9. Royalist disaster & private grief: 1645-7

On 14 June 1645, the New Model Army – Parliament's new national army – inflicted a decisive defeat on the Royalists at the Battle of Naseby in Northamptonshire.  It was a disaster for the King.  His army was shattered and his private papers had fallen into Parliament's hands.  They published them.  Now people could see that they had been right to fear that he planned to bring an army of Irish Catholics over to fight in England.  He was negotiating to do just that, and he was trying to get money and mercenaries from abroad.  

The last hopes were fading for the Royalists.  In Wensleydale, John Scrope had been holding Bolton Castle for the King.  It had been under siege since the autumn of 1644.  Now, although there was no chance of relief, the garrison held out until all their supplies had been eaten – including the horses and all the animals – and then they surrendered in November 1645.  Parliament ordered the castle to be slighted, and some of it was demolished. 

Bolton Castle

By then Sir Thomas Danby and Lady Danby were back in their own house at Thorpe Perrow.  His estates had been seized by the Sequestration Committee because he had fought for the King, but in each county there was a Committee for Compounding with Delinquents, which could let the men have their lands back if they pledged never to fight against Parliament again and if they paid a fine – a useful way for the new government to raise money.  Sir Thomas's fine was heavy, but by 1645 he had paid up and he and Catherine were at home again.  

She was now expecting her sixteenth child.  Ten of her babies had lived to be baptised but the others were stillborn, Alice remembered, from frights caused by fire in her chamber, by falls and other accidents.  She had been married at the age of fifteen and she was now thirty.  Tender-hearted and sweet-natured, she was badly grieved by the war and the state of the country and she dreaded to think what the future might hold.  She had been left during the war to manage the estate and household while her husband was away in the King's service and only able to come back rarely and she had missed him badly.  She had been vexed and troubled by the many alarms and difficulties caused by the presence of the Scots soldiers quartered on her.  She had been very unwell during this pregnancy and now she went into labour earlier than she expected.  She couldn't get her old midwife because she was in Richmond, which was shut up by the plague.  And the baby was a breech presentation, coming – as Alice said – double into this world.  

At last she was delivered of a fine boy after a long and very hard labour.  He was named Francis after Alice's little godson, his elder brother who had died that summer of smallpox.  Catherine was in dreadful pain, unable to sleep or eat.  The women of her family came to her.  Her sister-in-law Lady Armitage and her aunt Mrs Norton had been with her when Alice came to take their place.  Catherine was making her preparations for the good death which was of such paramount importance at the time, praying for her family and for peace in England, and entrusting her children to her husband's care.  After a week, Alice's grief for Catherine was such that she became ill herself.  Mrs Wandesford came with her careful young servant Dafeny Lightfoote and sent Alice home.  

Catherine loved Dafeny dearly and now Dafeny was always with her.  At last, with her head on Dafeny's breast, she said, "I am going to God, my God now."  Dafeny spoke to her bracingly, saying she hoped God would spare her to bring her children up.  "How can that be," said Catherine, "for I find my heart and vitals all decayed and gone.  No.  I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which is best of all."  She died on 20 September 1645 about a month after giving birth and was buried at Masham two days later.  Her funeral was held at night, according to Alice's recollection, because the Parliamentarian and Scots soldiers would not let a sermon be preached.

On the other side of the country, the Wandesfords' friends in Chester were in trouble.  

Though the Battle of Naseby had left the King with no realistic chance of winning, the fighting continued across the kingdoms.  In parts of the West Country, the Midlands and Wales, men grew so weary of the plundering, ill-disciplined troops that they banded together to try to keep both armies out.  

Chester was still held for the King and had been under siege, off and on, for a year.  In September 1645, as Catherine Danby's life drew to a close, the city found itself under a new assault.  This time, the siege was total and it lasted until February 1646.  By the time the Royalist commander Lord Byron was finally persuaded by the Mayor to surrender, the poor were dying of hunger.  The loss of life, the damage and destruction had been huge.  After the siege was over, plague swept through the city, taking a fearful toll of the starved and homeless poor.  Alice and her mother were profoundly grateful that they had escaped.

Lord Byron (1599-1652)

The King, the Scots and the cancellation of Christmas: 1646-7

Oxford had been the King's capital city since 1642.  The University was on his side – the townspeople were not.  He had returned there in November 1645, hoping to begin again with a new campaign in the spring, but his plans fell through.  Parliamentary troops besieged the city – and then they discovered to their amazement that the King had escaped.   On 27 April 1646, with his hair cut short, wearing drab clothes and a false beard, he had slipped out of Oxford with two companions.  

He had been in secret negotiations for a separate peace with the Scots, but his arrival at their camp outside the siege of Newark took them completely by surprise.  The Scottish general in charge was David Leslie, the man to whom Mrs Wandesford had gone for help against Captain Innes.  Now he needed to get the King away at once to the Scots garrison at Newcastle.  So the King ordered the reluctant Royalist commander of Newark to surrender so that the Scottish army could leave.  On 8 May the Scots broke camp and set off north with the King. 

They kept him as an open prisoner in Newe House, a mansion with extensive grounds inside Newcastle's city walls.

Newe House, see Tyne & Wear Museums blog

From there – when he wasn't playing golf – the King plotted.  He carried on negotiations with both the Scots and the Parliamentarians, trying to exploit the divisions between them, and he intrigued with his exiled Queen, trying to get troops from Ireland and France.  He didn't succeed in any of it.  

The war was over and the Scots were negotiating with Parliament for payment towards the arrears of wages owed to their troops, after which they would leave England.  Abandoning hope of coming to an agreement with the King, the Scots handed him over to Parliament in January 1647.  

Parliamentarian troops took over his custody and the Scots marched out of Newcastle, with the fishwives pelting them and shouting "Judas" because they thought the Scots had sold the King.

In February 1647, Parliamentarian troops appeared in the North Riding, travelling south with the King.  The road lay through Northallerton and they stopped the night there at the house of the Metcalfe family, opposite the parish church.  The grief of people like the Wandesfords can be imagined – for them he was, as Alice said, a holy, pious prince who fought God's battles against his enemies, a nursing father to his three kingdoms.  

The Porch House, Northallerton: where Charles I stayed in 1647

The next grief to strike Alice's poor mother was the loss of her brother Sir Edward Osborne.  In spite of his own cares and sorrows, he had been a constant support to his widowed sister.  He had spent heavily in the King's service and been obliged to pay a large fine to get back his sequestered estates.  He had retired to live quietly at Kiveton with his second wife Ann, never ceasing to grieve for his son Edward, killed in the roof collapse at York in 1638.  It was because of some excellent melons from his gardens at Thorpe Salvin Hall and Kiveton, Alice said, that he was taken ill.  He ate a little too much – the melons were too cold for him – and he was thrown into a vomiting and diarrhoea that exhausted him past recovery.  He died a few days later on 9 September 1647 to the great distress of his family, and was buried in the chancel of Harthill church.  He was fifty-one.

While the grieving Mrs Wandesford was running her household and providing for her children like the skilful housewife that she was – Alice remembered her careful huswifery – constant in her charitable works and always remembering the needs of the newly homeless clergymen and their families who would appear at her door, Parliament was running the country.  This wasn't to everyone's liking.  

Parliament was proving highly efficient at collecting taxes – revenue much needed for the Army, which was getting worryingly radical and deeply involved in politics – and hard times under the King's rule were beginning to fade from memory.  Not everyone greeted the destruction of paintings, statues and decorations in their parish church with joy.  Theatres had been closed since 1642.  And now Christmas was cancelled.  

The English loved Christmas.  The church services were only part of it – all classes in England celebrated the twelve days with food and drink, parties and revels, while the Presbyterian Scots had banned Christmas several years earlier because it was Catholic, superstitious, not mentioned in the Bible and led only to drunkenness and debauchery.  Parliament had established a new pattern for public worship and the Feasts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun were banned.  No more sinful behaviour to bring down God's wrath upon the kingdom – the recent war showed where that had led.  No special church services, everyone to go to work, shops to be open, no hanging up the holly and the ivy, and absolutely no partying.   

The ban probably hardly mattered to the family at Hipswell, in mourning for Sir Edward Osborne.  Tucked away in Catterick, and careful not to draw hostile attention, Mr Syddall was still able to celebrate Holy Communion for them and a quietly held Christmas service could go unnoticed.  But in Kirklington, under the eye of the Presbyterian minister Mr Nesbit, the villagers will have missed their Christmas service and the only safe way to entertain friends in anything like the proper style would be after dark, secretly, fairly quietly and behind closed doors.

News would come to the Wandesfords that in some places across the country there had been riots over the ban.  Armed force was needed to stop the partying in Kent, where the usual Christmas football game was played in Canterbury, and in Westminster the churchwardens of St Margaret's were arrested for failing to stop a Christmas day service.

And at intervals news came of the King.  

First he was held by Parliament, then he was taken by the radicals of the Army.  Then he escaped.  And then, like his grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, when she thought she would find a friendly refuge with Elizabeth of England, Charles made a fatal misjudgment of character.  He didn't go to Berwick and the support of the Scots.  He went to the Isle of Wight, thinking the governor would protect him and help him get to France.  Instead, he found himself imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle.  

Notes

This period of the wars is called the English Civil War 1642-46

The Tyne & Wear Museums blog has more pictures of the Newe House, which was later known as Anderson Place.  It stood just off Pilgrim Street.

Sir Edward Osborne's gauntlets, said to have been worn by him in the war, are on display in Harthill church; his helmet was stolen in the 20th century.  See here 

Next: 10. The Man of Blood & the English Republic: 1648-1650 

7. The Siege of York & Battle of Marston Moor: 1644

 Mrs Wandesford could now turn her mind to her sons' education.  

She need have no worries for her eldest, George.  He was happy and safe in France completing his education with Mr George Anderson, an excellent man and a wise scholar.  (He was also a Scot who was zealous for the Church of England, which must explain why he was an expatriate).  But fifteen-year-old Christopher was causing her a great deal of concern.  He was still suffering terribly from the fit of the spleen – the depression – that had gripped him since his father's funeral.  His torments, Alice remembered, were dreadful to witness.  Mrs Wandesford had exhausted every possible cure and the family's tender care had been unavailing.  But now she could send him to the famous physician Dr John Bathurst, who was in York. 

Dr John Bathurst (1607-59)

So in November 1643, Christopher was sent to York, where he was successfully treated by Dr Bathurst and where he could go to school.  At the same time, his younger brother John began to attend the Grammar School at Bedale.  Life looked very promising.

Unfortunately – 

On 15 September 1643 the King and the Irish rebels had signed a one year truce.  The King could now transfer troops from Ireland to England.  Not only that – he was planning to send Irish Catholic forces to Scotland to join with Royalists there.  But the very idea of Catholic forces was anathema to many in Scotland and England.  The Parliamentarians were now looking at defeat so they came together against their common enemy with the Scottish Covenanters.  On 25 September they signed their agreement – it was called the Solemn League and Covenant.  It was a military alliance and a religious pact.  The Covenanters intended England to have the same form of religion as the Scots.

On 19 January 1644, the Army of the Covenant under Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven marched into England.  On 28 January, the Scottish advance guard was at Morpeth.  The garrison at Newcastle was inadequate – the Marquess of Newcastle led his men out of York to reinforce it, reaching there on 2 February with only hours to spare before the Scots arrived.

Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven (1581-1661)

For two months the armies manoeuvred against each other in Northumberland and County Durham, but on 12 April the Royalists were forced to evacuate Durham and Lumley Castle.  The Marquess of Newcastle aimed to make a stand at Piercebridge.

During the winter months, Mrs Wandesford had been considering her plans.  Friends advised her to move to York, where both Christopher and John could get an excellent education – and the prospect of a social life must have appealed to her, for herself and for Alice.  She had made up her mind to the plan, packed up her goods and they were on their way when they met with a messenger from a friend, Thomas Danby of South Cave.  He had sent them urgent word that they must turn back because York would soon be under siege.  This must have been just after 11 April, when Parliamentary forces had stormed and taken Selby and York was laid open to attack.  One of the commanders, Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton Hall in the West Riding, wrote to a friend, 

The blow has made us Masters of the Field in Yorkshire, God grant we may maintain it; and then nothing can hinder us to Teese-side.

So Mrs Wandesford turned back.  She and her two children went to Kirklington, where the Revd Robert Dagget took them into his home until the Hall could be ready for their occupation.  But sixteen-year-old Christopher was in York.

When the Marquess of Newcastle heard of the loss of Selby, he had to leave Piercebridge and march south to reinforce York.  The Scots were coming south behind him.  On 14 April, they occupied Darlington.  The next day they were at Northallerton, where one Royalist regiment resisted them – a forlorn hope.  

The Marquess of Newcastle reached York on 18 April.  The city's Roman and mediaeval walls had been repaired and strengthened in 1642 and an outer ring of earthworks and forts built beyond the walls.  Cannon were mounted on Bootham Bar, Walmgate Bar, Monkgate Bar and Micklegate Bar, and on the castle itself.  The garrison was well provisioned and fully manned.  

On 22 April, the Army of Both Kingdoms – the Parliamentarians and and their Scottish allies – was at York.  The formidable city was now besieged and Christopher Wandesford was inside the walls.

York Castle in 1644

Notes

Dr John Bathurst was the founder of the Bathurst family fortunes.  They owned lead mines in Arkengarthdale and held the manor of Skutterskelfe for a hundred years from about 1659.  The Bathurst Charity is still active in Hutton Rudby.

Alice puts the Battle of Marston Moor as happening on the same day as they were turned back by the message from Mr Thomas Danby, but it's clear from the context that this was not the case. 

George Wandesford & the Battle of Marston Moor: July 1644

On 1 July 1644, the King's gifted young nephew Prince Rupert of the Rhine outwitted the Allied generals and raised the York siege.  The Allies had concentrated their troops on Marston Moor and Hessay Moor, the uncultivated common land to the west of York between Long Marston and Tockwith.  

Rupert of the Rhine (1619-82)

On 2 July at nine in the morning they learned that the Prince's army was approaching them.

There were now five armies at York.  On the Royalist side, there were the 18,000 men of the armies of the Prince and of the Marquess of Newcastle.  On the Allied side, there were 28,000 men made up of Lord Leven's Army of the Covenant, Lord Fairfax's Northern Association and the Earl of Manchester's Eastern Association.  Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell with his regiment of Ironsides formed part of the Eastern Association.  The coming battle – the Battle of Marston Moor – was to be the largest ever fought on English soil.

It was at this moment that 20 year old George Wandesworth arrived on the scene.

George had been obliged to come back from France, hoping to gather some funds from his Yorkshire estates because there was no income coming out of Ireland.  He had been to see his uncle Sir Edward Osborne at Kiveton, which lies about 10 miles east of Sheffield, and was now on his way home.  He and his uncle will have assumed that his best route would lie between Wetherby, which the Allies had taken some months ago, and the besiegers around York.  But Prince Rupert's rapid approach and the manoeuvres of the armies confounded his plans and he found himself among troops preparing for battle – and uncomfortably close to straggling parties of Allied soldiers.  He was glad to come upon his cousin Colonel Edmund Norton's troop of dragoons.  

When he realised what was going to happen, he decided he must go back into York and find his brother Christopher – and in the second lucky coincidence of his day he met young Kit riding out of the town with some other boys.  They were naively going off to see the battle.  A fine brotherly exchange must have taken place before George took his brother up behind him and set off home.  

And then his luck ran out.  He had been seen and recognised in the company of his cousin Edmund Norton and his behaviour was thought suspicious.  A party of Scots horse set off after them.  It was near midnight when George came at last to Kirklington.  He made his way quietly to the gate of the Hall by a back way, not wanting to attract notice by going through the village.  It must have created quite a stir in the household when he and Kit appeared.  

Behind them on Marston Moor, the Allies attacked at half past seven in the evening just as a thunderstorm broke and the Royalists had decided there would be no battle.  It was all over in two hours.  Thomas Danby of South Cave died that day, Alice said, shot to death with a cannon bullet, cut off by the midst of his body as he sat his horse.  The last stand was that of the Marquess of Newcastle's own Northerners, his Northumbrian Whitecoats, who refused quarter and died where they stood.  

Over 4,000 Royalists were dead, and about 300 Allies.  The Allied victory, won for them by Oliver Cromwell's cavalry, had not been inevitable but it was complete.  Two weeks later, the city of York surrendered.  The defeated Royalists were able, under the terms of the surrender, to march out with their arms and colours, on their way to Richmond and Carlisle – but they didn't all get there, because most of the men quickly deserted.   The gates of Micklegate Bar were opened and the victorious Allied armies came into York.   Its churches and the stained glass of the Minster were preserved from pillage and destruction by order of the Allied commanders who now held York for Parliament, the Yorkshiremen Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas Fairfax.  

Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612-71)

This was the end of Royalist control of the North and the beginning of Oliver Cromwell's reputation as a military commander.  The Marquess of Newcastle left for Holland – his fortune had been spent in the King's course and he was unable, he said, to endure the laughter of the court.  Prince Rupert and the remaining Northern cavalry rode out of York on 4 July to Richmond and from there to Lancashire.  

On the coast, the strategically important Mulgrave Castle had been seized by the Royalists in 1642 – now Parliament retook it and used it as a prison.  At Stockton-on-Tees, which the King had been allowed to keep in his agreement with the Scots when they occupied County Durham, the castle's poorly paid and supplied garrison surrendered to the Scots without a fight on 24 July 1644.   

Some 25 miles to the north of York, Helmsley Castle was still held for the King.  In September it was besieged by Parliamentarian forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax himself, who defeated an attempt at rescue by Royalist forces from Knaresborough.  In November, the food ran out and the Royalist commander negotiated a surrender.  He was allowed to march his men off to join the forces holding Scarborough, while Sir Thomas ordered the castle at Helmsley to be slighted – the curtain walls and the east tower were broken down so that the ruin could not be garrisoned again.  Knaresborough castle itself surrendered after a six month siege – like Helmsley and Mulgrave castles, it too was slighted by Parliament.  Stockton castle was destroyed.  Sir Thomas Fairfax was badly wounded at Helmsley by a musket ball that broke his shoulder, but the Royalists who hoped that he would die of his injuries were to be disappointed.  His forces moved on to besiege Scarborough and its castle.  That was to be a long and bloody business.

Helmsley Castle.  [By Barkmatter CC BY-SA 3.0]

More than sixty miles to the north, the city of Newcastle had been holding out against the Scots, the North's old enemy, since they crossed the border.  After York fell, Newcastle had no chance – there was no possibility of a relief force.  In October, the western part of the walls were broken down by artillery bombardment and mines and the Scottish Covenanters fought their way into the city, the Royalist forces retreating into the Castle Keep.  One of the Scots described the horrors – the desperate courage on both sides, the thundering cannons roaring, the thousands of musket balls flying, the clangour and carvings of swords, the pushing of pike, the wailing of women, the carcasses of men like dead dogs in the streets.  The situation was hopeless and the Royalists surrendered.  

The Scots now controlled the Tyne and they had always been able to use the port of Sunderland on the River Wear – the men who ran Sunderland were Puritans and hostile to the King, and Sunderland had been on the side of the Covenanters from the beginning.

Next: 8. Mrs Wandesford moves to Hipswell: 1644-1645