“May it please your Highness, you are welcome, sir, so many several ways, as it is beyond my arithmetic to number, but this I know, you are the Redeemer of the North, and the Saviour of the Crown. Your name, sir, hath terrified three great Generals, and they fly before it. It seems their design is not to meet your Highness, for I believe they have got a river between you and them; but they are so nearly gone as there is (no) certainty at all of them or their intentions, neither can I resolve anything, since I am made of nothing but thankfulness and obedience to your Highness’s commands.”
[99] The Pythouse Papers, p. 19.
Rupert arrived, as Warwick tells us, “with a very good army, Goring being joined to him with the Northern horse”. It was not without some skilful manœuvring that he was able to effect an entrance into York. Here is his enemy’s account of it:—[100]
“Leaguer before York.
“The Earls of Leven, Lindsay, and Manchester, Ferdinando Lord Fairfax, and Thos. Hatcher. Since our last the conditions of affairs is not a little changed for on Monday last, upon notice of Prince Rupert’s march from Knaisburgh (Knaresborough) towards us, we resolved and accordingly drew out the armies to have met him.” They do not say that Newcastle came after them, but Heath (Chronicle, p. 58) says, “those in York pursued their rear, and seized some provisions,” which must have been most welcome to a half-famished garrison expecting a good many thousand more hungry men who would also want food. The Generals go on to say that they “for that end did march the same night to Long Marston, about four miles west of York, but the Prince having notice thereof passed with his army at Boroughbridge,” a place about eighteen miles to the north-west of York, and quite out of his direct route, “and so put the river Ouse betwixt him and us, whereby we were disabled to oppose his passage into York, the bridge we built on the west side of the town, being so weak that we durst not adventure to transport our armies over upon it. This made us resolve the next morning to march to Tadcaster for stopping his passage southward.”
[100] S. P., Dom., Charles I, vol. LX.
According to this account, therefore, it was Rupert who put the river between himself and the enemy, and not the enemy who put the river between themselves and Rupert, as Newcastle had written.
Rupert having effected his juncture with Newcastle, the Parliamentary generals had to consider what should be their next step. It used to be held that a besieging army should be larger than that of the place invested; but the Royalist and the Parliamentary armies were pretty equal in numbers. The most probable decision of the Parliamentary Generals, therefore, would be to retire.
On the other hand, it was a question whether it would be the policy of the Royalist army to force an engagement. With a fortified town at their backs, it might have been under other circumstances; but Newcastle’s men had been much underfed of late, and Rupert’s were wearied by long marches, whereas the Parliamentary forces, although very short of provisions, were better fed than Newcastle’s, nor were they travel-worn like Rupert’s.