Royalist

The most thorough attempt to date to reconstruct the Royalist order of battle at Marston Moor has been made by Brigadier Peter Young in his classic "MARSTON MOOR 1644" (Roundwood Press 1970) yet while his reconstruction, largely based on the plan of the battlefield drawn up by Prince Rupert's Walloon engineer officer, Bernard De Gomme, deals with the prince's forces quite adequately his treatment of the Marquis of Newcastle's northern army is much less satisfactory and it is towards correcting this deficiency that this present short series of articles is aimed.

The starting point for any study of the Royalist army that day must inevitably be De Gomme's map. The value of this drawing has recently been questioned by Dr. PR. Newman in his recent study of the battle and so it may be as well to begin by examining it. These doubts would appear to derive largely from Newman's inability to reconcile it with his own interpretation of the battle (a dangerous practice) and he comes in the end to the not entirely original view that the map is the same one which Prince Rupert showed to Lord Eythin before the battle and represents proposed rather than actual dispositions, though he remains puzzled by the fact that De Gomme had apparently taken some care at a later date to colour and annotate the map without first correcting it to show the actual situation as he (Newman) believe it to be.

In fact as examination of the plan would suggest the opposite and that it represents not only the actual dispositions at the commencement of the battle but also reveals that the Royalist army must have arrived on the field in three distinct phases:

Phases

First came Prince Rupert's own forces- all or most of the regiments being identified individually followed some time afterwards by the northern Horse who would appear to have earlier been detached from the main body of Rupert's army in order to physically effect the relief of York while the rest of the army slept in the forest of Galtres as much as nine miles away from the city. Evidence of this delayed arrival may be seen both in the absence of any detailed information about the regiments- only the names of the brigade commanders are noted by de Gomme, and in the otherwise inexplicable deployment of the two rather mediocre Derbyshire cavalry regiments of Eyre and Frescheville in the front line on the Royalist left (see map).

Finally there came the 3,000 northern Foot under Lord Eythin, whose arrival appears to have triggered off the battle. Newman considered that this being the case then the whitecoats would be spread out across the moor, possibly even all the way back to York, but in fact here is no reason to believe that this was so. Accounts agree that while somewhat tardy the northern Foot arrived on the field in a body rather than as a straggling disorderly rabble and it is also reasonable to suppose that when the battle did commence they did not as Newman seems to imagine simply stop dead in their tracks until events overtook them. Instead it would appear from De Gomme's sketch that they were hurriedly rushed by Eythin into a suitable position.

Naturally in the haste and confusion of a battle already begun De Gomme had neither the time nor the opportunity to note even the names of the brigade commanders, let alone the Colonels though simply marking the positions of the seven divisions would be easy enough. The position occupied by these men is further testimony to the assumption that De Gomme drew what he saw rather than what he ought to have seen for the formation adopted is itself indicative of haste and improvisation. Not very much as though they were positioned thus in order to bolster an already sagging right wing.

If one accepts that this is in fact the case then much of Newman's assumptions about the course of the battle must be reconsidered and the picture shifted somewhat back to the traditional one, that however is not the purpose of this present article and the question which we must consider instead is just how much does De Gomme tell us about the order of battle and how may the gaps best be filled?

Prince Rupert's Army

While the component regiments were drawn from a number of sources Rupert's army was a fairly homogenous force which might more accurately be thought of as Lord Byron's army with some additions.

Amongst the Horse the largest single contingent was composed of those regiments which had been serving under Byron in Cheshire and North Wales during the previous winter, most or all of them having been present at the battle of Nantwich in January. This group included the following regiments;-

LORD BYRON'S
LORD MOLYNEUX'S
COLONEL MARCUS TREVOR'S
SIR THOMAS TYLDESLEY'S
SIR WILLIAM VAUGHAN'S

Of these both Byron's and Tyldesley's regiments had previously served with some distinction in the Oxford Army, while Vaughan's, then under Sir Thomas Lucas had fought in Ireland. Of the other two Lord Molyneux's had been newly raised while Trevor's, originally raised by Lord Capel had a depressing history of defeats.

The next contingent in order of size was the Prince's own which was made up of the following regiments;-

SIR JOHN HURRY'S
SIR WILLIAM PELHAM'S
PRINCE RUPERT'S HORSE
PRINCE RUPERT'S LIFEGUARD
COLONEL SAMUEL TUKE'S

With the exception of Hurry's small regiment these were all good units. Tukes had come from the Newark garrison as had Pelham's. The latter while known to have been present is not shown by De Gomme, however since he annotated Tuke's detachment with the words 200 Horse it may well be that the two Newark regiments were brigaded together. Finally there were a rather mixed bag of garrison units from the north Midlands;-

COLONEL ROWLAND EYRE'S
COLONEL JOHN FRESCHEVILLE'S
COLONEL THOMAS LEVESON'S

Only the last seems to have been up to much and the fiery Thomas Leveson terrified friend and foe alike. Frescheville's on the other had, described in a Parliamentarian intelligence report as numbering eight Troops of only about twenty men apiece was a rather scrappy unit cobbled together from the horse of several Derbyshire garrisons.

Rupert's Foot were of a similarly mixed origin though they reflected to an even greater degree Byron's later complaint that the Army was very substantially his own one. The following Foot regiments had previously served under Byron;-

COLONEL ROBERT BROUGHTON'S
LORD BYRON'S
COLONEL MICHAEL EARNLE'S
COLONEL RICHARD GIBSON'S
SIR THOMAS TYLDESLEY'S
COLONEL HENRY WARREN'S

All but two of these had fought at Nantwich in January; Earnle's, Gibson's and Warrens had indeed been rather badly knocked about, especially the two former who could only form a single joint battalion. On the other hand Byron's and Tyldesley's had not only escaped virtually unscathed but the latter had recruited very successfully during the march through Lancashire, Broughton's and Tillier's mend had arrived from Ireland shortly after Nantwich and of the two the former was probably the better. Raised in Denbighshire in 1640 it had seen hard service in Ireland and acquitted itself well at the storming of Bolton. Tillier's on the other hand was a composite unit made up of contingents from a number of regiments in the Dublin garrison.

A number of small Foot regiments had not previously served under Buron, these were;-

COLONEL HENRY CHEATER'S
COLONEL EDWARD CHISENALL'S
COLONEL ROWLAND EYRE'S
COLONEL JOHN FRESCHEVILLE'S
COLONEL JOHN MILLWARD'S
PRINCE RUPERT'S

Of these only Prince Rupert's could be described as a good regiment though even they may not yet have recovered from the battering received in the storming of Bolton. As to the others, Cheater's was another Irish regiment, this time formed from levies landed on the Whitehaven quayside who had been sitting quietly in Bolton (le Dale) Castle until summoned to join the Prince. Chisenall's had lately been raised in Lancashire (in the previous fortnight) but it at least had some experienced officers.

The remaining regiments were a scrappy job lot drawn from the Derbyshire garrisons. Two other regiments which may also have been present (both Colonels were killed) were Colonel Edward Roper's Foot from Shropshire, and Colonel Charles Townley's Lancashire regiment. Little is known of these regiments and indeed De Gomme does not show them on his map. It would seem likely therefore that the Colonels were killed while serving as volunteers or else, that their regiments were so small as to be incorporated in some other regiment.

As to Dragoons De Gomme offers few clues, though his omission of any from his plan is not in any significant- a similar map executed to show the Royalist dispositions at Edgehill two years earlier similarly omits all mention of Dragoons though three if not four units were certainly involved on that occasion. Colonel Henry Washington's regiment of Dragoons was almost certainly on the moor that day, they had led the attack on Stockport at the outset of prince Rupert's campaign to relieve York and there is no reason to believe that they were subsequently left behind in Lancashire.

Further, circumstantial evidence that they took part in the battle comes from an examination of the state of the regiment before and after that summer. Whilst a good, well-found regiment at the outset of the campaign, by the end of the year the regiment had evidently been so severely handled as to be no further use save as a Foot regiment in the Worcester garrison and such a disaster can only have been Marston Moor. Two white Dragoon Guidons taken by the parliamentarians may have belonged to the regiment. There is no evidence of other regiments having been present, with the Prince's army though a number of independent Troops swelled their numbers; Fresheville and the other Derbyshire officers brought a small Troop and the following of Rupert's cavalry regiments are known to have included a Troop of Dragoons in their orbat; -- Sir Thomas Tyldesley's and Sir William Vaughan's.

Battle Map

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