Military History From Primary Sources [00] The English Civil Wars 1642-1649 by Bob Carruthers

Author:Bob Carruthers [Carruthers, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: new
ISBN: 9781781591475
Amazon: 1781591474
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

John Hotham.

In the larger towns, the effects of the war were more marked. Lucy Hutchinson, wife of the Governor, described the events in the Parliamentarian stronghold of Nottingham after messengers brought word of a Royalist advance in January 1644.

Lucy Hutchinson’s memoirs are particularly interesting as they provide an eye witness account of the fighting from a female perspective. We do however need to treat her material with some caution as the reader does get the strong impression that some of the books in which they appear may been slanted to present the memory of her husband in the best possible light.

Nonetheless her lucid account of the attempt by the royalists under Sir Charles Lucas to capture the puritan town is an exciting and wonderfully detailed description of the kind of action which was being fought throughout England in late 1643 and early 1644. If Lucy Hutchinson’s experience was typical of other towns of this size it is not too difficult to understand why the rate of mortality was so great. It has been estimated that the civil war took a proportionately higher poll on the men of Great Britain than the Great War and the constant repetition of events like these no doubt played their part.

“The Horse, perceiving the enemy’s body to be a great one, retreated to the Castle, and the Foot seeing them gone, and none of the townsmen come forth to their assistance, made also an orderly retreat back to the Castle, in which there was not a man lost nor wounded. The works being unperfect and quitted were easily enter’d though the cannon that play’d upon them from the Castle took off wholly the second file of musketeers that enter’d the gates, and kill’d them. The first was led up by Lieutenant-Colonel Cartwright, who two days before had sent to the Governor for a protection to come in and lay down arms. The enemy being enter’d possessed themselves of St Peter’s Church and certain houses near the Castle, from whence they shot into the Castle yard and wounded one man and killed another, which was all the hurt that was done our men that day.

The Parliamentarians were to be more successful then the Royalists in their search for outside help. A few days before the King’s Irish Regiments were routed at the battle at Nantwich, the Scots had finally come to Parliament’s aid and crossed the border near Berwick with a might army, some twenty thousand strong. Suddenly the whole complexion of the war was altered.

By 1643 the whole of England was paying a terrible price for the continuation of the war. The prospects for a negotiated peace at that time would still appear to have been a very real one, but the stubbornness of Charles and the superior political skills of the hawks in the parliamentary camp, combined to ensure that the war continued, despite the appalling consequences for the country.

Robert Baillie, one of the Scottish commissioners sent to London in 1643, sent a letter home describing the state of England as he found it in the second year of Civil War.

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