The History of the First Britannic Civil War by RJ Evans (2003)
By the end of 1607, the battle lines had been drawn. The forces of Richard II of the House of Stewart held the north and west of England, Wales and Scotland whilst the Parliamentarian-Tudor faction, under Anne and Arthur, controlled the south and east. Figure 1 shows a rough disposition of loyalties. Such maps are notoriously inaccurate as they do not represent individuals or outliers, nor could they hope to represent widespread public feeling in an era before opinion polls. Nonetheless, figure 1 has some uses.
Richard II enjoyed support from the Scottish nobility, most obviously from the Lords of March including: Earls Lennox, Home, Gordon, Kellie, Mar and Maxwell, and Lords Carmichael, Sandilands, and Johnstone. Of particular import was William Stewart, Earl of Westmorland, who commanded the Emperor’s army. By spring of 1608 this army numbered close to 40,000 men but was scattered across garrisons in the northern and western midlands and the Severn valley.
English support for Richard II was far less secure and relied on individual reasons and intimidation. The northern Lords – Northumberland, Humber and Warwick – were more or less coerced into supporting Richard. With Scots crawling over the land, there was no shortage of replacements if the English Lords showed any sign of treason, and the Earl of Lincoln’s execution gave them no doubt that Richard would remove them.
That being the case, there were some English who fought willingly for their Scottish Emperor. Richard Stanley, Earl of Derby, was desperate to prove his House’s loyalty after his nephew’s treason and declared his public support for Richard no less than four times between April 1607 and January 1608. The House of Seymour too supported Richard. This was perhaps obvious given that Edward Seymour’s sister was married to the Emperor, though their marital troubles were an open secret, and it seems the Earl of Surrey and Bedford stayed loyal to his brother in law out of genuine intent rather than sentiment. Finally came the Dorset branch of the Grey family. Lionel Grey was married to a Seymour but had also been appointed Lord Paramount of the West when Richard dissolved the old Council in 1605. Furthermore, Grey’s main local rival was the Earl of Lincoln, a strong ally of the Tudors, and he potentially stood to lose his position in a Tudor court. He thus supported Richard out of necessity.
These were the major families, but there were hundreds of smaller names who joined the Royalists, including many gentry from the north and midlands. Two of note were Roger Frecheville and Robert Bertie. Frecheville was a wealthy landowner in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire but had found his rise strangled by the Earls of Humber and the Lords of Hastings. He was also a former commander of the Calais garrison and was a vital part of the Stewart war machine. Even more important was Robert Bertie. Bertie had remained loyal even in the madness of the April Days. Though he had commanded the Middlesex Regiment, he was originally from northern Lincolnshire and was instrumental in bringing Lindsey and Grimsby to the Royalist side. He was made Duke of Lindsay for his efforts and appointed a General of the army.
The Parliamentary faction, in contrast, could bank on the majority of the population of south east England and London, including the nobility. The House of Tudor was disadvantaged by their northern and welsh estates being occupied, but they still possessed some land in the south. Of main import were the Earls of Thetford, Essex, St Albans, Lincoln, Huntingdon, Wiltshire, Kent and Arundel but they were joined by many Lords and members of Parliament.
Primary amongst these were was George Carew, Lord of Totnes. Carew had been a junior commander in the Low Countries and Swedish wars, but in the absence of Oudenberg, Magnus the Red or Henry Tudor, he was one of the few who had more experience of war than politics. Talking of politics, it was Thomas Richardson who continued to lead the political element of the rebel cause from London alongside the other leading Parliamentarians from the previous year.
Wales is a special case which deserves a separate discussion. Though the Tudor were an old Welsh family, the Principality initially sided with Richard II. The Emperor had lightened the burden upon him when he had abolished the regional councils and his son Richard Prince of Wales, though 11, ruled from Ludlow under the auspices of Sir Herbert Grey of Ruthin which won over much of the northern marches. In the southern marches, the Pembroke lands around Wye and Raglan had been confiscated a few years earlier with only the peasantry still loyal to their Earl. Further west and in mid Wales the same fate befell the Tudor lands. There was more resistance here but it was still easily dealt with. Though not a major population centre, Wales was nonetheless denied to the rebels.
Figure 1 does have some limitations which bear discussing. A colour-coded system for showing allegiances always glosses over the undecided or smaller voices. A prime example in is northern Lincolnshire. Though largely Puritan, this part of the county was lost to the rebels because of the actions of Robert Bertie. This is not to say that the region of Lindsay was unanimously Royalist, and there were local skirmishes throughout the Civil War. Likewise in the south, a number of supporters of the Seymour, Stanley and Grey families agitated against the rebels either by moving north to support their Emperor or by local passive resistance, which was usually clandestine.
War by its very nature destabilises. With the decline of central authority many local issues flared up and scores were settled. Some of these had political dimensions and were contested by local rivals from different sides – the Lincolnshire stand-off between Bertie and Hastings is the clearest example – but many merely took advantage of the situation. The Raleighs of Dorset, for example, used the war to smuggle in tonnes of Tobacco from their Goughton cousins. Accordingly this account of the First Civil War could not hope to encompass all of these disputes and ‘smaller’ stories, though they must be acknowledged as part of the wider picture of the war.
The 1608 campaign opened with a Royalist march on London once again. Richard II’s aims were simple: retake the capital and purge the traitors. The Parliamentarians had a more challenging aim. They had to bring Richard to battle, defeat and arrest him without causing so much damage or bloodshed to lose them popular support. The Emperor in contrast showed little reticence to burn or plunder, to him the lands south of the Trent were in rebellion and did not deserve leniency.
In mid-April 1608, over 25,000 men crossed the Trent at Newark and marched directly down the Great North Road towards Huntingdon. A garrison army led by the Earl of Thetford was defeated at Costerworth on the 1st of May, only 5 miles from the site of Tudor’s defeat at Corby Glen. Devereux was able to escape with half of his 12,000 men and flee south. This was a mere skirmish compared to the Battle of Ashwell over a week later. Thetford had been met by the Earl of Essex and Sir John Killigrew north of Stevenage which had bolstered their forces to 24,000 men, almost on par with the advancing Stewarts.
Between them the three men decided to hold Ashwell Hill just to the east of the Great North Road. The issue was that neither Essex nor Thetford were particularly skilled in commanding a large army. Killigrew was far more experienced and had been a junior officer at Nybro over a decade earlier. Unfortunately, Killigrew was low-born and had merely an advisory capacity with Thomas Cromwell II, the Earl of Essex, in official command.
Thus on the morning of the 11th of May 1608, the Parliamentary force drew up facing north-west towards the road along a low sloping ridgeline. Essex was taking advice from Killigrew and positioned his cannon in view of the road with the infantry behind. The majority of these men were levees from the south east. The majority of the trained units being further west at the time.
In contrast the Earls of Westmorland and Lindsay, with Warwick supporting them, had a well trained force of infantry and cavalry having brought their best forces to battle. Westmorland was an experienced commander, and had actually fought as a mercenary alongside Killigrew in Sweden. He refused the obvious advance up the slope and instead sent his cavalry under Sir John Maxwell on a long loop to the south and east whilst he and Lindsay took their infantry to the east and approached the Parliamentary line obliquely from the north.
In the ensuing pincer movement, the right most flank of the rebel army was caught between the infantry and cavalry and destroyed in short order with Killigrew killed. Desperate and in shock, the two Earls pulled to the west and left the Great North Road to London open for Richard II who had remained in Royston during the battle.
Ashwell demonstrated the weakness of the rebel cause in these early days. For generations the Britannic fighting men had been exported to Calais which had become a fortress. Yet with the European war in full swing, and Catholic brigands burning Picardy, these military elites were unavailable. Magnus, for example, had not set foot on English soil since his outlawing. This left the rebels with either untested or ageing men. Only the Earl of St Albans and his son Hal could be said to have military experience but they were both pre-occupied in early summer 1608.
To the rebels, the West Country remained a prime target for subjugation. Only Marquess Lionel Grey, and his local subordinates Bevil Grenville and Jacob Astley, stood in their way from controlling the region. The West Country, like Wales had benefitted from Richard’s abolition of the regional councils, but here the peasantry, and gentry in particular, were more accustomed to the international trade and rights which Richard had also curtailed and so were more bellicose.
Edward de la Pole, Earl of St Albans and his cousin Phillip, Earl of Lincoln, thus took 19,000 men west in spring 1608. Lionel Grey could muster only around 9,000 men, and much of local populace rose in support of the invaders. Running out of room, Dorset finally made a stand at Thorndon Cross, west of Bodmin Moor. A plan to use the hills for hit and run actions came unstuck given Hal de la Pole’s proficiency with light cavalry and the Royalist forces disintegrated in just a couple of hours. Dorset fled, deeper into Cornwall, and Lincoln pursued him. For all intents and purposes, however, the Royalist enclave in the west had been defeated. St Albans and his son instead returned east, having learnt of the defeat at Ashwell a few days prior to the Battle of Thorndon Cross.
In the home counties, Richard II had balked. Since Ashwell, the road had lain open to him, but the moral path to victory had not. All across the home counties the advance of the Emperor was stalled by ordinary people. Violent resistance was rare, but bridges and sheepfolds were broken to slow down the advancing army, water sources were poisoned and even food tampered with. A Baker’s wife in Hertford famously poisoned loaves seized by the invaders which laid up an entire cavalry company for a week. All of this was ultimately ineffective, and Richard reached Enfield on the 20th of May. However, it did send a clear message that Richard and his army was not welcome.
The Emperor was faced with the same issue which had made him quit the capital in the previous year. He could subjugate the populace but only with severe bloodshed and the corresponding moral backlash. The Emperor’s entire cause and motive had centred upon him being the morally superior and rational, God appointed, monarch. Enraged though he was he could not countenance such a massacre of his own capital. The impasse dragged on for a week with the Royal army camped in the Lea valley. Lennox, desperate to avenge his father, encouraged Richard to advance with fire and sword but even William Stewart, the Earl of Westmorland, advised against this. The problem was that the rebels did not really have depots or bases to target. Of course London was the intellectual and industrial heart-land, but the army at Ashwell had been common conscripts; they had no barracks or staging grounds which could be obliterated. Those soldiers which had not followed Essex and Thetford west had simply melted back into the fold.
By the 29th, word reached Richard that another army was massing near Salisbury as Essex and Thetford had joined forces with St Albans. Knowing this was his chance to break the spirit of the rebels completely, but wishing not to be forced to give battle near London, Richard marched his army west towards Oxford in order to protect his lines of communication. The hoped for battle occurred at Boar’s Hill 2 miles south-west of Oxford on the 4th of June 1608.
Westmorland had chosen Boar’s Hill for the superior view it gave of the countryside and the fact that the eastern flank was protected by the Thames. As had become custom, Richard II himself waited in Oxford whilst Westmorland led the army into battle. Boar’s Hill was perfect for a static defence, and the Royalists had the cannon for it, but Stewart had been tasked with destroying the rebel army, he had to be more aggressive.
Accordingly, on the morning of the 4th of June Westmorland and Lindsay drew up their forces facing south west. Their dispositions were in 2 ranks with cannon between them – perfect for a static defence. However Westmorland had placed a flanking force – 3,000 cavalry and 4,000 light infantry led by Sir John Maxwell and the Earl of Lennox respectively – in a thicket along the eastern foot of Boar’s Hill. Westmorland planned to have this force sweep around behind the rebels after they were engaged upon the hill.
This wooded thicket, after the day’s events, became known as Hal’s Hollow. The father and son of St Albans, accompanied by the Earl of Thetford, knew that Stewart would try to bleed them upon the hillside. Accordingly they planned for a ferocious counter charge upon two fronts. St Albans senior would take the western flank of Boar’s Hill the Hertsmen in the vanguard with the intention of piercing the Royalist line at one end. Thetford would take the eastern flank followed by Hal de la Pole who would them break off and descend Boar’s Hill into the thicket and thence loop around behind Westmorland’s line. Appropriately, Hal had the Richmond regiment who were named for the military college near London, but sported the Tudor colours in recognition of the fallen Earl.
The early stages of the Battle of Oxford played out as the Earl of Westmorland had hoped that they would. The entire rebel host charged up Boar’s Hill into his prepared defences and seemed to shudder to a stop. However after a brief pause, the Hertsmen on the left surged forward and on the right Hal descended into the thicket. By chance this later charge ran straight into Maxwell and Lennox’s enveloping charge taking the latter totally by surprise and having the advantage of the slope. Maxwell’s cavalry took losses and galloped south before they could sustain anymore, leaving Lennox’s infantry to be pinned down and annihilated.
On Boar’s Hill, St Albans’ thrust at the western end of the line successfully pierced the first rank of Scots causing Lindsay to send up his northerners, men of the Earl of Warwick. The northerners promptly defected. As the routing Scots charged through the massed ranks of northern firearms, their commanders ordered them to turn their muzzles to the sky and not fire. Almost all of the men obeyed, and allowed St Albans’ men to storm past them into the rear. Richard II’s intimidation of the northern Lords could only apparently be taken so far, and Warwick refused to fight fellow Englishmen on the commands of a Scot. Fearing such an outcome, he had already sent word to his family in Yorkshire to flee to Europe five days before the Battle and his wife and daughters arrived in Rotterdam by the 7th of June.
The dual reversal meant that Westmorland’s centre, who had been containing Thetford’s probing attacks, were forced to retreat. Lindsay tried to rally the Scots in the west whilst Lennox tried to retreat in the east but both were fighting an up hill battle. The defection of Warwick and the surprise charge of Hal de la Pole downslope created an atmosphere of panic in the Royalist army – who else had betrayed them? With the retreat turning into a rout, Stewart ordered the withdrawal.
What followed was a chaotic afternoon as the Royalists tried to extricate their forces from Boar’s Hill and cross the Thames into Oxford. There was little order, and an instruction by Westmorland to destroy the bridges behind them was misinterpreted leading to looting and burning of the western parts of Oxford. The smoke and confusion hindered both armies, with commanders on either side unable to locate their foe or even their own men. Lennox was stuck the wrong side of the Thames and captured whilst Maxwell, having rallied his cavalry, returned to find the battle lost and so he forded the Thames at Abingdon and then moved north.
In the chaos Richard II and around 13,000 men were able to escape to the north but the rest were either killed or captured in the bloodied streets of Oxford as the rebels tried to restore order. Once again frustrated, Richard left a trail of destruction as he marched through Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire. Oxford was a much needed respite for the rebels, alongside Thorndon Cross it represented the first real victories of the war. However unlike the battle in Devon, Oxford was a victory against Richard II himself. The battle, and his furious response to it, proved that the Emperor could and should be beaten.
Nonetheless the Royal army was not entirely defeated, and it returned to Nottingham by the end of the month. The second half of the 1608 campaigns would instead be characterised by small and localised skirmishes as both sides jockeyed for an advantage. A rebel victory near Droitwich in August momentarily opened the West Midlands as the Earl of Derby scrambled to retreat from an army under the Earl of Lincoln, but the timely arrival of the Earls Home and Huntly with Scottish reinforcements forced him to pull back to the south.
To the east Richard himself and Westmorland secured the line of the Trent whilst Lindsay engaged in counter-insurgency in northern Lincolnshire. This saw one of the darker episodes of the Civil War. In early September, Robert Bertie’s agents had tracked down a group of Puritans and other traitors in the village of Scrooby about 10 miles from Doncaster. This was right on the edge of the Earl of Lindsay’s jurisdiction, but the man was eager to prove his loyalty to Richard after the debacle of Oxford. As far as we can tell, Lindsay was not himself at fault, but Westmorland had begun to use him as a convenient scapegoat and so he was desperate to prove his loyalty. Thus when Lindsay and around a hundred of his men entered Scrooby on the 5th of September 1608, their bloodlust was up.
The village Rector, Andrew Wray brother of MP John Wray, came out to meet the armed cavalrymen, but after a short parlay in his Church he was beaten to death in his own Vestry having apparently failed to answer some of Lindsay’s questions. Some of Wray’s parishioners tried to prevent their clergyman’s death and were set upon themselves. Before long arms had been raised against the village and as many as 100 civilians lay dead including women and children. It is unknown whether any members of the village were actually harbouring fugitives of Richard II.
The Scrooby massacre typifies the mood in the Royalist camp after the Battle of Oxford. Already suspicious of their enemy’s machinations, the supporters of the Emperor now turned their wary eyes on each other. The Earls of Northumberland and Humber were placed under veritable house arrest until such time as they were required. In such an event, a party of loyal Scots was left with their families to guarantee good behaviour. Warwick’s defection also affected the ordinary folk of Yorkshire. The number of armed Scots roaming the lanes of God’s County, already uncomfortably high, rose even further. It wasn’t long before isolated groups of Scots began to turn up murdered, only increasing the animosity and suspicion.
Thus as the campaign of 1608 came to an end, the rebels were really on the ascendancy. George Carew had spent the year training a new army in London and Essex and these men would be ready for action in 1609. Without the expert skills of the Calais Company or other veteran regiments, Carew had instead eschewed complicated manoeuvres and had drilled the men in the use of the Snelbus for 10,11, sometimes 12 hours a day until their fingers were raw and their eyes streamed with tears from the smoke. This New Rebel Army was merely a very dumbed-down version of Magnus the Red’s volume of fire tactics. They could simply out-shoot the Royalists, and Carew hoped that this would suffice whilst the Richmonds, Hertsmen and their brothers-in-arms carried out the more difficult tasks.
As for Richard II, Westmorland was trying to get him to see sense. The military advantage, if one had ever existed, was truly gone now. Westmorland was a loyal and tenacious soldier and he was not stupid. He would fight if his Emperor ordered him to, but he did not want to lead men to their deaths for a lost cause. However, as so many before him had failed, so too did the Earl of Westmorland. Instead, Richard dispatched Lord Maxwell, his Chancellor, to gather funds from abroad. The problem of course was that with London lost, the Netherlands and Germany beaten and the Catholic states unthinkable, there were very few ready sources of coin open to the Emperor. So it was that in October 1608 the Chancellor of the Exchequer set sail for New York in the New Canaan Republic and the Banking Houses there. Meanwhile, Richard also needed men and so he sent Earl Home to Dublin to entreat King Michael to support his Emperor.