Edge Hill: The Battle and Battlefield; With Notes on Banbury & Thereabout. Edwin Alfred Walford
href="#litres_trial_promo">[b] of its having been cut to commemorate the slaughter of a chieftain’s horse at the battle of Towton, in 1461, the chieftain preferring to share the perils of the fight with his followers.
II
The reign of King Charles I. showed a widening of the difference between the ecclesiastic and puritan elements of the English community—elements which were the centres of the subsequently enlarged sections, royalist and parliamentarian. In the later dissentions between the King and the Commons it was early apparent how widespread had been the alienation of the people from the King’s cause—an alienation heightened, as Green in his “Short History” tells us, by a fear that the spirit of Roman Catholicism, so victorious on the continent, should once more become dominant in England. How great was the tension may be known from the fact of the contemplated emigration to the American colonies of such leaders as Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Warwick, Lord Brooke, and Sir John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell. When the rupture at last came, the Parliament was found to have secured the larger arsenals, and also to have forces at its disposal in the trained bands of London and in the militia, which it was enabled rapidly to enrol. Though the unfurling of the Royal Standard near Nottingham failed to secure many adherents to the King’s cause, Essex hesitated to attack the royalists when they might have been easily dispersed, thinking no doubt to overawe the King by mere show of force. Yet when Charles began recruiting in the neighbourhood of Shrewsbury, he was soon able to gather an army, and on October 12th, 1642, he commenced his march upon London. The astute and carefully moderate policy of the Commons was to rescue the King from his surroundings, and to destroy the enemies, especially the foreign enemies, of the State, about the King’s person. The sanctity of the King’s person was yet a prominent factor—the belief in divinity of Kingship, notwithstanding all the misrule there had been, was yet alive in the hearts of the people. Therefore when the King had gathered his forces together and began his Southward march, Lord Essex with his army was commissioned “to march against his Majesties Army and fight with them, and to rescue the persons of the King, Prince and Duke of York.” The Earl of Essex, with the Parliamentarian forces, was at that time in Worcestershire, endeavouring to prevent the recruiting of the King’s troops; and though the Earl moved two days later on by rapid marches into Warwickshire, it was only to find that he had been out-marched by the King, who, after resting at Southam, stood with the Royalist army at Edgcot across the way to the capital. That this had been accomplished, notwithstanding the opposition of the strongholds of Warwick and Coventry, speaks not unfavourably for the generalship of Earl Lindsay, the King’s Lieutenant-General, whom we find at Edgcot contemplating an attack upon Banbury Castle. The King’s was a good position: it commanded all the roads to London, held Banbury in its hand, covered the Cherwell bridge and fords, and had within touch the dominating escarpment of Edge Hill. If the purpose was the subjection of some prominent leaders of the Parliamentarians it succeeded only in the taking of Lord Saye and Sele’s house at Broughton, and of Banbury, and Banbury Castle; in the partial destruction of Lord Spencer’s house[B] at Wormleighton, and in sending a summons to Warwick Castle to surrender.
Kineton, on October 22nd, was the headquarters of the Parliamentary army, the troops in the evening disposing themselves on the surrounding plain. “The common soldiers have not come into a bed, but lain in the open field in the wet and cold nights,” says the Worthy Divine[PG] “and most of them scarcely eat or drank at all for 24 hours together, nay, for 48, except fresh water when they could get it.” The want of transport, which had necessitated Hampden and Hollis struggling behind a day’s march in the rear in the neighbourhood of Stratford-on-Avon, had no doubt entailed these privations upon the army. Nor do the Royalists appear to have fared better, for Clarendon[B381] complains of the hostility of the country people, stating also that the circuit in which the battle was fought, being between the dominions of Lord Saye and Lord Brooke, was the most eminently corrupt of any in the kingdom. The King’s forces seem to have been quartered about the country between Wormleighton and Cropredy, Prince Rupert with his cavalry near Wormleighton, the King himself staying at Edgcot House, whilst the main body of the army occupied the slopes and high lands on the Northamptonshire side of the Cherwell vale near by. Thus the three roads North of Banbury were dominated by the Royalist troops, and the fourth, the old London road, was within striking distance.
The preaching of the local divines, Robert Harris, John Dod, and Robert Cleaver, had no doubt added largely to the enthusiasm of the country folk for the cause of the Commons. Though no great increase of the King’s forces could be expected in such a district, yet there is an interesting account in Kimber and Johnson’s Baronetage[NO] (1771) of a country gentleman Mr. (afterwards Sir Richard) Shuckburgh:
“Sir Richard Shuckburgh, Knt., eldest son and heir, was in no way inferior to his ancestors. As King Charles I. marched to Edgecot, near Banbury, on October 22nd, 1642, he saw him hunting in the fields with a very good pack of hounds, upon which it is reported that he fetched a deep sigh, and asked who the gentleman was that hunted so merrily that morning when he was going to fight for his crown and dignity; and being told that it was this Richard Shuckburgh, he was graciously ordered to be called to him, and was by him very graciously received. Upon which he went immediately home, armed all his tenants, and the next day attended him in the field, where he was knighted, and was present at the battle of Edge Hill. After the taking of Banbury Castle, and his Majesty’s retreat from those parts, he went to his own seat and fortified himself on the top of Shuckborough Hill, where, being attacked by some of the Parliament forces, he defended himself till he fell, with most of his tenants about him; but being taken up and life perceived in him, he was carried away prisoner to Kenilworth Castle, where he lay a considerable time, and was forced to purchase his liberty at a dear rate.”
A fight for the possession of Lord Spencer’s house at Wormleighton was the Saturday evening’s prelude to the Sunday’s battle. It had been garrisoned by some Parliamentarian troops sent by Essex, and in Rupert’s attack some prisoners were taken, from whom, it is said, the whereabouts of the Parliamentarian army was learned.[Y] The house is said to have been partly burned down in the fight, but it is not clear whether it happened then or in the year 1643. Though with the Parliamentarians in the early part of the Rebellion, Lord Spencer became Royalist long ere the campaigns were over. The fact of an outpost being pushed so far as Wormleighton shows that the Dassett Hills were held by the Parliament forces. The Royalists had marched into the heart of a hostile country, Warwick Castle and Lord Brooke on the N.W., Fawsley House and the Knightleys on the N.E., and on the South, Sir A. Cope and Hanwell Castle, and Banbury and Broughton Castle. Lord Northampton’s lands on the Western border of Oxfordshire were near enough to find touch with the King. His house played locally a most prominent part for the Royalist cause, and its military leadership was of the best.
III
Early on the morning of Sunday, October 23rd, Prince Rupert forwarded information to the King that the camp fires of the Parliamentarian army had been seen on the plain between Edge Hill and Kineton. With keen foresight Earl Lindsay abandoned the intended advance upon Banbury, and speedily began the movement of the Royalist army towards the fringe of hills which dominates the Warwickshire vale. It seems at first strange that the Parliamentarians, familiar as so many of them were with the physical features of the neighbourhood, should have neglected when so near to secure possession of some part of the Edge Hill ridge. This, however, is explained in a pamphlet of the time,[PH] “An Exact and True Relation of the Dangerous and Bloudy Fight between his Majestie’s Army and the Parliament near Keynton.” Therein we learn that the artillery were unready, for want of draught horses, and with Colonel Hampden and Colonel Grantham were forced to be left behind, and hence no advance could safely be made beyond Keynton.
Hampden had with him three regiments of foot, nine or ten troops of horse, some companies of dragooners, and seven pieces of cannon, with the necessary ammunition train,[PB] perhaps about 4,000 men in all. The troops of the Parliament were quartered in the villages of the plain. Tradition says that Tysoe was occupied, and that the soldiers took the bread from the village ovens ere they marched down street to the fight.