The work of the Scoutmaster and his associates is a subject which has attracted little attention from historians of the Civil War. Even specialised military histories generally content themselves with a passing reference to the existence of such a post, while a leading authority on the period recently wrote:

"The armies all had 'scoutmasters', about whom we know very little, but how did the scoutmasters navigate? We do not know." [1]

Philip Tennant, in his work on the war in the South Midlands, has aptly pointed out that the movements of a seventeenth century army did not necessarily bear much resemblance to a modern route march; the troops were liable to roll forward across the countryside in a great wave, several miles in breadth, with groups of men breaking away on private sorties of their own and turning up in villages far away from the general line of advance. [2]

Under such circumstances, it is not clear that a man with a map could have done a great deal to control the army's march but this was not, in any case, the Scoutmaster's responsibility. It is true that his men might well range ahead of a body of troops on the march-, Sir Ralph Hopton describes how they (the Royalist army) marched with scouts out before and on every hand of them, that might over Sourton Down.... (but) young James Chudley had drawn out of Okehampton 200 choice horse and by means that he was better guided than their scouts were on that large Down and by the darkness of the night he came up close to the van of their dragoons undiscovered...." [3]

Clearly the Royalist scouts were not even responsible for finding their own way on this occasion, still less blazing a trail for the body of the army; they were themselves reliant on local guides (mainly, no doubt, because they were moving by night) and their function was to feel for an approaching enemy, giving timely warning to the troops whose flanks and line of march they were reconnoitring. In point of fact, the difficulty of finding one's way from point to point in seventeenth century England can be exaggerated. Granted that the road network was appallingly bad, detailed maps all but nonexistent and signposts conspicuous by their absence, a great many people contrived to travel quite widely without much apparent difficulty.

Carriers journeyed regularly between London and the major towns and cities: there were daily departures for Northampton and Oxford, and the King's Post left for Edinburgh three times a week. There was a "Carriers' Cosmography", a directory of routes which were available, and the service continued to function, at least in part, even under wartime conditions - much to the satisfaction of those soldiers who supplemented their income by persistently robbing the wretched carriers. Other trades people also routinely travelled long distances by road, and Sir Samuel Luke's letter books contain transcripts of information obtained at his headquarters in Newport Pagnell from men who had arrived from Gainsborough, Winchester, York, Manchester, Petersfield Lincoln and a wide variety of other towns. [4]

It is clear that many of his informants were civilians going about their ordinary business and perfectly capable of finding their way from Lancashire or Yorkshire to destinations at the other end of the country. How much easier it would have been for an army, which in the earlier part of the war, would as likely as not be campaigning in a region in which both many of the rank and file and the gentlemen who led them had been born and bred: Newcastle, Hopton, the Fairfaxes and their officers would have been reasonably familiar with the areas in which they fought, having travelled them extensively in the course of business and the social round. The more prominent would travel regularly between their estates and London; the Court itself was often on the move (if usually in South East England). If all else failed, the local populace could always be approached-, they might be sympathisers who would volunteer information but even if they were hostile, the soldiery could always resort to a little gentle persuasion.

In fact, contemporary accounts suggest that it was only rarely that local guides had to be employed, and then usually during night marches or attempts to pass unseen through an enemy's position. Thus Charles I, in order to leave Newark in November 1645, was compelled to watch an opportunity, by the darkness of the night and good guides, to steal...to Worcester or Oxford." [5]

Sir Henry Slingsby, writing of a breakout from the same besieged town, says: "Because our march lay through the enemy's quarters, we provide us a guide and took the night time to march in." [6]

In fact, Slingsby and his comrades provided themselves with no less than three guides but still encountered problems: one, "a Gentleman, one Mr. Packgrave", went on ahead to investigate a house where another local helper had arranged to meet them. He failed to return and, when Slingsby's party finally steeled themselves to follow him (they were reluctant to send the remaining guide lest he should take to his heels as soon as he was out of sight). They discovered Packgrave comfortably settled in the warmth. Similarly, when Sir Henry Gage was returning from Basing House to Oxford after delivering supplies for the Marquis of Winchester: the Marquis giving him two or three guides who knew the country exactly, he marched from Basing without sound of drum or trumpet marching by-ways, in the morning they likewise passed over the Thames at a ford little more than a mile from Reading, and to so escaped the enemy..." [7]

It is noteworthy that Gage had needed no assistance on his approach march, he required guides only because he was leaving at night and avoiding the main routes.

Acquisition of Intelligence

Far from being concerned with conducting the army on its line of march, the Scoutmaster concentrated on the acquisition of intelligence, using every method which was available to him, both open and clandestine. The Scoutmastcr-Gcneral of an army in the field sent his agents into the enemy's camp or attempted to Suborn individuals on the opposing side with the object of acquiring information on their plans and dispositions. Writing in 1670, the author of "Pallas Armata" [8] draws a distinction between "private" intelligence of this type, which he recogniscd as the Scoutmaster's province, and "publick" intelligence, which a modern soldier might call tactical reconnaissance: the latter, in his view, was the responsibility of the Major General and "the several Majors of Regiments both of the Cavalry and the infantry, none whereof I conceive will suffer the Scoutmaster to usurp his office." Yet, although it is certainly true that scouting was undertaken by both horse and foot under the leadership of their own officers, the Scoutmaster might also direct such operations. The County Committee of Staffordshire, for example, ordered that "Captain Bowes, Captain Rugely Captain Wagstaffe, Captain Wakefield, Captain Yonge and Captain Thacker shall every night by turns let Mr. Collins (the Scoutmaster) have ten troops to scout with him for the safety of the garrison at Stafford..." [9]

Similarly, at Naseby: "About 8 of the clock in the morning, it began to be doubted whether the intelligence they (the Royalists) had received of the enemy was true. Upon this the Scoutmaster was sent to make further discovery, who, it seems, went not far enough but returned and averred that he had been three or four miles forward and could neither discover nor know anything of them." [10]

As the Royalists had been warned that Fairfax's army had been quartered within six miles of Market Harborough on the previous night (indeed some of Langdale's horse had already been taken prisoner as Parliamentarian troops occupied Naseby village), they had every reason to suppose that the enemy were in the immediate vicinity. However, it was the Scoutmaster who rode forward to establish contact with them; it was only after he had returned and submitted his (totally inaccurate) report that Rupert drew out a party of horse and musketeers both to discover and engage them, the army remaining still in the same place. [11]

Rupert evidently rode out with the horse, for we are told that "His highness had not marched above a mile when he received certain intelligence of their advance, and in a short time after he saw the van of their army but it seems not so distinctly but that he conceived they were retiring. Thereupon he advanced nearer with his horse..." [12]

The implication is clearly that someone had ridden ahead of Rupert and the main body of tire horse, and reported to him that the enemy were advancing. Of course the Prince may have detached some troopers for this purpose but, having just sent the Scoutmaster forward on an identical mission, which he clearly considered to be that worthy's duty, it is highly probable that Rupert had once again ordered him to reconnoitre. A man of the Prince's temperament would have been unlikely to let his subordinate quietly disappear to the rear after making that earlier, inconclusive report.

The office of Scoutmaster was not neccessarily a noncombatant one, and some of those who held it were men of action. At the relief of Newark on 21 March 1644, Rupert's then Scoutmaster, Sir William Neale rode with him into battle and cut off the hand of a trooper who laid hold of the Prince's collar. The Eastern Association's Scoutmaster, Lionel Watson, acted as a sort of aide-de-camp to Lieutenant General Cromwell at Marston Moor and appears to have fought with the horse on the Allied left wing. Sir Samuel Luke, ScoutmasterGeneral to Essex' army was at Edgehill as Captain of a troop and, in 1643, was commissioned to raise a regiment of dragoons in Bedfordshire; he later fought with distinction at Chalgrove Field. Royalist Scoutmaster-General Francis Rowley was killed in action at Stow-on-the Wold.

The Scoutmaster's status was, however, somewhat ambiguous. Watson held the rank of Major but his rival Samuel -Bedford, who 'had served as a Scout under Luke and eventually deputised for him as Essex' Scoutmaster-General, encountered considerable difficulty in obtaining the money due to him when he lost that post on the formation of the New Model; the bureaucrats apparently denied that he had been in the army at all: "But the fortnight's pay upon reducement I cannot yet get, for the new treasurers make scouts neither officers nor soldiers." Wrote Bedford in disgust. [13] He was offered the post of Commissary-General which eventually went to Henry Ireton but preferred to resign; a few months later, he was appointed Scoutmaster to the Committee of Both Kingdoms, on the same salary which he had enjoyed during his time with the army. This, at roughly &3163 4 a day (on the 1647 Establishment) seems quite generous, except for the fact that it was expected to cover such overheads as the cost of hiring agents and the maintenance of subordinates! [14]

It was in fact common for Scoutmasters to hold no specific military rank and many were evidently civilians. The later ScoutmasterGenerals of the New Model fall into this category (Monck sandwiched the Deputy Scoutmaster-General between storekeepers and preachers when listing the officials whom he wished to maintain on the establishment of the Army in Scotland [15] ) as do many of the Scoutmasters attached to garrisons or small field forces who are mentioned in contemporary documents; Rowley though ranking before the Colonels listed in "The Royal Martyrs", appears in a separate section together with Commissary- General Windham. [16]

As we have seen above, exposure to the risks of battle was part of the job, and this would be particularly true for the more junior; however, the background of some Scoutmasters suggests that a higher value was placed upon intellectual attainments, and a certain versatility which might be thought to merge into untrustworthiness.

Sir George Downing, for example, who was Cromwell's Scoutmaster-General in Scotland during 1650, had been the second man to graduate from Harvard University and had subsequently taught there before embarking on a religious career which included spells as a ship's chaplain, a preacher in Barbados and chaplain to Okey's dragoons. While still receiving his Scoutmaster's pay, he was employed in the post war settlement of Scotland, served as an MP and engaged in a diplomatic career in Europe, culminating in his appointment as Resident at The Hage. After the Restoration, he transferred what may loosely be termed his allegiance to Charles II, not scrupling to betray his former comrade Colonel Okey and deliver him to an agonising death. Contemporaries described him as "a crafty fawning man" and "a perfidious rogue" [17] ; perhaps the most charitable comment that can be made about him was that he was ideally suited to the murky world of intelligence. Henry Jones, the Commonwealth's Scoutmaster-General in Ireland, was likewise a graduate (of Trinity College, Dublin), the son of a bishop and himself appointed to the see of Cloghcr in 1645. He became Vice Chancellor of the University of Dublin in the following year. Nevertheless, he was no academic of the ivory tower variety; in 1641, he had defended (albeit unsuccessfully) Bellananagh Castle against the Irish rebels and, having been captured and deputed to carry a petition to Dublin on behalf of the insurgents, returned to captivity in fulfilment of the promise he had made to them, then escaped. He was the brother of Colonel Michael Jones, the prominent Parliamentarian soldier. Henry was strongly anti-Catholic, and was heavily involved in various atrocity commissions set up to investigate the events of the Irish rebellion; on occasion, the zeal of the commissioners got the better of their regard for justice and it seems that some "confessions" were extracted by the use of torture. Like Downing, Jones was employed on a commission for the settlement of the pacified territory, in this case in Ulster. This tendency to employ the Scoutmaster-General in essentially political business is also exemplified by the references to Mr. William Rowe, "Scoutmaster of the Army" in Scotland in 1648, which occur in two of Cromwell's letters [18] ; Rowe, in company with Colonel Bright, was despatched to Edinburgh to undertake negotiations with the Committee of Estates and "the well-affected Party". It is probable that he had established contacts in these circles in the course of his intelligence gathering activities.

Lionel Watson, too, did not restrict his activity to the gathering of military information. A Lincoln goldsmith before the wars, lie began his service as Treasurer to Lord Willoughby's forces in the county, before his appointment as Scoutmaster- General to the army of the Eastern Association and subsequently to the New Model. Not content with monitoring the activity of the Royalists, he turned his attention to those of his colleagues who differed from him in matters of religion, and presented Cromwell with a list of all those officers he judged to be Presbyterians. In 1647, he was one of the intermediaries between the leaders of the Army and their sympathisers in London, and was Subsequently a member of the Committee of General Officers, primarily an administrative body with particular responsibility for identifying suitable candidates for promotion.

The Scoutmaster-General then, might undertake a wide variety of duties, political as well as military. He was an administrator, collecting and sifting information from a variety Of Sources in order to build up a coherent Picture of what was happening on "the other side of the hill"; managing the budget which had been allocated to him so that he might achieve this objective and deploying the "scouts" under his control, both open and clandestine, in the most effective manner possible. Inevitably, the ordinary Scoutmaster of a garrison operated on a less exalted plane but his duties, while more Mundane had the same object in view.

SCOUTING IN THE FIELD