30—
Commander-in-Chief

After his standard had been somewhat ignominiously floated at Nottingham Charles moved westward to gather the support he believed to be awaiting him in Shropshire and in Wales. He left Nottingham on the 13th for Derby, where the miners came into him in considerable strength, mostly joining the Lifeguard commanded by Lord Willoughby d'Eresby; he was welcomed at Shrewsbury on the 20th where he was joined by Patrick Ruthven with twenty or so experienced officers. Baron Ruthven of Ettrick was a hard-drinking, experienced soldier, already some seventy years of age, who had seen much service in the European wars and been Charles's Muster-Master in Scotland and Governor of Edinburgh Castle. In his pleasure at seeing him Charles now created him Earl of Forth. At Chester on the 23rd recruits began to flock in, not only from the immediate neighbourhood but, as expected, from North and South Wales and from Staffordshire, and also from Lincolnshire, Bedfordshire, and further afield.

The Parliamentarian forces under Essex had hoped to surprise the King at Nottingham, but, learning of his departure, had stopped at Northampton and on the 19th began a westward march towards Worcester parallel to the King's own. Worcester had opened its gates to Royalist troops but Rupert, probably correctly, judged the city untenable against Essex's advancing army and was covering the Royalist evacuation of the town when, quite accidentally, he fell in with a small group of Parliamentarian horse at Powicke Bridge. Rupert had the advantage of seeing the enemy before they saw him and in a brief little encounter on 23 September 1642 the first real engagement of the war occurred, in which the Parliamentarian horse broke and fled, not drawing rein until they had joined their main army, many miles away. The news of Powicke Bridge was brought to

Charles at Chester by Richard Crane, Commander of Rupert's Lifeguard, who was knighted on the spot by the delighted King. Though only about 2000 men in all had been involved Charles had, indeed, cause for satisfaction as he gleefully examined the six or seven captured cornets of horse who were brought in. First blood of the war had gone to him and casualties were few, though among the wounded were his nephew, Maurice, and his friend, Sir Lewis Dyve.

In common with the majority of the men who were joining up on either side, Charles had to learn the strategy of war in a country like England. Some of the recruits had had experience in Germany or the Low Countries, some had fought under Gustavus Adolphus and were familiar with the Swedish form of fighting, others favoured the simpler Dutch formations. Some, like the King himself, had experimented for hours with model soldiers and artillery. None of them had fought before on English soil with its own particular problems. Where fields had been enclosed, for example, there was little opportunity for deploying an army — certainly not the cavalry — and the weather played its part. Roads were execrable, bad enough for individual horsemen, almost impassable for the numbers who were now beginning to turn even the best of them into mud and quagmire as the ruts and holes common to most surfaces were filled to over-flowing by the heavy rains of September 1642. For men to be kneedeep in mud and water was not uncommon, while horses, carts, waggons and coaches had to be pushed and hauled time and time again through the enveloping slime. The drill books and manuals of war that were brought out might in some respects put a captain ahead of his men, but they gave no real insight into the situation. Neither side, for example, had envisaged the number of horses that were needed — not for the cavalry since volunteers brought their own mounts — but cart horses for drawing gun-carriages and other heavy vehicles. It took six or eight cart horses, harnessed in tandem, to pull a field gun; the heaviest cannon required twelve or fourteen. Charles, whose study of warfare had familiarized him with the problem, had encouraged James Wemyss, his Master Gunner, to produce a lighter and more mobile piece of artillery. Wemyss had actually constructed a gun consisting of a copper tube strengthened with iron bands and covered by a leather skin, but this had not yet come into general production, and markets and farms for miles around Charles's army were being scoured for horses and, failing horses for oxen, to draw his heavy guns. Carts and wagons were in similar demand for conveyance, and

denuded farms were paid by the day for their use, with a bonus if the driver came too.

Food, fodder, the paraphernalia of cooking and eating, cooks, provisioners, traders anxious to provide anything that was required for man or beast; shovels, spades, pickaxes, wheelbarrows; ropes, spare harness, materials to repair the constant breakages which the conditions of travel entailed, came along with the army. In particular a contingent of smiths and wheelrights were there, for the roads played havoc with horses' hooves and with the wheels of vehicles, and in hostile country the inability to secure the services of these craftsmen could be very serious.

Normally the Royalist army on the march consisted of two brigades of cavalry in the van, followed by a brigade of foot. Charles followed on horseback supported by his Lifeguard with his banner and flanked by his Council of War, with secretaries and messengers to hand. There followed another infantry brigade and then the enormous and unwieldy artillery train protected by musketeers, the horses pulling desperately at the heavy guns and at the carts and wagons loaded with arms and ammunition. Courtiers and courtiers-turned-soldier frequently brought their wives who travelled in carriages. They all brought much personal baggage. Even the lower-ranking soldiers came with their wives, their wardrobes and their household goods, while the secretariat had its own wagon of writing materials, documents, letters, duplicates, the King had his personal wardrobe and his more private correspondence, prostitutes cheerfully tagged along, and in the rear a further brigade of cavalry, sometimes in front of, sometimes behind the baggage trains, completed the tale of an army marching to war. The untidy, heterogeneous procession covered some five miles or more from van to rear of the muddy and difficult roads of the Midlands, moving so slowly that it took Charles ten days to cover less than a hundred miles between Shrewsbury and Banbury, which was not considered bad going and which was better than Essex did on his nearly parallel journey from Worcester to Kineton when he averaged only eight or so miles a day, and then left part of his army far in the rear.

The army carried few tents and little camping equipment, so the surrounding countryside was scoured to find billets for the 12,000 or so troops on the move. Charles and the High Command generally lodged in some nobleman's house while the men slept in scattered villages as far as ten miles away. The total area occupied by an army,

simply to move from one place to another, was very considerable. Though provisions were at first paid for and often eaten in camp, it is understandable that the advent of an army came to be dreaded and that its passage was likened to the passing of a horde of locusts. It would seem difficult to conceal its whereabouts. Yet, in spite of the strategy learned on the Continent and the frequent recourse to drill books and military manuals, the art of reconniassance was so lacking, or so extremely elementary, that commanders frequently seemed unaware of the presence of the enemy until they were on top of them.^[1]

After Powicke Bridge there had been some discussion of strategy among Charles's High Command: should they engage Essex then and there and endeavour to take Worcester? Or should they march on London? The former was ruled out partly because the enclosed nature of the countryside made cavalry deployment difficult, and partly because Charles's growing resources made the bolder plan viable. His armies were increasing daily and he now had no scruples in accepting Catholic money or plate or, indeed, Catholic services: 'this rebellion is grown to that height', he wrote to Newcastle, 'that I must not look what opinion men are who at this time are willing and able to serve me'.^[2] He left Shrewsbury on October 12, making for London in a south-easterly course with some idea of taking Banbury on the way. Passing between hostile Warwick and Coventry he stopped at Southam and reached Edgcott, four miles from Banbury, on the evening of October 22, where he lodged at Sir William Chancie's house with Rupert nine miles away at Wormleighton, Lindsey at Culworth, and his men dispersed to such scattered quarters as they could find. The weather was atrocious and bitterly cold. About midnight Rupert sent word that Essex, who had been on the shorter march from Worcester, was at Kineton, some seven miles west of the main Royalist position. The two armies, though they marched the same way and had been only twenty miles apart when they started, and for the last two days had been on a parallel course only ten miles apart, had until then no knowledge of the whereabouts of each other.

There was danger to Charles in continuing his march with Essex in his rear, so when Rupert reported in favour of battle Charles readily accepted his advice. 'Nephew', he hurriedly scribbled, 'I have given order as you have desyred; so I dout not but all the foot and canon will bee at Edgehill betymes this morning, where you will also find Your loving oncle and faithful frend.' Discussions concerning tactics soon reached deadlock; Lindsey favoured the Dutch order of battle, Rupert

the Swedish in which pikemen and musketeers were interspersed in the battle line-up, and Charles supported his nephew. The fatal flaw in the command which allowed Rupert to be independent of the Commander-in-Chief had already led to difficulties and now the volatile and haughty Prince appeared to be taking over the whole strategy of the battle, foot as well as horse. When Lindsey cast his baton on the ground declaring: 'Since your Majesty thinks me not fit to perform the office of Commander-in-Chief I would serve you as colonel only', Charles cut the Gordian knot by instructing Lord Forth to draw up the army in battle order while he himself assumed the overall command.

The ridge of Edgehill, where the Royalists would take up their position, was some five miles west of Edgcott and only two miles from Kineton. By early morning Rupert's horse were drawn up on the ridge and Charles was gazing through his perspective glass at the awakening Parliamentarian armies below. It was afternoon by the time the Royalist foot had been brought in from the scattered villages where they lay, and by that time Essex had collected the main body of his army and had deployed it in one of the open fields of that still largely unenclosed countryside. He was perturbed at the numbers he saw massing against him, which far exceeded any reports he had received, particularly since two of his regiments of foot and one of horse were a day's march behind him. He did the only thing that was open to him. He stayed where he was and waited for the enemy to attack. Charles meantime, having sent his sons firmly away to comparative safety in the charge of the faithful Dr Harvey, was riding up and down amongst his men with a black cloak over his armour encouraging everyone. By three o'clock they were ready. 'Go in the name of God', he said to Lindsey, 'and I'll lay my bones by yours.' He had under his command some 2800 horse, 10,500 foot, 1000 dragoons, and some twenty guns drawn up, in customary fashion, with the foot in the centre and the cavalry on each flank. Many prayers went up that day. Sir Edmund Verney, bearing the royal standard in a conflict he could not believe in; Lord Lindsey, no less determined to fight in the King's forces although he was no longer their leader; Lord Falkland, no fighter by inclination and hoping to end the strife in one swift blow; cavaliers who had followed Rupert from Europe; courtiers, excited and scornful of the enemy; country gentlemen and their sons whose only experience of war was in the tales of their fathers and the dusty textbooks they had routed out; raw recruits, frightened and

uncertain, whose instinct was to break and run for home; Charles himself whose baptism in battle was about to begin; seasoned veterans like Sir Jacob Astley whose spoken prayer served for them all: 'O Lord!, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me'.

Rupert, on the right of the King's army, was the first to charge using the full weight of his horsemen, in his accustomed style, to break the enemy, reserving his fire for the pursuit. The Parliamentarian left wing was shattered by the impact. Rupert and his cavaliers pursued the fleeing horsemen to Kineton and beyond, only drawing rein when two of Hampden's regiments were seen advancing towards them. The Royalist left wing had acted similarly, if not so dramatically, and the brunt of the fighting in the field had been left to the two blocs of infantry where Charles remained, urging on his men, commanding mercy to the enemy, in the midst of terrible slaughter. His commanders begged him to retire to the top of the hill, which he did for a while, but he was soon down amongst his men again. As evening fell Rupert's horsemen returned to the battle which might have been decisively won but for their long absence. Falkland urged one more charge, possibly thinking to end the war then and there, but it was too late; men and horses were spent and darkness was falling. Charles refused to leave the field lest the enemy attempt another attack or construe his withdrawal into an admission of defeat. He slept fitfully in the uncertain light and scant warmth of a small fire made from such wood and brush as could be found, the dead and wounded of both armies lying near him on the battlefield. Before he slept he rewarded one act of heroism, while mourning its necessity. Verney had fallen in the battle and the royal standard had been seized, but Captain Smith, slipping through the enemy lines after dark with a few comrades, recaptured it and brought it to the King, who knighted him on the spot. He had no news of Lindsey, or of Lindsey's son, who had last been seen standing over his wounded father in an attempt to save him.

By first light the wounded were being brought in and the dead identified. They had lost some 1500 men in all. Lindsey's son was a prisoner, Lindsey himself had been carried to a barn where he lay without medical attention, bleeding to death; others who remained in the cold of the battlefield all night fared better, as Harvey recorded, for the frost congealed the blood on their wounds. It was soon apparent that Essex was moving off to Warwick, and the way to London was open to Charles. If the battle itself had been indecisive the result of the

battle was a victory for the King, for it had achieved his objective.^[3] Rupert proposed to the Council of War that a flying column of 3000 horse and foot should immediately march on Westminster and take the capital by surprise. Charles could not bring himself to entertain so immediate a confrontation. But neither, it seems, could he envisage a more sober approach to the city. Instead he marched to Banbury, where he secured supplies of food and clothing for his men, and he captured Broughton Castle, doubtless deriving satisfaction from the knowledge that he was master in the Puritan territory of Lord Saye and Sele. He and his army then moved forward unmolested to Oxford, whose loyalty to the King was unquestioned in spite of some difference of opinion between the town and the University. But in doing this he allowed Essex to make a leisurely return to the capital. Neither side hurried. The initial impact of civil war had been sobering and the armies were not yet willing to risk a fresh encounter. But Charles, by the delay, lost more than his opponents, for he never again had the opportunity of occupying London. Perhaps, thereby, he lost the war.

Charles entered Oxford on October 29 at full march accompanied by the four Princes and with the sixty or seventy colours captured at Edgehill borne before him. The welcome was warm and the mayor presented him with a bag of money. The deputy orator welcomed him more effusively for the University and, with his sons, he took up residence in Christ Church, while Rupert went to St John's where, in Laud's time, he had been accepted as a commoner. The foot-soldiers were billeted in the villages round Oxford, the cavalry headquarters were at Abingdon, many important officials remained near the King — Culpepper and his family in Oriel College, other members of the Privy Council in Postmaster's Hall opposite Merton College where the Warden's lodgings were being prepared for Henrietta-Maria.

The arms and ammunition they brought with them joined the stores already in the cloisters and tower of New College, twenty-seven pieces of heavy ordnance were driven into Magdalen Grove. Grain was stored in the Law and Logic Schools, fodder in New College, animals were penned in Christ Church quadrangle. In the Music and Astronomy Schools cloth was cut into coats for soldiers and carried out by packhorse to be stitched by seamstresses in nearby villages. The mill at Osney became a gunpowder factory, a mint was erected at New Inn Hall to turn the plate that had been brought in to

the King into negotiable money. Nicholas Briot's assistant, Thomas Rawlins, who was with Charles, had much of his master's skill and, apart from utilitarian pieces needed for soldiers' pay, the mint produced a beautiful golden crown piece to his design and a medal to mark the victory at Edgehill — for so the Royalists termed it, though Charles was well aware of the greater victory it might have been, as he told the Venetian Ambassador who visited him at Christ Church; if the cavalry had not overcharged and returned to the field too late to do further battle, he said, it would have been a great victory indeed.

Charles made one not very convincing attempt to march on London when Rupert, on November 11, took and briefly held, a Parliamentary outpost at Brentford. But the London trained bands streamed out to protect their city, and faced with a force of 24,000 men, outnumbering him by two to one, Charles withdrew. He might have crossed into Kent at Kingston and drawn upon the support for him there, but the campaigning season was over and he preferred to settle down in Oxford for the winter. The fortifications of the city, begun before Charles's arrival, were continued. The High Street was blocked at East Bridge by logs and a timber gate, while a bulwark between it and the Physic Garden wall supported two pieces of ordnance, and loads of stone were carried up Magdalen Tower to fling down upon the enemy. The digging of trenches was ordered at vulnerable points between St John's College and the New Park, and in Christ Church Meadow, but the response was poor and when Charles reviewed the work he spoke to the citizens personally, afterwards issuing an Order that everyone over the age of sixteen and under sixty should work on fortifications for one day a week or pay twelve pence for each default. Plans were made to use the waters of the Thames and Cherwell, which surrounded the city on all sides except the North, as an additional defence, the vulnerable North being protected by regiments at Enstone, Woodstock, and Islip. Communications with Reading, which the Royalists held, were kept open by garrisons at Wallingford and Abingdon. Strong garrisons at Banbury, Brill, Faringdon and Burford completed an outer ring of defences behind which Charles at last had a little time for contemplation as he and his army settled in for the winter.

But first he attended to the pleasant task of honouring his children by conferring the degrees of MA upon them; for Dr Harvey, Cambridge and Padua, there was the distinction of an Oxford MD. So

popular among his followers were these awards that Charles found himself sponsoring 18 Doctors and 48 Bachelors of Divinity; 34 Doctors and 14 Bachelors of Civil Law; five Doctors and eight Bachelors of Physics; 76 MAs and 12 BAs. As the day of inauguration wore on the Chancellor's actions became more mechanical, his attention lapsed, and many men who had not been named thrust themselves forward after candlelight to receive the coveted honour. The granting of degrees was an easy way for Charles to reward his followers, and by the following February the University was tired out with one Convocation after another and Charles, without ill-will, agreed to curtail his academic awards.^[4]

Meanwhile printing presses, many of them clandestine, were proliferating, especially in London, giving vent to every kind of opinion, religious, social, political; reporting battles, conferences, proceedings in Parliament or in Oxford. They came from both sides and neither side and voiced complaints that could be laid at the door of either party or no party, they proposed solutions that were practical or Utopian, they expressed new antagonisms, new alignments as the struggle proceeded and they reflected every shade of opinion and belief that the violent opening of society generated. A London bookseller, George Thomason, set out to collect a copy of every pamphlet and news-sheet that came his way from the beginning of the Long Parliament. For the year 1642, the peak year, he had well over 2000 and the numbers were always well over a thousand. They included the news-sheets which were the successors of the corrantos brought to England from Holland during the earlier stages of the Thirty Years War and which now began to appear as regular weekly newspapers. Charles had been as quick as anyone to appreciate the value of print and of regular reporting. He took a printing press with him when he left London and one of the first things he did in Oxford was to inaugurate a weekly news-sheet. Its first appearance as Mercurius Aulicus in January 1643 was preceded by a few days by Parliament's Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer. Aulicus was published from Oriel College under the editorship of Dr Peter Heylin, the Laudian divine, but its leader-writer and subsequent editor was Sir John Berkenhead, a brilliant protégé of William Laud, a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, who had worked for some time with the Archbishop at Lambeth Palace. Aulicus seems to have had two printing presses at Oxford and, remarkably, it was also printed in London. The opening paragraph of the first number referred to its

rival — 'a weekly cheat' put out to nourish falsehood amongst the people and 'make them pay for their seducement'. Aulicus would make them see 'that the Court is neither so barren of intelligence . . . nor the affaires thereof in so unprosperous a condition, as these Pamphlets make them'. In its 118 numbers, ending with the issue of 31 August — 7 September, 1645, Aulicus maintained a high standard of informed and witty reporting, receiving its news items and effecting a system of distribution and sale in and out of Oxford and even in London under the very eyes of Parliament.^[5] It competed with some 170 different news-sheets which appeared for longer or shorter periods and hundreds of pamphlets, many of which made their way to Oxford. Charles was enormously interested in all the pamphlet literature. Early in January 1643, for example, The Complaint of London, Westminster, and the parts adjoyning was being read to him while he was taking supper and he did not rise until it was finished.

Insofar as it was possible to make any calculation at this stage, it seemed that a majority of the House of Lords were following Charles and some forty per cent of the Commons, which was considerably more than the attitude of either House had indicated in the early days of the Long Parliament. Of the Commons possibly 236 Members were Royalists, most of whom had joined him, while 302 remained at Westminster. The tenants of the great landowners were for the most part following their lords — if they did not stay away from battle in an effort at neutrality; industrial towns, particularly the clothing towns of Lancashire, were for Puritanism and Parliament, while the surrounding areas, which contained many Catholics, were for the King. Similarly Bradford and Halifax contributed much support for Parliament, while round them rural areas followed the Royalist allegiance of their landlords. On the whole Charles had great hopes of the North, where he had appointed the Duke of Newcastle Commander of the four northern counties; in March 1643 he stiffened the inexperienced lord by giving him James King, Lord Eythin, a Scot who had seen active service on the Continent, as his Lieutenant-General. By the middle of December Newcastle was virtually in control of Yorkshire, and Lord Fairfax, the Parliamentarian Commander, had fallen back to Selby. In Cornwall the Marquess of Hertford, William Seymour — at one time the husband of the unhappy Arabella Stuart — who was Lieutenant General of the Western Counties, was in virtually complete control, with Ralph, Lord Hopton, his second-in-command and

such men as Bevil Grenville, grandson of the hero of the Revenge , fighting with him.

Charles's opponents had the advantage of London, of most of the wealthy towns and important ports, but south of the capital he could count on support in Kent. Roughly speaking, Charles might call the North and the South-West, including Wales and Cornwall, his country, the East and South-East Parliamenterian country, with the Midlands somewhat unevenly divided in favour of Parliament. But everywhere there were pockets of individual allegiance, and all over the country great houses were standing out in hostile territory. Charles saw among his own supporters large and small landowners, old landed families and new, merchants, industrialists, lawyers, rising gentry and falling gentry — but he saw them on the other side, too. Even past favours had not guaranteed support. He wryly watched the Earl of Holland with his friends of the Providence Island Company, and he wondered why Wemyss, his master gunner, with whom he had appeared to be on good terms, had taken up arms on the other side.

Why, indeed, were they fighting at all? Edward Hyde had often told him that the number of those who desired to sit still was greater than those who desired to engage on either side, and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes was saying that there were few of the common people who cared much for either of the causes, but that most would have taken either side for pay or plunder. There certainly had been reasons for the antagonism of the Long Parliament. But that was past history. The abuses of which they complained had been removed, the constitutional government they demanded had been secured by the summer of 1641. Was it purely rancour that made people fight against him? Were they remembering the past — the forced loans, the monopolies in which they did not share, the tonnage and poundage, so necessary a tax in an untaxed country like England, lack of preferment at Court or in office, the enclosure prohibitions and the accompanying fines at which Laud had been so adept, his own knighthood fees, forest fines and the ship money he had used for the ships which now were in Parliament's hands? If Charles had given way on the militia could he have averted war? Was it over the control of the armed forces that they were fighting? If he had abandoned Episcopacy would he have averted war? But they had not wished him to do that, as the debates on the Grand Remonstrance and the opposition to the Root and Branch Bill made abundantly clear. Did they really believe that he

was so lukewarm in his religion, or so much under the influence of his wife, as to consider joining the Roman Church? Did they consider for a moment that his relations with Spain were anything but opportunist or that he had in any way encouraged the Irish rising in 1641? He remembered angrily that the people who now accused him of betraying the Protestant religion were the very ones who had refused aid to his sister. He still could not see why a compromise had not been reached. Had Bedford served him ill by his death at the moment when a middle group might have negotiated a settlement? But, whatever the answers, it takes two to make a quarrel and it takes two armies to wage war, and unless there had been a significant reaction against Parliament the formation of a King's party would have been unlikely and the outbreak of war impossible.

Possibly the split had occurred between those who believed in his promises and those who did not believe that he had abandoned forever the right to supply without the sanction of Parliament. But a tax would be a tax, money would be required, whether for King or Parliament, and Charles could watch, even with amusement, the response accorded to his opponents' efforts to raise money. When Pym had met with a poor response from the City earlier in 1642 and spoke of 'compelling' the Londoners to lend, their defences had gone up immediately. Certainly, said D'Ewes, 'if the least fear of this should grow, that men should be compelled to lend, all men will conceal their ready money, and lend nothing to us voluntarily'. There was a similar reaction at the end of December when the City refused to lend unless the Upper House set an example. Some noble lords refused absolutely, others took time to consider, Lord Saye subscribed a mere £100, the Earl of Manchester £300.

Many people undoubtedly believed that to continue the quarrel with the King would be to unleash anarchy, and in this respect the petitions and rioting at the end of 1641, which Parliament itself had encouraged, did them harm. The Venetian Ambassador noted the apprehension lest an attenuation of royal authority 'might not augment licence among the people with manifest danger that after shaking off the yoke of monarchy they might afterwards apply themselves to abase the nobility also and reduce the government of this realm to a complete democracy'. Sir John Hotham, a little too late for Charles's satisfaction, came over to the King's side after the fighting had started, giving as one of his reasons that he feared 'the necessitous people' of the whole kingdom would rise 'in mighty numbers, and whatsoever

they pretend for att first, within a while they will sett up for themselves to the utter ruine of all the Nobility and Gentry of the kingdome'. This danger of anarchy was one of the reasons for preserving episcopacy. As his father had said, no Bishop, no King; and Sir Edmund Waller had pointed out the relationship in greater detail. Episcopacy, he said, was 'a counterscarp, or outwork; which, if it be taken by this assault of the people . . . we may, in the next place, have as hard a task to defend our property as we have lately had to defend it from the Prerogative. If . . . they prevail for an equality in things ecclesiastical, the next demand perhaps may be lex agraria, the like equality in things temporal.' Or, as Sir John Strangeways put it in the course of the debate on the Root and Branch petition, 'If we make a parity in the Church we must come to a parity in the Commonwealth.'

As far as Charles could see the choice of sides rested almost entirely on the answer to the question whether property, and the civil and ecclesiastical order which upheld it, would be safer under King or Parliament. Those who supported Parliament might have had some doubts when in October 1642 a lawyer named Fountain appealed to the Petition of Right when refusing a 'gift' to Parliament and was told bluntly by Henry Marten that the Petition was intended to restrain kings, not parliaments. Fountain was sent to prison.

But while for richer people the issue had come to be very largely one of property, there were many who were now supporting Parliament under the wider banner which Charles's opponents had appropriated to themselves — that of 'Liberty' or, in the plural, 'Freedoms'. Charles could now see his mistakes in censoring the press, in allowing the 'Puritan martyrs' their platforms; he could see that 'little men', defeated by poverty, left behind by economic developments, were unafraid of anarchy but simply hoped for a new deal under Parliament; he knew well enough the power over these people of such fanatics as John Lilburne, who turned up as prisoner in Oxford after the taking of Brentford, having lost nothing of his old fire. In court he objected to being charged as a 'yeoman', being of gentry stock; he argued with the Earl of Northampton, and challenged Prince Rupert to combat, an unexpected invitation which caused the Prince to leave the room saying 'the fellow is mad!' In his captivity in Oxford Castle Lilburne kept up such a furore that the Royalists were only too happy to exchange him in May 1643 for Sir John Smith, whom Charles had knighted on Edgehill field.

The new Earl of Lindsey, who had remained a prisoner in Warwick Castle since Edgehill, was also exchanged in 1643 and joined the King. From such friends and supporters who came into him at Oxford Charles reaped great satisfaction. On the anniversary of Edgehill he called Edward Lake to him. Lake was a lawyer who, despite his inexperience, had shown remarkable bravery. When his left hand was shot he placed his horse's bridle in his teeth and fought with his sword in his right hand until the end of the day, when he was captured and imprisoned. Seven weeks later he escaped and made his way to Oxford. Charles was deeply impressed; 'you lost a great deal of blood for me that day', he said, 'and I shall not forget it.' Then, turning to the bystanders, 'for a lawyer', he said, 'a professed lawyer, to throw off his gown and fight so heartily for me, I must need think very well of it'. Charles not only created him a baronet but showed his habitual care over detail by taking a personal interest in Lake's proposed coat of arms, himself augmenting it by the addition of one of the lions of England.^[6]

As winter set in at Oxford the Court of Whitehall reproduced itself as best it might. The city was now full of soldiers and courtiers, Privy Councillors, secretaries, officials and supporters of many kinds, mostly accompanied by their families, all crowding in on the limited accommodation, generally content to exchange their normal state for a couple of rooms in an overful lodging just for the sake of being there at all. Fashionably dressed ladies walked in college gardens or watched the recruits, mostly scholar-turned-soldier, marching down the High Street and out to the New Parks for martial exercise, or drilling in the meadows by the Cherwell under the walls of Merton College. Domestic troubles began to assert themselves: Prince Charles had the measles; Prince Maurice, more seriously, had an attack of the stone which worried his mother more than the war itself; Charles had to send to Whitehall for stockings and other small necessaries. The House of Commons debated whether a servant should be allowed to take them to Oxford and decided by a vote of 26 to 18 that Charles might have them. He did not know which was worse — the lack of interest in his needs or the fact that the matter should have been discussed at all. More serious was the news in March 1643 that Henrietta-Maria's chapel in Somerset House had been ransacked and that Parliament had sequestered the lands of bishops, deans and chapters, appropriating the income to their own use.

Meanwhile Charles played tennis with Rupert, he hunted as far away as Woodstock, he received Ambassadors, including the Venetian and the Frenchman, who was a constant visitor; he even did his best to celebrate a wedding when a Groom of his Bedchamber married the reigning beauty of the exiled Court. But all this was accompanied not only by the drilling of recruits and the construction of fortifications but by the clatter of cavalry as horsemen moved in and out of the city. The most advanced post of the Parliamenterian armies was at Windsor, where Essex was covering the western approaches to London, and while the armies of both sides lay in their wide-spreading winter quarters there was a constant movement of patrols, reconnaissance parties, and probing detachments of horse. The spring offensive was heralded when Parliamentarian forces took Reading, only twenty miles from Oxford. At the beginning of June they were in Thame and ventured into Wheatley but were beaten off by a Royalist garrison on Shotover Hill. Rupert disliked this forward probing and hoped to retaliate by securing a convoy of money which he had heard was on its way from London to Thame. He missed the convoy but on his way back to Oxford on June 18 he dispersed a small enemy force at Charlgrove Field, ten miles south-east of Oxford. In this little skirmish John Hampden was mortally wounded and died in Thame six days later. The removal of his moderating influence was a serious loss to Parliament.

The time was now approaching when Henrietta-Maria herself would be joining her husband with the arms and money she had collected. As they made plans for their reunion the couple set about deliberate deception. 'All the letters which I write by the post, in which there is no cipher, do not you believe', she instructed, 'for they are written for the Parliament.' So it was given out that she would land at Yarmouth or Boston, whereas she intended Newcastle or Scarborough. But as the time for her departure drew near communications failed completely. As Powicke Bridge and Edgehill were fought the couple were out of touch and only the most dramatic rumours reached the isolated Queen. At last, with communications restored, she set sail in January 1643. First her little flotilla was becalmed off the Dutch coast. When they finally got away they were struck by storms of unprecedented ferocity and for nine days were beaten to and fro off the Dutch shore with no opportunity of making land. The Queen sustained her terrified ladies by assuring them that Queens of England were never

drowned, acting at the same time as father-confessor to those who were convinced their end was near. When at last they were able to make land, it was Holland and not England to which they had come. The third effort was successful and Henrietta-Maria landed at Bridlington on February 22. She was given Royalist cover from the land and a troop of cavaliers rode in to greet her a few hours after her arrival. Charles was overwhelmed with relief and admiration: 'when I shall have done my part', he wrote from Oxford, 'I confess that I shall come short of what thou deservest of me.' Her trials were not yet over for the small house in which she prepared to spend the night became the target of bombardment from Parliamentarian ships and she was compelled to take to the shelter of fields and hedges while cannon shot burst round her. Even when she was ready to ride south there were difficulties, for Fairfax with his army lay between her and Oxford. It took her nearly five months to reach Stratford where she was met by Rupert on July 11. But by that time her journey had become a triumphant march. Volunteers flocked in to her and with the arms and ammunition she had brought from Holland she was accompanied by 2000 foot, well armed, 1000 horse, six pieces of cannon, two mortars, and 100 well filled wagons. Newcastle was her escort, Jermyn her Commander-in-Chief, and she herself, as she wrote exultantly to Charles, was her 'she majesty, generalissima' over all. Two days after leaving Stratford she met her husband and her two eldest sons at the foot of Edgehill. They slept that night at Sir Thomas Pope's house at Wroxton and the next day proceeded to Woodstock and thence to Oxford.

The welcome to Oxford was dubbed 'triumphant' and 'magnificent' with soldiers lining the streets, houses packed with spectators, trumpets sounding, heralds riding before her. At Carfax the town clerk read a speech and presented her with a purse of gold, at Christ Church the Vice Chancellor and the Heads of Houses in scarlet gowns welcomed her, students read verses in Latin and English, and she received the traditional University present of a pair of gloves. Charles then conducted her, by a private way through Merton Grove, to the Warden's Lodgings in Merton College which would be her home.^[7]

With the Queen's arrival Oxford resembled even more the Court at Whitehall, with courtiers flitting between Christ Church and Merton, ladies dressing elegantly in spite of the cramped rooms in which they were compelled to make their toilets. Practical jokes were played on academics who were a natural butt, it was even possible to produce

a masque. But more serious was the renewal of the gossip and rivalry her presence brought. Digby, now one of her favourites, was at odds with Rupert; Holland, who had begun the war on the other side, came to Oxford to make his peace with her and spent far too long in her elegant drawing room at Merton, frequently in the afternoons when Charles himself was visiting his wife. Charles would not receive him back into favour and Holland departed for London and the Parliament. As he prepared for the coming campaign, Charles could have done without such distractions.