Fairfax had a great advantage over Newcastle, having served with the English army in the Low Countries, whereas Newcastle had had no military experience. He had also the recommendation for a command in Yorkshire, that he was a Yorkshireman both by birth and by blood. On the other hand he laboured under the disadvantage of the intense dislike and contempt of his fellow-Yorkshireman and brother officer, Sir John Hotham, the Governor of Hull. There were very few “gentlemen, or men of any quality, in that large county,” says Clarendon, “who were disaffected to his Majesty”. The chief of these were Fairfax, the Hothams, father and son, Cholmondley, and Stapleton.
We must now return to him in the summer of 1642. A special charge, given to him by the King, was the Bishopric of Durham. In that diocese were many sympathisers with the Parliament, and among such were not a few of the clergy. Now Newcastle knew the Dean to be thoroughly loyal to the King; so he issued an order that no sermon was to be preached in the diocese until it had been written out and submitted to the Dean; and he ordered the Dean not only to strike out anything which he might consider savouring of disaffection, but also to put in expressions of devoted loyalty to the sovereign, wherever such sentiments were wanting. Besides this he empowered the Dean to punish any of the clergy who might be in the least contumacious about the matter. We have the Duchess’s authority for this statement.
In spite of the carefully doctored sermons, the Duchess tells us that “there happened a great mutiny of the Trainband Souldiers of the Bishoprick at Durham, so that my Lord was forced to remove thither in Person, attended with some forces to appease them; where at his arrival (I mention it by the way, and as a merry passage) a jovial Fellow used this expression, That he liked my Lord very well, but not his Company (meaning his Soldiers)”.
Then Newcastle set resolutely to work to raise an army. It would be interesting to know with what weapons he armed it. The artillery of the time was provided with very elementary guns; and the muskets, harquebuses (carbines), and petronels (heavy pistols), all left much to be desired. Pikes were then an all-important weapon; but pikemen required almost more drill and training than did any other soldiers, and it is doubtful how soon those in Newcastle’s hastily recruited army could have been of any effective service; but, at any rate, they could hardly be less experienced in military affairs than was their commander-in-chief.
Scythes, fastened to the ends of poles, we know to have been used in the seventeenth century by the defenders of fortresses, for hooking off soldiers attempting to scale the walls and for upsetting scaling-ladders. Most tempting tools to use, one would imagine. Bows and arrows were certainly carried by the Scottish army which crossed the English border, as described in an earlier chapter, and Grose (vol. II, p. 272) says that one of their uses was “to gall or astoyne the enemye with the hailshot of light arrows, before they have come within danger of the harquebuss shot”.
The Duchess says that the King of Denmark sent a ship containing arms and ammunition to Newcastle, and that, among the weapons, were “Danish clubs”. In our twentieth century superiority, we may look down with contempt upon clubs; but, in a hand-to-hand fight, heavy clubs might be weapons to which considerable respect would be due, if swung by the arms of able-bodied warriors upon the skulls of their enemies.
It was another person’s opinion that Newcastle had even more than a sufficient supply of arms and ammunition, and that he was acting the part of the dog in the manger.
“Sir Marmaduke Langdale to Sir William Savile.[44]
“1642, Nov. 9th, Newcastle.—(My Lord of Newcastle) hath plenty of arms and ammunitions, far more than he can tell what to do withal, in so much as he must be forced to have a greater guard than he intended for the safety thereof, yet I know he will not spare you either arms or ammunition.”