Colonel Gell

There are many examples of personal enmity within the forces of both sides during the Civil War, and of the damage it caused to their effectiveness. One well-documented feud was that between Sir John Gell, the commanddr of the Parliamentary troops in Derbyshire, and his cavalry commander, Thomas Sanders.

Sir John Gell of Hopton was commissioned Colonel by the Earl of Essex in October 1642, and authorised to raise a regiment of 1,200 men to hold Derbyshire for Parliament. Gell had some military experience. He may have taken part in an expedition led by the Duke of Buckingham in 1627 [1] and he had been a Captain in the Derbyshire trained bands. He owned a training manual called "The pathwai to martiall discipline", by Thomas Styward, published in 1582, which he had been advised to take to militia musters and which, from its bloodstained cover and pages, seems to have been carried into battle too. [2]

Gell first commissioned his brother Thomas as Lieutenant-Colonel, and a tenant and old acquaintance of his, Johannes Molanus, as his Major. Among others who brought armed units to join the regiment, and who thereby obtained commissions, was Thomas Sanders of Little Ireton. His contribution was an infantry company of two hundred men and he was appointed Captain. While Gell could rely on the loyalty of his brother and Molanus, he and Sanders became irreconcilable enemies and when Sanders was later to declare that Gell was a greater enemy to him than any Cavalier, Gell was happy to agree.

They were divided by their politics. Gell was a conservative Presbyterian, favouring the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, while Sanders was more radical and was eventually to support the Independents. They were temperamentally unsuited. While Gell was intolerant of any opposition to his authority, Sanders, coming from the same social class, resented his pretensions. Sanders, in common with many other local commanders in Derbyshire and elsewhere, regarded his 200 foot soldiers as a private army, and Gell was the last man to have been happy with a semi-independent unit in his regiment. Sanders was also "a very godly honest country gentleman" [3] and hated Gell's more relaxed morals and earthy and violent language.

Captain Sanders Deserts

In the early months of 1643 Gell was threatened by the Earl of Newcastle's army in the north. Sanders and his 200 men, plus 60 dragoons, were in garrison at Burton and Gell called them in to strengthen the Derby defences, only to discover, to his fury, that Captain Sanders had deserted him. In Gell's own words, "In the meane tyme that wee left Captayne Sanders at Burton, one Mr Houghton, a Lancashire man, was made Colonell, and hee made the said Sanders his Leiftennant Colonell, soe that Colonell Gell lost that great company and above sixty dragoones horse and armes, which was a great losse to Derbyshire when the enemy were soe aboute us". [4]

This desertion probably indicates that the corrosive enmity between Gell and Sanders was already established. In Sanders's own version of this episode is heard a wounded, whining tone of self-justification which was characteristic of his explanations of his clashes with Gell. He had raised the troops himself, doubted the validity of Gell's commission, had been "thrust out of the county" by Gell in order to put him "in danger of ruine" [5] and had accepted Haughton's commission only to save himself and the Burton garrison. [6]

The point about the troops being raised by him and, by implication, his to dispose of, illustrates an attitude which made it impossible for him to serve happily under Gell. Sanders's new commission was short-lived. On the 2nd July the troops of queen Henrietta Maria, on her way south to join the king in Oxford, stormed Burton, killing many of the defenders and capturing many more, including the newly-promoted Lieutenant-Colonel Sanders, his commander, Haughton and his major, Nathaniel Barton.

The return of Captain Sanders

Sanders, released soon afterwards in an exchange of prisoners, went to London and obtained Parliamentary permission to raise money in Derbyshire for the formation of a contingent of cavalry to operate in the county. [7]

Such an addition to the Derbyshire force was needed and Essex granted him a commission. While Sanders and his friends regarded the appropriate rank to be that of colonel, Essex restricted him to major, presumably in an attempt to preserve a single unified force in Derbyshire. However, Sanders was given the power to appoint his own officers and to have command of all the cavalry in Gell's regiment except Gell's own troop, an arrangement guaranteed, in the words of one of Sanders's allies, to cause "inconveniences". [8] Sanders's own interpretation of the arrangement was "I acted, he had the honour", [9] an interpretation which Gell was not likely to share.

However, with the alternative prospect of a second regiment under a Colonel Sanders, Gell wrote to him on the 12th December 1643 accepting the arrangement - "I am contented you shall have full power and authority to constitute and appoint captains and all other inferior officers belonginge to a regiment of horse ... I onely desire to except my owne troope" [10]

Sanders appointed a number of captains who shared his religious and political views and were to prove allies in his opposition to Gell. The most prominent were Nathaniel Barton, Joseph Swetnam, Robert Greenwood, and Robert Hope. Barton, Sanders's former major at Burton, and Swetnam, were clergymen, while Greenwood's civilian role was running a leather manufacturing business in Ashbourne. [11]

Robert Hope of Derby served as lieutenant in Greenwood's troop until being appointed to command his own in June 1644. In the months ahead, contemplating his fractious regiment, Gell may have brought to mind the words of his military bible, Styward's "Pathwai to martiall discipline" - "where many divisions are, there happens the sooner discord and disorder". To add to Gell's problems Sanders also joined the Parliamentary Committee at Derby, under an order of Parliament dated the 16th October 1643, [12] together with an ally, Captain Robert Mellor, a Derby alderman with a commission in Gell's own company.

Committee business

Parliament's division of responsibility between Gell and the Committee was always likely to cause conflict between them, as similar arrangements did in other counties. As colonel of the Derbyshire regiment, Gell was responsible for military operations in the town and county, while the Committee was responsible for raising the money to finance them. At first the conflict was muted and Gell was able, up to the end of 1643, to conduct his war without challenge to his authority. The Committee, dominated by his relatives and his ally Sir George Gresley, rarely met and allowed him to get on with things. Even this Committee, however, was a necessary evil as far as Gell was concerned, and there are many reported expressions of his impatience with it. [13]

Sanders was probably accurate when he described Gell's method of conducting business - he regarded the Committee "as being a meanes to curbe & hinder him of sole power & rule, which he aimed at ... he did what he pleased ... we had noe sett tyme, noe place but his chamber, noe chare & noe order entered but entered in an arbitrary way". [14]

Gell's position was greatly strengthened in January 1644 when Essex appointed him Governor of Derby. [15] The commission placed Derby "together with all officers & souldiers therein, to be under your commands". It instructed "all officers & souldiers under your power, & all other the inhabitants of the said towne, and alsoe all others whom it may concern to obey you as their Governor".

The problem of Major Sanders

Neither the agreement between Gell and Sanders nor the unambiguous terms of Gell's commission as Governor could prevent the conflict between them, and the Earl of Essex was soon aware that his arrangement was not working. On the 21st February 1644, two months after Gell had signed his submissive letter, Essex was writing to Sanders, reminding him of his military duty to obey Gell and make no military move without Gell's approval. [16]

Sanders, like Gell himself a small man, [17] proved a very successful commander "of one of the bravest regiments of horse in the North" [18] but there was mutual loathing between him and his colonel, notwithstanding that Sanders himself agreed that Gell consulted him and the junior officers, in a "loveing & amicable" manner, before undertaking any operation. [19]

Divided loyaltiesThe danger from the north was removed when the Earl of Newcastle's army was routed at the battle of Marston Moor on the 2nd July 1644. While this victory made Gell's task of holding Derbyshire much easier, it also brought him problems. The main victors at Marston Moor were Lord Ferdinando Fairfax, commander of the Parliamentary forces in Yorkshire, and his son Sir Thomas, commander of the cavalry and Lord Fairfax's second-in-command. Sir Thomas had made an enemy of Gell by failing to send help when Newcastle was threatening to over-run Derbyshire, and after Marston Moor his father exacerbated Gell's antagonism by garrisoning Bolsover with a regiment commanded and partly officered by deserters from Gell's regiment.

By the autumn Gell was trying hard to persuade Parliament not to transfer Derbyshire to the Northern Association, a proposal which would place him under the command of the Fairfaxes. Derbyshire had been ordered to associate with the Midland counties at the beginning of the war and on the 20th September the Leicester Committee wrote to Derby proposing a joint letter to the Speaker supporting their continued association. [20]

Gell's main argument to Parliament was that, with the earl of Newcastle's army gone, he and his regiment were more urgently needed in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. Privately, the last thing that Gell wanted was to serve under the Fairfaxes. Sanders on the contrary badly wanted to serve under Sir Thomas Fairfax and had proposed joining with the Nottingham cavalry under Colonel Thornaugh in an expedition led by Fairfax to relieve the Lincolnshire town of Torksey, then being beseiged by troops from the royalist garrison at Newark.

In a scathing letter to Sanders written on the 25th September, [21] the day after Sanders had been asked to join the Torksey expedition, [22] Gell rebuked Sanders for the Torksey proposal, suggesting that Thornaugh's reason for going was simply that the enemy were near his estate. The Derby forces should undertake nothing without the order of "those that wee are under" and should "associate ourselves southwardly". Gell went on to insist that there should always be consultation before any operation was undertaken - "I beinge strange to the busines, doe desire to confere with those capts and officers that should go upon the servis, before I order them upon servis. It concerneth theyre lives, and the treuth is I am very tender of those brave and valiant frends that have been so faithfull in our servis".

He also reminded Sanders that the soldiers he was proposing to take to Lincolnshire had not been paid - "Further you know that our souldiers doe expect monies, which if they have not I can not expecte further servis from them ... I doe thinke it exceedinge harde to leave of gettinge of monies for our souldiers". Gell was always very serious about paying his soldiers. "The pathwai to martiall discipline" warned him to ensure that "the good souldier be not anie waies hindered of his paie, which would do so much hurt to his good nature, without whom the Coronell can availe little or nothing". Gell finally condemned the enterprise as dangerous to the safety of the county. Sanders made a sarcastic annotation - "Sr Jo: Gell his loving letter to me".

The garrison at Coleorton

In November Gell sent Sanders to help in setting up a strong point at Coleorton, to nullify the effectiveness of the royalist garrison at nearby Ashby, in Leicestershire. In the poisonous atmosphere caused by his attempt to join Fairfax Sanders went off to Coleorton with five troops of his cavalry. The Coleorton garrison was to be manned jointly with troops from Leicestershire, the arrangement specifying Derby dragoons as well as cavalry, and Sanders was soon complaining that they had not been sent - "it is some foote we desire, with whose helpe we can save our quarters and doe our owne business in this part of Derbyshire". [23]

He complained about the conditions and threatened to leave - "we this night lie horse and men in the fields ... pinched with cold". The infantry failed to arrive, though letters from Gell did come, provoking more complaints - "we expected mouskets, & not papers yesternight". [24] Gell must have accused Sanders of cowardice for proposing to leave Coleorton, as Sanders's reply protested that his soldiers were brave men - "our horse have not been slow to ayd others upon the least alarum". A Leicestershire force of horse and foot was on its way to join them "and that you wil engage none of your foote after such importuning is strange". In spite of all the acrimony the Coleorton garrison succeeded in its objects of impeding the royalist lines of communication and keeping the parliamentary ones open.

The Recorder Election

The quarrel became more venomous late in 1644, when the post of Recorder at Derby became vacant in November and Gell proposed his brother Thomas. Thomas Gell was a barrister and must have seemed the obvious man for the job. Sanders, however, did not agree. Thomas Gell, was, as far as Sanders was concerned "unfit for the place... in respect of his mean estate, want of learning, law and honesty, his conversation being so scandalous, for unclean swearing and hating all honest men; that he favoured malignants and enemies in arms and was not to be trusted or confided in". [25]

Gell, predictably, was furious, and gave Sanders a verbal beating at a meeting in Derby Town Hall. Sanders, unrepentant, wrote to Gell from Coleorton - "I wonder at your slanderous words spoke of me in the open hall at Derby. I desire our actions may be compared and weighed, then it will appear wheather I be a brownist, a coward & a knave or noe. What I am & what I have don ... moste in these partes know: but to call me a knave, malice & envy itself (& I perseave there is enoffe in you towards me of both). I am confident my integrity will defend me. I confesse ... I think the Lieutenant Colonel unfit to be Recorder and I will hinder it all I can. For two brothers and two sons-in-law solely to rule a county, all honest men resent. I seek not the place of governor or colonel. Rather than hinder the public, I will sit down from arms and seek to do the kingdom service in another way & if I be not called (for I will not by unlawfull meanes seek it) I will returne to a private life & soe end my dayes ... I desire that personal dislikes and grudges may not hurt the public". [26]

Sanders's reference to the Gell family control of the Committee indicates personal jealousy and his last sentence is an unlikely declaration of self denial from an ambitious man. To admit to being a "Brownist" or Independent would at that stage to have been admitting to political extremism and Gell had clearly drawn blood with his gibe.

The Committee Enlarged

The officers of Sanders's company shared their Major's loathing of Gell. He was accused of unfair distribution of money as between his own and Sanders's troops and of welcoming into his own company any who consequently deserted. This perceived discrimination resulted during 1644 in Sanders and his officers joining others in the county in petitioning Parliament for additional members to be put on the Committee to break Gell's grip on it. [27] Parliament, aware of the trouble in Derbyshire, agreed to increase the size of the Committee.

Gell tried to organise opposition to it among the officers of the regiment, all of whom he invited to a dinner in December 1644. [28] After the meal his brother Thomas proposed to them that they should join in opposing the new Committee's work. Gell had earlier said that Mellor and others were trying to "procure authoritie to the Committee & they would have me ruled by a Committee but I will not, and they that cross me I will cross them". [29] It is clear from his brother's proposition that he imagined that his hostility to a Committee controlling the military was shared by the soldiers. He was disappointed. The captains of horse, Sanders's men, all refused Thomas Gell's proposal.

Presbyterians and Independents

It was ultimately a disaster for Gell that Sanders and his officers were Independents, even though, since the term was at that time still a term of abuse, they denied it. It is significant that Sanders felt obliged to deny that he and his officers "go about to supress the gentry". [30]

A tract of 1648, entitled "City Spectacles", abused Sanders and his officers in the vituperative style characteristic of the time - "In the next place I must needs unkennell a nest of Independent cowards and vermine. And first I must pluck out by the eares Sanders (that Diminiture of Alexander), Captaine under Sir John Gell; (the greatest act of valour that he ever did was to shoot a gentleman through the arme, and cut him after he was taken prisoner and disarmed): when he was to goe upon any service he had a trick to make his souldiers mutiny; which he did famously, when he should have gone with Colonel Gell to Naisby fight. His officers are like him". [31]

These religiously and socially defined political divisions were eventually to split Parliament and the army. In the small world of the Derby Committee, where the arrival of Sanders in October 1643 had disturbed the hitherto unchallengeable alliance of Gell, his brother, his sons-in-law John Wigley and Henry Wigfall and Sir George Gresley, these large divisions were an element in the irreconcilable enmity between Gell and Sanders.

The Last Straw

Gell's patience with his reluctant major broke in the early weeks of 1645. Sanders had refused to go with a force sent to Newark in December, instead going to London, where he was taking part in lobbying Parliament for the appointment of the new Committee members. On his return Gell wrote on the 5th January ordering him to join his cavalry, who were by then at Southwell, in Nottinghamshire. [32] Sanders ignored this, [33] and Gell then wrote to Essex accusing Sanders of refusing to obey him.

Essex at last recognised the impossible situation he had engineered and decided to remove Sanders's commission and replace it with one which placed him unambiguously under Gell's command. [34] He sent Gell the new commission, [35] and on the 29th January Gell informed him that Sanders refused to accept it and that he had therefore been placed under house arrest. [36] Sanders demanded to be allowed to resign his commission in person and "I refuse to accept a new one because I will not be under the command of him who desires my ruin more than any Cavalier in England". [37]

This was not the first time that Sanders had threatened to resign and Gell was characteristically sarcastic - "My Lord this Major hath usually upon discontent offered to lay downe his armes, which I conceive is no loss to the publique".

Claiming that his officers and soldiers refused to serve under Gell Sanders attemped to remove them from the regiment. While under house arrest he wrote to Colonel Sandes, commander of the Nottinghamshire cavalry, with whom his troops were then serving, asking him to send Swetnam to Fairfax to ask for a commission. [38] He also asked that Swetnam's troop should not be sent back to Derby, where "their horses and arms will be taken from them" and speculated that another troop of his company, Capt Hope's, might escape from Derby if Fairfax demanded more help from Gell.

There is nothing to suggest that Gell would disarm his own troops, and indeed all the evidence is that he was trying hard to keep these men on side. He wrote to them in Nottinghamshire on the 3rd February pointing out that Sanders had come to Derby not to get money for their pay, as he understood they believed, but with a pass from Colonel Sandes to go to London. [39] He said that the treasurer had no money but that he himself had borrowed some and would get more - "Some of you petitioned for a new committee but if it were not for the old, you would not have received one penny". However, the £400 or £500 he sent them was accompanied by a copy of a "protestation" which the reluctant officers were asked to sign, undertaking to remain in the Derbyshire regiment. [40]

They wrote to the Committee asking whether, since they were not going to sign this undertaking, they should return the money. In an understandable fit of rage and frustration Sir John threatened the Committee men with his cane, which was clearly more than a ceremonial accessory. He told them that "if they medled with his souldiers or answered that letter hee would cracke the crowne of the proudest of them all (some Baronetts & knightts being then present) & he gave the committee most uncivile speeches calling them knaves & shitten stinking fellowes". [41]

While Gell was writing to the troops in Nottinghamshire, their Captain, Swetnam, was in York, pleading Sanders's case for a commission in Fairfax's army. [42] While "Sir John is extremely odious here", Fairfax could not give him one, "being loth to clash with Essex", but the commission would be granted "so soon as Sir Thomas is settled". On the 11th February Essex ordered Gell to release Sanders and send him details of charges against him. [43] Essex had at first intended to replace Sanders but had by then changed his mind. Gell was "not to put any other in his place, or remove any officer before you heare from me againe. But I intend he shalbe no longer your major than he shal obey you as his Colonel".

Thomas Gell was sent to put the case against Sanders, which was heard before the Council of War. [44] Sanders was accused of refusing to help in convoying a consignment of guns from Peterborough in 1644, of refusing to join a skirmish at Egginton Heath, of joining the party in London petitioning for addition to the Committee instead of joining Fairfax in blockading Newark and of refusing to go there on his return from London. In his answers Sanders denied being ordered to join the convoy, said he had failed to arrive in time at Egginton Heath because his stable was locked and he had no horse, denied refusing to go to Newark, saying that at the time he went to London it had not yet been decided who should go there, and said that he needed a rest for health reasons before joining his troops at Southwell when he returned.

There was the story of Sanders's desertion at Burton, a claim that he had run away at a siege of Newark and another that he had never led his troops in person. He explained his conduct at Newark by describing the loss of most of his men, saying that he had been ordered to join the retreat with Major Molanus, and insisted that he had often led his men into battle. There were accusations and denials of subversion and Sanders insisted that he always obeyed reasonable orders from Gell.

Gell won a paper victory. Sanders and the cavalry remained hostile. Sir Thomas Fairfax wrote to Gell on the 7th February ordering him to send Sanders's horse from Nottinghamshire to assist Sir William Brereton, commander of the Parliamentary forces in Staffordshire and Cheshire, in a seige of Chester. [45]

Still unpaid, the cavalry were posted to Chester. In a letter to the cavalry captains dated the 10th February conveying Fairfax's order, and in later ones, Gell gave vent to his anger at the subversion going on - "I am more beholden to Sir Thomas Fairfax than to you, for he acknowledges me to be your Colonel, but this I impute to that ungrateful fellow Swetnam rather than to the rest". [46]

He dismissed their refusal to accept the money he had sent to them - "if you refused the money I borrowed to send to you, it is no fault of mine". By May many of the soldiers had deserted and made their way back to Derby. Gell, instead of punishing these men, gave them £1 each on condition that they did not rejoin their company. At the same time he gave Captain Swetnam his opinion of Sanders in terms that echoed Sanders's own - "he had rather fight with Major Sanders than with any Cavalier in England and that he would have his pennyworth out of him". [47]

The expeditions to Nottinghamshire and Chester were, according to Sanders, part of Gell's malevolent campaign against him, as it put his troops to long winter marches, aggravating the discontent they already felt over lack of pay, while Gell's own troops stayed in the comparative comfort of Derby. [48]

The Battle of Naseby

It had become apparent that the king would not be permanently defeated while the operations of the different Parliamentary armies were imperfectly coordinated and while confusion often reigned at local level. The military confusion in Derbyshire was typical. Here, the disruption caused by local commanders such as Sanders, who had raised their own forces and regarded themselves as entitled to serve under the superior officer of their choice, was compounded by the army commanders. Essex had failed to make clear who was in command of the Derbyshire cavalry and Lord Fairfax had first formed a regiment of deserters from the Derbyshire regiment and had then installed it in Bolsover Castle, where it competed for funds and supplies with Gell, who had a commission from Fairfax's colleague Essex to defend Derbyshire. The remedy came with the formation of the New Model Army in April 1645. Commanded by Fairfax, with Cromwell as Lieutenant-General, the New Model proved itself at Naseby on the 14th June.

Gell had been instructed by Fairfax to take command of the combined cavalry and dragoons of Cheshire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire at Nottingham and pursue the king. However, he failed to arrive at Naseby in time to take part in the battle. Exactly why is difficult to determine. He had never before shown any tendency to avoid a fight. Gell claimed that his force took a fortnight to assemble and that by the time he moved off the king had already been defeated. Fairfax himself, in a letter to Sanders, talked of Gell's "unwillingness presented, but of disobedience cannot say". [49]

Although Gell was soon to be in favour of making peace with the king it seems unlikely that in 1645, with the war still undecided, he held back for political reasons. The answer may lie in the time which he claimed to have taken in assembling his troops at Nottingham. By the middle of 1645 he no longer had complete control of either the Committee or the regiment as the Sanders faction opposed him in both. Sanders's company was committed to him rather than to Gell and their discontent was aggravated by the usual difficulty in paying and feeding them. The pamphleteer may have been right to blame Sanders for the delay.

Mutiny and desertion

Later in June, in a confusion which was typical of this war, the Derby garrison received conflicting orders from Fairfax and the Committee of Both Kingdoms. [50] Fairfax instructed Sanders to take the cavalry to Gloucester. While the Committee at Derby wrote to Fairfax for confirmation of this order a second came from the Committee of Both Kingdoms addressed to Gell, instructing him to take his brigade to Worcester. The disaffection among the cavalry officers errupted on the 5th July, as Gell was on his way to Worcester. According to Sanders, who had gone to Gloucester, his troops heard that he was on his way back to Derby and immediately deserted Gell. [51] Gell's explanation was that they refused to continue because there was no money to pay them. [52] Whatever the reason the troops returned to Derby. Gell's depleted expedition proved abortive and he too returned. [53]

On the 8th July Sanders wrote to the Committee of Both Kingdoms - "You have commanded me to obey Sir John Gell as my colonel. I conceive it hard that I and those honest valiant captains should be engaged to observe the result of one mans absolute will while others have their commands from Parliament". [54]

If matters from then onward were to be properly conducted by a council, he was prepared to serve under Gell, "but if I am subjected to his sole will, I shall lay down my commission and sit down in some angle, spending the rest of my days in contemplation and devotion". The threat of resignation remained Sanders's favourite ploy. At the same time he wrote to a contact asking him to intercede with Fairfax and Cromwell to make him sole commander of the cavalry. He described quarrels among the Derbyshire regiment, where his own soldiers were wearing Fairfax's colours and Gell's own troops, wearing Gell's colours, were abusing them and threatening to pull the Fairfax colours out of their hats. [55] In a letter dated the 14th July 1645 Gell reminded Sanders about the order from the Committee of Both Kingdoms instructing him to obey him as his Colonel. [56]

Tutbury Failure

At the beginning of September Gell was asked by the Staffordshire force to join in an attack on the royalist garrison at Tutbury. By his own account he responded by sending Thomas Gell with four hundred infantry. [57] However he had been instructed by the Committee of Both Kingdoms to hold five hundred infantry ready to join in a blockade of Newark. According to Gell's account the Derbyshire and Staffordshire contingents met a mile from Tutbury and considered the situation. They decided that as any seige would last a month, during which time the Derbyshire force might be recalled to comply with the Parliamentary order, the operation should be abandoned. This sensible decision provoked further bitter recriminations at Derby.

According to one of the recently-appointed, anti-Gell, members of the Derby Committee, Sanders had been sent to the rendezvous with Thomas Gell. [58] The Staffordshire force had withdrawn unilaterally when they heard that the Derbyshire troops were on standby, leaving Sanders and his men "to the fury of the enemy", who had been alerted by the troop movements. In spite of the obvious military reasons for the withdrawal Sanders branded this aborted operation as disgraceful and demanded to know why the orders had been changed. Gell was scornful - "What, do you prate?", and threatened to knock him over the head. [59]

The conflicting accounts of this episode, and Gell's apparent failure to communicate fully with his senior officers, reveal the damage that the hostility between Gell and Sanders was inflicting on the regiment's effectiveness. It was still, however, to play a valuable part in the last moves in the war and took part in the blockade of the king in Newark which ended with the king's surrender to the Scots on the 8th May 1646.

The Sanders paper

Gell's enemies on the Derby Committee and in his regiment submitted allegations about his conduct of the war to the Parliamentary Committee for Examinations, starting in November 1645 [60] . There were more complaints in the summer of 1646 and Sanders presented an indictment to the Committee - "Articles against Sir John Gell, Baronet, Colonel of a Regiment, Governor of Derby and a Justice of the Peace for the said county". [61]

It was a summary of Gell's alleged high-handed and tyrannical behaviour toward the Committee and others, his financial misconduct, military failures and his unfairness to Parliamentarians and favour to royalists. The indictment ends with a general attack on Gell's character. Gell, "besides other scandalous conversations, is a frequent swearer, jeerer and scoffer of religious men and practices, a protector of loose and disolute persons".

Post War

Having won his war, Gell had lost the peace, though none of the accusations made against him resulted in prosecution. In 1648 he moved permanently to London. He gave money to the king during his protracted negotiations with Parliament and the army, [62] and in 1650 was tried and imprisoned for "misprision" of treason, ie failing to disclose his knowledge of a royalist plot. [63] He was pardoned and released in 1653, and at the Restoration was further pardoned for his part in the war. [64] He continued to live in London, where he died in 1671. He was buried at Wirksworth.

Major Sanders's Career

Sanders continued to seek a commission in Sir Thomas Fairfax's New Model Army. By March 1646 Captain Barton, who had deserted Gell in 1645, was in Cornwall with Fairfax and Cromwell, and he reported to Sanders that he had pressed Sanders's wish to bring his company over to the New Model and be commissioned in it. [65] Barton had also told Fairfax about allegations which Gell had made against him and Fairfax had replied "his conscience told him he did not deserve it and he was loth to take any great notice of it".

In April Barton wrote again, from Oxfordshire, to tell Sanders that as soon as the General arrived he should come and make his case, and "I much desire to hear what success you have had against Sir John Gell". [66] Sanders in fact joined the Nottinghamshire regiment of Colonel Thornhaugh when Gell's was disbanded and became Colonel when Thornhaugh was killed in battle. He and Barton were in London at the time of the king's execution and in May 1649 Sanders's regiment guarded Parliament while Fairfax and Cromwell left to put down a rising by the Levellers. He later became an MP and his will of 1689 revealed that he had done well out of the war. [67]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS