The Battle of
Edgehill during the
English civil war depicting Charles I before the battle of Edgehill by Sir
Edwin Landseer and Prince Rupert with his Royalist cavalry by Stanley
Berkeley. Both military paintings shown in fine art military prints. To
order your print use our secure ordering facility.
EdgeHill Excerpt fromThe
British Battles On Land & Sea By Evelyn Wood
The political situation prior to the Outbreak of the Civil War
-1642-1651: - Charles I succeeded his father, James I in 1625 and then
impressed those about him as being “temperate, chaste and serious.”
In pursuance of arrangements made a year earlier, he was married at
Canterbury to Henrietta, sister of Louis XIII a fortnight after the
funeral of James I.
The young King was soon in trouble with both Houses of Parliament,
for he had the despotic ideas of Queen Elizabeth without her tact.
She generally acted on Lord Burleigh’s advice to his Sovereign,
which was “Gain the hearts of your subjects, and you will have their
hands and their purses.”
Charles I dissolved Parliament, August 12th, but before
the members separated they expressed decided adverse opinions on the
conduct of the King’s advisers, animadverting on much which had been
done, and which was, in the view of Parliament, against the interests of
England. The new
parliament assembled February 27th, 1626, was greatly irritated
by the king’s speech, magnifying his prerogative and belittling their
attributes. This discontent
was greatly increased by the king’s peremptory letters written to the
speaker.
The House persisted in its determination to impeach the Duke of
Buckingham, the King’s favourite, and principal adviser, and Charles
caused two members of the House to be arrested.
On the other hand the house imprisoned a man on a complaint made by
the King. All three prisoners were soon released; the king then had
trouble with the House Of Lords, he having committed the Earl of Arundel
to the Tower. The peers
resented this arbitrary act, and eventually the Earl was released. Charles dissolved Parliament, June 15th, the
second within fifteen months.
The Duke of Buckingham, who escaped punishment by the dissolution,
led an expedition to La Rochelle, which ended disastrously, and on the
return of the soldiers the inhabitants of England declined to have them
billeted in their houses.
For the next twelve years there was a continuous struggle between
the King and his subjects, although from 1629 to 1640 the feelings of the
people could not be legitimately expressed.
Two men in whose persons most of the Monarch’s failing were
intensified unfortunately advised the King in most things.
William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.
He and the King wished to make the Monarch supreme in the sate, and
to admit no divergence from the Established Church.
Laud got his way, flogging Presbyterian ministers, and cropping the
ears o scurrilous pamphleteers, till 1640.
From 1629 to 1640 the king assisted by Laud and Strafford, governed
without a Parliament; they harassed every class, the Star Chamber dealing
with offences against government, and Laud’s Court of High Commission
coercing the clergy into obeying the “Act of Uniformity.”
Eventually, when the Scots rose against Laud’s Prayer Book,
Charles I, finding that the troops he had led to the Border would not
fight called another Parliament. It
sat for twenty-two days. Next
year his financial necessities obliged him to summon another Parliament,
some members of which retained their seats for thirteen years.
The sword
was drawn in August 1642, and soon after in every shire of England, two
hostile factions appeared against each other in arms, and for a time it
was not easy to say which of the adverse parties was the more formidable.
The House of Parliament held London, and commanded the adjacent
counties, the large towns and seaports, the fleet, and the River Thames. They had at their disposal nearly all the military stores of
the kingdom, and were able to impose duties on goods imported from abroad
and on various productions of home industry; while the king was ill
provided with artillery and ammunition.
The taxes, which he was enabled to lay on those rural districts,
which were temporarily occupied by his troops produced far less than the
Parliament, could draw from the City of London alone.
For pecuniary aid he relied chiefly on the generous munificence of
his general highborn adherents. Many
of these deeply mortgaged their old ancestral estates, pawned their
jewels, melted their plate, the wassail bowls, and silver chargers, in
order to assist their struggling king. When the factions flew to arms the soldiers of
the King were chiefly gentlemen and their immediate dependants, well
mounted and skilled in the use of the arms; while the ranks of the
Parliament were recruited from yeoman farmers and tradesmen, as yet raw
and untrained. The king in
person commanded the Cavaliers, and the Earl of Essex the Roundheads;
while Prince Rupert, the nephew of Charles, led the Royalist cavalry.
Excluded
from Hull, where all the arms procured for the campaign against the Scots
were stored, Charles unfurled the Royal standard at Nottingham on August
25th.
Charles had found that the Parliament denounced his proclamations;
he retaliated.
Having sounded the disposition of the loyal and gallant cavaliers
of Yorkshire, he summoned all his “loving subjects” north of the
Trent, and within twenty miles south of that river, to meet him in arms at
Nottingham.
At the first muster of the king’s force at Nottingham was so
small that he did not feel himself justified in attempting to attack the
Earl of Essex, who, when the scattered bodies of the Parliamentary army
joined him at Northampton, found himself at the head of 15,000 men.
Charles therefore deemed it more prudent to retie by slow marches
towards Derby, and thence to Shrewsbury, in order to encourage the levies,
which his friends were raising in those parts.
With these forces the King marched from Shrewsbury, intending to
give battle as soon as possible to those of the parliament, which were
continually augmented by recruits from London; and in order to bring that
crisis about, he moved in the direction of the capital, which he knew
Essex would not abandon him.
Two days after, the Earl began his march from Worcester.
“Shrewsbury and Worcester, the places from which the two Generals
set out, are not above twenty miles distant; yet had the two marched ten
days in this mutual ignorance.
So much had military skill, during a long peace, decayed in
England.”
Prelude by a skirmish at Powick Bridge, in which Prince Rupert was
victorious, the opening and first pitched battle of the Civil War was
fought at Edgehill, on October 23rd, 1642.
The army of the king was at Banbury; that of the Parliament at
Kineton, in Warwickshire, when Prince Rupert brought intelligence of the
advance of the latter.
As the Kings troops marched over the hills they saw those of Essex
getting into position in a vale, which lies midway between Kineton and
Edgehill.
Having left in his rear 2,000 infantry, 500 horse, and some of his
artillery, Essex was in no hurry to engage, and was satisfied that he had
arrested the Kings march on London.
Prince Rupert commanded the right wing of cavalry.
The left was under Commissary-General Wilmot, aided by Sir Arthur
Aston; Lord Lindsey led the infantry.
Sir Philip Stapleton led the right wing of the Parliamentary army,
consisting of three regiments of horse, with the heaviest cannon.
The brigade of Sir john Meldrum, a Scottish Puritan, led the van;
Essex led the centre, Lord Brooke and Hollis the rear.
The left wing consisted of 24troops of horse, led by Sir James
Ramsay, a Scoto-Swedish officer.
About two in the afternoon, the King, who was accoutred in mail,
gave the signal for battle by firing a cannon with his own hand.
Then ensued between the two armies a cannonade, which lasted for
about an hour, when the infantry began to engage.
Prior to this, Prince Rupert, marching down the slope with the
Royal right wing, to charge the enemy’s left, was suddenly joined from
amid their ranks by an entire troop under Sir faithful Fortescue, who had
just come over from Ireland.
Wheeling about, his soldiers now charged sword in hand upon those
they had deserted.
This incident inspired such doubt in the cavalry of Essex, each man
then mistrusting his comrade that they failed to withstand the fury of
Rupert’s attack.
They broke, were utterly routed, and pursued for more than two
miles from the field of battle.
During this cavalry pursuit the pike men and musketeers on both
sides had been engaged without any advantage on either hand.
The king’s infantry, when endeavouring to line some hedges on the
right of Essex, were driven in by Dragoons, but the main body, with the
Royal Standard, pressed on within musket shot of the enemy.
“Upon which” says Ludlow, “we observing no horse to encounter
withal, charged them, with some loss from their pikes, though very little
from their shot; but not being able to break them, we retreated to our
former station, and Sir Philip Stapleton, our captain, wishing for a
regiment of foot to secure the cannon, we promised to stand by him in
defence of them, causing one of our servants to load and level one of
them, which he had scarcely done, when a body of horse appeared advancing
towards us from that side where the enemy was.
We fired at them with case shot, but did no other mischief save
only wounding one man through the hand, our gun being overloaded and
planted on high ground; which fell out very happily, this body being of
our own army and commanded by Sir William Balfour.”
Essex had sent two regiments of horse in succession to charge the
centre with the Royal Standard; and then Sir William Balfour, a well
trained Scottish officer, finding that Prince Rupert, in his wild pursuit,
was fairly out of the field with nearly all the cavalry of the King, swept
round with his squadrons, made a flank movement, and falling on the centre
where Charles was, with sword and pistol, made such havoc and disorder
that the King and the boy Princes, his sons, were in imminent danger of
being taken.
Sir Edmund Verney, who bore the Royal banner, was slain, and the
standard taken; but it was recovered by John smith, Lieutenant of the Lord
John Stuart’s (of Lennox) troop, who, putting over his shoulder an
orange scarf (the Earl of Essex’s colour), gallantly galloped into the
midst of the enemy, tore it from the hands of him who bore it, and laid it
at the feet of the King.
Then return of Prince Rupert with the horse alone prevented the
total defeat of Charles, whose right flank he had left completely exposed;
for Balfour, who by the flight of the cavalry, had now only a small body
of the reserve secured himself near the infantry of Essex.
If the king and Prince Rupert could have persuaded their cavalry to
change the infantry of Essex, who were now unsupported, they might have
been sure of a victory; but the Royal cavalry came back in such extreme
disorder that they would not attack the steady front shown by the pike men
and musketeers of Essex, who did not, however, feel himself sufficiently
strong to advance.
The battle closed by a desultory cannonade.
Rupert’s cavalry when returning were assailed by Essex’s guard
of horse, which fell upon their rear.
All night and the next day the armies lay under arms, face to face;
but neither renewed the attack, though the absent forces of Essex had
all-save Cromwell’s troop-come in, under Colonel Hampden, with the
remainder of his cannon.
The day passed without a shot being fired.
Essex was advised to attack by some of his officers, but preferred
the advice of Colonel dissented.
He marched to Warwick in the evening, while the King retired to
Banbury.
The parliament claimed a drawn battle.
