The King Charles I’s military preparations got off to an
uninspiring start. On his arrival in Yorkshire the local Trained Bands were
called out and although they accompanied him on an abortive attempt to secure
the great magazine at Hull on 29 April, it was also clear that they would not
be willing to march beyond the county boundary. If he was to raise a proper
army he needed to look elsewhere.
In June therefore the King began issuing both Commissions of
Array, empowering the authorities in each county to muster and arm troops, and
also military commissions directing named individuals to raise regiments.
Although some units were raised in Yorkshire it soon became clear that a more
central location should be chosen for the mustering point. To that end
therefore he left York and formally set up his standard at Nottingham on 22
August 1642. By this symbolic act he announced that he was taking the field not
as Charles Stuart, but as King of England and that all who stood against him
were rebels. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that the choice of
Nottingham was less than inspired.
Parliament too was busily enlisting volunteers. Backed by
City money and ready access to both existing magazines and the continental arms
markets, it planned to raise no fewer than twenty regiments of foot for an army
to be led by Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex. The call met with an enthusiastic
response and on 18 August two of those regiments were ordered to Warwickshire.
Having been joined on the road by a third regiment, they successfully brushed
aside a Royalist detachment at Southam on the 22nd1 and afterwards occupied
Coventry, leaving Sir Jacob Astley to pessimistically declare: ‘He could give
no assurance that the King would not be taken out of his bed if the rebels made
a brisk attempt to that purpose.’
On 7 September more regiments left London and Essex opened
his headquarters at Northampton on the 10th. In the face of this growing threat
the King was persuaded to move westwards either to Shrewsbury or Chester where
he could pick up the numerous levies expected out of Wales and the North West.
Accompanied by just five regiments of foot and a bare 500 horse, he evacuated
Nottingham on the 13th and marching by way of Derby, Uttoxeter, Stafford and
Wellington, he established himself at Shrewsbury on the 20th while his nephew,
Prince Rupert took up an advanced position at Bridgenorth with the cavalry. It
took a few days for Essex to learn of this move, and consequently, he did not
leave Northampton until the 19th, with the intention of occupying Worcester. In
so doing he precipitated the first serious clash of the campaign.
In July the Oxford colleges had pledged their silver plate
to the King, but making the offer and actually delivering it were two entirely
different matters. A cavalier officer, Sir John Byron was therefore ordered to
Oxford with 150 horse and dragoons and instructions to secure as much of it as
possible. Given that the Midlands were already infested with Parliamentarian
detachments and recruiting parties this was a risky business, but any delay
could mean that the plate might be seized by the Parliamentarians instead –
Oliver Cromwell had already prevented a similar donation by the Cambridge
colleges. In the event the first phase of the operation went smoothly enough.
Byron and his newly raised regiment were convoyed south as far as Leicester by
Prince Rupert and apart from a minor skirmish at Brackley they arrived
unmolested on 28 August. Naturally, it took some time to gather in the plate
and assemble a pack-train and as the days passed Byron’s situation grew ever
more perilous. This was particularly so after Rupert’s withdrawal from
Leicester on 5 September. Returning to Nottingham was no longer possible, so
instead spurred on by the news that Essex was establishing him self at
Northampton, Byron evacuated Oxford on the 10th and headed westwards.
Slowed down by the heavily laden pack-train he took ten days
to cover the sixty-odd miles from Oxford to Worcester and, having thrown
himself into the dubious shelter of the city’s crumbling walls on the 20th, he
decided to dig in there and wait for help. As the King was also on the move he
may in any case have been uncertain as to where to go next. At any rate Rupert,
alerted to his plight, moved south and two days later was at Bewdley, but by that
time the Parliamentarians were also closing in fast.
At dawn on the morning of the 22nd a detachment of about
1000 of Essex’s horse and dragoons led by Colonel John Brown made a
half-hearted attempt to force the city’s Sidbury Gate. The guard refused to be
intimidated but although Brown made off before Byron could mount a sortie, he
had no intention of giving up. Hauling off to the south he crossed the Severn
at Upton and then headed back up the west bank to take up an ambush position
just south of the river Teme at Powick shortly before dawn on the 23rd.
Worcester itself lay on the east bank and Brown correctly foresaw that when
Essex arrived Byron would try to make a run for it up the west bank. As soon as
the convoy broke cover Brown planned to move forward and snap it up in open
country and so although the dragoons took up a covering position on a low ridge
overlooking the Terme he kept his cavalry mounted and ready to move at a
moment’s notice.
For a time nothing happened, but later that afternoon a number
of Parliamentarian sympathisers hurried out of the city to advise him that
Byron was preparing to leave. As the Royalists can have been only too well
aware that Brown was waiting for them this could only mean that Essex was
approaching. Sure enough confirmation of this came at 4pm and Brown decided to
make his move.
Oddly enough, there appears to have been a surprising lack
of enthusiasm on the part of some of his troop commanders. The MP Captain
Nathaniel Fiennes for one is said to have urged caution, but Brown had his
heart set on capturing the convoy and while he mounted up his dragoons Colonel
Edwin Sandys led the rest of the cavalry across the narrow pack bridge and into
the equally narrow lane beyond. Unfortunately, what neither Brown nor Sandys
realised was that in the meantime Prince Rupert had arrived and in order to
cover Byron’s withdrawal was taking up a blocking position in Wick Field, just
to the north of the bridge. The hedges lining the lane were consequently
stuffed full of Royalist dragoons who very properly saluted Sandys with a
volley delivered at point-blank range. Sandys naturally responded by spurring
forward in order to get clear of the lane and into Wick Field, but there he
received a second unwelcome shock, for the field was full of Royalist
cavalrymen frantically catching and mounting their horses.
Not expecting a Parliamentarian move so late in the day, the
cavaliers had literally been caught napping. All or most of them had dismounted
and were sleeping under the trees and now a desperate race developed as both
sides deployed into a hasty battle-line. Having been forewarned by the noise of
the ambush, the Royalists had a crucial few moments’ advantage and Rupert
charged first, sword in hand. Only one of the Parliamentarian troops, commanded
by Fiennes, seems to have put up much of a fight. Sandys himself went down and
his whole command was sent tumbling back down the lane. As soon as the ambush
was tripped Brown had dismounted his dragoons again and now he checked the
Royalist pursuit at the bridge, but the fugitives themselves kept going,
recrossed the Severn at Upton and running into Essex’s own Lifeguard troop at
Pershore carried them away in the general rout.
It is difficult to assess the casualties suffered by either
side in this affair and all that can be said is that the Royalists reckoned to
have taken about 50 or 60 prisoners. They also put it about that they had
killed and wounded as many more, but given the brief duration of both fighting
and pursuit, this claim is probably more optimistic than accurate. Naturally
enough, their own losses were light although a surprising number of officers
seem to have managed to get themselves wounded as a result of going into action
without waiting to buckle on their armour. On one thing at least both sides
were agreed: Sandys’ Regiment was destroyed as a military unit and although the
fight was otherwise of no real military significance it had enhanced Royalist
morale and left the Parliamentarian cavalry with a decided inferiority complex.
Balked of his prey, Essex occupied Worcester on the 24th and
then waited for the rest of his forces to catch up. His army had still not been
fully concentrated when he took it out of Northampton and it was not until two
weeks later that the last of them trudged in. On 7 October Cholmley’s Regiment
was pushed up the valley as far as Bridgenorth but this was evidently
considered a little too exposed, for by the 11th Essex had established a proper
set of forward positions in the area of Bewdley and Kidderminster. Despite his
brief to seek out the King, Essex seems to have been reluctant to act
aggressively and instead his dispositions indicate that he was anticipating a
Royal advance down the Valley.
Unfortunately, if one excepts the vicarious employment of
spies, this tripwire was the extent of Essex’s intelligence gathering. If the
King did what was expected of him the detachments at Kidderminster and Bewdley
would give adequate warning of the direction and strength of the offensive and
perhaps even delay it while Essex brought his main force out of Worcester to
meet the Royalists on ground of his own choosing. The King, however, failed to
oblige. While a march down the Valley was certainly the obvious approach, the
professional soldiers advising the King successfully argued for a thrust
straight at London. Essex would certainly try to intercept such a move, but it
was better that the inevitable encounter should take place in the Midlands
where the countryside was generally open, rather than in the Severn Valley
where the numerous enclosed fields would hamper the employment of the
Royalists’ best asset – their cavalry.
In order to cover this movement Rupert marched on 10 October
to Shifnal and then from there to Wolverhampton and down to Stourbridge on the
14th. In the face of this advance Lord Wharton obligingly fell back from
Kidderminster and confirmed to Essex that the King was indeed coming down the
Valley. In reality the King had actually marched out of Shrewsbury with all his
foot on the 12th, and by the 19th, when Essex at last realised what was
happening, the Royalists were at Kenilworth with the road to London wide open
before them. There was no question of course of their making a dash for the
capital while Essex’s army remained in being, but the threat was sufficient to
bring the unfortunate general marching eastwards and worse still, marching
blind.
It was at this point that the evil effects of the Powick
Bridge debacle first became apparent. Essex ought to have had his cavalry out
observing the Royalists but instead he kept them close at hand and lacking
proper intelligence the two armies blundered into each other by accident.
Contact was established not through aggressive patrolling but through the
chance encounter of two parties of Quartermasters seeking billets at
Wormleighton in Warwickshire on the 22nd. The Royalists were evidently taken
just as unawares but they won the fight which followed and on further
investigation found Essex moving into quarters around the small market town of
Kineton.
At midnight orders were given for the Royalists to
concentrate later that morning on Edgehill, a three-mile-long ridge lying
astride the Kineton to Banbury road. They were also as it happened forming up
between Essex and London. Bad weather on the march had been forcing both armies
to disperse each night in search of shelter and consequently they were slow to
concentrate. Rupert seems to have been on the ridge by daybreak but it was
after two before the King’s army was fully concentrated and some of Essex’s
regiments were still arriving as the battle ended.
Edgehill proper is rather too steep and commanding to invite an attack and so the Royalists descended about as far as the 350-foot contour line which represents the point at which the slope rather abruptly begins to level out and fall away rather more gently towards the north-west and the village of Kineton. Most of the ground was taken up with an open expanse of unenclosed ridges and furrows known as Red Horse Field, which offered no impediment to a textbook deployment and thanks to the preparation of a map by the Walloon engineer Bernard de Gomme it is a relatively straightforward matter to reconstruct the Royalist dispositions.
The cavalry deployment at first glance appears quite
straightforward, although a close examination throws up some interesting
questions. In the first place de Gomme omits any mention of the Royalist
dragoons, but it is clear from other sources that four regiments were present –
and not three as is usually assumed – under the overall command of an
experienced professional soldier named Sir Arthur Aston. According to the Duke
of York, Aston (who had just been commissioned as Major General of Dragoons)
took post on the right and a number of sources also testify to the presence
there of Colonel James Usher’s Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Henry
Washington. The second regiment in his little brigade is unidentified, but
there is no reason to doubt that it was Sir Edmund Duncombe’s since both
regiments on the left can be identified. Colonel Edward Grey’s Regiment was
certainly there and Bulstrode refers to the dragoons on that flank being
commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George Lisle and Lieutenant Colonel John Innes.
The latter is known to have commanded Prince Rupert’s Dragoons and therefore
Lisle presumably fought under Grey, who also appears from the Duke of York’s
account to have served as acting brigade commander. While both Washington and
Grey were to be employed in clearing the hedges to their immediate front the
role played by Rupert’s and Duncombe’s dragoons is less certain, although
Belayse asserted that: ‘before every body of foot were placed two pieces of
cannon, and before them the dragoons and 1,200 commanded musqueteers as Enfants
Perdu.’ If true this would suggest that in addition to covering the flanks the
dragoons formed a rudimentary skirmish line ahead of the infantry brigades.
There is no evidence that any of these regiments were
particularly strong, and as the Royalists are generally credited with having
around 1,000 dragooners it can be assumed that both Aston’s and Grey’s brigades
mustered 500 men apiece.
As to the Horse, de Gomme’s representation of their
deployment appears at first glance to be quite straightforward with both wings
being drawn up in ‘checquer’, that is with three regiments in the front line
and two more in the rear covering the gaps between.
On the extreme left of the front line stood three squadrons
of Lord Wilmot’s Regiment, and then Lord Grandison’s and Lord Caernarvon’s
regiments with two squadrons apiece. In the second line were Sir Thomas Aston’s
and Lord Digby’s regiments, each forming only a single squadron. With the
exception of Lord Wilmot’s Regiment the number of cornets depicted by de Gomme
corresponds to the number of troops known to have been mustered with each
regiment and the additional cornet in Wilmot’s outermost squadron may represent
the troop commanded by ‘Blind Harry’ Hastings, whose whereabouts are otherwise
unknown. Assuming this to be the case it would seem likely that the first line,
commanded by Wilmot himself, numbered about 850–900 officers and men, with a
further 300 or so in support.
Turning to the right wing, however, there at first appears
to be an odd discrepancy both as to the number of comets depicted by de Gomme
and in the apparent strength of Sir John Byron’s Regiment. On the extreme right
of the front line stood the King’s Lifeguard comprising a single squadron said
by Sir Philip Warwick to have been 300 strong. Its proper place should have
been with the King himself, but stung by unkind jibes from the rest of the
cavalry they insisted on taking part in the attack.
The Lifeguard aside there were, as on the left, three
regiments in the front line: the Prince of Wales’ Regiment, Prince Rupert’s and
Prince Maurice’s Regiments. All three were formed in two squadrons and all
three according to de Gomme’s plan mustered four troops apiece. Maurice’s
Regiment certainly had only four troops but the other two were rather stronger
with Rupert’s mustering six troops and the Prince of Wales’ perhaps as many as
eight. Conversely, however, Sir John Byron’s Regiment in the second line is depicted
with six troops organised in two squadrons. As he had mustered no more than 200
horse and dragoons at Worcester only a month before this looks rather unlikely.
It is rather more probable therefore that the two squadrons which de Gomme
shows under Sir John Byron’s command is actually an ad hoc brigade comprising
his own embryonic cavalry regiment and the reserve troops of the Prince of
Wales’ and Prince Rupert’s regiments.
Assuming that one third of both regiments went into the
reserve, as was certainly a common practice, then the front line ought to have
numbered close on 900 officers and men, while Byron’s two reserve squadrons may
have mustered anything from 300 to 500 men depending on just how strong his own
regiment was. Both wings of horse were therefore of a similar size except for
the addition of the 300 Lifeguards on the right.
The equally neat-looking deployment of the infantry forming
the centre masks a furious row over their deployment. Like the cavalry, they
were initially drawn up in ‘checquer’ with three brigades in the front line and
two in the second.
From right to left stood Colonel Charles Gerard’s brigade,
comprising his own, Sir Lewis Dyve’s and Sir Ralph Dutton’s regiments. In the
centre of the front line Colonel Richard Fielding’s brigade was made up from
Sir Thomas Lunsford’s, Colonel Richard Bolle’s, Sir Edward Fitton’s and Sir
Edward Stradling’s regiments, but apparently not his own one which may have
been part of a small force covering Banbury. Finally, on the left Colonel Henry
Wentworth’s brigade comprising Sir Gilbert Gerard’s, Sir Thomas Salisbury’s and
Lord Molyneux’s regiments. Covering the substantial gaps between these brigades
were the two standing in the second line; on the right, Sir John Belasyse’s
brigade which again consisted of his own, Sir William Pennyman’s and Thomas
Blagge’s regiments, and on the left; Sir Nicholas Byron’s brigade comprising
the King’s Lifeguard of Foot (de Gomme depicts the Royal standard with the
right hand division of this brigade), the Lord General’s and Sir John
Beaumont’s regiments. On the basis of a pay warrant dated 16 November 1642,
just three weeks after the battle, it has been estimated that the strength of
these brigades was probably in the region of 1800 or 1900 men apiece.
The operational deployment of these brigades proved to be
controversial. The King’s Lord General, the Earl of Lindsey intended to array
them in the conventional Dutch or German manner, that is with two battalions up
and one back. Each of these battalions would have been drawn up with a stand of
pikes in the centre and musketeers on each wing. Instead a furious row broke
out when the Field Marshall Patrick Ruthven insisted on employing a quite
different formation known as the Swedish Brigade.
This was essentially a diamond formation comprising four
battalions. The point battalion was drawn up with its stand of pikemen forward
and the musketeers behind. To the right and left rear of this battalion were
two more, deployed with their pikes towards the centre of the formation and the
musketeers on the outside. The fourth or reserve battalion was deployed like
the first and standing directly behind it.
There is no doubting that this was a complicated formation,
which required the constituent regiments to be broken up and their personnel
redistributed throughout the brigade. At first sight therefore it seems to have
been asking too much of the inexperienced Royalist infantry and it has been
suggested that the adoption of the ‘Swedish’ brigade contributed to their poor
performance in the battle. However, the decision was not blindly based upon
dogma but upon a very sensible appreciation of just how poorly equipped those
infantrymen really were.
It is clear from de Gomme’s map and from the surviving
records of arms and ammunition issued in the months after the battle that at
this early stage of the war most regiments could only muster equal numbers of
musketeers and pikemen – and some perhaps more pikemen – rather than the two
musketeers for each pikeman required to form German-style battalions. This
shortage of musketeers was obviously going to place the Royalists at a
significant disadvantage in a firefight so Ruthven decided to form them up in
the old ‘Swedish’ brigade which was in fact an assault formation quite
literally spearheaded by pikemen.
As to the King’s artillery, little needs to be said. A pair
of light guns were attached to each infantry brigade and six heavier ones
appear to have been emplaced just to the north of Radway, some 300 metres
behind Gerard’s brigade.
