On the night of 28 March 1644 the Parliamentary army lay
encamped close to the Petersfield–Winchester road, the Royalists a mile and a
half or so to the north, but with an advance guard of brigade strength on the
southern spur of the arena under the command of George Lisle. The number of
cavalry in each army was very similar. Waller and Balfour had about 3,000
horse, but the Royalists may have had 200 or so more. In infantry, however, the
Parliamentary generals had a distinct numerical advantage, and this was to have
a very significant effect on the course and outcome of the battle. Adair
accepts Sir Arthur Haselrig’s estimate of 7,000 musketeers and pikemen, but
this seems very much on the large size. Using Adair’s own estimates of the
strengths of the seven infantry regiments that fought at Cheriton, 5,000 to
5,500 would be a more credible estimate. In addition Waller and Balfour had two
regiments of dragoons, size unknown. According to Hopton, he and Forth had
3,200 foot soldiers. They comprised his own troops 2,000 strong, and 1,200 that
Forth had brought with him from Oxford. Sir William Ogle described the Oxford
contingent as the Queen’s forces, that is infantry Henrietta Maria had brought
from the north in May and July 1643, but it apparently included a contingent
from the Oxford garrison, and also some troops from the Reading garrison, as
George Lisle was colonel of one of the regiments stationed there.
The encounter stage of the battle, which began early the
following morning as soon as the mist cleared, was initially an extension of
the feint and counter-feint that had characterized the previous day’s
skirmishing. Roe claimed that the general officers and colonels had decided to
retreat at a council of war held on the evening before the battle, but Waller
and Balfour seem to have decided to stand their ground, not to retreat.
However, there remains a slight element of doubt. Balfour’s use of language in
his post-battle report can be read as an attempt to pre-empt any rumours that
the initial decision had been to retreat rather than to defend the Hinton
Ampner ridge: ‘We having taken a resolution (by reason of your Excellency’s and
the Committee of Both Kingdom’s commandments) to be wary and cautious to engage
ourselves in a fight with the enemy but on advantage, yet we finding them
resolved to put us to it …’. Possibly a decision to retreat had been overtaken
by events if, as Roe suggests, energetic patrolling during the night by Birch’s
regiment made it impossible to separate the two armies the following day. On
the other hand the occupation of Cheriton Wood suggests resolution, not
indecision, unless, of course, the intention was not to encourage Lisle’s
advance guard to fall back but to secure the left flank of the Parliamentary
army as it retreated towards Petersfield.
The force in Cheriton Wood was made up of 1,000 musketeers
from Colonel Potley’s and the White regiment of the London Trained Bands
supported by a regiment of horse and two pieces of regimental artillery. Waller
and Balfour had also sent another body of musketeers to defend Harley’s little
village that commanded the pass between the far end of the southern spur of the
arena and the high ground on the west bank of the River Itchen. This may also
be seen as a move to secure the other flank of the army in case the Royalists,
denied the chance of attacking its right wing by the forces in Cheriton Wood,
launched an assault against the left wing instead.
Cheriton Wood lay to the right of George Lisle’s position, but overlooking and flanking the southern spur of the arena along which the Royalists intended to deploy if, the wood was smaller than it is today. It was not until the mist began to lift, about two hours after sunrise according to Hopton, that the Royalist generals became aware of what had happened, but continuing with the policy of aggressive defence they had employed throughout the short campaign, they almost certainly moved the entire Royalist army forward to the southern ridge to support Lisle’s brigades of horse and foot. The line of battle extended from the end of the ridge adjacent to Cheriton to a point some way to the east where their troops were within range of Waller’s musketeers in Cheriton Wood. Hopton’s infantry occupied the part of the line nearest to the wood, Forth’s that nearest to Cheriton, but Hopton took care to draw up his infantry and cavalry in dead ground, possibly on the slope of the middle ridge where they could not be shot at by the enemy in the wood. Where the rest of the Royalist horse were deployed at this time in the morning is uncertain, but they are unlikely to have been on the right flank of the army. The valley of the Itchen and the arena were full of enclosures, and thus most unsuitable for cavalry fighting. It can therefore be assumed that the cavalry brigades were drawn up somewhere to the east, but in a position from which they could be brought quickly forward to harry the enemy army as it retreated. Sir John Smith had apparently been sent orders the night before to be ready to lead the pursuit with 1,000 horse.
After the Royalist army had been put into battle formation,
Hopton apparently ordered 1,000 musketeers from his own corps under Colonel
Matthew Appleyard to expel the enemy from Cheriton Wood. However, on emerging
onto the open hillside from the dead ground, the fire they experienced from the
western edge of the wood was so intense that there was every possibility that
they would be forced to fall back if they remained where they were. Hopton
therefore ordered one of Appleyard’s four divisions to move up the dry valley
between the middle and northern spurs of the arena and attack Cheriton Wood
from the north or the north-west with artillery support. This would have been
easy to arrange if, as seems likely, the train of artillery was using Bramdean
Lane to move from Sutton Down to the southern spur of the arena.
This assault from an unanticipated direction supported by
cannon fire was too much for the brigade defending Cheriton Wood. It quickly
took to its heels, but not so quickly as to necessitate the abandonment of its
artillery pieces. There were few casualties, but Colonel George Thompson, the
commander of the cavalry, may have had his leg shattered by a cannon ball at
this point rather than later in the battle. The Royalists probably gained the
impression that a disorderly withdrawal was getting under way, as ‘we could
discern several companies of thirty, of forty, and more in some, running over
the fields in the rear of their army half a mile and as well discern their
horses spanned in their carriages and to their artillery’. Hopton claimed that
he was keen to take advantage of the confusion by launching an attack from the
environs of Cheriton Wood against the rear of Waller’s army with 1,000 foot and
1,000 horse. Forth, however, advised against it and Hopton claims to have been
‘very satisfied’ to accept his opinion.
The Lord General would have had good reason for waiting on
events. With their left flank now totally secure, the Royalists’ position on
the southern spur of the arena was so strong that the enemy were almost caught
in a trap. In order to escape from it, Balfour and Waller had a number of
choices any one of which could have ended in disaster. They are unlikely to
have considered advancing down the Petersfield road towards Winchester, as
their army’s march would have been across open downland with no protection
against the enemy. Taking a more southerly route towards the city, on the other
hand, would have involved moving across difficult country, more downland but
interspersed with wooded valleys, where they could easily fall into a trap
sprung by the Royalist cavalry operating with infantry support. Moreover, in
both cases the enemy’s falling in behind them would have completely cut their
best line of retreat back into Sussex. Other alternatives were little better.
They could have ordered a general attack, but to do so most of their troops
would have had to move across open ground towards an enemy drawn up in an
excellent defensive position. Alternatively they could have fallen back towards
Petersfield, which risked the army falling into disorder and brigades being cut
off and destroyed.
However, there was probably another reason for Lord Forth’s
caution, though it is not mentioned in any of the Royalist accounts, namely the
disparity in numbers between the force he and Hopton commanded and the one led
by Waller and Balfour. The Royalist generals would have been well aware of
this, as they had a very good view of the whole of the Parliamentary army from
George Lisle’s position on the southern spur of the arena. A swift advance
towards the Petersfield–Winchester road at Bramdean by 2,000 of Hopton’s
troops, a body only a fifth the size of Waller’s army, which threatened to cut
off the latter’s best escape route, might be very risky. If the Parliamentary
generals kept their heads, they could easily reinforce their right wing and
possibly inflict great damage on Hopton’s men before Forth could send support.
Eyewitnesses are rather hazy about what happened next on the
morning of 29 March, but a conflation of the reports of observers on both sides
results in quite a high level of consensus on how thrust and counter-thrust led
to a fully fledged battle developing that neither side seems to have wanted. It
appears from Sir Arthur Haselrig’s account of the battle to the House of
Commons, and from an estimate of the time it would have taken Lord Hopton to
re-deploy the Royalist left wing in and around Cheriton Wood, that a period of
between one and one and a half hours elapsed before the next significant
development. Balfour claimed the Parliamentarians decided to remain where they
were after the loss of the wood because the enemy was determined to fight them,
and this was as good a decision as any, given the dangers they faced if they
tried to move away. He therefore drew up his horse in the small heath to the
north of the Petersfield–Winchester road, that is, between the enemy and the
rest of his army, thus shielding it from attack by the forces on the southern
spur of the arena. The cavalry were nevertheless in a very exposed position,
but behind and above them was the massed firepower of the Parliamentary
artillery and most of Waller’s musketeers. The length of the Parliamentary line
is uncertain, but it is doubtful if it stretched in one direction as far as
Bramdean village. The western end, however, was anchored in the little village
mentioned by Robert Harley, and this was essential for the security of the
entire army. If the Parliamentary musketeers lost control of it, not only would
Forth and Hopton have turned Waller and Balfour’s flank, the enemy infantry
would also be in a position to pour devastating fire into the regiments at the
western end of the Parliamentary cavalry line.
When all these arrangements were complete, Waller and
Balfour had as strong a position defending the Hinton Ampner ridge as Forth and
Hopton had defending the southern spur of the arena. Meanwhile, on the Royalist
side Hopton had drawn up his corps in a defensive posture covering all the
approaches to the wood and to East Down, whilst the Lord General’s troops
clustered around the position that Lisle’s brigade had occupied during the
night. Forth’s infantry may even have moved down the slope of the southern spur
as far as a substantial hedge that probably marked the boundary between fields
on the southern spur of the arena and the heath where Balfour had deployed the
Parliamentary cavalry. What is certain at the start of the next stage of the
encounter, however, is that Waller’s army was in the bottom or on the
north-facing slope of the Hinton Ampner ridge, and that the Royalists could
look down upon them.
The exact circumstances surrounding what happened next,
however, are a mystery. The key, I believe, is to appreciate that Waller and
Balfour were behaving in a way that the Royalist generals had not anticipated.
Instead of retreating or attacking, they had remained exactly where they were,
but deployed their army in a defensive formation, which, as Harley commented,
involved facing north rather than west. The only vaguely offensive move, apart
from the brief occupation of Cheriton Wood, had been sending musketeers to
defend the little settlement in the pass by the Itchen. There followed the
Royalists’ first tactical mistake, but one from which Hopton was very careful
to disassociate himself in his narrative. Having put the Royalist left wing
into a defensive posture, he was making his away along the brow of the hill to
consult with the Lord General when he saw to his amazement Forth’s troops ‘too
far advanced, and hotly engaged with the enemy in the foot of the hill, and so
hard pressed, as when he came to Lord Forth he found him much troubled with it
for it seems the engagement was by the forwardness of some particular officers
without order’. The form of words is interesting. Not only is Hopton saying
that it was no responsibility of his, he is also hinting ever so slightly that
Forth had ordered the attack by his use of the word ‘seems’. Colonel Slingsby
was much more forthright. He stated in no uncertain terms that ‘we were ordered
to fall on from both wings’, and thus, by implication, by somebody holding a
higher rank than his own. This cannot have been Hopton’s major general of foot,
Sir John Paulet, who was carrying messages between Hopton and Forth, and who
had no jurisdiction over Forth’s troops. As Sir Jacob Astley, the major general
of the Oxford army, was not present at Cheriton, the officer concerned can only
have been the Lord General himself. The behaviour of the enemy during the night
and early morning suggested that enemy generals were considering retreat as one
of several options. This view would have been further strengthened if Forth had
received intelligence from Hopton’s wing after the capture of Cheriton Wood on
the lines of the passage from Slingsby’s account reproduced above. If so, it
would surely have crossed Forth’s mind that all that was needed to induce
Waller and Balfour to withdraw was a thrust against their other wing which, if
successful, would render their position along the Petersfield–Winchester road
untenable.
