In Chester, the Wandesfords found a welcome and were treated with kindness and friendship by the gentry families. Within the strong walls of a city well-stocked with muskets, garrisoned by Royalist troops and with armed watchmen night and day guarding the gates, Mrs Wandesford must have felt she had reached a safe haven for her family and especially for her convalescent daughter and troubled son Christopher. Refugees like themselves from Ireland were coming into the city, and lawlessness in Cheshire was driving people there, but Sir Thomas Danby was able to relieve her of the care of her grandsons and her twenty-year-old son George was safely in France with his tutor.
She had many anxieties to deal with. Besides the health of Alice and Christopher, there were matters from her husband's estates in an increasingly chaotic Ireland to settle, and she was short of money because rents from Yorkshire weren't arriving. She didn't like to accept the offers of help from friends in Chester, but she had the invaluable support of her brother Sir Edward Osborne.
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| Sir Edward Osborne (1596-1647) |
He, poor man, had never recovered from the death of his eldest boy Edward in 1638. Sir Edward had taken the place of Strafford as President of the Council of the North and was living at York Manor in York, the official residence, at the time. A violent storm brought down a chimneystack which crashed through the roof, killing 17 year old Edward and sparing 6 year old Thomas only because, when the disaster happened, he was looking under a table for his pet cat. Now Sir Edward was busy as a Commissioner of Array for the King, charged with mustering troops.
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| York Manor (now King's Manor). [Tim Green CC by 2.0] |
Outside Chester the situation was bad.
The Wandesfords knew that Scottish troops were no longer in easy reach of their Yorkshire estates – they had left England in August – but now dreadful news kept coming in from Ireland of cruelties and massacres. Even more appalling versions of the same news, of much larger numbers of Protestants dead, of rapes and tortures and murdered babies, came from the London printers and propagandists. Anglicans like the Wandesfords were shocked to hear of the desecration of the cathedrals of Winchester and Chichester by Parliamentary troops who smashed the stained glass and the memorials. Alice shared the opinions of everyone she knew – the King's Scottish and English opponents were men who had wantonly tired of a lawful and peaceable government, the Irish nakedly thirsted after the blood and lives of the English, the religious grievances of the Calvinists and Catholics were nothing but pretence, and the Earl of Strafford was a martyr.
Yorkshire and the Battle of Piercebridge: 1642
Beyond the walls of Chester – and even within the walls – conflicting loyalties were dividing families, towns and villages.
London grew too dangerous for the King and he set up his Court in York on 19 March 1642. The city found itself the capital of the kingdom for six months, housing foreign ambassadors, nobles, the important men of state and a committee sent by Parliament to keep an eye on the King.
Rival Puritan and Royalist groups fought each other in the streets. Terrifying stories of massacres in Ireland began to reach Yorkshire and wild fears of Catholic Irish invasion took root. Having two Catholic priests executed – the head of Father Lockwood, aged nearly 90, was put on Bootham Bar, and the head of young Edmund Catterick of Carlton near Richmond, on Micklegate Bar – couldn't convince doubters that Protestantism was safe in the King's hands. And it was no use the King decreeing that no Catholics could join his army – at the muster, anyone could see that nearly half the Royalist colonels were Catholic. Recruitment for Parliament surged among the lower classes in the West Riding. As time passed and the hope of finding an agreement between the two sides faded, the city authorities began to strengthen York's defences.
On 22 August 1642, the King marched southward and raised his standard at Nottingham Castle. He was now at war with Parliament.
On 23 September, the Wandesfords will have seen the King being enthusiastically welcomed into Chester with great civic ceremony. He was there because it was an important strategic stronghold, the main port for Ireland and the gateway to Royalist North Wales and he spent a few nights in the city, reviewing the troops of his supporters, before moving on to Wrexham. A month later, his forces and the Parliamentarians met in battle for the first time. It was at Edgehill, a dozen miles south-east of Stratford-upon-Avon, and both sides claimed victory.
And what about Yorkshire, where Alice's sister Catherine must now have been in great anxiety for her husband, who had gone to join the King's army?
Hull was held for Parliament by Sir John Hotham and Scarborough by the Whitby landowner Sir Hugh Cholmley, and the independently-minded weavers and small farmers of the West Riding were mostly Puritans, but the North Riding was for the King and the few Parliamentarians there had a poor time of it. They included men like the Earl of Mulgrave, the three sons of Sir David Foulis of Ingleby – their father had spent seven years in prison because of Strafford – and their cousins Thomas and James Chaloner of Guisborough. The Robinsons of Rokeby near Greta Bridge were ardent Parliamentarians. John Dodsworth of Thornton Watlass, a kinsman of the Wandesfords, was raising a company of dragoons for Parliament.
Parliamentarian captains met at Bedale in October 1642. They tried to organise the Trained Bands and they held a public meeting in Richmond to raise funds. But the fund-raising wasn't very successful and the Trained Bands weren't at all keen. Very many people wanted to keep out of this argument and in some places communities made neutrality pacts with each other. Before long, force and threats were being used to get recruits. Hugh Cholmley of Tunstall near Catterick first tricked his neighbours into mustering for his son's troop of Royalist horse and then forced them to stay in the troop, threatening he would have them hanged and their houses burned if they didn't.
Both King and Parliament needed control of the crossing places on the River Tees. The Royalists were bringing in supplies of arms from the Continent into the River Tyne. They were needed for York, which was threatened from the west and from the Parliamentarian ports of Hull and Scarborough to the east.
William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle, was the Royalist commander-in-chief in the North East. His army of about 2,000 horse and dragoons, together with 4,000 foot soldiers and ten pieces of cannonry reached the narrow mediaeval bridge at Piercebridge on 1 December 1642. On the other bank of the Tees was Captain John Hotham with about 120 horse, 400 foot and two small cannons.
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| William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle |
An advance guard of Royalist dragoons and foot under 36 year old Colonel Sir Thomas Howard forced its way onto the bridge and fierce fighting followed. Finally unable to hold the bridge, Hotham withdrew his men towards Knaresborough with, he said, only three wounded. The attackers will have suffered more in their onslaught on the bridge and their leader Sir Thomas Howard was killed. He was buried the next day at High Coniscliffe while the Marquess of Newcastle and his forces marched on to York.
Battles at Guisborough and Yarm: 1643
The loss of Piercebridge and the arrival in York of the supplies was an enormous blow to the Parliamentarian gentry of the North Riding. Their goods and estates were confiscated and they couldn't help their friends in the West Riding because the men of the Trained Bands, who had turned up so reluctantly, simply melted away. Sir Henry Foulis of Ingleby reported that a Cleveland foot regiment that had mustered 500 men at Yarm had rapidly dwindled to 80 at the approach of the enemy.
Meanwhile, someone the Wandesfords had known in Dublin had returned home to his estates at Hemlington, just south of the Tees. This was 32 year old Guilford Slingsby, who had been Strafford's loyal secretary to the end and who had since been secretary to the young Prince of Wales in Holland.
Slingsby had no military experience himself, so he had brought back with him a few mercenaries to train the troops he intended to raise for the King. They were needed to protect the arms convoys crossing the Tees and to threaten the Parliamentarians in Scarborough.
Sir Hugh Cholmley in Scarborough learned that his distant kinsman Slingsby had orders from the Marquess of Newcastle to occupy Whitby – which was his own territory, where he had his great house beside the ruins of the ancient Abbey. Picking up two troops of dragoons in Malton, he took his men on the hard, wintry march across the moors towards Guisborough. He had with him 80 horse, 170 dragoons and 130 foot – some 380 men in all.
On 16 January 1643, Cholmley's men came down from the moors. Slingsby's forces – some 100 horse and 400 foot, mostly raw recruits – were so confident that they came about a mile out of Guisborough to meet the Parliamentary troops and they placed their musketeers under the hedges in positions of advantage. They were able to hold their ground for a couple of hours but they were gradually forced back and defeated. Slingsby, badly wounded by artillery fire, was taken prisoner. The surgeons tried to save him, amputating both his legs above the knee, but he died three days later. He was buried in York Minster.
When Sir Hugh Cholmley, who had moderate religious views and was becoming ever more unhappy with his choice of allegiance, reported the battle to Parliament, he wrote
I am forced to draw my sword not only against my countrymen but many near friends and allies some of which I know both to be well affected in religion and lovers of their liberties.
He withdrew his men to Scarborough, and he ordered 400 foot, 150 horse and two cannons to Yarm to hold the narrow bridge over the Tees.
A few weeks later, a very large convoy of 120 wagons and 140 packhorses, guarded by perhaps 2,000 men, was on its way south to the Marquess of Newcastle. The Parliamentary forces at the bridge had no chance. On 1 February 1643 the Royalists fell on them and in a very brief time most of them were taken. The Battle of Yarm was soon over. The prisoners were taken to Durham Castle, where they were badly treated. The Royalist convoy left engineers at Yarm to stop future Parliamentarian attempts on the bridge – they broke down its northern arch and put a wooden drawbridge in its place.
Within weeks, Sir Hugh Cholmley had changed sides. The King now held Scarborough. On 30 June, the Marquess of Newcastle won a victory at the Battle of Adwalton Moor, five miles from Bradford. The North was now almost completely Royalist.
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