[68] The Duchess’s account.
Fairfax wrote:[69] “This appeared the greater mercy, when we saw our mistake; for we found three thousand men in the town, and expected but half the number.... This was more a miracle than a victory.”
[69] Masère’s Select Tracts, p. 424.
Pious Royalists, on the contrary, would probably attribute their own defeat to the machinations of the devil; and the impious modern reader may possibly consider the victory, on Fairfax’s own showing, rather a fluke.
Some time afterwards Newcastle recovered Goring by an exchange of prisoners; but the defeat at Wakefield very seriously hampered him.
Shortly before the disaster at Wakefield, Newcastle had taken Rotherham by storm, and Sheffield without opposition. Early in June he stormed and took Howly House, a place which the Duchess describes as “a strong stone house, well fortified ... wherein was a garrison of soldiers, which My Lord summoned, but the Governor disobeying the summons, he battered it with his cannon, and so took it by force”. She gives Newcastle great credit for his extraordinary humanity in not killing the Governor in cold blood, after the place had been captured.
The King was now becoming very nervous and he wished for Newcastle’s help. On 18 June, 1643, the Queen wrote to Newcastle from Newark: “The King is still expecting to be besieged in Oxford.... He had sent me a letter to command you absolutely to march to him, But I do not send it to you, since I have taken a resolution with you that you remain. There is a gentleman, Lieutenant Markham, who has received from you a letter, so angry, that I thought it could not be from you, so that I have commanded him to remain, and I hope that he will not be punished for it, moreover ... since I am yet good-natured enough not to send you your order from the King to march to him, you, on your part, must not punish one who stays by order of the Queen.... Your constant and faithful friend, Henrietta Maria.” [70]
[70] Letters of Henrietta Maria, edited by Mrs. Everett Green, p. 219.
This letter shows the conveniences likely to follow from allowing a lady to meddle in the conduct of a campaign.