King Charles II (21 page)

The Fife débâcle removed from the Scots their other option of a northward encirclement. In a clever manœuvre Cromwell, now restored to health, reached Perth and cut off the Scots’ supplies. Militarily speaking, Charles had probably been right from the first in desiring the southern expedition. Now he was certainly right in desiring to speed up the operation if it was to take place at all.

Still the Scots havered. Their army lurked uncertainly west of Fife, near Stirling, leaving the initiative to Cromwell. The Scots did not finally take the decision to plunge south, regardless, for several vital weeks. The actual march began as late as 31 July. The Duke of Hamilton (formerly Earl of Lanark, who had succeeded his brother, executed by Parliament) agreed that marching on England was probably the best course. Or at any rate he called it ‘the least ill’. But he added, ‘It appears very desperate to me.’ Now the fatal divisions, the doom of Scottish society for so many years, began to appear in their ranks once again. Argyll, for example, retreated morosely from the scene and refused to join the army. At this the Engager Hamilton was full of glee: ‘All the rogues have left us.’
¹⁸
But by the time Charles reached England he would need all the rogues he could get.

It was thus a listless and troubled force which crossed the border into England on 5 August.
^fn1
Such energy as it had was unfortunately diverted into such idiotic channels as the dispute initiated, with typically bad timing, by Buckingham. The perky young Duke suddenly took it upon himself to object to command of the army being given to a Scot, although the King had the veteran Leslie at his side, as well as Middleton. When Charles tactfully referred to Buckingham’s youth as a reason for denying him (Buckingham was actually two years older than Charles),
the Duke sulked in the most childish and public manner, refusing to speak to Charles, refusing to come to the Council, and – supreme buffoon’s touch – refusing to change his linen in protest.

These debilitations contrasted with the energy with which the Commonwealth acted to meet the Scottish menace. Once again, as in 1648, much care was taken to present the invaders as alien and predatory.
Mercurius Britannicus
was coached to make a display of anti-Scottish feeling; an issue of early August chose to recall to its readers every single Scottish invasion of England which had taken place since that of King Malcolm in 1071. The word ‘un-English’ was used to describe those who might be so unwary as to join the ‘King of Scots’; stoning was suggested as a suitable fate for them.
¹⁹

This so-called King of Scots was in fact proclaimed King of England at Penrith, a northern market town, and later at Rokeby, where a flourish of trumpets attended the ceremony. But it was significant that the important border town of Carlisle had refused to surrender to his call. And as their native country receded, all too many of the Scots decided to recede from the army back to it. Practically no-one in England joined the royal standard to replace them.

Government measures in England, including the cancellation of all public meetings, dealt efficiently with the emergency. Meanwhile, Cromwell, Lambert and Harrison, three of the toughest Parliamentary generals, were busy harrying the Scottish army in the rear: ‘That mongrel Scotch Army’, as Thomas Lord Bruce (a Royalist) disdainfully called it in his memoirs.
²⁰
But it was not actually mongrel enough. The Catholics of Lancashire existed but they did not rise. The King was after all at the head of a band of Presbyterians.

Nothing seemed to go right. When the Earl of Derby, the great magnate of Lancashire, landed from the Isle of Man to bring his followers to the King’s aid, he was instantly defeated at Wigan. Only the Earl himself, and a handful of his men, escaped to join the King further south. The presence of Commonwealth spies in the Royalist organization exacerbated its problems: Isaac Berkenhead, a supposed Royalist agent, betrayed
the correspondence between the King and Lord Derby. Another spy, Thomas Coke, revealed so much of the Royalist network in England that about two thousand people were taken into custody, including potential leaders such as the Duke of Richmond and Lord Beauchamp.
²¹

The King’s fortunes got no better as he moved south. If anything, the patriotic revulsion of the English against the Scots increased. The Parliamentary commander of the town of Shrewsbury refused to surrender to ‘the King’, and addressed his refusal pointedly to the ‘Commander-in-Chief of the Scottish Army’. There are many instances in contemporary records and memoirs of once loyal monarchists who simply stayed away from the doomed and by now straggling royal train as it wound its way through that English countryside. At Chirk Castle Sir Thomas Middleton not only declined to rouse North Wales on behalf of the King, but even refused to receive his letter.

The Duke of Hamilton had written, ‘I confess I cannot tell you whether our hopes or fears are greatest, but we have one stout argument – despair; for we must either stoutly fight or die.’ It was in this mood that King Charles, at the head of no more than sixteen thousand men, most of whom were by now utterly exhausted, arrived on August 22 at the city of Worcester.

Twelve days passed before the Commonwealth Army attacked. This period was spent by the King in desperate activity, trying to salvage something like victory from a hopeless situation.

Proud of its loyalty to the royal house, Worcester had been the first city to declare for Charles
I
in the Civil War. Graced by an incomparable cathedral, which loomed over the woody bank of the River Severn, it presented a fair sight, this city set in a flat green countryside of fertility, nearing the Marches of England and Wales. Here the King lodged in a small mediaeval house
^fn2
and gave his mind to the reanimation of his dispirited men. It had been twenty-three days since they departed from Scotland. Their problems were not purely of the mind: they were exhausted by this seemingly endless yet unsuccessful progress through England, and their belongings were in tatters;
most of them lacked shoes and stockings altogether.

The city did have one advantage to set against all this; it occupied a naturally defensive position, situated on one river, the Severn, as it flowed down to Bristol, and defended by another, the Teme, which flowed into the Severn at a strategic point slightly south-east of the town. Beyond the river palisade were the heights blocking off Worcester from Evesham and, to the west, the Malvern Hills. This combination of river and hill might be turned to profit at the eleventh hour.

The day after his arrival the King held an assembly in the broad water-meadows below the cathedral. But the manifesto he issued showed that his prolonged march had still given him no opportunity to feel the pulse of English opinion; he was quite out of touch. For instance, he offered to settle religion according to the Covenant; he thought the difficulties of this were covered by promising arrears of pay to anyone who would desert the Commonwealth. The Act of Oblivion he offered to anyone except the actual regicides must also have seemed curiously unreal to those gathered in the water-meadows; they would have formed the perfectly correct conclusion that it was the King and the Scots who were going to need an Act of Oblivion before they were much older. At least Charles stressed the fact that the Scots would be returning to their own country once the matter at hand was concluded: government propaganda had underlined the fear that the Scots would be granted good English land.

But when the King tried to order a levy of all persons between sixteen and sixty, he was preaching to the wind. Soon Cromwell himself would be ranged against him with thirty thousand seasoned men. The government had even successfully ordered out the English militia against England’s titular King. Any stray soldiers were far more inclined to join up with the winning side of the Commonwealth than with that of the beleaguered King.

Cromwell, supported by Lambert, Harrison and Fleetwood, had arrived from the north. But, with his usual strategic flair, he decided to cut off Worcester from the south and south-east in order to obviate the risk of the King reaching London. The royal party inside Worcester were like settlers within a defensive
circle of their upturned wagons; they soon found themselves ringed by the Indians. In the absence of any possibility of rescue – no military here galloping up in the nick of time – the King hoped to break out of the ring. He was certainly very much in control of the campaign. Indeed, in this final throw (the first and last military command in the field he would ever hold), he showed both courage and ability. It was at Charles’ orders that the four vital bridges guarding access to the town were blown up; it was not his fault that the order was inadequately carried out, so that one bridge, at Upton, survived in sufficiently good condition to be patched up and used by Lambert.

Otherwise, the King concentrated the bulk of his soldiers within the walled city, where he trusted to the narrow streets to provide a natural form of defensive fortification. But he did position three Scottish regiments under Thomas Dalyell, Sir William Keith and Major General Pitscottie to guard the vital confluence of the Severn and the Teme in the fields below the city to the west. Cromwell was in position from 29 August onwards, with the Cromwellian guns battering away at the town from the east; a bold night foray by Middleton failed to silence these guns.

The final Indian charge could not be long delayed; indeed, there are grounds for believing that Cromwell actually delayed the assault to coincide with his ‘most auspicious day’ – 3 September, the first anniversary of his victory at Dunbar.
²²
When the first noise of firing was heard, the King climbed up the fine fourteenth-century square tower of Worcester Cathedral. This watchpost surveyed (and still surveys) an imposing panorama of water and wood, as the two rivers were spread out beneath his gaze.

It was an historic position. In this cathedral had been buried another unfortunate English monarch, John, and an unlucky prince, Arthur, he whose premature death after marriage to Catharine of Aragon had brought about the marital conflicts of Henry
VIII
. Just as in its own past Worcester had seen many battles, with Saxons, Danes and Normans jostling in its legends, so the cathedral too had its scars. The beautiful stained glass
which had survived the Reformation had not survived the depredations of the Parliamentary troops after the Siege of Worcester in 1646, when cathedral and city were pillaged. The arrival of King Charles
II
incidentally provided a welcome doctrinal interruption in the Puritan services which had taken place there ever since.

The King was armed with a spy-glass and dressed in his now familiar uniform of a buff coat, and boots, with a red sash and the George round his neck. Below him he could see into the College Green, surrounded by mediaeval houses, and packed with horses, carts and men. Beyond that could be glimpsed others of his troops, and their colourful standards: in his own mind, at least, they were prepared to defend the city or die in the attempt. Beyond that again lay the marshes outside the city.

The Castle Hill, to the immediate south-west of Worcester, had a fort on it. Close and to the south-east lay the so-called Fort Royal (now a tasteful municipal park), whose top put an observer on a level with the cathedral itself. Perry Wood and Nunney Wood were situated beyond the Fort Royal. Bunns Hill lay roughly between the two high points, with Cromwell stationed below it. There the King could see the bridge of boats being towed up the Severn by Fleetwood, with the men milling around over it. Further away still, his own Scots, under Sir William Keith, guarded the Powick Bridge; they were determined to hold it valiantly.

It was the sight of the boats which inspired the King to his next move. Cromwell with most of his cavalry had crossed the Severn in support of Fleetwood. Determined as he was not to sit down under the certainty of defeat, the King concluded that this departure must have considerably weakened the main Commonwealth force to the south-east. He therefore ordered his own men to charge immediately out of the Sidbury Gate and attack them. And he himself promptly joined in the fray.