#Arthur Heselrige

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The End of the Commonwealth 1659-60: ‘according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the Government is, and ought to be, by Kings, Lords and Commons’

George Monck Makes His Move

General George Monck Entering London with His Troops. Source: Mary Evans Picture Library website

THE FINAL days of the Commonwealth were filled with the very unresolved issues that had dogged the English republican experiment from its start - the question of legitimacy, the unsettled balance of power between the various postwar factions and the yearning of the populace for stable government. However, England’s civil wars had one last drama to play out before the Commonwealth’s denouement.

The Royalist plotters of the Sealed Knot, observing the crisis of the post-Protectorate regime, thought their time had come at last to seize the initiative by force. In July 1659, a series of uprisings across northern England was planned to overthrow the Rump and invite Charles II to assume the throne. As with other of the Sealed Knot’s schemes, this plot was also uncovered and then called off by its instigators, but not before Sir Thomas Myddleton had declared for the King in Wrexham and the Earl of Derby had entered England from the Isle of Man to try to incite Lancashire to rise. Neither succeeded in attracting much support, but Sir George Booth, a local landowner, mayor of Chester, and, significantly a former Parliamentarian, raised an army of 4,000 and proclaimed his support, less for a restored monarchy and more for a fresh Parliament, legitimised by new elections. This call for full Parliamentary representation became the increasing slogan of the growing opposition to the Army and England’s republic. Booth may have anticipated a coming public mood, but that mood was not universal yet. With no other anti-Rump force in the field, Booth headed to Manchester, pursued by a small Parliamentary force under the command of John Lambert. On 18th August the two armies clashed at Hartford Beech in Cheshire. The experienced Parliamentary force soon had the better of what turned out to be a set of running skirmishes until the Royalists finally routed as they attempted to cross Winnington Bridge. Both Myddleton and, eventually, Booth, were captured and the defeated Royalist soldiery were allowed to return to their homes. So ended the last set piece battle of the English civil wars.

Any Parliamentary solidarity that may have been engendered by this brief renewal of fighting in England, did not last long. Lambert, newly emboldened, was determined this time to secure the supreme leadership role he had denied himself after Cromwell’s death out of loyalty to his former commander. His opportunity came when his regiments, based in Derby, issued a proclamation to the Rump, requiring the granting of all the Army’s demands concerning pay, indemnity, religious toleration, the maintenance of republican government and the purging of “delinquent” MPs opposed to the military. Included in the demands was Lambert’s own elevation to second-in-command of the Army under General Charles Fleetwood. Naturally the Rump could not agree to what became termed the “Derby Petition” and retaliated by ordering Fleetwood to arrest Lambert in early October and issued an ordnance overturning all legislation passed during the Protectorate and requiring its validation by the House of Commons. In addition, under the lead of Arthur Heselrige, the Rump passed a further ordnance that reserved all tax-raising powers to the House of Commons and set about establishing a committee to take the control of the Army, ordering the London regiments to rally to defend Parliament. In the event, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the Army that won this stand-off: Fleetwood refused to move against Lambert who called on the same London regiments to muster and protect the Commonwealth. This they did, leading to the dissolution of the Rump Parliament yet again by military coup, and the establishment of a Committee of Safety to run the country by the Army’s Council of Officers.

Fleetwood and Lambert were in charge, but they had no practical plan as to what to do next. Lambert favoured restoration of the Protectorate, with himself as Lord Protector, but there was little appetite for this, even within the Army. The Committee of Safety could keep order, but in the absence of Parliament or constitution, it could neither raise taxes nor legitimise its role. It was a stop-gap, and the supporters of the Parliamentary cause saw no alternative to elections to a new and representative lower House. What was new however, was that in their determination to oppose both military rule and, as they saw it, the barely controlled radicalism on the part of the common soldiers, these former enemies of Charles I began to see the restoration of the monarchy as the only way out of this impasse, much to the surprise and delight of the exiled Stuart Court.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, General George Monck observed events south of the border enigmatically. He possessed the only military force of sufficient size and experience capable of challenging Fleetwood and Lambert, but his intentions were far from clear. Although Monck had sent sympathetic messages to Heselrige, he made no move to support the Rump or prevent its dissolution. Charles’ emissaries had contacted him offering the general vast rewards if he would defect to the Royalist side, but Monck had rebuffed their advances. Equally, he had not declared support for Committee of Safety either. The former Royalist turned Cromwellian loyalist was however about the enter the fray of Commonwealth politics decisively.

On 20th October, Monck declared his hand. He stated that he supported Parliamentary government and demanded the Council of Officers recall Parliament, threatening to bring his army into England in order to enforce this if necessary. Lambert and Fleetwood did not react well to this interference from their brother officer and prepared to resist any such incursion from Scotland. Lambert headed north to Newcastle, to rally the New Model forces there, but found to his consternation that the northern army was filled with dissent, infuriated at lack of pay and promised pensions, and that the soldiers too had joined the calls for new elections. Lambert succeeded in calming some of the agitation and he and Monck faced each other warily across the Scottish border. The issue was forced in November when in the south and in Ireland, the troops rebelled and demanded the recall of Parliament. When the fleet revolted too, threatening to blockade the Thames until the House of Commons sat again, Lambert, with his forces of questionable loyalty, knew his game was up. This was confirmed when the aged Sir Thomas Fairfax emerged from retirement to call for the restoration of Parliamentary rule. The northern armies deserted to the much-loved former commander en masse, leaving Lambert with no army and no options.

In December, military rule effectively fell apart, driven as much by the Council of Officers’ inability to pay the men as by the simultaneous and insistent, calls for the restoration of Parliamentary rule. On 26th December, Fleetwood and Lambert were forced to recall the Rump whose first action was to place the Army under Parliamentary control. Lambert, trapped between Monck’s forces and Fairfax’s new volunteer army of deserters, could not prevent this. On New Year’s Day 1660, Monck’s army crossed the Tweed and proceeded south, meeting no resistance. In fact, the Rump had told Monck that with the collapse of the coup, they no longer needed his presence in London, but the general proceeded to the capital anyway. The restoration of the Rump was only the first step in the ever-mysterious Monck’s probable plan.

As for Lambert, he submitted to the authority of the Rump and was immediately arrested and confined in the Tower of London. He would remain a prisoner for the rest of his days, finally dying, almost certainly suffering from dementia, in 1684. It was a sad end to one of the Commonwealth’s most capable politicians and soldiers. If, as he had wished, and others had urged, Cromwell had nominated Lambert as his successor and not his ineffective son, Lambert may have made a success both of the Protectorate and the English republic. Lambert in power would certainly have introduced a written constitution to England, with the formal checks and balances the British system of government lacks to this day. With Lambert leading the country in the late 1650s, the path to the Stuart restoration may have been blocked forever.

Once he reached London, Monck’s alliance of convenience with the Rump swiftly came to an end. It became clear that Heselrige and his allies were intent on calling highly restrictive elections that would ensure that only MPs who supported the Rump’s quasi-republican agenda would be able to serve. When in February, the Rump fell into dispute with the City of London council over proposed tax increases, and ordered Monck to suppress the Council, the general refused. Instead he gave the Rump seven days to dissolve itself and arrange full, unrestricted national elections. Given the impossibility of this deadline, a compromise was reached through an agreement to the restitution of the previous Parliament - the so-called Long Parliament - originally summoned by Charles I in November 1640, and forcibly dissolved in Pride’s Purge. The purged MPs returned to Westminster in triumph, escorted by Monck’s soldiers. The Long Parliament’s sole items of business were to confirm Monck as commander-in-chief of the Army, and to agree a date for its own dissolution and the calling of new elections. This it did on 16th March 1660.

Monck’s ultimate desire to see Charles II restored to his throne slowly became plain. As arrangements for elections were put into place, the general at last openly communicated with the Stuart court, which had transferred its location to Breda in Holland. But the enigma of Monck persisted: he was no political Royalist. He informed Charles’ emissaries that the King’s return to England would not be without conditions. There would be an amnesty for all who fought against the Crown in the civil wars; all sales of Royalist lands would remain in place; a degree of religious tolerance would be afforded, and the King would rule jointly with his Parliament. As the path for the unlikely restoration of a somewhat altered monarchy was cleared, John Pym would probably have approved.

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The Return of the King: ‘And all the world in a merry mood because of the King’s coming.’

Charles Restored to his Throne

Source: The BBC

SO CLOSE to being able to resume his throne, Charles II displayed a subtlety and flexibility that had always eluded his father, in order to achieve his ultimate goal. In consultation with Monck, the exiled King and his courtiers, principally Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, drew up the Declaration of Breda, a conciliatory document, issued on 4th April 1660, representing Charles’ commitments to the English people, recognising the altered political reality of his soon to be reclaimed Kingdom. The Declaration promised an amnesty for all who had fought against the Stuarts, with the exception of those who had signed Charles I’s death warrant (the so-called “regicides”) and high-ranking republicans. The sale of Royalist estates would remain in situ; the Army’s pay arrears would be made good, and religious toleration extended to all but Roman Catholics. Crucially, regular Parliaments were promised, along with Parliamentary control of the Army. It was a masterful document, designed to placate majority moderate Parliamentary opinion, and by implication, promising no return to Royal absolutism. In this context, Parliamentary elections were held and resulted in a Parliament absolutely committed to the restoration of the King and the terms of the Declaration of Breda. This Parliament, officially called the “Convention Parliament”, given the absence of a constitution to sanction it, unsurprisingly became popularly known as the “Cavalier Parliament”. It did not take long for the new Parliament to take on the appearance of a government of the victors, for all Charles’ bridge-building.

There was one last attempt to resuscitate the Good Old Cause. John Lambert escaped from the Tower and sought to raise a republican army to oppose the Restoration, choosing his rallying spot, perhaps symbolically, as Edgehill, the site of the first battle of England’s civil wars. Some four troops of cavalry joined Lambert, but the Army, firmly under Monck’s control and seduced by Charles’ promises of pensions and back pay, at last turned its back on its former commander. Lambert’s force was soon outnumbered and overpowered by a New Model detachment under the command of one of the regicides, Colonel Ingoldsby, who took his former colleague into custody. Ingoldsby would go on to become a significant figure at Charles’ court, unlike Lambert, for whom a lifetime of imprisonment awaited. On 1st May 1660, the Declaration of Breda was read to both Houses with the understanding that it would form the basis of the restoration of the English monarchy.

The way was prepared. Nothing now stood in the path of Charles’ triumphal return to England. Following a formal and personal invitation to return home by Monck and Sir Thomas Fairfax, Charles set sail from The Hague and landed at Dover on 25th May and from there processed through Kent to the capital, greeted all along his route by cheering and ecstatic crowds. His reception in London, once the centre of Parliamentary revolt against his father, was little short of delirious, characterised by bonfires, tolling bells, tapestries hung from windows and fountains allegedly running with wine. He was escorted by 20,000 soldiers, most derived from New Model regiments - perhaps the greatest irony of what became known as “The Restoration”. On 29th May, Charles received loyal addresses from the Speaker of the House of Commons and the former Parliamentary commander, the Earl of Manchester, representing the Other House. Charles was then proclaimed King.

Although the Restoration is generally viewed as being bloodless and a typically English counter-revolution, there was in fact a considerable amount of reckoning. Despite the narrative being set that the Parliamentarians won the civil wars and that the restored monarchy was a shadow of Charles I’s Personal Rule, this is only partially true. Charles II did ensure Parliament passed an Act of Oblivion and Indemnity, which pardoned all who had fought with the Commonwealth’s armed forces, but many of the stalwarts of the Commonwealth were exempted from the Act. In addition to John Lambert’s life imprisonment, several army officers were executed, the most notable being the New Model general and Fifth Monarchist, Thomas Harrison, who was hung, drawn and quartered, meeting his grisly fate with the cheery confidence of someone who knew he would return at God’s right hand to wreak vengeance on his oppressors. Most of the regicides that the new regime could get its hands on were executed, but some survived or were rehabilitated by the new government. General Charles Fleetwood, head of the Army under the post-Cromwell Protectorate, for instance, despite being sentenced to death, managed to successfully claim he had been coerced into signing Charles I’s death warrant, although the fact Monck vouched for him was probably significant. Most of the Major-Generals managed to escape abroad, usually to Europe, while Edward Whalley fled to North America, where he sought refuge amongst the Puritan communities there. John Desborough actually plotted republican revolt from Europe. Extradited, he managed to avoid trial and ultimately retired to Hackney.

Thomas Fairfax, a known opponent to the trial of Charles I and a crucial figure in securing the success of Monck’s overthrow of the Commonwealth, received a royal pardon, and resumed his peaceful retirement, living until 1679, his reputation intact. Arthur Heselrige, fierce republican but scourge of the Protectorate, was perhaps an ambiguous figure to the Royalist regime. He was not arraigned for treason, but he was imprisoned in the Tower. Any ongoing debate as to what to do with the veteran Parliamentarian was resolved by his death within the year. Richard Cromwell, continued his somewhat charmed existence. After his deposition by the Army, Richard lived in exile in France, and was eventually permitted to return to England, dying in 1680. Richard’s brother Henry, often viewed as potentially a more effective successor to their father as Lord Protector, was left unmolested, and became part of the Anglo-Irish landowning class until his death in 1674. In acts of performative “justice”, the deceased regicides, Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, Thomas Pride and John Bradshaw, had their corpses exhumed, were posthumously beheaded, and their bodies publicly displayed as traitors.

The matter of retribution and punishment settled, Charles was now faced with ruling a much-changed English Kingdom and with reaching an equitable settlement with both Scotland and Ireland. Charles handled the post-civil war realms with dexterity and thoughtfulness, but his reign, although undeniably successful given the difficulties of his inheritance, did not do enough to fully resolve the issues of governance and sovereignty that had led to the destruction of his father, and he could not, ultimately, do enough to save the House of Stuart.

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The Restoration: ‘As to things of State - the King settled and loved of all’

The Compromise Settlement of Charles II

King Charles II by John Michael Wright. Source: Wikipedia

FOR MANY former supporters of the Parliamentary cause, the Restoration must have been hard to take. For all the warm words of the Declaration of Breda, it must have felt to those that had followed John Pym, Arthur Heselrige, Oliver Cromwell and John Lambert, and especially the comrades of John Lilburne, that their own world had been turned upside down. For the Restoration, in so many ways, was precisely that. Not only was Charles II settled on his throne which in truth, by 1660, all but the most ardent republicans believed was the only way out of the constitutional impasse the Commonwealth had found itself in, but the House of Lords was re-established; the Church of England, including a hierarchy of bishops was reintroduced; the New Model Army was abolished and even the Divine Right of Kings was reinstated. It must have seemed to the advocates of the Good Old Cause that all those years of tumult, death and revolution were for naught: the Monarchy and all its works was back with a vengeance.

And of course, there was indeed vengeance. As described last time, the regicides that were still alive were pursued mercilessly by the new government, even the dead not being safe from the King’s wrath. In addition, the so-called “Cavalier Parliament” consisting of triumphal Royalist MPs, presided in many respects over a victor’s peace. The disestablishment of the New Model Army was, after the executions of the regicides, the most visible sign of a restored monarchy. The Army had been the instrument of Charles I’s defeat and the constant protector of the Commonwealth, and it had also been a major political player that forcibly dissolved Parliament after Parliament. To see this formidable military force that had destroyed the Royalist armies, crushed the Scots and ended the Irish Rebellion, simply disappear was no clearer sign that not only was the Parliamentary cause dead, but that the gravest threat to the Stuart regime was also no more - and without a shot being fired. The successor regiments that later became the Coldstream Guards and the Royal Horse Guards, comprised the core of a 7,000 man militia, loyal solely to the monarch - a situation that Charles I had long craved. These regiments would become the basis of the standing British Army, whose oath of loyalty remains to the monarch - an echo of the settlement of England’s civil wars.

Charles’ religious settlement was, on the face of it, a restoration of the Anglican Church in its prewar form. Episcopalianism was back, including in Scotland, supported by a new Book of Common Prayer. Bishops were also readmitted to a restored House of Lords, where they sit still. Despite Charles’ Breda promises of religious toleration, the Solemn League and Covenant was repealed, and the cause which had spurred the Scots into rebellion and war against the King’s government in the late 1630s was effectively suppressed. Although Charles himself was personally quite tolerant of different religious persuasions, including notoriously, Roman Catholicism, his Parliament was not. The confident Cavaliers remembered how hard the Presbyterians had tried to enforce their version of Protestantism on the three kingdoms; how the rule of the Major-Generals had tried to squeeze all joy out of Christian worship and, recalled with horror, the republicanism and threat to land ownership that millennial sects, sheltering within the ranks of the Levellers, had tried to introduce. A number of anti- Puritan bills were passed, most notably the Corporation Act of 1661 (which excluded non-Anglicans from public office) and the Five Mile Act of 1665 (which banned non-Anglican ministers from their former livings). These Acts effectively excluded Presbyterians and other low church groups from participating in the new political or religious establishment. This led ultimately to these disenfranchised faithful into forming their own churches. They called themselves Nonconformists and Dissenters, eventually formalising themselves into the various strands of Methodism. Within these churches the spirit of anti-Royalist and Anglican sentiment remained, leading ultimately to eighteenth century radicalism and part of the impulse that fuelled the desire for independence within Britain’s American colonies.

Scotland was freed of military occupation and its Parliament restored, but government garrison troops remained and Scotland never recovered the independent swagger it had enjoyed earlier in the century when it was able to interfere in the affairs of England and influence the outcomes of the civil wars with easy confidence. With its government impoverished and subservient, its independent military strength non-existent, its religion subordinated and the fault line between Highland and Lowland populations exacerbated by the civil wars, Scotland was a shadow of its prewar self. The days of routine Scottish invasions of England were over forever. In less than fifty years, Scotland’s mercantile class, faced with bankruptcy following catastrophic economic decisions and ill-advised colonial adventures, would petition the English Parliament and Crown for an Act of Union, granted in 1707, which would make the United Kingdom a political, as well as a monarchical, reality.

In Ireland, Charles’ government was focused and ensuring rebellion did not recur and made great efforts to rehabilitate, and reconcile with, the landowning Old English aristocracy and breaking the religious solidarity with the Old Irish rural workers and peasants that had driven so much of the rebellion’s early success. Charles’ own pro-Catholic sympathies helped this process, but he also did little to restrain Scottish Protestant settlement in the north and west, thus sowing the seeds of a sectarian conflict that would get ever more vicious over the next three hundred years.

But the Restoration was not absolute and Charles did not intend it to be, whatever the attitudes of the Cavalier Parliament. Charles had not spent half his life prior to his return on the run in order to simply repeat the mistakes of his father. Although not the constitutional monarch envisaged by George Monck, Charles nonetheless attempted to rule in partnership with Parliament. For Charles, his Divine Right to rule was a device to secure his legitimacy, not a principle by which a king should govern. There were several political factors that caused Charles to eventually dissolve the Cavalier Parliament in 1679, but new elections were held immediately. Unlike his father, Charles was never tempted by Personal Rule and was rarely in dispute with his Parliaments, unlike his predecessor governments. Parliamentary rule was solidified under Charles’ settlement in a way unimaginable in the years leading up to the civil wars.

Similarly, for all the anti-Puritanism of his regime, there was no systematic persecution of dissenters and no legal requirement for his subjects to adopt the new Prayer Book or the Anglican Communion. In Ireland, the ferocious oppression of Catholics and Irish self-determination was still in the future, and that would be driven principally by Protestant settlers, exacerbated significantly by the renewal of civil conflict in Ireland in the late 1680s. Charles was a cautious and astute man. His love affair with particularly, the English, population, had significantly dissipated by the end of his reign, but all his subjects, whatever their views of his government, were grateful to him for ensuring peace was maintained and that the conflicts that had led the inhabitants of the British Isles to fight and kill each other for years, were not reignited.

The immediate view of history, that lasted well into the nineteenth century, was that the British civil wars and the republican experiment were anomalies, best forgotten. The skill of the Stuart and Hanoverian regimes in suggesting the civil wars were no more than a family quarrel, quickly forgiven and forgotten, is the reason why there is no direct link between the proto-socialism of the Putney Debates and the the later Radicalism of the eighteenth century. Issues such as land reform and universal suffrage were effectively barred from public debate for 150 years.

Charles’ later reign did contain conflict and there was even a Radical attempt to kidnap the King at one point, but the most dangerous issue was that of the succession. A new political Parliamentary party, with a sneaking admiration for the Good Old Cause, called the Whigs, was formed determined to prevent the accession of Charles’ brother the openly Roman Catholic James, to the throne given the absence of a legitimate heir to Charles. A staunchly Royalist group which became known as the Tories formed to oppose the Whigs and support the Stuart succession. Thus the contours of future Parliamentary debate and factionalism began to take shape.

In February 1685, Charles died. There was, in the event, no challenge initially to James ascending the throne as King James II. However, the new monarch resembled his father in a haughty attitude and political ineptitude. The conflicts that drove civil wars would be reprised and, once again, absolute monarchy would be the loser.

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Marston Moor: ‘If York be Lost, I Esteem my Crown Little Less’

Parliament Wins the North

The Battle of Marston Moor. Source: GettyImages and History Extra

OLIVER CROMWELL started his pro Parliamentary career modestly enough. Born in 1599 to a landowning family in Huntingdon, Cromwell became a Member of the Parliament of 1628, and supported Pym’s attempts to secure greater accountability on the part of the Crown. His political views radicalised as he became attracted to Puritanism (possibly after a bout of depression) and by 1636, following his inheritance of considerable estates in the environs of Cambridge, Cromwell became one of the more influential “backbench” Puritan MPs, now representing Cambridge. When war broke out, Cromwell set about recruiting a cavalry force to support the Parliamentary cause. He fought at Edge Hill, where he was both impressed and horrified by the actions of Rupert’s cavalry, admiring their courage and fighting skills, but astounded at their lack of discipline: lessons he would take with him as he developed his own skills in commanding mounted troops. He became a cavalry colonel in the original Eastern Association army and his reputation for intelligent military leadership stood him in good stead when Parliament reorganised that force in 1644 under the generalship of the Earl of Manchester. Thanks to merit and historical family connections to the Montagu family, Cromwell was appointed as Manchester’s second in command. From that moment on, Oliver Cromwell never looked back.

The military situation entered an extremely dynamic phase as campaigning resumed in spring 1644. The King still remained hopeful that he could bring the war to a swift close by a southern assault on London, despite the stymying of his forces in the north, and the strengthening of the Parliamentary forces in the east. Sir Ralph Hopton, now fully recovered from his wounds, was ordered to advance on the capital from Kent and was opposed by his old friend and rival once again, William Waller. The two forces manoeuvred around each other until finally clashing outside the village of Cheriton in Hampshire on 29th March. Hopton’s force took a defensive posture against which Waller’s men were flailing until a Royalist regiment spontaneously broke ranks and advanced on the enemy. Sir Arthur Heselrige’s red coated so-called “Lobsters”, one of the most disciplined units of cavalry on both sides of the war and one of the few armoured forces at the time, immediately charged the exposed troops and annihilated them. His centre left vulnerable, Hopton had little option but to withdraw, giving the Parliamentarians an unequivocal victory. The Royalist force retreated to Oxford, where it was consolidated into larger formations. The victory at Cheriton therefore meant not only that the threat to London was permanently removed, but that the Royalist presence in the south east had effectively ceased to exist.

The Royalist cause also had reasons to celebrate in March however, because Rupert had succeeded in breaking the Parliamentary siege at Newark and destroying the the enemy forces encamped there. Having stabilised the east Midlands for the Crown, Rupert withdrew to Shrewsbury and awaited orders from the King. After the unexpected and, it now seemed, decisive defeat at Cheriton, the Royalist high command decided that York had to be relieved if the disaster of the loss of the north of the country was to be avoided. Rupert received personal instructions from Charles that seemed to imply saving York was paramount and that this requirement overrode all other imperatives. However there was an ambiguity in the orders as the King also seemed to say that if York was impossible to save, then Rupert should reinforce the King in Oxford. Rupert took the view that York was the priority and was to have to defend his fateful decision for the rest of his life.

Rupert moved north into Parliamentary controlled Lancashire. Bypassing the well defended and staunchly anti Royalist town of Manchester, the prince attacked Bolton, taking the town easily and then sacking it. Over 1,000 Parliamentary soldiers and civilians were massacred by Rupert’s troops giving “no quarter” in an event that was later utilised by Parliament in its claim that the King was a “man of blood”, happy to slaughter his own subjects. Liverpool met a similar fate and by early May, Lancashire was effectively under Royalist control. Meanwhile Parliament had moved to exploit their unexpected triumph at Cheriton. Essex’s and Waller’s forces combined in order to march on Oxford and bring the King to battle in what the war party in the Commons hoped would be the decisive battle of the war. In a concurrent action, Parliament also sent a portion of the Eastern Association army north under Manchester and Cromwell, with instructions to link up with the Fairfaxes and Leslie, and take York, thus bringing the whole of the north under Parliament’s control. The Parliamentary assault on Charles himself ended in an embarrassing failure in June. Essex and Waller did not like each other and the evidence is that Essex resented the dilution of his command that the expansion of Parliamentary armies brought with it. Essex occupied himself relieving the town of Lyme with his whole force, reducing the size of the Parliamentary army attacking Charles. Nonetheless, Waller did succeed in forcing the King into an ignominious retreat from his court at Oxford. However he did not have the forces to bring the King to decisive battle and, after an unsuccessful encounter at Cropredy Bridge, Waller was faced with demands from his own troops that they return home to London, which they did, leaving a relieved Charles to establish a new base of operations at Worcester, and Waller frustrated at the amateurish nature of his soldiers. The debate within Parliament’s command which would eventually result in the formation of the New Model Army had begun.

Rupert meanwhile sent a feinting force, masquerading as a vanguard, towards York from the west, while his main army headed towards the city from the north via Knaresborough. The combined Scots and Parliamentary forces of Leslie, Manchester and the Fairfaxes were deceived and by the time they realised they were arraigned against a phantom army, Rupert had entered York and effectively ended the siege: it was a brilliant tactical manoeuvre. Rupert then consolidated his army with that of Newcastle and the York garrison and moved out of the city, taking up positions on Marston Moor, challenging his Parliamentary opponents to battle. This was undoubtedly a high risk strategy, as defeat would involve all the Royalist in the north, but victory could re-establish full Royalist control in the region and free Rupert to ride to the King’s aid in the south, thus fulfilling both of Rupert’s contradictory royal orders. The Parliamentarians were also aware of the stakes, but elected to give Rupert what he wanted. The two armies faced each other on the Moor on 1st July as a storm began to blow, which delayed proceedings, but on the following day, the Parliantary army began to advance.

The armies were drawn up in traditional fashion, with cavalry on the flanks, artillery to the fore and infantry in the centre. However the 28,000 strong Parliamentary army outnumbered that of the Royalists by almost 10,000 men and the Parliamentarians also occupied the high ground. The Parliamentary troops began to advance down the slope towards their opponents. Although Royalist artillery caused difficultly to Cromwell’s troops on the left, Thomas Fairfax’s horse soon routed their Royalist opposite numbers on the right. The battle became a bruising affair, with the advantage swinging one way then the other, but after Cromwell had succeeded in overcoming his opponents on the left, and Fairfax’ victorious cavalry returned to the field, the Royalist infantry began to find itself surrounded. As the battle wore on in atrocious weather conditions, and Cromwell led disciplined charges from left to right of the battlefield, the Royalists began to break and flee, losing all cohesion. In a glorious but pointless gesture, Newcastle’s personal bodyguard, the White Coats, refused to quit the field or to accept Parliamentary offers of quarter. All but thirty of the regiment died where they stood. The Royalist rout was complete. In one of the bloodiest battles of the civil war, four thousand Royalist soldiers died, while the Parliamentary army lost half that number. Prince Rupert had gambled and lost: Royalist military strength and presence in the north of England was destroyed forever.

The prince retreated into York with the rest of his defeated troops and the next day led his cavalry in a dramatic break out into Lancashire, urging Newcastle to defend the city. But the Earl was a broken man. He had expended a large amount of his personal fortune taking and holding the north for the King and the defeat at Marston Moor shattered him. He could not stand the thought of the ridicule or censure at court that may well have followed, so he resigned his commission and took ship for the continent eventually settling in Paris where he lived in exile until the Restoration in 1660. Rupert meanwhile forever kept the King’s orders on his person, to prove that he had acted on his uncle’s instructions at all times in the disaster that was Marston Moor.

York surrendered to Fairfax on 16th July 1644.