Jacobites by Jacqueline Riding

Author:Jacqueline Riding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Hubert Gravelot, Headpiece to Paul de Rapin-Thoyras’s ‘The History of England’, 1744–47.

(© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM)

35

Packington

‘flying back’

On Friday, 6 December the Duke of Cumberland was at Packington, thirteen and a half miles due south of Derby. He writes to the Duke of Newcastle, updating him on the British army’s advance to Northampton) and now confirming that the cavalry, artillery and some battalions had already arrived in Coventry. By this movement, and as planned, the duke believes ‘we had gaind a march on the Rebells, & had it in our Power to be between them and London’. But he continues, revealing mild astonishment, ‘of a sudden they quitted Derby & are gone to Ashbourn with great precipitation’. This retreat suggested that there had been little, if any, coordination between the French invasion force gathering across the Channel and the advancing Jacobite army. But this was not the duke’s immediate concern. The race was now on to cut off Charles and his men from the north while pursuing them from the south. To that end, the Duke of Cumberland had immediately dispatched Colonel Conway to Marshal Wade at Doncaster, with orders for the marshal to march north-west into Lancashire, in order to intercept the Jacobite retreat into Scotland ‘which other wise they might probably succeed in’. For now, the duke’s own troops were in no condition to pursue, as he affirms: ‘Since Monday that we first march’d from Litchfield to this day We have marchd more hours than there had been daylight, & tho the Troops hitherto supported with a most surprising cheerfulness & health yet they can hold out no longer without some Rest.’ The duke also admits that this situation is very new to him ‘as this is my first Winter Campain’ and therefore ‘I can only judge by what others of more experience say, & by what I have read’. The early winter ‘has been as severe as it is possible to conceive’, and the marching back and forth to block the Jacobite army’s advance had meant that ‘every man has worn one if not two pair of shoes’. As a result, ‘I have been forced to promise them this day a pair of stockings & shoes each Man, which I hope the King will not disapprove of.’1

Over the following days the duke received various pieces of intelligence concerning the events at Derby and the subsequent movements of the Jacobite army. One, dated 6 December, stated that the observer, Mr Lydall, ‘saw them or went with them three miles from Derby towards Ashborn & that they tooke the direct road thither’. Lydall also recalled that ‘they marched very fast & that the horses which drew their artillery & Baggage went upon a trot’.2

The following morning the Duke of Devonshire, then at Pontefract in Yorkshire, sent a note to the Duke of Cumberland, enclosing several pieces of information that had arrived at Chatsworth during the night, which confirmed that the Jacobite army had left Leek. According to his

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