On 22 August, 1642, the King formally hoisted his standard at Nottingham, and hostilities became a reality. He made Shrewsbury his head-quarters in September, and from there he wrote:—

“Your most asseured faithfull
“frend

“Charles R.[43]

In October the battle of Edgehill was fought, and in November there were encounters at Brentford and Turnham Green, after which the King took up his winter quarters at Oxford.

Essex, the Commander-in-Chief of the Parliamentary forces, commissioned Lord Fairfax to command the armies in Yorkshire and the adjacent counties; therefore henceforth Fairfax was to be Newcastle’s principal enemy.

Fairfax had a great advantage over Newcastle, having served with the English army in the Low Countries, whereas Newcastle had had no military experience. He had also the recommendation for a command in Yorkshire, that he was a Yorkshireman both by birth and by blood. On the other hand he laboured under the disadvantage of the intense dislike and contempt of his fellow-Yorkshireman and brother officer, Sir John Hotham, the Governor of Hull. There were very few “gentlemen, or men of any quality, in that large county,” says Clarendon, “who were disaffected to his Majesty”. The chief of these were Fairfax, the Hothams, father and son, Cholmondley, and Stapleton.

We must now return to him in the summer of 1642. A special charge, given to him by the King, was the Bishopric of Durham. In that diocese were many sympathisers with the Parliament, and among such were not a few of the clergy. Now Newcastle knew the Dean to be thoroughly loyal to the King; so he issued an order that no sermon was to be preached in the diocese until it had been written out and submitted to the Dean; and he ordered the Dean not only to strike out anything which he might consider savouring of disaffection, but also to put in expressions of devoted loyalty to the sovereign, wherever such sentiments were wanting. Besides this he empowered the Dean to punish any of the clergy who might be in the least contumacious about the matter. We have the Duchess’s authority for this statement.

In spite of the carefully doctored sermons, the Duchess tells us that “there happened a great mutiny of the Trainband Souldiers of the Bishoprick at Durham, so that my Lord was forced to remove thither in Person, attended with some forces to appease them; where at his arrival (I mention it by the way, and as a merry passage) a jovial Fellow used this expression, That he liked my Lord very well, but not his Company (meaning his Soldiers)”.

Then Newcastle set resolutely to work to raise an army. It would be interesting to know with what weapons he armed it. The artillery of the time was provided with very elementary guns; and the muskets, harquebuses (carbines), and petronels (heavy pistols), all left much to be desired. Pikes were then an all-important weapon; but pikemen required almost more drill and training than did any other soldiers, and it is doubtful how soon those in Newcastle’s hastily recruited army could have been of any effective service; but, at any rate, they could hardly be less experienced in military affairs than was their commander-in-chief.

Scythes, fastened to the ends of poles, we know to have been used in the seventeenth century by the defenders of fortresses, for hooking off soldiers attempting to scale the walls and for upsetting scaling-ladders. Most tempting tools to use, one would imagine. Bows and arrows were certainly carried by the Scottish army which crossed the English border, as described in an earlier chapter, and Grose (vol. II, p. 272) says that one of their uses was “to gall or astoyne the enemye with the hailshot of light arrows, before they have come within danger of the harquebuss shot”.

The Duchess says that the King of Denmark sent a ship containing arms and ammunition to Newcastle, and that, among the weapons, were “Danish clubs”. In our twentieth century superiority, we may look down with contempt upon clubs; but, in a hand-to-hand fight, heavy clubs might be weapons to which considerable respect would be due, if swung by the arms of able-bodied warriors upon the skulls of their enemies.

It was another person’s opinion that Newcastle had even more than a sufficient supply of arms and ammunition, and that he was acting the part of the dog in the manger.

“Sir Marmaduke Langdale to Sir William Savile.[44]

The King was of the same opinion as to Newcastle’s superfluity of weapons, and wrote to him asking for a supply; but he did not receive any, and Newcastle pleaded that he had none to spare. Charles then wrote:—[45]

As to men, Newcastle was also successful. The Duchess says:—

“Amongst the rest of his Army, My Lord had chosen for his own Regiment of Foot, 3,000 of such Valiant, stout and faithful men (whereof many were bred in the Moorish-grounds of the Northern parts) that they were ready to die at my Lord’s feet, and never gave over, whensoever they were engaged in action, until they had either conquer’d the Enemy or lost their lives. They were called Whitecoats, for this following reason: My Lord being resolved to give them new Liveries, and there being not red Cloth enough to be had, took up so much of white as would serve to cloath them, desiring withal, their patience until he had got it dyed; but they impatient of stay, requested my Lord, that he would be pleased to let them have it un-dyed as it was, promising they themselves would die it in the Enemies Blood: Which request my Lord granted them, and from that time they were called White-Coats;” or, sometimes, she might have added, “Newcastle’s Lambs”.

She tells us in another place that “Within a short time, my Lord formed an Army of 8,000 Foot, Horse and Dragoons, and put them into a condition to march in the beginning of November, 1642. No sooner was this effected, but the Insurrection grew high in Yorkshire, in so much, that most of His Majesties good subjects of that County, as well the Nobility as Gentry, were forced for the preservation of their persons, to retire to the City of York, a walled Town, but of no great strength.”

Before going to York Newcastle had to leave about half his army behind him. Clarendon says: “having left a good garrison at Newcastle, and fixed such small garrisons in his way, as might secure his communication with that port, to which all his ammunition was to be brought, with a body of near 3,000 foot, and 600 or 700 horse and dragoons, without any encounter with the enemy (though they had threatened loud) he entered York, having lessened the enemy’s strength, without blood, both in territories and men”. Two regiments, which had been raised for the enemy, dissolved on his approach.

Newcastle then settled down for the winter, “yet,” says Clarendon, “few days passed without blows, in which the parliament forces had usually the worst”. But not always; for, if the following statement be true, Newcastle’s forces were on one occasion repulsed in a manner of which the description reads like a page from Don Quixote.

“Sir John Hotham to William Lenthall.[46]

When the winter set in,[47] Newcastle, with the King’s troops, held all the country between York and the border of Scotland, while the south of Yorkshire was under the control of Fairfax and the troops of the Parliament.

As no supplies came from the Government for the army of Newcastle, he had to provide for it otherwise. The Duchess tells us how this was managed: “It was agreed, That the Nobility and Gentry of the several Counties, should select a certain number of themselves to raise money by a regular Tax, for the making provisions for the support and maintenance of the Army, rather than to leave them to free-quarter and to carve for themselves”.

The seizure of York by Newcastle had been a step of the greatest importance. Clarendon says of it:[48] “It cannot be denied that the Earl of Newcastle, by the quick march of his troops, as soon as he had received his commission to be General, and in the depth of winter,”—late autumn would have been more accurate—“redeemed, or rescued the city of York from the rebels, when they looked upon it as their own, and had it even within their grasp; and as soon as he was master of it, he raised men apace”. The Duchess says that he raised from first to last 100,000;[49] but this must surely be an exaggeration—“and drew an army together, with which he fought many battles, in which he had always (the last excepted,) success and victory”—another exaggeration.

Although Newcastle’s seizure of York was of the utmost importance, the King was somewhat premature in thinking that now “the business in Yorkshire” was “almost done”. On 15 December, 1642, he wrote (see Ellis’s Letters, series 3, vol. III, p. 293):—

Something having been said already of Newcastle’s troops and weapons, it may be well to say a little about the General who was in command of them. His contemporaries shall describe him. Clarendon says: “He liked the pomp and absolute authority of a General well, and preserved the dignity of it to the full; and for the discharge of the outward state, and circumstances of it, in acts of courtesy, affability, bounty, and generosity, he abounded, which, in the infancy of war, became him, and made him, for some time, very acceptable to men of all conditions”.

Sir Philip Warwick,[50] a well-known cavalier, who knew Newcastle intimately, bears very similar witness, saying: he “was a gentleman of grandeur, generosity, loyalty, and steady and forward courage”.

Clarendon continues: “But the substantial part, and fatigue of a General, he did not in any degree understand (being utterly unacquainted with war), nor could submit to; but referred all matters of that nature to the discretion of his Lieutenant-General King”. Clarendon then says that when there was a battle he was always present, if it was possible, and that, on such occasions, he “gave instances of an invincible courage and fearlessness in danger, in which the exposing himself notoriously did sometimes change the fortunes of the day, when his troops (had) begun to give way”. But “such actions were no sooner over than he retired to his delightful company, music, or his softer pleasures, to all of which he was so indulgent, and to his ease, that he would not be interrupted upon any occasion soever; insomuch as he sometimes denied admission to the chiefest officers of the army, even to General King himself, for two days together; from whence many inconveniences fell out”. As indeed may easily be imagined.

Sir Philip Warwick supports this evidence. He says that Newcastle’s “edge had too much razor in it; for he had a tincture of a romantic spirit, and had the misfortune to have somewhat of the poet in him.... This inclination of his own and such kind of witty society (to be modest in the expression of it) diverted many counsels, and lost many opportunities, which the nature of that affair”—the campaign in the North—“this great man had now entered into, required.”