe full of blood, from a huge blister which then refused to heal. He had pushed his powder flasks and matchcord inside his clothes to try to keep them dry, but he had so little warmth in his body this was probably achieving little. If he had to fight for his life, would his musket even fire?
So another dark, wild night passed in the open. Essex, Skippon and a few other officers found refuge in a thatched cottage near Enborne where they snatched rest and prayer and planned for the day to come. Out in the fields their men huddled under hedges, silent and apprehensive. Rain bucketed down incessantly. Winds bowled over the lonely Berkshire uplands in long, mournful gusts. Neither weasel nor water-vole was stirring, and the owls stayed in the barn.
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