A history of England

by Charles Oman

Local contests throughout England.

While the campaign of Edgehill and Brentford was in progress, there was fighting going on all over England. In each district the local partisans of king and Commons were striving for the mastery. In the East the Roundheads carried the day everywhere; the whole coast from Portsmouth to Hull, with all the seaboard counties, fell into their hands. In the West and North the result was very different; Sir Ralph Hopton beat the king's enemies out of Cornwall and the greater part of Devon. The whole of Wales, except the single port of Pembroke, was won for Charles. In Yorkshire there was fierce fighting between two local magnates, the Marquis of Newcastle on the royal, Lord Fairfax on the Parliamentary side. By the end of the winter Newcastle had got possession of the whole county except Hull, and the cluster of manufacturing towns in the West Riding and on the Lancashire border. He had raised an army of 10,000 men, and controlled the whole countryside from the borders of the Scots as far as Newark-on-Trent. But in the Midlands the first campaign settled nothing; districts that held for the king and districts that held for the Parliament were intermixed in hopeless confusion. It would obviously need much further fighting before any definite result could be secured.

Charles in want of money.

After futile negotiations had filled the winter months, the spring of 1643 saw the renewal of operations all over the face of the land. The negotiations, indeed, were but a foolish waste of time. It was not likely that the king would accept the two conditions which the Parliament made a sine quâ non—the grant to them of the power of the sword by the Militia Bill, and of the right to "reform" the Church by turning it into a Presbyterian Kirk. The struggle had to proceed, though both parties found it extremely hard to maintain. The king more especially had the greatest difficulty in finding the "sinews of war." The sale of the crown jewels was but a temporary expedient; the loyal offerings of the Oxford Colleges, who sent all their gold and silver plate to be melted down at the mint which the king had set up in their midst, could not last for long. The Royalist gentry soon stripped their sideboards and strong boxes bare. The want of a regular supply of money was always checking the king's movements. He called together a Parliament at Oxford, to which came a majority of the House of Lords, and nearly a third of the House of Commons, and this body granted him the right to raise forced loans under his privy seal, and to take excise duties all over the realm; but as the richest part of England was not in his hands, this financial scheme was not very successful. Charles was always on the verge of seeing his army disband for want of pay. The Parliamentarians were somewhat better off, owing to their control of London and the other chief ports of the kingdom, but even they were often in dire straits for money, and heard unpaid regiments clamouring in vain for food and raiment.

1643. Royalist successes—(1) in the West.

The events of the campaign of 1643 were no more decisive than those of the previous autumn. In the centre the king and Essex watched each other all through the summer without coming to a pitched battle. The only event of note in these months was the death of Hampden, the second man in importance among the Parliamentary leaders, in a cavalry skirmish at Chalgrove Field. But on the two flanks the Royalists gained important successes. Hopton, with the army of the West, swept over Somerset and Wilts, routing Sir William Waller—an enterprising but very unlucky general—at Lansdown (July 5), and afterwards at Roundway Down near Devizes (July 13). In consequence of these victories, Bristol, the second town in the kingdom, fell into Royalist hands (July 26). A further advance put the army of the West in possession of Hampshire and Dorsetshire, so the Roundheads retained nothing in the South, except the ports of Plymouth and Portsmouth, with a few scattered garrisons more.

(2) in the North.—The "Associated Counties."

At the same time, the Marquis of Newcastle beat Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas, the mainstays of the Parliamentary cause in the North—at Adwalton Moor (June 30)—a victory which enabled him to conquer the Puritan stronghold in the West Riding, and to drive the last wrecks of the enemy into Hull. Newcastle would have won Lincolnshire also, but for the resistance made by a new force, the levy of the "Associated Counties." The shires of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, had banded themselves together to raise a local army. It was a zealous and well-disciplined force, commanded by Lord Manchester, under whom Oliver Cromwell served as general of horse. It was Cromwell's ability as a cavalry leader which saved Lincolnshire to the Parliament, by the winning of the hard-fought engagements of Gainsborough (July 28) and Winceby (October 11).

Siege of Gloucester.—First Battle of Newbury.

Charles should now have called in Hopton and Newcastle to his aid, and marched straight on London. But both the West-country and the Yorkshire Royalists disliked leaving their own districts. Hopton's and Newcastle's men protested against being called up to Oxford before they had made a complete end of their own local enemies. Charles was weak enough to yield to their wish, and meanwhile resolved to take Gloucester, the one great Roundhead stronghold left in the West. He laid siege to it on August 10; but on the news of his march westward, the Parliament gave Lord Essex peremptory orders to attempt its relief at all costs. Reinforced by six strong regiments of London train-bands, zealous but new to war, he marched with 15,000 men into the West. When he approached the besiegers, Charles resolved not to fight in his siege-lines, but to attack Essex in the open. He therefore raised the siege, allowed the earl to revictual Gloucester, but placed himself across the line of retreat to London. At Newbury, in Berkshire, Essex found the king's army arrayed on both sides of the London road, and ready to receive him (September 19). There followed a fierce fight among lanes and hedges, as Essex strove to pierce or outflank the royal line. Prince Rupert threw away the best of his horsemen in attempts to break the solid masses of the London train-bands, who showed a steady power of resistance very admirable in such young soldiers. In one of these desperate charges fell Lord Falkland, the wisest and most moderate of the king's councillors, who is said to have deliberately thrown away his life because of his sorrow at the long continuance of the war. After a hard day's work, the earl had partly cut his way through; and in the night the king, alarmed at the fact that his infantry and artillery had exhausted all their powder, ordered his army to retreat on Oxford. Then the Parliamentarians were able to force their way to Reading without further molestation.