Having said something of the Commander-in-Chief, it may be well to notice his principal officers. King, the Lieutenant-General, whom he placed over his infantry, was a soldier of considerable experience. Clarendon says that he “had exercised the highest commands under the King of Sweden with extraordinary ability and success”. We saw in the last chapter that Newcastle left a great deal to the discretion of King, and, considering our hero’s total inexperience of war, it was probably well that he did so. Some readers of these pages may feel inclined to add: Then probably, also, any merits that were earned by Newcastle’s army were due to King and not to Newcastle. This may, or may not, have been the case; but, if they were due to King, he did not get the credit for them. In fact, the result was the other way about. As everybody knows, Newcastle finally met with disaster, “when,” says Clarendon, “those who were content to spare” Newcastle blame, poured upon the head of the unfortunate General King bitter accusations of “infidelity, treason and conjunction with his country-men” (the Scots), “without the least foundation or ground for any such reproach”. “Throughout the whole course of his life,” he had “been generally reputed as a man of honour”. Elsewhere Clarendon says that, under Newcastle, King “ordered the Foot with great wisdom and dexterity”.

We will notice next the general in command of Newcastle’s cavalry, General Goring, who had obtained that appointment chiefly through the influence of the Queen. When he took it up, he was bitterly chagrined at not having been made Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the North, instead of Newcastle. Goring also owed Newcastle a grudge over the Governorship of the Prince of Wales. Goring had set his hopes upon that appointment, and, as we have seen, Newcastle got it.

Of General Goring, Bulstrode says:[51] “If his conscience and integrity had equalled his wit and courage, he had been one of the most eminent men of the age he lived in: but he could not resist temptations, and was a man without scruple, and loved no man so well, but he would cozen him, and afterwards laugh at him, as he did at the Lord Kimbolton; and of all his qualifications (which were many) dissimulation was his master-piece, in which he so much excelled, with his great dexterity, seeming modesty and unaffectedness, etc.”

Clarendon says[52] that he was a hard drinker, and that “he was not able to resist the temptation, when he was in the middle of” the enemy, “nor would decline it to obtain a victory: as, in one of those fits, he had suffered the horse to escape out of Cornwall; and the most signal misfortunes of his life in war had their rise from that uncontrollable license”. Goring “in truth, wanted nothing but industry (for he had wit, and courage, and understanding, and ambition uncontrolled by any fear of God or man) to have been as eminent and successful in the highest attempt of wickedness, as any man in the age he lived in, or before”.

We come next to a general of a very different character, the general in command of Newcastle’s artillery. It might be expected that a general would be chosen to command artillery on account of his knowledge of guns and their management; but Sir Philip Warwick says that Newcastle chose Davenant as his General of Artillery because he was a poet.

Aubrey has something to tell us about this warbling warrior. He says[53] that Shakespeare stayed “once a yeare” at the public-house kept by Davenant’s father and mother, and the old scandal-monger adds that, “when he was pleasant over a glasse of wine with his most intimate friends,—e.g., Sam Butler (author of Hudibras) etc.”—Davenant would say that he considered he wrote with the very spirit of Shakespeare “and seemed contented enough to be thought his son”. He was very intimate with Newcastle’s friend, Sir John Suckling; and, long after the time with which we are dealing in this chapter, he became Poet Laureate.

Like Goring, Davenant to some extent obtained his appointment by the help of the Queen; for when she sent[54] “over a considerable quantity of military stores, for the use of the Earl of Newcastle’s army, Mr. Davenant came over with them, offered his services to that noble Peer, who was his old friend and patron, and was by him made Lieutenant-General of his Ordnance, to the no small dislike of some, who thought that a post very unfit for a poet; in which, however, they made no great compliment to their General” (Newcastle) “who wrote poems and plays as well as Mr. Davenant”.

To make his staff complete, Newcastle appointed, “The Rev^d. Mr. Hudson,” a “very able Divine,” “Scout Master General of the army,” as we learn from the same authority.

We find the army of the North, therefore, under a Commander-in-Chief who was utterly inexperienced, a General of infantry who had[55] “the unavoidable prejudice, in this conjuncture, of being a Scots-man,” a drunkard for General of cavalry, a poet for General of Artillery, and a very able divine for “Scout Master-General”. What could be expected of a campaign in which, at any critical moment, the Commander-in-Chief might have “retired to his softer pleasures” and refused to see anybody, while one of his Generals might be getting drunk, another, not exactly drunk, but “pleasant with a glass of wine,” reciting his poems or boasting of his illegitimate birth, and a third writing a sermon?

During the winter Newcastle was not idle. The Duchess says: “And though the season of the year might well have invited my Lord to take up his Winter-quarters, it being about Christmas; yet after he had put a good Garison into the City of York, and fortified it, upon intelligence that the Enemy was still at Tadcaster,” a town about eight miles south-west of York, “and had fortified that place, he resolved to march thither”.

The enemy had broken down part of the stone bridge which gave entrance to the town, had planted guns on the remaining part, and had also placed guns on a newly-made fort on a hill, near the town, commanding the road from York. This affair is worthy of notice because, as will presently be seen, it reflects upon the character of Goring, the Lieutenant-General of the Horse.

“My Lord ... ordered a march before the said Town in this manner: That the greatest part of his Horse and Dragoons should in the night march to a Pass at Weatherby, five miles distant from Tadcaster, towards North-west, from thence under the Command of his then Lieutenant General of the Army, to appear on the West side of Tadcaster early the next morning, by which time my Lord with the rest of his Army resolved to appear at the East-side of the said Town; which intention was well design’d, but ill executed; for though my Lord with that part of the Army which he commanded in person, that is to say, his Foot and Cannon, attended by some Troops of Horse, did march that night, and early in the morning appear’d before the Town on the East side thereof, and there drew up his Army, planted his Cannon, and closely and orderly besieged that side of the Town, and from ten in the morning till four a Clock in the afternoon, battered the Enemies Forts and Works, as being in continual expectation of the appearance of the Troops on the other side, according to his order; yet (whether it was out of Neglect or Treachery that my Lords Orders were not obeyed) that days Work was rendered ineffectual as to the whole Design.”

“Ineffectual” because Goring and his horse did not “appear on the West side of Tadcaster early the next morning”. Consequently the enemy escaped during the night and went “to another strong hold not far distant from Tadcaster, called Cawood-Castle, to which, by reason of its low and boggy Scituation, and foul and narrow Lanes and passages, it was not possible for my Lord to pursue them without too great an hazard to his Army; whereas had the Lieutenant General performed his Duty, in all probability the greatest part of the principal Rebels in Yorkshire would that day have been taken in their own trap, and their further mischief prevented”.

Although Goring is not mentioned by name, in the above account, there can be little doubt that he was the delinquent. We know the name of the Lieutenant-General who commanded “the greatest part of the horse and dragoons”. Whether his conduct was due to drunkenness, or to treachery, or to jealousy of Newcastle, does not appear. The poet, whose guns “battered the enemy’s forts and works,” may have done better than might have been expected on this occasion.

At about this period a very courteous correspondence took place between Newcastle and the younger Hotham. The relations of the Hothams to Newcastle are a matter of history concerning which the Welbeck manuscripts contain many interesting and important details. Only fragments from those manuscripts can be given here.

In December, 1642, Captain John Hotham, Sir John’s son, wrote to Newcastle[56] about an exchange of prisoners, offering to release “as many as the Earl has released, without an exchange”. On the 27th he wrote: “Your free and noble expressions of doing me so many great and real favours shall make me endeavour either to requite them or be extremely thankful for them”.

A few days later he wrote: “With faith and honour to serve the King and the Commonwealth is all our ambition, and to leave that to posterity which our ancestors left us, an untainted name”. And he goes on to “bewail the unhappiness of these distractions, that hinder me from attending upon your Lordship”.

A week afterwards he wrote again to Newcastle: “I honour the King as much as any and love the Parliament, but do not desire to see either absolute conquerors.... If the honourable endeavours of such powerful men as yourself do not take place for a happy peace, the necessitous people of the whole Kingdom will presently rise in mighty numbers and whosoever they pretend for at first, within a while they will set up for themselves, to the utter ruin of all the nobility and gentry of the kingdom.”

We shall presently have occasion to look at some letters from Hotham to Newcastle written three months later. In the meantime several events took place of considerable importance both to Newcastle and to the Hothams.

In some “propositions for peace,” which the Parliament sent to the King in January, 1643, complaints were made at “the raising, drawing together, and arming of great numbers of Papists, under the command of the Earl of Newcastle ... whereby ... the Papists have attained means of attempting, with hopes of effecting, their mischievous designs of rooting out the Reformed Religion, and destroying the professors therefore”. Newcastle had no love for Papists. He simply took into his army any loyal men whom he met with. But the Commons were bent upon his destruction, and one of their “propositions for peace” was that, in any amnesty there should be a special “exception of William, Earl of Newcastle”.

Although both Clarendon and the Duchess tell us that Newcastle won nearly all his skirmishes in midwinter, 1642-3, there are what profess to be “True Relations” to the contrary among the Thomason Tracts.

“1643. Jan. 2. A True Relation of a Great Victory obtained by Lord Willoughby of Parham against divers forces of the Earl of Newcastle.”

“1643. Jan. 23. A True and Plenary Relation of the defeat given by Lord Fairfax forces unto my Lord of Newcastles forces in Yorkshire.”

In February, 1643, Newcastle was informed that the Queen, having sailed from Holland, would shortly land somewhere on the east coast of Yorkshire, and he was ordered to meet her and to escort her to a place of safety. One would imagine that, at this time, Newcastle must have had more than sufficient worries and anxieties on his mind, without having the care of the Queen’s precious person laid upon his shoulders.

Her Majesty had sailed from Scheveling in a fine English ship, accompanied by eleven transports laden with stores and ammunition for the King; and, as a convoy, she had the protection of the famous Dutch Admiral, van Tromp. After tossing in a storm for a fortnight, she was driven back to Scheveling; but in a few days she sailed again and anchored in Burlington (now Bridlington) Bay, on 20 February.

Two days passed without any symptoms of troops for her protection; so she remained on board; but, on the 22nd, a large body of cavaliers appeared on the hills. Newcastle, who had not known where to expect her to land, had been rambling along the east coast; and, as soon as his scouts brought him news of the arrival of the Queen’s ships, he hastened to Burlington.

Under the protection of Newcastle by land and van Tromp by sea, the Queen landed and got lodgings in the town. On reaching the shores of her husband’s kingdom, she might fairly have expected some peaceful repose after her voyage; but her rest was disturbed at five o’clock the next morning, by the sound of heavy firing.

Five small ships of war, belonging to the Parliament, had entered the bay during the night, unobserved by van Tromp, whose large ship drew too much water to follow them into the bay. It seems absurd that they should have been out of shot of the Dutch guns; but the cannon of that time did not carry far. As the Parliament had voted the Queen guilty of high treason for sending supplies from abroad to the King’s army, Batten, the Parliamentary Admiral, thought this a good opportunity of taking either her person or her life. She wrote to King Charles:[57] “One of these ships had done me the honour to flank my house, which fronted the pier, and before I could get out of bed, the balls were whistling upon me in such style that you may easily believe I loved not such music. Everybody came to force me to go out, the balls beating so on all the houses, that, dressed just as it happened, I went on foot to some distance from the village to the shelter of a ditch like that at Newmarket;[58] but, before we could reach it, the balls were singing round us in fine style and a serjeant was killed within twenty paces of me.” This must have been trying work for a lady, at between five and six o’clock on a February morning, more than an hour before sunrise, on the bleak coast of Yorkshire.

When the Parliamentary ships sailed out of the bay into deep water, on the ebbing of the tide, van Tromp had a word or two with them; but, strange to say, he failed to capture them.

The captain of one of the Parliamentary ships, however, had imprudently ventured on shore, where he was taken prisoner by some of Newcastle’s soldiers. Having been tried by court-martial and condemned to be hanged, he happened to be met by the Queen on his way to execution. She asked what the procession meant and, on being informed, she ordered him to be liberated, when he went over at once to the King’s service. This incident is mentioned in Bossuet’s famous funeral oration after the death of Henrietta Maria.