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William Cavendish, Earl and later Duke of Newcastle, was the foremost of the King’s aristocratic Generals. By 1643, he’d raised the largest Royalist army of the First Civil War.
He was granted greater powers than any other regional Royalist commander, and was able to raise his own taxes and coin money. He also dubbed 12 knights.
In this podcast, prof Andrew Hopper of Lifelong Learning at the University of Oxford discusses the significance of Newcastle as a Royalist General.
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William Cavendish, the Earl and then Marquis of Newcastle, was the foremost of Charles I’s “grandee” commanders. Grandees were those generals appointed in 1642–3 who owed their positions to their wealth and status rather than their military experience. Charles believed their example would help stimulate their patronage networks into the Royalist camp, yet Civil War military historians have long considered their military record was dismal. However, P.R. Newman’s research into northern royalism during the 1980s defended Newcastle’s reputation, lamenting that no other Royalist grandee had been “so consistently denigrated by historians as he.” Newman pointed out that Newcastle was indeed the general of the largest Royalist army of the whole First Civil War and he stressed the wisdom of Newcastle’s choices of his subordinate commanders. And also, that no other grandee commander had the capacity to deliver a decisive Royalist victory as Newcastle did. Indeed, for a while during late summer of 1643, Newcastle’s military success appeared to suggest that a decisive Royalist victory was close at hand. If we accept that military leadership did influence the outcome of the Civil Wars, then a fresh look at Newcastle’s generalship is both timely and worthwhile.
Newman’s admiration of Newcastle was reacting against a negative tradition that stretched back to the Royalist historian, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. Newcastle had refused Clarendon’s help when Clarendon was writing his Royalist history of the Civil Wars. I think this helps explain Clarendon’s waspish disdain of him thereafter. Clarendon considered Newcastle personally courageous, but ill-suited to generalship and the rigours of field campaigning. He claimed Newcastle was negligent of the King’s orders and hostile to peace negotiations, a man estranged from the Royal court. Supposedly, Newcastle was diverted from command by “delightful company, music” and “softer pleasures of life”. Newcastle’s detractors have long highlighted his military inexperience. Sir Philip Warwick, having served on Newcastle’s staff, praised his “grandeur, generosity, loyalty, and steady and forward courage”, but reflected “he had the tincture of a romantic spirit, and had the misfortune to have something of the poet in him.”
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Contemporaries used Newcastle’s literary and artistic interests to unfairly besmirch his military reputation, and this was then later reinforced by Victorian historians. Robert Bell, the editor of the Fairfax Correspondence, jibed that Newcastle was a better horseman than a musician, a better musician than a poet, and a better poet than a general. Sir Charles Firth concluded that Newcastle’s campaigns against the weaker northern Parliamentarians “can hardly be considered very creditable to his military talents.”
More recently, Malcolm Wanklyn has pointed out the problems of attempting to “audit” the performance of Civil War generals. He argues that many historians have been beguiled by Clarendon’s ascribing of blame for the King’s defeat, overlooking how this was indeed shaped by Clarendon’s personal animosities. Clarendon himself harboured a nostalgic, somewhat rose-tinted view of the noble-driven nature of Royalist mobilisation in 1642. In this, he happily praised Newcastle’s mustering of the Royalist northern army “purely by his own interest, and the concurrence of his numerous allies in those northern parts”. To accomplish this, Newcastle was invested with unique powers and overtook the largest territorial base of any Royalist commander, encompassing authority across thirty-two garrisons across the north. Newcastle demonstrated his vice-regal status by dubbing twelve knights, coining money and raising taxes. By late 1643 he was general for all counties north of the Trent, as well as Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Rutland, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. His unique position was underlined by the separate orders the King published for governing his army. Any soldier that drew his sword in Newcastle’s presence meaning harm was to lose his hand. Any individual corresponding or treating with the enemy without Newcastle’s leave could be executed. The extraordinary powers invested in him reflected his importance to Royalist strategy.
Now, the Royalists tended to stress personal loyalty over service to a wider cause, so with the King distant in Oxford, Newcastle’s person became an important focus for northern royalism. His wife’s claim that he raised 100,000 men for the King is clearly wildly inflated. Yet, even his enemies ceded the centrality of his person to northern Royalist war effort. The Parliamentarian, Lucy Hutchinson, praised his excellent hospitality and long residence in the north, remarking that he was “a lord once so much beloved in his country”, and that “no man was a greater prince than he in all that northerne quarter.”
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In 1641, the Earl’s rents supposedly brought him in over £22,000 per annum, making him one of the wealthiest noblemen in England. His estates stretched across Northumberland, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and his army recruited soldiers from all these counties, in addition to Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire and Westmorland. He issued so many commissions to officers that Sir Philip Warwick considered the cohesion of his army was compromised by under-recruited units. P.R. Newman conceded that Newcastle was “consciously creating an army which would reflect upon his own grandeur”.
This method of building an army was an efficient way of mobilising Royalist sympathies among the landowning elite. Around a third of these commissions went to Catholic officers, and as the Catholic gentry tended to have a closer relationship with their tenants, they may have been better able to mobilise those tenants than their Protestant counterparts.
Having coordinated the muster of such large numbers of men, their training was improved by the numerous professional officers who landed with the Queen, Henrietta Maria, at Bridlington in February 1643. His army was mainly equipped by imports from the Netherlands, landed on north-east coast largely by privateer merchants.
Newcastle was also effective in gathering military intelligence and acting upon it. Unlike many other Royalist commanders, he employed a Scoutmaster-General and he was careful to use codes to convey sensitive information. He has recently been credited with establishing “a sound base of intelligence-gathering”, aided by a broad base of popular sympathisers that he enjoyed across the north.
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Newcastle’s army arrived in Yorkshire by forcing a passage across the River Tees at Piercebridge on 1 December 1642. They arrived in York just two days later. Pledging to avoid plundering civilians, Newcastle aimed to maintain his army through three main means: loans, taxation and the confiscation of enemy Parliamentarian estates. Firstly, he invited the Yorkshire gentry to lend him money for the King’s war effort. The means by which he raised loans became then formalised with the Yorkshire Engagement, a document popularly known as the Yorkshire Magna Carta. Lenders were promised reimbursement from the Engagement’s signatories, who pledged to repay loans according to their estates’ size. By this means, over 100 people subscribed and £19,000 was raised very quickly. Many were forced to pay contributions or sign the Engagement against their will, under threat of plundering, or to procure their release from imprisonment.
Then, from April 1643, Newcastle imposed upon Yorkshire what became known as the “Great Sesse”. This was a scheme which emulated the assessments placed upon territories under Parliamentarian control. It was designed to raise £30,000 per month to support his northern army. So, rather than maintaining his forces by plunder and free quarter, as so often claimed in Parliament’s propaganda, Newcastle developed several financial mechanisms to support his forces on a long-term basis. Given the size of his army, reported by a fellow Royalist commander, Sir George Goring, as 18,000 men in April 1643, this was no mean achievement.
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In the war of words, Newcastle proved himself effective too. In March 1642, the King established a Royalist press at York, which printed at least 74 different tracts that year alone. Newcastle later used this facility to propagate print that explained his actions, reinvigorated his supporters and won converts from amongst the Parliamentarians, such as Sir Hugh Cholmley, the Governor for Parliament of Scarborough Castle.
Newcastle’s printed polemics were in response to personal attacks made upon him in the London press that branded him as “the Atheisticall Marquess” or a “Semi papian” for the Roman Catholic nature of his forces, and I think this is a reflection of how much Parliamentarians feared his army, but also of the Catholic presence among the officer corps within it. This stood at 36 per cent of Newcastle’s officers and 40 per cent of his colonels. Some, such as John, Lord Belasyse and Lord William Widdrington, occupied positions of high command.
Newcastle appreciated that allegiance was to be negotiated as well as commanded, he did not let Parliamentarian propaganda go unanswered. Needled by enemy declarations about his employment of Catholics, he published a brave personal defence of his Catholic soldiers that he ordered to be published in all Yorkshire’s churches and chapels: “That I have in mine Army some of the Romish Communion I do not deny… These I admitted for their Loyalty and Abilities, not for their Religion.”
Newcastle contrasted the loyalty of his own Catholic supporters with the rebelliousness of his enemy, Fairfax’s supporters who he labelled “Sectaries, Brownists, Anabaptists, Familists.” He depicted the Parliamentarians as deceivers of their own followers, insurgents who did “prostitute the Ordinance of God to the rebellious designes of ambitious men.” Then, to appeal to the gentry’s nightmarish memories of Tudor rebellions, he accused Fairfax’s men of sacrilegious iconoclasm with a levelling design against the honour and property of the landed elite:
“They have spared no places, The Churches of Christians which the Heathens durst not violate, are by them prophaned: Their Ornaments have been made either the supply of their necessities, or the subject of their scurrilities, their Chalices, or Communion Cups… have become the objects of their Sacriledge, the Badges and Monuments of ancient Gentry in Windows, and Pedigrees have been by them defaced; Old Evidences, the Records of private Families, the Pledges of Possessions, the boundaries of Mens Properties have been by them burned, torn in Pieces, and the Seals trampled under their Feet. Ceilings and Wainscot have been broken in Pieces, Walls demolished… And all this by a Company of Men crept now at last out of the Bottom of Pandora’s Box.
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Newcastle’s success was not underpinned by formal military education on the continent like so many other Civil War generals. His first commission was as captain of the Prince of Wales’s Troop during the First Bishops’ War, commanding knights and gentlemen. He challenged his commanding officer, Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, to a duel for affronting him by deploying the Prince’s troop in the army’s rearguard. The affair suggests that, like many other noble commanders, Newcastle had difficulty reconciling his self-regard to service to a broader cause.
In late 1642, Newcastle’s immediate strategic objective was to mobilise the north-east for the King and control enough coastline to allow the Queen to land safely with munitions from Europe. With this in mind, he was ill-inclined to co-ordinate with other Royalist armies, despite Charles ordering him south several times. Predictably, as his army increased, rival Royalist leaders grew jealous of its size and Newcastle’s autonomy of command. He did not deplete his field force by establishing too many garrisons, and his army soon swelled to rival, and then exceed, the Oxford army in size.
In December 1642, by establishing himself at York, Newcastle spilt the local Parliamentarians in two, and won the support of the county’s Royalists. Nowhere in England had such startling territorial success been replicated. Newcastle’s foresight in planting garrisons at Pontefract and Newark would later prove very costly to Parliament’s war effort. On 15 December 1642, Charles wrote to Newcastle stating that he “would always look upon you as a principal instrument in keeping the crown on my head. The business of Yorkshire I account almost done.”
But from the Queen’s landing at Bridlington in February 1643 until her departure later that June, Newcastle’s strategy was constrained by having to play the courtier and provide her with 4,000 men for a convoy to deliver her to her husband safely and boost the supply of arms to Royalist forces further south.
Despite this success, given his superior manpower, Newcastle has been blamed for not subduing all the north for the King. However, his freedom of action was limited by the elusiveness of the enemy and by the Composition of his own forces. Firstly, Newcastle understood that his Yorkshire enemies were geographically, religiously and politically divided, between the Hothams in Hull and the Fairfaxes and their popular support in the West Riding clothing districts. The mutual loathing of these two leading families afforded Newcastle the opportunity to negotiate a secret treaty with the Hothams in order to concentrate his efforts against the Fairfaxes.
This was a shrewd move and it spared the Queen from military confrontation in her passage from Bridlington to York. In the West Riding, no such accommodation was possible and the little army commanded by Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax, proved very difficult for Newcastle to engage. As Fairfax’s army was weak in Cavalry, it inclined to fight in urban battlefields, hoping to win small, incremental engagements through speed and surprise to buy itself time and boost the morale of its soldiers.
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A sign of Newcastle’s frustration then was his challenge to Lord Fairfax to name a time and place to fight him in the open, according “to the Examples of our Heroick Ancestors, who used not to spend their Time in scratching one another out of Holes, but in pitched Fields determined their Doubts.” Newcastle’s desire for trial by battle reflected his attachment to chivalric concepts of honour, and also his confidence that in a set-piece battlefield encounter, his substantial advantage in Cavalry would prove decisive.
Newcastle developed a patient strategy to root the Fairfaxes out of their towns, first by isolating them, second by disrupting the cloth trade, food supply and provisions upon which their Pennine hinterlands depended, and finally by striking at their support base with overwhelming force. Newcastle routed Fairfax’s rearguard on Seacroft Moor on 30 March 1643 after they had abandoned their defensive positions in a retreat from Selby. Thereupon, Newcastle triggered panic at Westminster when it was reported that he was besieging Lord Fairfax in Leeds with an army of 10,000 Foot and 30 troops of Horse.
Now, whilst the Queen and Sir George Goring favoured assaulting Leeds that April, Newcastle exercised greater caution with his men’s lives. Appreciating the heavy losses that a major assault would entail, he favoured the advice of his professional officers who recommended a temporary withdrawal. This was a sound move, and significantly came at a time when Newcastle was mourning the death of his first wife at Bolsover Castle on 17 April 1643.
But thereafter, the Queen grew impatient with his lack of progress. On 18 May, she referred to him in a letter to the King as “fantastic and inconstant”. Newcastle was anxious about rumours of the Queen’s disfavour. He feared for his status in the distant royal court at Oxford and he required repeated reassurances from the King.
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Newcastle could not strike further south without having defeated the Fairfaxes decisively, and Sir George Goring highlighted the means to achieve this, writing in April 1643: “wherefore if you can get between Bradford and Leeds, you will so annoy, divert and separate them in all their Designs… This will so bare them.” Newcastle’s eventual pursuit of this strategy paid off, obliging the Fairfaxes into gambling on a desperate surprise dawn attack that backfired, crowning Newcastle with a crushing victory at Adwalton Moor, outside Bradford, on 30 June which reduced the Fairfaxes to fugitives. This was the largest battle of the Civil Wars since Edgehill, and with the exception of Lostwithiel, arguably it was Royalism’s greatest military victory.
For his personal role in this, P. R. Newman applauded Newcastle as a “general of perception and capacity”, who personally turned the tide of battle. Newman’s evidence was a report of Newcastle’s valour in the Royalist serial newsbook, Mercurius Aulicus, on 3 July. It held that the Earl had steadied the wavering Royalist line which was giving ground:
“He presently alighted from his Horse, went himselfe to his Foot, and taking a Pike into his hand, bid them follow him assuring them, not a man should goe further than he himself would lead them, bidding them now shew themselves for King Charles and their Countrey, and by the help of God they would not leave one Rebel in the North.”
This pamphlet claimed that Newcastle’s personal intervention so infused his soldiers with his noble courage that the tide of battle turned, the rebels fleeing in astonishment at the Royalists’ newfound bravery. This reflected contemporary Convention to stress the bravery of generals to explain successes and the cowardice of rank-and-file soldiers to explain defeats. Regardless, the victory raised Newcastle’s standing in Oxford, where it was celebrated with a public thanksgiving, bonfires and bells.
Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Charles Firth and the Duchess of Newcastle all agreed that Newcastle might have ended the war on the back of this success had he marched south to join the King. There was no immediate obstacle. Bradford and Leeds fell to him within days. Remaining Parliamentarians were driven from the West Riding and Royalist garrisons were established in the clothing towns. Yet Newcastle’s failure to capture the Fairfaxes and their senior officers allowed his enemies to escape and rebuild a new army behind Hull’s formidable fortifications.
Newcastle did eventually move southward. Recapturing Gainsborough on 30 July and reaching Lincoln on 4 August 1643, his army forced the Parliamentarians south-eastwards, causing panic in East Anglia. Yet at Lincoln, came news that Fairfax was overrunning the East Riding once again and threatening the estates of Yorkshire’s Royalists. Therefore, Newcastle informed Charles he was duty bound to return to besiege Fairfax in Hull. In many respects, this decision had been forced upon him; the Yorkshire gentry refused to march further south and Sir Marmaduke Langdale warned Newcastle that if he forced the issue, “they should say he had betrayed them.”
Ian Gentles has unsympathetically suspected that Newcastle was “hampered by the same dilettante attitude as the other Royalist peers”, and that he was “deficient in his strategic consciousness”. Even Newman acknowledged that Newcastle’s geographical immobility brought about his final defeat. With hindsight, Newcastle lost the initiative in 1643 due to poor strategic decisions, yet it must be recognised that his freedom of action in these was constrained.
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From January 1644, the long-negotiated invasion of northern England in Parliament’s favour by the Scottish Army of the Covenant, threw Newcastle back onto the defensive. In October 1643, the King had rewarded him with the title of Marquis, for defending the northern border. Newcastle was successful in his strategy to impede and delay the invaders. Despite being outnumbered, he checked the Scots, first at Corbridge in February, and then in county Durham in a series of engagements during March. It was not Newcastle’s faulty strategy but the Fairfaxes’ defeat of Sir John Belasyse’s Yorkshire portion of Newcastle’s army at Selby that forced Newcastle’s return southward to save the city of York.
And in York, Newcastle proved himself an effective garrison commander. He dispatched his Cavalry southward and enduring a ten-week siege from 23 April to 1 July. The city was well supplied with provisions and he strung out negotiations with the besiegers in expectation of relief. Newcastle’s Duchess later claimed that he advised Rupert not to fight at Marston Moor, believing that relations between the Scots and English Parliamentarians would deteriorate and that the allied army would divide itself. This smacks of hindsight, but the decision to give battle was Rupert’s, acting on the King’s orders.
As a consequence of being overruled, Newcastle appears to have abdicated command once his army’s late arrival at Marston Moor prevented Rupert from exploiting the unpreparedness of the allied armies. Whether his inertia extended to a “malign” influence, as suggested by some, seems too harsh. Ill-discipline among the soldiery rather than the outright hostility from Newcastle seems a far better explanation for the late arrival of Newcastle’s infantry on Marston Moor. Yet Newcastle’s arrival in a coach rather than on horseback suggests he was in no hurry and disinclined to force an Engagement. Owing to the enemy’s surprise attack that evening, Newcastle could exercised little generalship at Marston Moor. His battlefield heroism as described by his Duchess reflects more the role of Cavalry captain than commanding general.
Had Newcastle chosen to fight on foot as he was claimed to have done at Adwalton Moor, he would have been fortunate to come away with his life. His famous infantry regiment, Newcastle’s Whitecoats, were refused quarter. Killed where they stood, fewer than 30 were left alive. In all, between 4,000 and 6,000 Royalists were slaughtered in just ninety minutes, making this encounter the bloodiest Engagement of the Civil Wars in England by far. Newcastle seems to have remained on the field longer than most commanders. Yet, many of the dead were his own infantry, as “good foote as were in the world” as he had boasted.
From their perspective, there can be no questioning his failure of leadership. He abandoned them to escape on horseback. The psychological blow wrought by their massacre made this too painful for him to reflect upon in writing. Instead, his Duchess later excused his defeats as having occurred in his absence through “Jugling, Treachery, and Falshood” amongst his subordinates. This is unpersuasive; rather than admit to mistakes or shortcomings, bewailing treachery and blaming others to deflect responsibility was a common response of commanders trying to come to terms with defeat.
Supposedly unwilling to “endure the laughter of the court”, Newcastle considered that his reputation would not survive the disaster.” He would have shared Rupert’s embarrassment that their armies had been ordered to stand down immediately prior to the enemy attack. Newcastle rode to Scarborough and took ship for Hamburg. Seventy peers and gentlemen accompanied him, a reflection of his eminent social status. In response, other Royalist officers surrendered and went home. York was left with little hope of relief.
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Newcastle’s injured honour and his fear of ridicule had massive consequences far beyond his personal allegiance: it brought about the decapitation of northern Royalism. Newcastle hoped that his past services would outweigh the disservice of his flight. In this, he lacked the steeliness and resilience of the Fairfaxes who responded to their defeat at Adwalton Moor very differently. Newcastle was ill-equipped to emulate them. In adversity, his brittle honour and overriding concern for his status was an important Royalist military weakness.
In conclusion, despite his admiration for Newcastle, P.R. Newman concluded that the successes of his army “did nothing whatsoever for the King further south.” His final verdict was that the “single long-term contribution that Newcastle made to the war may have been the ultimate embroilment of Parliament with the Scots.” Newcastle’s success as a general widened the conflict and raised the stakes, forcing Parliament to procure an alliance with the Scottish Covenanters and Charles to recall more of the English army in Ireland.
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Although far from being a great general, Newcastle was certainly the foremost among the King’s “grandees”. He was indeed the most successful Royalist commander of 1643. Exceeding his initial objectives, he did much to raise, maintain and protect the largest Royalist army of the First Civil War. In this he was a great coalition builder, sustaining a large multi-confessional armed force for two years. He proved an effective figurehead, organiser and propagandist, although perhaps a poor reader of the terrain. On occasion, he showed himself a successful tactician, overcoming his lack of pre-war military experience. Dependent on professional advice, he took it, choosing talented and experienced subordinates. His army’s string of victories at Piercebridge, Tadcaster, Seacroft Moor and Adwalton Moor raised the possibility of an outright Royalist victory.
Yet Newcastle was unable to capitalise on these successes. Lacking in ruthlessness and tenacity, his failure to finish the Fairfaxes in 1643 cost the Royalists dearly. Had he ordered his Yorkshire regiments to garrison the north and contain Hull, allowing him to march south with his other forces, then he may have panicked Parliament into peace negotiations and the war’s outcome may have proved different. Even though this argument is speculative and driven by hindsight, many Royalists voiced it in explaining their defeat.
As a battlefield commander, it seems Newcastle was fundamentally flawed. Indeed, he seems to have recognised this by wisely leaving tactics to others. Whilst his concern for his reputation and status did much to inaugurate his armed Royalism, these considerations undermined his resilience once his army was broken in the field.
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You can now listen to another talk by Professor Hopper, on Newcastle’s Parliamentarian enemy in the North, Sir Thomas Fairfax.
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