Edge Hill: The Battle and Battlefield; With Notes on Banbury & Thereabout

by Edwin Alfred Walford

The preaching of the local divines, Robert Harris, John Dod, and Robert Cleaver, had no doubt added largely to the enthusiasm of the country folk for the cause of the Commons. Though no great increase of the King’s forces could be expected in such a district, yet there is an interesting account in Kimber and Johnson’s Baronetage[NO] (1771) of a country gentleman Mr. (afterwards Sir Richard) Shuckburgh:

“Sir Richard Shuckburgh, Knt., eldest son and heir, was in no way inferior to his ancestors. As King Charles I. marched to Edgecot, near Banbury, on October 22nd, 1642, he saw him hunting in the fields with a very good pack of hounds, upon which it is reported that he fetched a deep sigh, and asked who the gentleman was that hunted so merrily that morning when he was going to fight for his crown and dignity; and being told that it was this Richard Shuckburgh, he was graciously ordered to be called to him, and was by him very graciously received. Upon which he went immediately home, armed all his tenants, and the next day attended him in the field, where he was knighted, and was present at the battle of Edge Hill. After the taking of Banbury Castle, and his Majesty’s retreat from those parts, he went to his own seat and fortified himself on the top of Shuckborough Hill, where, being attacked by some of the Parliament forces, he defended himself till he fell, with most of his tenants about him; but being taken up and life perceived in him, he was carried away prisoner to Kenilworth Castle, where he lay a considerable time, and was forced to purchase his liberty at a dear rate.”

A fight for the possession of Lord Spencer’s house at Wormleighton was the Saturday evening’s prelude to the Sunday’s battle. It had been garrisoned by some Parliamentarian troops sent by Essex, and in Rupert’s attack some prisoners were taken, from whom, it is said, the whereabouts of the Parliamentarian army was learned.[Y] The house is said to have been partly burned down in the fight, but it is not clear whether it happened then or in the year 1643. Though with the Parliamentarians in the early part of the Rebellion, Lord Spencer became Royalist long ere the campaigns were over. The fact of an outpost being pushed so far as Wormleighton shows that the Dassett Hills were held by the Parliament forces. The Royalists had marched into the heart of a hostile country, Warwick Castle and Lord Brooke on the N.W., Fawsley House and the Knightleys on the N.E., and on the South, Sir A. Cope and Hanwell Castle, and Banbury and Broughton Castle. Lord Northampton’s lands on the Western border of Oxfordshire were near enough to find touch with the King. His house played locally a most prominent part for the Royalist cause, and its military leadership was of the best.

III.

arly on the morning of Sunday, October 23rd, Prince Rupert forwarded information to the King that the camp fires of the Parliamentarian army had been seen on the plain between Edge Hill and Kineton. With keen foresight Earl Lindsay abandoned the intended advance upon Banbury, and speedily began the movement of the Royalist army towards the fringe of hills which dominates the Warwickshire vale. It seems at first strange that the Parliamentarians, familiar as so many of them were with the physical features of the neighbourhood, should have neglected when so near to secure possession of some part of the Edge Hill ridge. This, however, is explained in a pamphlet of the time,[PH] “An Exact and True Relation of the Dangerous and Bloudy Fight between his Majestie’s Army and the Parliament near Keynton.” Therein we learn that the artillery were unready, for want of draught horses, and with Colonel Hampden and Colonel Grantham were forced to be left behind, and hence no advance could safely be made beyond Keynton.

Hampden had with him three regiments of foot, nine or ten troops of horse, some companies of dragooners, and seven pieces of cannon, with the necessary ammunition train,[PB] perhaps about 4,000 men in all. The troops of the Parliament were quartered in the villages of the plain. Tradition says that Tysoe was occupied, and that the soldiers took the bread from the village ovens ere they marched down street to the fight. But of the doings at Compton in the Hole, barely a mile distant, during the occupation we know nothing.

It is hard also to understand that there should have been anything in the nature of a surprise[B] in the Royalist advance, for within a district so sympathetic to their cause, one would have supposed the Puritan leaders to have been immediately informed of every movement of their enemies. Indeed, in another quaint pamphlet, “A Letter sent from a Worthy Divine,”[PG] the writer says that the alarm came at about eight o’clock in the morning, that the enemy were advancing, and that “it pleased God to make myself the first instrument of giving a certain discovery of it, by the help of a perspective glass, from the top a hill.”

Deploying, therefore, before daybreak, across Cropredy Bridge, then narrower than at present, and no doubt crossing the Cherwell at certain fords also, the King’s forces marched by way of Mollington to Warmington, where they had been preceded by Prince Rupert’s horse, who would have travelled across the Southern part of the Dassett Hills. It is said[B] that “the foot were quartered at so great distance that many regiments marched seven or eight miles to the rendezvous, so that it was past one of the clock before the King’s forces marched down hill.” Much delay would be occasioned in getting the troops across the river Cherwell, not so easy to be forded at that time of the year. The narrow bridge[1] would allow but slow passage for 10,000 or 12,000 men, with all the impedimenta of war material. Another pamphleteer[PA] says “the King’s horse were at the rendezvous between ten and eleven; the van of the foot an hour later, and the rear and artillery, including the Lord Lt. General’s own regiment, not until two hours after.”

As the Parliamentarian troops take up their position upon the plain, it is worth while to pause for a few minutes to look at the composition and armament of the two forces. Many of the troops on both sides appear to have been indifferently provided with weapons. Implements of warfare that had not been in use since the Wars of the Roses—the long bow, the cross bow, &c.—resumed their places amongst the accoutrements of the men at arms.[a] There were the heavy horse in iron casques, breast-plates and greaves, the musketeers with their matchlocks, and the dragoons or dragooners,[J118] with sword and matchlock. These last seem to have been so called from the drake, the firearm they once carried, and though not strictly speaking cavalry, yet accompanying and supporting them. Each regiment of Lord Essex’s army carried a standard inscribed on the one side with the watchword of the Parliament, “God with us,” and on the other side the motto of the regimental commander; Lord Saye and Sele’s were the blue coats, the Commander’s were orange and Lord Broke’s purple; Colonel Ballard’s troops were clad in grey, Colonel Holles’ in red, and Lord Mandeville’s in blue. Across his breastplate each officer of the Parliamentary army wore an orange scarf, the commander’s colour.