Cavaliers and Roundheads. Christopher Hibbert

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       3 TRIAL OF STRENGTH

       ‘My Lord, we have got the day, let us live to enjoy the fruit thereof.’

      Lord Wilmot

      While the King’s forces were withdrawing from Worcester towards Shrewsbury in the late summer of 1642, the Parliamentarians were on the march towards them. They were commanded by Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, the son of that gifted, wayward Earl who had so fascinated Queen Elizabeth I and been beheaded for attempting a coup d’état against her Council. It was difficult to conceive of a son less like his father. Handsome, reckless and opinionated, exasperatingly conscious of his considerable talents, the father had marched about the Queen’s court, his tall figure leaning forward like the neck of a giraffe as though he were a prince of the blood, beguiling women, carelessly offending or carefully charming men. The son, born in London in 1591, was now fifty-one years old, a stolid, stout, retiring man, plodding, honest and taciturn, often to be seen puffing ruminatively on a pipe. He had been married at the age of thirteen to Frances Howard, the sultry, sensual and unbalanced daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, who was the same age as himself. This young bride had soon afterwards become the mistress of Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, and, with the help of her powerful family, had managed to obtain an annulment of her marriage to Essex on the grounds of his impotence. Essex then married Frances, daughter of Sir William Paulet. This marriage too was unhappy and, so it was whispered, unconsummated. Like her predecessor, Frances took a lover, Sir Thomas Uvedale. Soon afterwards she became pregnant. Essex resignedly acknowledged as his own the resultant baby who died soon after its birth. The parents then separated; and Essex went to live with his sister, wife of the Earl of Hertford, at her house in the Strand.

      By then Essex had seen a good deal of active service on the Continent. He had not much distinguished himself, but his amenable, dutiful reliability and the loyalty he inspired among his subordinates recommended him to Pym and his friends who had, after all, a very circumscribed field of talent from which to make their selection. At least, silent though he so often was behind those thick clouds of smoke from his pipe, Essex seemed to have a good knowledge of the military manoeuvres practised on the Continent by the commanders of the armies in which he had served; and who else, it was asked in London, could be found with Essex’s authority and reputation?

      Essex’s orders were ‘to rescue His Majesty’s person, and the persons of the Prince and the Duke of York out of the hands of those desperate persons who were then about them’. It was still convenient to suppose that it was not the King himself who was at fault but his advisers, that Parliament was taking up arms to protect the King from them, and indeed from himself, rather as though, in the words of an unnamed Member of Parliament, he were a man contemplating suicide, or ‘as if he were at sea and a storm should rise and he would put himself to the helm, and would steer such a course as would overthrow the ship and drown them all’. In obedience to his orders to ‘rescue his Majesty’s person’, Essex presented himself before Parliament to take his leave of its Members. Ignoring the Commons, he addressed a few words to the Lords then left abruptly, declining to wait for a reply. Several Members of the House of Commons went to look for him, ‘hoping to obtain some word of recognition’. Eventually they found him sitting in the Court of Wards puffing on his pipe. He stood up, acknowledged their presence in silence, his hat in one hand, his pipe in the other, and left the room without speaking.

      On 9 September he left London for Northampton. He was cheered as he passed through the streets, though some spectators looked askance upon his troops, ‘ragged looking and marching out of step’, ten thousand of whom had gone on before him, rather more than half of them mounted. Few of them had had any more than the briefest drilling; many were evidently intent upon plunder; and certainly, before they reached Northampton, they had pillaged villages and ransacked houses all along the way, several companies threatening to turn back unless they received their overdue pay. ‘We are perplexed with the insolence of the soldiers already committed,’ one of his officers warned Essex, ‘and with the apprehension of greater. If this go on, the army will grow as odious to the country as the Cavaliers.’

      The Earl of Essex himself had good cause to complain of his men’s conduct, but good reason, too, to hope that order would soon be brought into the ranks, since he had many seasoned officers under his command, both British and foreign. Sir William Balfour, a Scottish professional soldier of strong Protestant views, who had once whipped a priest for trying to convert his wife to popery, was with him as Lieutenant-General of the Horse. Essex could also rely upon Sir James Ramsay, another Scottish professional of proved accomplishments, soon to be commended for his gallantry. To give advice in gunnery there was a French expert, on cavalry tactics a Croatian and a Dutchman, Hans Behre, who had his own troop of Dutch mercenaries and was appointed Commissary-General. Moreover there were men of high social rank among Essex’s officers as well as distinguished Members of Parliament. Denzil Holles, Member for Dorchester, commanded a regiment of foot. John Hampden, Member for Buckinghamshire, also raised a regiment of foot whose men wore green coats and were soon recognized as among the best soldiers on either side. Sir Arthur Haselrig, Member for Leicestershire, commanded a troop of horse; so did Oliver Cromwell, Member for Cambridge. Other commanders of regiments included Henry Mordaunt, second Earl of Peterborough, whose father had been Essex’s General of the Ordnance until his death in June; William Fiennes, first Viscount Saye and Sele; Henry Grey, first Earl of Stamford; Robert Greville, second Baron Brooke; Edward Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, heir of the first Earl of Manchester. William Russell, fifth Earl and later first Duke of Bedford, was appointed Lord-General of the Horse under Sir William Balfour’s watchful eye.

      As Essex’s army advanced towards him, the King continued his withdrawal towards Shrewsbury, pausing on the way near Stafford to address his assembled forces: ‘Your consciences and your loyalty have brought you hither to fight for your religion, your King and the laws of the land. You shall meet with no enemies but traitors, most of them Brownists [followers of the Puritan, John Brown], Anabaptists and Atheists, such who desire to destroy both Church and State and who have already condemned you to ruin for being loyal to us…[I promise, if God gives us victory,] to defend and maintain the true reformed Protestant religion established in the Church of England, to govern according to the known laws of the land [and to] maintain the just privileges and freedom of Parliament.’

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