Authors: Michael Arnold
When first I considered writing about Marston Moor, I intended the battle to be the singular focus of the story, a whole novel dedicated to the events of 2 July 1644. But it quickly became clear that by focusing purely upon the battle, I would be neglecting a number of contributing factors that led five armies to converge on a scrap of turf five miles west of York. The book, then, is really the story of three separate historical threads that, ultimately, become entwined: The invasion of the Scots, the siege of York, and Prince Rupert’s York March.
The signing of the Solemn League and Covenant (much of which is discussed in the fifth Stryker tale,
Warlord’s Gold
) between Parliament and the Scots is one of the major turning points of the First Civil War; the subsequent invasion by a powerful Scottish army ensuring that the conflict would engulf all three of Charles Stuart’s kingdoms.
As described in the novel, the Army of the Covenant, under the command of Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven, crossed the frozen River Tweed on 19 January 1644. Leven’s army was significantly smaller than had been contracted for, but remained a powerful force, and they advanced cautiously southwards through Northumberland, hampered by rain and snow, and by significant resistance at their first major objective; Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It quickly became apparent that Newcastle would be very difficult to capture, so Leven bypassed the city, instead occupying Sunderland, a port town with strong Parliamentarian sympathies, and well placed as a base of future operations.
The leading Royalist in the north of England was William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, who left his base at York to intercept the Scots, leaving behind a small contingent of Yorkshire Royalists under the command of Colonel John Belasyse. The Marquis took the bulk of his army to counter the Covenanters, eventually setting up headquarters at Durham. Much of the winter and early spring saw little action between the main armies, the foul weather making roads almost impassable, and neither side was willing to push for a decisive engagement.
When the weather improved at the beginning of April, the respective armies began to jockey for position once more, but news quickly reached the Marquis from further south at Selby. The Yorkshire town was strategically critical. It controlled major routes between York and Hull, and was a defensible crossing point on the River Ouse, making it immensely important to the movement of troops and goods in the area. Belasyse had taken a large portion of his army to Selby to defend it from the county’s Parliamentarian faction, led by Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax. There had been a battle: and the Parliamentarians had won, taking the town, huge stocks of munitions and upwards of 1,500 Royalist prisoners (including Belasyse himself). It was an unmitigated disaster for the Royalists. The way was now open for a Parliamentarian advance upon York.
The city was regarded as the capital of the North, and its capture would be a heavy blow to the Royalists, both militarily and in terms of morale. It could not be allowed to fall. Thus, as soon as he heard the news, the Marquis of Newcastle abandoned operations against the Scots and marched rapidly south to its defence. Naturally, the Earl of Leven gave chase, making rendezvous with Lord Fairfax and the Yorkshire Parliamentarians at Wetherby around the middle of April. The combined force, dubbed the ‘Army of Both Kingdoms’, proceeded to fall upon York, arriving before the city on 22 April. Together, the two armies mustered more than 20,000 men and scores of artillery pieces. For the citizens holed up within the walls, they must have been a truly terrible sight to behold.
And yet York would prove to be a formidable nut to crack, despite the vast horde set against it. Situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss, it commanded the only bridges over the former between Selby and Boroughbridge, making encirclement problematic.
Moreover, the city was fortified by an almost continuous circuit of Roman and medieval walls set upon an earthen rampart and interspersed with small towers, while an outer ring of earthworks and forts stretched beyond the main wall for additional protection. The city possessed four main gates (or ‘bars’) and a castle that dominated the southern defences, all of which were mounted with powerful guns. There was a quarter-mile gap in the wall to the east of the city, because the low-lying area had been flooded by an expanse of stagnant water known as the King’s Fishpond. This had come into being when the Foss was dammed close to its confluence with the Ouse, causing the river behind to form a lake that, though probably quite shallow, would be too broad to cross beneath the defenders’ fire. Furthermore, the garrison was well provisioned and contained a full complement of men after the arrival of the Marquis of Newcastle’s army on the eithteenth of the month.
Thus, the Army of Both Kingdoms settled in for a protracted siege, fanning out around the city in a large arc, with Lord Fairfax’s army to the east and the Scots to the south and west, with the construction of a bridge of boats over the River Ouse at Acaster Malbis to allow communication between the two armies.
The siege dragged on, with the Parliamentarian forces digging into their positions during the next few weeks, until early June, when the third of the region’s great powerhouses arrived. The Earl of Manchester led the army of the Eastern Association, with Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell in command of his cavalry. Manchester had spent the first half of 1644 securing Lincolnshire for Parliament, and with that task complete, he was free to join Fairfax and Leven, bringing the total number of Allied troops before York to something approaching 30,000. More significantly, the Eastern Association plugged the gap to the north of the city, meaning that York was now completely encircled.
While siege operations continued at York, the most (in)famous of King Charles’s commanders was also on the move. Prince Rupert of the Rhine, still basking in the glory he had won by relieving the siege of Newark (described in my short story,
The
Prince’s Gambit
) marched his army out of its Shrewsbury headquarters in early May, with the ultimate goal of rescuing York from the Army of Both Kingdoms.
In other circumstances, the king’s main force, the Oxford Army, would probably have been the natural choice to relieve York, but the course of the war had turned – yet again – in March when the Royalists in the south had been defeated at the Battle of Cheriton. The Oxford Army had, by turns, been thrown onto the defensive, its collective gaze shifting away from events in the north to focus on Oxford itself. This left Rupert to deal with York.
First, though, he had to gather reinforcements and secure Lancashire for troops returning from Ireland. Joined by the Earl of Derby, the county’s leading Royalist, and Lord Byron, who brought four regiments of horse and four of foot from his garrison at Chester, they advanced first to Stockport, capturing the Parliamentarian position and securing a crossing of the River Mersey. After plundering the town, and bypassing the well-fortified Manchester, they arrived at Bolton on 28 May. It is here, at the town so staunchly Puritan that folk called it the ‘Geneva of the North’, that we first encounter Stryker in the book. It is also here that one of the most notorious events of the entire war is played out.
The chief Parliamentarian operating in the area was Colonel Alexander Rigby, who had been laying siege to Lathom House (Derby’s seat) until news of Rupert’s approach reached him. He abandoned operations at Lathom and took his small army to seek protection behind Bolton’s earthen walls. The effect, of course, was that the town – hitherto fairly weakly defended – now possessed a far stronger garrison than Rupert had expected to encounter. The prince’s initial attack (formed of four regiments) was beaten back with heavy casualties. This defeat was humiliating enough, but the Royalists’ anger turned to rage when, as described in
Marston Moor
, the defenders hanged one of the soldiers taken prisoner during the first assault. It is not clear exactly who the victim was – nor who carried out the execution – but it seems to have been fuelled by the assumption that the man was an Irish Papist. In fact, he was almost certainly English, but a large portion of Rupert’s army had recently come back from the war in Ireland. Either way, his summary execution was a fatal error on the part of Bolton’s garrison, who faced a furious enemy thirsty for revenge. Prince Rupert ordered a second, larger-scale attack, forbidding quarter to ‘any person then in Armes’.
At the second time of asking, the Royalists were successful. As I have described, a group of horsemen were led through the defences by a local man. At the same time, the main part of the army stormed the walls, swarming into the streets to overwhelm Rigby’s men. The sack and slaughter that followed is undoubtedly one of the most notorious episodes of the entire conflict. One may dispute the numbers quoted – they range from the hundreds to the thousands – but it seems certain that a shockingly high number were slain from both the garrison and amongst the townsfolk. Nor did the horror stop at looting and killing. Accounts talk of ‘barbarous usage of some other maids, and wives of the town in private places, in fields and in woods’. It was one of the few events of the civil wars that came close to the savagery men like Stryker had witnessed on the Continent.
In terms of the story, much of what I describe was reported by survivors, including the murder of James Sydall. He was, it is said, shot twice, and the mocking astonishment of his killer (an unknown Royalist in fact, but the Vulture in fiction) is a matter of record.
After Bolton, Rupert went to Bury in order to meet up with the Northern Horse, under George Goring (of whom his secretary wrote, ‘
he strangely loved the bottle, was much given to his pleasures and a great debauchee
,’ but who was widely regarded as one of the most talented leaders the Royalist faction possessed), while a contingent were dispatched to Lathom House to present the captured colours of Rigby’s regiment to the Countess of Derby, who had resisted Rigby’s siege so admirably in the preceding weeks.
The prince’s next target was Liverpool, its location making it crucial as a landing place for troops returning from Ireland. As retold in the book, Liverpool – protected by a medieval wall and castle – provided a great deal of resistance. The Parliamentarian governor, Colonel Moore, rejected Rupert’s summons to surrender, and the incident where the Royalist herald’s horse was shot from under him really did happen. Such defiance could only provoke the fiery prince’s full ire, and, unsurprisingly, Rupert immediately ordered his artillery to pound the town into submission.
At noon on 10 June, the Royalists assaulted the breach, but were driven back. The writing, though, was on the wall, and Colonel Moore must have realised that he would eventually capitulate. News of Bolton would have reached him, and he surely must have had nightmares of what fate would ultimately befall the defenders. Under cover of darkness, he evacuated the garrison and its stores by sea, leaving the townsfolk to fend for themselves. The second attack met almost no resistance, save a Scottish unit who remained at the castle.
The fall of Liverpool was effectively the completion of Rupert’s first objective, the conquest (with the exception of Manchester) of Lancashire. At this point, however, he appears to have been uncharacteristically hesitant. He remained at Liverpool for another week. It is reasonable that he would linger in order to recruit extra troops, but it seems likely that he simply did not know what to do for the best. Should he proceed to York, or turn south to be near the King, who was surrounded by advisers whom Rupert despised?
But everything changed on 19 June, with the arrival of a letter from the King. As related in the book, it was hugely ambiguous, leaving Charles’s wishes wide open to interpretation. Historians have argued ever since as to its meaning, but, either way, Rupert decided that it was a direct order to engage the Allied Army at York. The Royalists left Liverpool almost immediately, and were crossing the hills (not called the Pennines until the eighteenth century) by the 23rd. Prince Rupert was now firmly on a collision course with the Army of Both Kingdoms.
Back at York, the Allies had been busy establishing their siege lines and setting up batteries around the perimeter, beginning a full scale bombardment on 5 June. As retold in the book, the Covenanters stormed a trio of outlying sconces, capturing two. The third, at the Mount, was saved by a last minute influx of reinforcements from Micklegate Bar.
As heroic as the action at the Mount had been, the siege-works were now terribly close to the city, and the entire perimeter had been successfully circumvallated. The Marquis of Newcastle knew that his options were now severely limited, and he opened negotiations for surrender. Following a rapid exchange of correspondence, there was an agreement to observe a cease-fire on 14 June, during which commissioners from both sides would meet to discuss terms. As witnessed by Forrester and Gardner, the parley was a failure, ending when the Royalist delegation stormed out of the negotiations without even taking a copy of the Allied terms back into the city. Unsurprisingly, the Allied leaders suspected their wily counterpart had simply been playing for time, and they pressed ahead with plans to capture the city.
By now, though, they understood that York’s ancient walls were far too robust to be breached by artillery alone, and a mining operation was initiated at two points: in the south-east at Walmgate Bar and in the north-west near St Mary’s Tower. They planned to explode the mines and assault the two breaches simultaneously.