In April Newcastle learned that the enemy’s General of cavalry was going to leave Cawood Castle for the west of Yorkshire; so he dispatched Goring, with a strong body of horse, to attack him on his march. Goring, a really able General when sober, overtook the Parliamentary cavalry and surprised their rear by a sudden charge, at Bramham Moor, or, as it was sometimes called, Seacroft Moor, and completely routed them, although their numbers were greater than his and in spite of their being under the command of Fairfax himself. If the Duchess’s story is true, Goring’s Horse killed many of the enemy, and took about 800 prisoners whom, with ten or twelve colours, they carried to York.

Lord Fairfax wrote[67] of this engagement: “Here our men, thinking themselves secure, were more careless in keeping order; and, whilst their officers were getting them out of houses where they sought for drink (it being an extream hot day)”—apparently it was one of the enemy’s drunken days and one of Goring’s sober days—“the enemy got, by another way into the Moore, as soon as we,” and then he candidly acknowledges the complete rout. Indeed he says: “Some officers, with me, made our retreat with much difficulty”.

This was an important victory to the credit of Goring; but the glory of his surprising Fairfax in April was sadly tarnished in May by his being surprised in his turn by Fairfax. Newcastle had taken Wakefield in April and had left it under the protection of Goring and his Horse. The enemy quietly approached and entered that town at night. Night is usually a bad time, and a town a bad place, for a drunkard: be this as it may, Goring was taken prisoner with most of his men and horses, and the enemy “possessed themselves of the whole Magazine, which was a very great loss and hindrance to my Lords designs, it being the Moity of his Army, and most of his Ammunition”.[68]

Fairfax wrote:[69] “This appeared the greater mercy, when we saw our mistake; for we found three thousand men in the town, and expected but half the number.... This was more a miracle than a victory.”

Pious Royalists, on the contrary, would probably attribute their own defeat to the machinations of the devil; and the impious modern reader may possibly consider the victory, on Fairfax’s own showing, rather a fluke.

Some time afterwards Newcastle recovered Goring by an exchange of prisoners; but the defeat at Wakefield very seriously hampered him.

Shortly before the disaster at Wakefield, Newcastle had taken Rotherham by storm, and Sheffield without opposition. Early in June he stormed and took Howly House, a place which the Duchess describes as “a strong stone house, well fortified ... wherein was a garrison of soldiers, which My Lord summoned, but the Governor disobeying the summons, he battered it with his cannon, and so took it by force”. She gives Newcastle great credit for his extraordinary humanity in not killing the Governor in cold blood, after the place had been captured.

The King was now becoming very nervous and he wished for Newcastle’s help. On 18 June, 1643, the Queen wrote to Newcastle from Newark: “The King is still expecting to be besieged in Oxford.... He had sent me a letter to command you absolutely to march to him, But I do not send it to you, since I have taken a resolution with you that you remain. There is a gentleman, Lieutenant Markham, who has received from you a letter, so angry, that I thought it could not be from you, so that I have commanded him to remain, and I hope that he will not be punished for it, moreover ... since I am yet good-natured enough not to send you your order from the King to march to him, you, on your part, must not punish one who stays by order of the Queen.... Your constant and faithful friend, Henrietta Maria.” [70]

This letter shows the conveniences likely to follow from allowing a lady to meddle in the conduct of a campaign.

Newcastle let his army rest at Howly House for five or six days. He then marched towards Bradford, “a little, but a strong town”.

Very unexpectedly, Newcastle “met with a strong interruption” on his march to the “little” town of Bradford; for the enemy had “very privately gotten out of Lancashire” “a vast number of Musquetiers,” and, as all the country about Bradford sympathized with the Parliament, Newcastle was unable to obtain intelligence of the movements of his foes. Newcastle’s greatest victory was to be won in the battle which followed and the Duchess shall act as our War Correspondent—by no means an inefficient one on this occasion.

Although written of as Alderton and Atherton and Adderton, the name of the scene of this battle is now spelt Adwalton Moor. It is immediately to the right of Drighlinton Station, on the branch line from Ardsley Junction to Bradford.

The Duchess begins by saying that in Fairfax’s “Army there were near 5000 Musquetiers, and 18 Troops of Horse, drawn up in a place full of hedges, called Atherton-moor, near to their Garison at Bradford, ready to encounter my Lord’s Forces, which then contained not above half so many Musquetiers as the Enemy had; their chiefest strength consisting in Horse, and these made useless for a long time together by the Enemies Horse possessing all the plain ground upon that Field; so that no place was left to draw up my Lords Horse, but amongst old Coalpits; Neither could they charge the Enemy, by reason of a great ditch and high bank betwixt my Lord’s and the Enemies Troops, but by two on a breast, and that within Musquet shot; the Enemy being drawn up in hedges, and continually playing upon them, which rendered the service exceeding difficult and hazardous.

“In the mean while the Foot of both sides on the right and left Wings encounter’d each other, who fought from Hedg to Hedg, and for a long time together overpower’d and got ground of my Lords Foot, almost to the invironing of his Cannon; my Lords Horse (wherein consisted his greatest strength) all this while being made, by reason of the ground, incapable of charging; at last the Pikes of my Lords Army having had no employment all the day, were drawn against the Enemies left wing, and particularly those of my Lords own Regiment, which were all stout and valiant men, who fell so furiously upon the Enemy, that they forsook their hedges, and fell to their heels: At which very instant my Lord caused a shot or two to be made by his Cannon against the Body of the Enemies Horse, drawn up within Cannon shot, which took so good effect, that it disordered the Enemies Troops.

“Hereupon my Lord’s Horse got over the Hedg, not in a body (for that they could not), but dispersedly two on a breast; and as soon as some considerable number was gotten over, and drawn up, they charged the Enemy, and routed them; so that in an instant there was a strange change of Fortune, and the Field totally won by my Lord, notwithstanding he had quitted 7000 Men, to conduct Her Majesty, besides a good Train of Artillery, which in such a Conjuncture would have weakned Caesars Army. In this Victory the Enemy lost most of their Foot, about 3000 were taken Prisoners, and 700 Horse and Foot slain, and those that escaped fled into their Garison at Bradford, amongst whom was also their General of the Horse, Sir Thos. Fairfax.”

Fairfax, after stating that the Royalist troops had been on the very point of retreating, goes on to say:[71] “Whilst they were in this wavering condition, one Colonel Skirton”—a Colonel in Newcastle’s army—“desired his General to let him charge with a stand of Pikes, with which he broke in upon our men; and, they not being relieved by our reserves (which were commanded by some ill-affected officers, chiefly Major General Gifford, who did not his part as he ought to do), our men lost ground which the enemy seeing, pursued this advantage, by bringing up fresh troops; ours being discouraged, began to fly and were soon routed.”

Heath says:[72] “The Marquess of Newcastle ... routed the Parliamentarians, gained their five pieces of cannon, and so amazed them, that they fled to Leeds, which way was precluded and obstructed; then to Bradford, in their flight whither, he took and killed two thousand, while Fairfax hardly escaped to Leeds with the convoy of one troop of horse. The next day the said Earl came before Bradford, which after the battering of forty great shot, he took, with two thousand more of the same party the next morning, with all their arms and ammunition.”

After the battle of Adderton Heath, Newcastle had an opportunity of showing courtesy to Fairfax,[73] “whose Lady being behind a Servant on Horse-back, was taken by some of My Lord’s Soldiers, and brought to his Quarters, where she was treated and attended with all civility and respect and within few days sent to York in my Lords own Coach, and from thence very shortly after to Kingstone upon Hull, where she desired to be, attended by my Lords Coach and Servants”.

Of this incident Fairfax himself wrote:[74] “Not many days after the Earl of Newcastle sent my wife back again in his coach, with some horse to guard her; which generous act of his gained him more reputation than he would have got by detaining a lady prisoner, upon such terms”.

Although he had captured his enemy’s wife, Newcastle unfortunately failed to capture his enemy’s far more important staff, owing to some dilatoriness on the part of a galloper,[75] “the chief Officers retiring to Hull, a strong Garison of the Enemy ... My Lord, knowing they would make their escape thither, as having no other place of refuge to resort to, sent a Letter to York to the Governour of that City, to stop them in their passage; yet by neglect of the Post, it coming not timely enough to his hands, his Design was frustrated.”

Newcastle had taken Lincoln and retaken Gainsborough, which had been captured shortly before by Cromwell; so altogether, at this part of the campaign, he was a victorious General.

It might seem pretty safe to infer that the Duchess’s account of the war was written from what she heard from her husband’s lips, and it is difficult to believe that he did not insist upon seeing it, either in manuscript or in proof, before it was published. If this surmise be correct, he intended, at the point in the campaign which we have now reached, to have gone to the South, so as to attack the enemy from the North, while the King fought them from the South. Ever afterwards he appears to have believed that, had he done so, he “would doubtless have made an end of the war”. But urgent requests reached him from the General in command at York, as well as from “the nobility and gentry” of the county, to return at once to their assistance, as they declared that the enemy was increasing in number and power every day. His General at York stated that, unless Newcastle came quickly, all would be lost in the North. Hints also reached him, that if he took his army to the South and left Yorkshire to its fate, he would be considered to have betrayed his trust.

Newcastle then hurried back to York, only to find the enemy so weak, that it retreated before him wherever he went, and his presence as well as that of his troops unnecessary.

The question presents itself whether Newcastle would have been wise to march to the South, leaving such a fortress as Hull behind him, a fortress very strongly garrisoned and containing many of Fairfax’s best officers. It is true that the younger Hotham had professed some sympathy with the Royalists, but neither he nor his father had shown any definite symptoms of deserting the Parliament. On the other hand, it might be argued that it would have been worth while to lose Yorkshire and the northern counties, if by co-operation Newcastle’s army and the King’s could have completely conquered the southern counties, subdued London, and broken the power of the Parliament.

In the early autumn of 1643, King Charles made Newcastle a Marquess. This advance in the peerage was of course an acknowledgment of his military services, and had nothing whatever to do with any purchase of the title by such a gross thing as filthy lucre: at the same time it is difficult to forget that the new Marquess had probably spent more in hard cash out of his own pocket for the King in raising his army than would have been necessary to buy the title in the ordinary heraldic market.

The gentlemen of Yorkshire were very uneasy at the presence of the recently-mentioned strong garrison in the south-east corner of their county, at Hull, and they besought Newcastle to lay siege to it and crush it, once for all, promising to raise 10,000 men to help him if he would make the attempt, a promise which was never fulfilled. Newcastle consented to their request, marched to Hull and besieged it.

The defence of Hull under Lord Fairfax was a very different thing from what it would have been if the wavering, half-Royalist Sir John Hotham had still been in command. But Hotham had lately been arrested and taken to the Tower. Newcastle threw up a good many batteries and fired red-hot shot into the town. Fairfax replied to Newcastle’s fire with water, by cutting dykes on the Hull and Humber, thus flooding the invaders, their batteries, their guns, their red-hot shot, and their camps.

And now, again, the question of marching to the assistance of the royal army in the South of England was urged upon Newcastle. According to Clarendon, while he was besieging Hull—and he besieged it for six weeks—the King ordered him,[76] if he thought he could not take it quickly, to leave sufficient troops to invest it, and to march with the remainder of his army through Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex towards London, which Charles would then approach from the opposite side.

Charles also told the Queen to press Newcastle on this point—evidently he had not much confidence in the power of his own commands! She wrote to Newcastle: “He” (the King) “had written me to send you word to go into Suffolk, Norfolk or Huntingdonshire. I answered him that you were a better judge than he of that, and that I should not do it. The truth is that they envy your army.” [77]

Newcastle sent a reply back to the King, telling him that “he had not strength enough to march and to leave Hull securely blocked up,” and that the gentlemen of Yorkshire, “who had the best regiments and were among the best officers, utterly refused to march till Hull were taken”. This shows the state of discipline among the King’s faithful officers at this period.

Besides Clarendon’s account of the King’s attempt to draw Newcastle to the South, we have that of Sir Philip Warwick, who acted as Charles’s envoy in this business:—[78]

“The King, finding by these experiences in the South, how tough the business was likely to prove, sent me some time before into the North to the Earl of Newcastle. My commission was, (for I had but three or four words under the King’s hand, written on a piece of white sarsanet to give me credit with him) to try what he meant to do with his army; and whether he would (when the season was) march up Southerly and in a distinct body keep at some distance from the King, to give a check unto the Southern army. But I found him very averse to this, and perceived that he apprehended nothing more than to be joined to the King’s army, or to serve under Prince Rupert; for he designed himself to be the man that should turn the scale, and to be a self-subsisting and distinct army, wherever he was, which, when I perceived fixed in him, being left to discretion, I thought it more reasonable to wave it, than press him to the contrary.... He told me that, when he could quit Yorkshire, and leave it in a condition to defend itself against the aforementioned enemies in it, he would march through Lincolnshire and recruit himself there, and so over the Washes into Norfolk and Suffolk and the associated counties; which had been a noble design.” After mentioning a disaster which later on befell Newcastle and the prospects of King Charles, Warwick adds: “which if he had pursued that design of marching into their associated counties, it had prevented; so as he had a natural foresight, from whence his danger should arise; but not a good angel or genius to divert it”.

It was all very well for Newcastle to talk about his projects when he should be able to quit Yorkshire and leave it in a condition to defend itself; but very soon he was not in a position to do either.

On 10 October, Manchester, Fairfax, and Cromwell defeated a force which Newcastle had collected in Lincolnshire. According to Whitelock,[79] “The Earl of Manchester took in Lincoln upon surrender, and therein 2500 armes, 30 colours, 3 pieces of cannon”. The same authority states that: “The Lord Fairfax beat from about Hull part of the King’s,” i.e. Newcastle’s, “forces, took from them 9 pieces of cannon, of which one was a demy-culverin, one of those which they called ‘the Queen’s Gods,’ and 100 arms.... Colonel Cromwell routed 7 troops of the King’s horse in Lincolnshire under Colonel Hastings.” Newcastle was then obliged to raise the siege of Hull, much to the disappointment and alarm of the “nobility and gentlemen of Yorkshire”; and he marched back to York.

Of the state of the war after this event Clarendon says:[80] “Albeit the Marquis of Newcastle had been forced to rise as unfortunately from Hull, as the King had been from Gloucester, yet he had still a full power over Yorkshire, and a greater in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire than the Parliament had”. The latter part of this statement is rather surprising when we consider the recent defeat of Newcastle’s forces in Lincolnshire.

In ending this chapter we will notice a letter from the Queen to Newcastle, written on 7 October, just before he raised the siege of Hull, in which the old matter of the Governorship of the Prince crops up again.[81]

“There is one thing about which I want to be informed by you before doing it. The Marquis of Hertford desires to be made groom of the stole to the King. If that be, he must cease to be governor to Prince Charles, so that we must place some one else about Prince Charles, which I do not wish to do, without first knowing whether you wish to have it again.” Presently she says (if he does not wish for it again): “there are two other places and I desire to know which would be most agreeable to you, for I have nothing in my thoughts so much as to show you and all the world the esteem in which I hold you, therefore write frankly to me, as to a friend, as I am now doing to you, which you desire;—chamberlain, or gentleman of the bedchamber. If I had chosen to act ceremoniously, I should have had this written to you by another, that is all very well where there is no esteem, such I have for you; and as this is written with frankness, I request a reply of the same, and that you believe me, as I am, truly and constantly,

“Your faithful and very good friend,

“Henrietta Maria R.”