Sir Thomas Fairfax

The Forgotten General
and His Actions in the North

Seacroft Moor and Wakefield

by David Blackmore


Seacroft Moor

His next fight was Seacroft Moor. His father was falling back from Selby to Leeds while Sir Thomas was to act as a decoy to draw the Royalists away from their main force. Sir Thomas achieved this by threatening Tadcaster. In fact he did more than that. When the Royalists abandoned Tadcaster he spent 3 or 4 hours sighting the towns' defences. It was too long and on Bramham Moor, with only 3 troops of horse and a few foot he was caught by Goring with 20 troops of horse and dragoons.

Fairfax ordered the foot to retire across the moor and with his horse held off Goring in the lanes and enclosures leading to the moor where the Royalist's superior numbers would be nullified. Fairfax held off Goring for what he thought was long enough to allow the foot to cross the open moor to the safety of enclosures on the other side. He then retreated himself, only to find that the foot were still where he had left them! He had no choice but to march both horse and foot together across the moor. Goring followed, but without attacking, perhaps apprehensive of attacking apparently steady infantry and Fairfax's force reached the relative safety of the enclosures adjacent to the moor.

Then, crossing a second open moor, Seacroft Moor, it all went wrong. It was a hot day and order was breaking down amongst the foot as they broke ranks to search houses for drink. The Royalists found another route onto the Moor and were able to attack from two directions at once. The foot ran and the horse were overwhelmed. Sir Thomas himself only just escaped. As it was his father had completed his march to Leeds unmolested. He described it himself as "one of the greatest losses we ever received". And it had been avoidable. [34]

Wakefield

A few weeks later, on 21 May, 1643, Sir Thomas led an attack on Wakefield with the intention of capturing it. Believing it defended by 800 or 900 men he had 1000 foot and 8 troops of horse. As it turned out Wakefield was defended by 3000 foot and 7 troops of horse. After considerable fighting the foot, led by Maj. Gen. Gifford and his cousin Sir William Fairfax, managed to breach the defences sufficiently for Sir Thomas to lead in the cavalry. Thereafter the superiority of the Parliamentarian cavalry told and Wakefield was taken.

The credit for the victory must go in the First instance to the infantry who are described in the official dispatch as fighting with "unspeakable courage". In the second instance it goes to Gifford who over came a potentially dangerous Royalist reserve force by turning one of their own guns on them.

Sir Thomas having got ahead of everyone else and with two Royalist officers as his prisoners, found himself, not for the last time, cut-off and surrounded by the enemy. It was only his horsemanship that got him out. By the time he rejoined his forces Gifford had finished the business. Once again his luck had held. [35]

It is interesting to speculate at this point on the state of relations between Sir Thomas and Maj. Gen. Gifford. Gifford was a professional soldier and had been with the Fairfax's since November 1642 as the commander of Lord Fairfax's infantry. One can imagine what Sir Thomas might have had to say to him about their performance, or lack of it, at Wetherby. And what would Gifford think about the young firebrand who sat on his horse at Tadcaster while Gifford lead infantry in some sharp and probably quite nasty house to house righting? The same young firebrand who got himself into trouble at Seacroft and lost some of Gifford's men. And then having got Gifford into a fight at Wakefield against three times their number of infantry, went swarming off on his own leaving Gifford to win the fight, but who, as the commander, got the credit.

One can easily imagine that by the time of the Battle of Adwalton things were just a little cool between these two men.

More Fairfax

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