To Catch a King

by Charles Spencer

  Major General Harrison, who had slowed the Scottish army’s march south, had been party to that same petition. Of all those who had judged the late king, Harrison had perhaps been the most harsh and hostile. He had first come to prominence as a major, when he had been identified as one of the ‘cluster of preaching officers’ whose religious fervour, when added to a natural affinity for soldiery, led to rapid promotion. He now stood in reserve, ready to witness the attacks that, he felt sure, would deliver the coup de grâce to the Royalist cause.

  Providing the chorus to the Parliamentary attack were the cannon of Major General Richard Deane, who had taken part in all aspects of Charles I’s demise, from planning his trial through to the examination of witnesses, as well as helping to choose the hour and location of his execution. Deane’s military talents were rare, and in demand: he was now both an admiral and the New Model Army’s artillery chief. Once his guns opened their throats to pound Worcester’s Fort Royal, which protected Sidbury Gate and the city’s south-eastern approaches, it was clear to all that a general assault had begun.

  Charles led the resistance to the enemy’s twin attack. He tried to stop the two Parliamentarian wings from uniting, sending forward 300 Highlanders under Colonel Colin Pitscottie in an attempt to block 1,000 rebels crossing the Severn. The Scots refused to break, an eyewitness recalling how the grey-coated troops retreated behind their gold and black standard ‘with characteristic bravery [and] … disputed every hedge’.12 But they were eventually killed, captured or scattered.

  Cromwell oversaw the progress of the main pontoon, and threw up a second bridge over the River Teme, reinforcing Ingoldsby and Lambert’s advances. They pushed against defences commanded by Major General Robert Montgomery, until Montgomery was wounded and his men’s ammunition ran out. As the Royalists fled back to the city, Cromwell sent his men in pursuit. He was in that state of euphoria that could possess him in battle, calling on the Lord of Hosts to bring his men victory.

  Despite Parliament having more than twice as many troops as the king, the battle of Worcester was in the balance for a while. Cromwell would later call the encounter ‘as stiff a contest for four or five hours as ever I have seen’.13 This was thanks, in part, to Charles’s energetic generalship.

  While Deane’s guns redoubled their efforts against the city’s defences, Charles sensed that the pivotal moment of the engagement had been reached. He put himself at the head of a brave counterattack, one of his men later recalling:

  His Majesty behaved himself very gallantly; with his own regiment of horse, and [the] D.[uke of] Hamilton’s, he broke a regiment of horse and forced back a considerable body of their horse but at last was overpowered, and our horse ran, though the King strove to make them stand. The King being closely pursued, and our men stopping the passage, was forced to quit his horse, and climb up our half raised mount, and there so encouraged our foot that the enemy retired with loss. The King perceiving the enemy too numerous, and our men worsted, drew them within the walls, where it was long disputed, and then taking a fresh horse, he rode to the cavalry, with the intention of rallying them, and scouring foot from the walls; but it was in vain, for [Lieutenant General] Middleton was wounded, and the chief of the horse officers either dismounted or slain, or I know not where.14

  This was the moment when David Leslie and his 3,000-strong Scottish cavalry would have been expected to intervene from their position at Pitchcroft, north of the city. English Royalists would look back on his failure to do so as the epitome of cowardice and treachery, and a dereliction of duty that cost them a chance of victory against the odds.

  It seems that when Leslie looked at the desperate fighting in front of him, and the huge numbers of the enemy advancing on Worcester, he judged the day to be already lost. This was, perhaps, a self-fulfilling prophecy, for he had recently said in private of his army that ‘howsoever it looked, it would not fight’.

  Several days earlier, on reaching Worcester and then learning of the enemy’s growing encirclement of his beleaguered and worn-out men, Leslie appears to have extinguished whatever flickering morale he had nursed on the trek south. He knew that this was where everything would be decided, and felt certain that the coming battle would be calamitous. It would doubtless steal the lives of many good Scottish soldiers, perhaps even his own. While risking himself in battle was an integral part of Leslie’s profession, he resented the imminent prospect of himself and his men being sacrificed for a scheme that he had marked from its outset as being absolutely and irretrievably doomed.

  It was against this context of the Scottish general’s dark pessimism that a Royalist would report with disgust: ‘David Leslie rode up and down as one amazed, or seeking to fly, for they were so confused that neither threats nor entreaty could persuade them to charge with His Majesty.’15

  Another of Charles’s supporters mourned the absence of the Royalists’ late, great general in Scotland, who would never have shrunk from attacking at such a moment, but whose betrayal by the Crown was now so keenly felt: ‘One hour of Montrose at the head of the 3,000 horse … had perhaps retrieved the fortune of the day: but Leslie … kept them stationary in the rear, until the infantry, having expended their ammunition, and reduced to fight with the but-ends of their muskets, gave way before the reserves poured in by [Cromwell], and fell back into the city, with the loss of their best leaders.’16

  While Parliamentary troops poured over the earthworks of Fort Royal, Charles found the roads around him choked with the rising tide of defeat. Arriving at Sudbury Gate he was confronted by an overturned ammunition cart, its oxen lying dead beside it. The king jumped from his horse and scrambled over the cart. He then pulled off his heavy armour in Friar Street, and found a new mount.

  When he saw some of his men throwing down their weapons in surrender, he urged them to keep fighting, reminding them of the righteousness of their cause. As it became clear that he could not persuade them to fight on, the king cried, ‘I had rather that you would shoot me, than keep me alive to see the consequences of this fatal day!’

  Charles was so immersed in the battle that he failed to recognise the moment all was lost. It had already arrived when he announced his intention of leading Leslie’s Scots in a final charge. The king’s lieutenants explained that there was no point: the men would never obey him, and the day already belonged to the enemy. The rebels had captured Fort Royal, slaying everyone in it, before turning the captured Scottish artillery on Charles’s men. Meanwhile, west of the city in St John’s, a brigade of Scottish infantry under Major General Thomas Dalyell had surrendered after the briefest resistance, showing the same lack of gumption as Leslie’s cavalry.

  A small force was formed under the Earl of Cleveland, a veteran cavalry general whose great bravery had been seen at the battle of Cropredy Bridge seven years earlier. Then, his inspired charge had helped to secure victory for the Crown against the run of the action. Now his task was to hold back the enemy, with defeat already certain, while the king tried to flee. Every minute the rebels were delayed would gain Charles more time in which to distance himself from the carnage of the rout.

  Nine other officers, including Talbot’s Major Careless and Captain Thomas Giffard, joined Cleveland in his holding operation. They led a small body of Cavaliers in repeated charges down Sidbury Street and the High Street, against overwhelming odds. Eventually, with several of their number dead or wounded, the survivors from this brave but bloodied troop either surrendered or fled. Royalist resistance spluttered on in isolated pockets around the city, before being snuffed out.

  One of Charles’s men who had witnessed him in action, and who was then taken prisoner, wrote: ‘What became of His Majesty afterwards I know not, but God preserve him, for certainly a more gallant prince was never born.’

  There is a tale, likely true, that the king went quickly back to the Commandery, his lodgings in Worcester, to gather some of his things. His escape attempt nearly ended in failure before it had properly begun, when the
enemy’s Colonel Ralph Cobbett burst through the building’s front door as Charles bolted out the back, leaving his papers behind.

  Charles rode out of Worcester through the octagonal bastions and pointed arch of St Martin’s Gate. It was six o’clock in the evening, the end of a hellish day, and the start of a journey that promised the king only two possible outcomes: escape, or death.

  7

  The Hunt Begins

  Arrived the news of the fatal Battle of Worcester, which exceedingly mortified our expectations.

  Diary of John Evelyn, 12 September 1651

  Around Europe, news of Charles’s defeat was met with a mixture of shock and resignation. Queen Henrietta Maria had been on the point of setting off with the French court for Berry when she received ‘the confirmation of defeat at Worcester, which caus’d the Queen to alter her designs’.

  She wrote to postpone a visit to the mother superior of a nunnery in Chaillot, ‘on account of the bad news from England, which nevertheless I hope is not quite so unfortunate as it is represented. My uneasiness renders me unfit for anything, until I receive the news which will arrive tonight.’ She ended with the plea: ‘Pray to God for the king, my son.’1

  Sir Edward Nicholas noted that the Duke of York, who was with his mother at the time, had also chosen to stay behind rather than remain as a guest of the French court: ‘They say it was to expect here to hear where the King of England was.’2 If his brother were dead, James would be the new claimant to the English throne. While waiting for further news, James remained in Paris with his mother, ‘in dreadful apprehension for the King’.3

  In parts of the Netherlands the result of the battle was at first wrongly reported as a victory for Charles. The English church in The Hague held a service of thanksgiving in the mistaken belief ‘that Harrison was killed, Lambert wounded and taken, 3,000 [Parliamentarians] killed … and the King of Scots was but seven miles from London’.4

  Charles’s sister, Mary of Orange, had been joining in the celebrations at the false report ‘that the King had got victory, divided the spoil, and triumphed in the City and Capitol of London, before ever a sword was drawn, or stroke struck’. She chose to reject the follow-up reports that the supposed triumph had in fact been an unmitigated disaster. When forced to accept the truth, she swooned with shock.

  Once details of the defeat spread, the focus amongst the Royalists remained Charles’s fate. As Mercurius Politicus explained: ‘The worst act of the tragedy to them is the good King, whether he be killed, or taken, or hidden; whither he is gone, what he will do.’5

  The senior Royalists in exile struggled to come to terms with the king’s failure. Sir Edward Nicholas wrote from Antwerp to Lord Hatton that he was ‘here in a doleful condition upon the news of the King’s being totally defeated, and his person in so very great danger’.6 There seemed no future for the Crown’s cause if Charles was dead. Even if he was free, he would surely soon be captured. After that would come execution.

  The twenty-four-year-old Queen Christina of Sweden had been particularly appalled at the beheading of Charles I. She had commissioned learned attacks on the regicides in Latin, which had been disseminated throughout Europe. But she realised that the result at Worcester made irrelevant her thoughts of helping the Royalists, and shelved plans of sending her fleet to assist the executed king’s son.

  Ambassador Michiel Morosini reported the scale of the defeat to the doge of Venice from the French court. He said that Charles had been ‘forced to seek safety in the mountains of Scotland, with 3,000 horse’, and concluded that, without immediate foreign assistance, Charles was vulnerable to ‘some accident [overtaking] him, of imprisonment or death. He is the more exposed to this as he has no force to protect him.’7

  But it was in England that news of the Royalists’ trouncing rang loudest. In London Colonel Barkstead lit a bonfire at Whitehall Gate, while his regiment of redcoats discharged volleys of musketfire in celebration. Thursday, 2 October was marked out as a day on which the victory would be celebrated throughout England, Scotland and Wales.

  Meanwhile the details of the defeat became a little clearer. A few hundred of Cromwell’s men had died, while between 2,000 and 4,000 Royalists had perished. Cromwell would speak of ‘the marvellous salvation wrought at Worcester’,8 and would call the outcome of the engagement a ‘crowning mercy’.9

  The Council of State sent brief headlines about the triumph to its commanders in Scotland, northern England and across the Midlands, and urged them to stand on their guard: ‘Some of their horse fled, which our horse are pursuing … It is probable that such as can scatter homewards will endeavour to do so; use your best endeavours to gather them up.’ In particular, it was noted: ‘As it is probable many of the enemy may endeavour to come to London, endeavour to gather them up, by parties of horse which will send out upon all avenues of the city.’10

  The day after the battle, the Council of State wrote to Cromwell: ‘We have seen your letter to the Speaker, and by that and others, have been informed of the great success given to the forces under your command, not doubting but God will in much mercy finish what remains.’11

  The crucial part of that mopping-up process would, of course, be the hunting down of King Charles. Either his body must be unearthed from among the slain, or – if he had escaped death – he must be pursued until he was captured.

  ‘Where their King is, God knows,’ the Weekly Intelligencer mused. ‘There are many who affirm that they saw him after the Fort [Royal] was stormed, and that he went out with the Horse that escaped, by the dark protection of the night.’ The newsbook gave a description of the fugitive king’s clothing, hoping it might assist his would-be captors: ‘In the day of the great fight he had on a black suit, it seems not thinking to fight, as on that day, nor dreaming how black it would prove unto him.’12

  Major General Thomas Harrison was in charge of rounding up the defeated enemy. He and a large force had been held back from the twin assault on Worcester to stand ready for the battle’s aftermath. Harrison had loudly and consistently predicted that God would grant his side victory, but the essential point now was to see it through. He relished the prospect of being the harvester of the defeated.

  Harrison had proved remarkably effective in rooting out Royalists in Wales following Charles I’s execution. One of his enemies would write of this period: ‘Major General Harrison [was in command] in Wales; in which employment to characterise his tyranny would swell a volume far exceeding this intended discourse. The laws of the land were not executed in Wales, but Major General Harrison’s laws were there in full force.’13

  The regicides who had risked all in killing Charles I felt sure that the recent triumph at Worcester was a God-given opportunity, if followed up vigorously, to set the seal on the new political order in England. If Harrison could quickly capture Charles, and deprive the Royalists of their natural leader, the future of the republic seemed assured.

  Harrison was a man of startling contrasts: a devout Puritan who loved fine things, his reputation for being able to quote at length from the more apocalyptic chapters of the Bible was as well known as the gorgeousness of his clothing. His reputation among his enemies, though, focused on his utter ruthlessness. This trait was driven by a religious fanaticism that saw him enter a state of rapture when in battle. When the Catholic stronghold of Basing House finally fell to Parliament in October 1645, at the conclusion of a trio of bitterly contested sieges, Royalists claimed to have witnessed Harrison kill in cold blood some who had laid down their arms. As he shot an actor called Dick Robinson through the head, he was heard to shout, ‘Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently!’14 Perhaps half of Basing’s overwhelmed garrison was slaughtered that day, but Harrison’s brutality somehow caught the eye more than the rest.

  It was Harrison who had been sent to transport the king from his prison at Hurst Castle, on the south coast of England, to London for his trial. Charles I’s shocking execution had seen the late king elevate
d to the status of martyr by his supporters, and tales soon emerged of Harrison’s impertinence to the beleaguered monarch in his final days.

  The king had been so aware of, and alarmed by, Harrison’s dark reputation that on learning that he was the officer in charge of taking him to London, he spent the night in prayer, preparing for imminent death at the major general’s hand. When the journey was under way, the king could not resist asking Harrison if he planned to murder him before they reached London. Harrison reassured him that he would do no such thing. If Charles had understood his captor and his beliefs better, this would not have been a comfort to him. The major general was convinced that the tyrant king needed to be tried and condemned publicly for having inflicted such great loss of life on his people. Charles therefore would not be murdered in a corner, as he feared. But he would still need to be put to death.

  In January 1649 Harrison sat as one of the king’s most enthusiastic judges, barely missing a session. At the conclusion of the trial he rose to his feet with his comrades in a display of unanimous support for the death sentence. He was the seventeenth of the fifty-nine men to sign the death warrant.

  After the axe was swung, Charles I’s head was stitched back onto his body. His remains were then sent for burial in Windsor. This was considered far enough from London to prevent his tomb becoming a place of pilgrimage for the capital’s Royalists.

  Harrison oversaw proceedings at the funeral, ensuring that the ceremony was devoid of pomp. He allowed none of the prayers that the king would have wanted at his service, and saw that the coffin was attended by a mere handful of Charles I’s most loyal supporters.

  Having had a leading part in the execution and burial of the father, Major General Harrison was now placed in charge of the manhunt for the son.