Battle of Worcester

5 Key excerpts on "Battle of Worcester"

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  Worcestershire Under Arms

  An English County During the Civil Wars

  • Malcolm Atkin(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Pen & Sword Military

    (Publisher)

  26 Although not mentioned in the muster, the troop also included Charles Giffard and his servant Francis Yates from Boscobel, Richard Lane from Bentley Hall in the West Midlands and a Worcestershire man, Richard Walker, the ‘scout-master’ (intelligence officer). Although small in numbers, these men were later to play a critical role in assisting the escape of the King from Worcester.

  Passage contains an image Powick Church. Prior to the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, this was used as a forward observation post by the Scots. INSET: Marks left by musket shot on the wall of Powick Church. (Author Collection) Passage contains an image

  Key Events: 1651 – the Battle of Worcester

  On 3 September 1651 the final battle of the English Civil Wars was fought at Worcester. An exhausted Scottish Army of 13,000 – 16,000 men (including a paltry c .2,000 Englishmen) had been trapped inside the city after their long march from Scotland. Against them, Oliver Cromwell had amassed an army of 30,000 men comprising battled-hardened New Model Army troops and members of militias that had flocked to the battle from all over the country.

  Having seized the river crossing at Upton upon Severn some days earlier, part of the Parliamentary Army advanced on the ridge at Powick at dawn and drove the Scottish defenders from the church. Another column advanced up the river bank of the Severn, dragging pontoons with them to make two bridges of boats with which to cross the rivers Severn and Teme. There was bitter hand-to-hand fighting and the battle became bogged down as the parliamentary troops found it impossible to cross the Teme. At c .3pm Cromwell stormed across the bridge of boats on the Severn with his reserve of New Model Army Horse. The Scots, taken in the flank, were forced to retreat and were pushed back into St Johns.

  King Charles II had believed that the main attack (as in 1646) would come from the east and had not, therefore, provided a sufficient reserve on the west side of the Severn. He now tried to relieve the pressure on his men by launching a pincer-movement on the Parliamentary troops on the east side of the city at c .4pm. He possibly hoped to punch a hole through the Parliamentary lines and make a break-out for London. But, again reinforced by Cromwell’s mobile reserve, the line held and the Essex and Cheshire militias poured down from the high ground to seize first Fort Royal and then to force an entry into the city through Sidbury Gate. Meanwhile, Fleetwood’s cavalry had pushed across the Severn Bridge from St Johns. Isolated pockets of resistance remained until 10pm but most of the Scots were pushed back onto the Quay where they surrendered. Charles II managed to escape at c .6pm, covered by a small party of Horse from the troop of local gentry under Lord Talbot. Around 10,000 prisoners were taken with accounts of the Scottish death toll being up to c

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  Handbook of First Generation Warfare

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • University Publications

    (Publisher)

  ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 2 English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists. The first (1642–46) and second (1648–49) civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third war (1649–51) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The Civil War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651. The Civil War led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son, Charles II, and replacement of English monarchy with first, the Commonwealth of England (1649– 53), and then with a Protectorate (1653–59), under Oliver Cromwell's personal rule. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England ended with the ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ victors consolidating the established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament's consent, although this concept was legally established only with the Glorious Revolution later in the century. Terminology The term English Civil War appears most commonly in the singular form, although historians often divide the conflict into two or three separate wars. Although the term describes events as impinging on England, from the outset the conflicts involved wars with and civil wars within both Scotland and Ireland. Unlike other civil wars in England, which focused on who ruled, this war also concerned itself with the manner of governing Britain and Ireland. Historians sometimes refer to the English Civil War as the English Revolution and works such as the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica call it the Great Rebellion .

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  Tudor and Stuart Britain

  1485-1714

  • Roger Lockyer, Peter Gaunt(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  However, between its outbreak in 1642 and summer 1646, when Parlia-ment secured a complete military victory, England and Wales were drawn into and divided by a major, lengthy, often intensive and quite highly organized civil war. The conflict brought with it death and injury, disease and dislocation, the destruction of buildings and the alteration of land-scapes, as well as wider social, economic, religious, political, constitutional and intellectual changes, many of them unforeseen, unexpected and unwanted at the outset. The main war of 1642–46 did not conclude with settlement and a secure peace but was followed by a long period of post-war uncertainty and instability, leading in the end to major changes in Church and state, and to renewed though much more limited fighting in England and Wales in 1648 and again in 1651 – sometimes referred to as the Second and Third Civil Wars. Understandably such a major development in English and more broadly – given the involvement of, and the implications for, Scotland and Ireland – in British history has generated intense historical interest and disagreement. First and foremost, the debate on the origins and causes of the war has long been central to wider interpretations of the Stuart and the early modern periods, while the ways in which views on this have changed have not only altered our perceptions of the war but also provide insights into wider historical fashions. Thus during the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries the dominant interpretation, associated with so-called Whig history, was of a war caused by long-term differences in the political and con-stitutional running of the country, also encompassing sharply divergent views on the nature and governance of the state Church.

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  The Making of the Modern English State, 1460-1660

  • Philip Edwards(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Charles had been overconfident and under-aggressive, and paid the price. Missing the chance to take Gloucester, which in parliamentary hands impeded direct access to royalist Wales, was the first major setback to the royalists: but worse was yet to come. On his march home to London, Essex was caught by Prince Rupert at Newbury and was forced to do battle. The two sides were fairly equal in numbers, except that the royalists had the advantage on horse, but this would prove an unusual battle in that, owing to the obstacles in the form of hedges and trees, there was little that the cavalry could do; the outcome of this long battle, unlike most, did not depend on the cavalry. It was an infantry affair, and both sides fought until exhausted and most of their powder spent. The king returned to Oxford, while Essex made his way back to London. The first battle of Newbury 20 September) was very significant and proved that the war would now be a long one. No single battle had decided the issue either way, and there was no possibility that the king could now march on London. As the year 1643 came to a close, the king was in control of most of the north of England, the west and south-west, while Parliament held sway in the home counties, the south-east, East Anglia and Lincolnshire. However, away fom the turmoil of the battlefield an agreement had been forged that would change the course of the war and render the term `English Civil Wars' a very misleading one. In September 1643 an alliance was forged between Parliament and the Scottish Presbyterians: the Solemn League and Coven-ant. This was Pym's final contribution to his beloved parliamen-tary cause before dying in December 1643. Pym's `middle group' would not long survive his death. There can be no doubt about the close links between the Scots and the parliamentary activists going back to 1640.

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  The English Revolution 1642-1649

  • D.E. Kennedy(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  24 The English Revolution, 1642–1649 of war they would exploit in order to deliver the war-winning blow. The Earl of Newcastle seemed to be poised to invade southern England, and the Earl of Ormonde, it was believed, was ready to bring an Irish army to join the King. The King’s enemies were in disarray. A party for peace emerged in the House of Lords. Thomas May records the demoralized attitudes of the King’s opponents ‘in this low ebbe of the Parliament’. The Royalists ‘seemed to possesse an absolute Victory, and the Parliament to be in danger of being quite ruined’. 33 The resolute defence of the city of Gloucester by Parliament’s forces under Colonel Massey (who made a name for himself in the wars) during the siege from 10 August to 5 September 1643 turned the tide for Parliament. The King with his Oxford army marched on Gloucester as part of a campaign to keep open Royalist communications with South Wales. While Essex and his enfeebled army had been unable to assist Waller after the disaster at Roundway Down in July, in this later emer-gency the Lord-General had, by the first week of September, led a hastily assembled relief force of some 15 000 troops on an epic march to within ten miles of Gloucester. The backbone of the force was the London Trained Bands. Rather than risk encirclement, the King lifted the siege and marched away. Essex then withdrew towards London by way of Newbury. In an attempt summarily to end the war, the Royalist cavalry galloped ahead to Newbury, pre-empting Essex from entering the town and forcing him into battle on 20 September in a difficult terrain of hedges and enclosures. 34 The first Battle of Newbury was one of the most bloody and confused battles of the war. The Royalists advanced on both flanks but were unable to dislodge the Parliamentarians from Round Hill, a prominent central feature of the battlefield, whose significance had been overlooked by the Cavaliers.

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