In September 1643, the Marquis of Ormond concluded terms for a one-year cease fire with the Irish Confederates on behalf of the King. The Cessation of Arms allowed government troops stationed in Ireland to be recalled to England to fight for the Royalists. Some of the returning troops were to join Lord Hopton's army in the South, but most of them were to form a new northern army that was intended to assist the Marquis of Newcastle in countering the expected invasion of England by Parliament's new Scottish allies. The King's use of troops from Ireland was controversial. Although he hoped in the long term to recruit Irish Confederates to fight against Parliament, his first reinforcements were battle-hardened English veterans of the Confederate War. This did not prevent Parliamentary news-sheets from playing upon the worst fears of English Protestants by representing the returning troops as bloodthirsty Irish papists.
The first contingent of troops for the new northern army landed at Mostyn in Flintshire on 16 November 1643. It comprised four regiments of foot and one of horse under the command of Major-General Earnley. The troops were landed in north Wales in order to counter a successful offensive in the region led by the Parliamentarian commander Sir William Brereton. With the intention of cutting off the Royalist stronghold of Chester, Brereton had forced the crossing of the River Dee at Farndon on 7 November in the face of fierce resistance from the Royalist garrison of nearby Holt Castle. He then marched into Wales, capturing Wrexham on 9 November and Hawarden Castle on 11 November. Brereton's campaign cut off the supply route from Wales to Chester and threatened a total blockade of the city. With the arrival of the first troops from Ireland, however, Brereton abandoned his invasion of Wales and withdrew to consolidate his forces in Cheshire and Lancashire. Earnley's veterans quickly re-established Royalist control of north Wales, then advanced to occupy Chester where they were joined by further regiments during the following weeks.
Cheshire, December 1643
Early in December 1643, the King appointed Lord Byron commander of all Royalist forces in Cheshire, Lancashire and north Wales, including the regiments recently arrived from Ireland. Byron arrived at Chester with reinforcements of 1,000 horse and 300 foot drawn from the Oxford army to bring the total strength of the new army up to around 5,000 men. The citizens of Chester quickly came to resent their unruly behaviour and the expense of maintaining them. Byron was anxious to keep his volatile army occupied and marched out of Chester on 12 December. He planned to isolate the Parliamentarian headquarters at Nantwich before advancing to capture it. Once he had secured Cheshire for the King, Byron planned to advance into Lancashire and from there to march to assist the Marquis of Newcastle against the Scots.
For several weeks Byron conducted a ruthless campaign against the Cheshire Parliamentarians. On 13 December, Captain Thomas Sandford led a daring raid on Beeston Castle, situated on a rocky hilltop and considered an impregnable stronghold. In a commando-style operation, Sandford and a small company scaled the rock face then climbed the castle wall. When Sandford's men appeared inside the castle, the garrison believed they had been outwitted by a larger force and promptly surrendered. The Parliamentarian commander Captain Steele was subsequently executed at Nantwich for cowardice. On Christmas Eve, when a group of Royalists commanded by Major Connought plundered the village of Barthomley, twenty villagers took refuge in the tower of St Bertoline's Church. The Royalists made a fire at the base of the tower to smoke them out, which forced them to surrender. Connought's men then stripped and killed twelve of the villagers in cold blood and wounded most of the others. Lord Byron boasted of the massacre in a report to the Marquis of Newcastle, earning himself the nickname of the "Bloody Braggadoccio" when the letter was intercepted.
Meanwhile, Sir William Brereton mustered a force of Parliamentarians from Lancashire and Cheshire at Middlewich. Before he could move against the Royalists, however, Byron launched a surprise attack around 27 December. The Parliamentarians were routed with 500 men killed or captured. With his forces in disarray, Brereton retreated to Manchester and sent an urgent message to Parliament requesting help before the whole of Cheshire was lost. In response, Parliament's Committee of Safety ordered Sir Thomas Fairfax to march to Brereton's assistance. Since September 1643, Fairfax had been attached to the Eastern Association army in Lincolnshire. Early in January 1644, he marched with 1,800 men across the Pennines in harsh winter weather to join forces with the Cheshire and Lancashire Parliamentarians at Manchester.
Nantwich, Cheshire, 25 January 1644
Having cleared most of Cheshire of the King's enemies, Lord Byron advanced towards Nantwich, the last Roundhead stronghold in the county. Nantwich had been a Parliamentarian garrison since January 1643. The River Weaver formed a natural defence at the western approach; the town was further fortified with a circuit of earthworks, ditches and barricades. The garrison of nearly 2,000 men was well-supplied. Its commanders Sir George Booth and Colonel Croxton had made preparations for a possible siege while Byron was campaigning in Cheshire.
Byron set up his headquarters at the nearby village of Acton and summoned Nantwich to surrender on 10 January 1644. The following day, after the summons was rejected, Royalist artillery opened fire on the town. The bombardment continued for several days with frequent skirmishing between the besiegers and troops from the garrison. On 18 January, after Byron's second summons had been refused, the Royalists attempted to take the town by storm. The defences were attacked at five points simultaneously but the assault was fiercely resisted and the Royalists were driven back with heavy losses of around 500 killed and wounded. Byron's army was declining in strength. Of the 5,000 that had marched from Chester, less than 3,500 were left after the fighting in Cheshire and at Nantwich itself. Sickness, desertion and the bitter weather had also taken their toll.
On 21 January, Sir Thomas Fairfax marched from Manchester with with a combined force of around 3,000 foot and 1,800 horse from Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. On 24 January, Fairfax swept aside a force of 200 Royalists attempting to block his advance as he passed through the forest of Delamere. Fairfax's intention was to reinforce the garrison at Nantwich rather than engage Byron's army in battle. He thought that the Royalist force was larger than it actually was, and that the veterans of the Irish service were likely to be better soldiers than his local levies.
As the Parliamentarians approached Nantwich, there was a change in the weather as a thaw set in and heavy rain began to fall. On the morning of 25 January, the River Weaver became so swollen that Lord Byron transferred his artillery and most of his infantry to the western bank where the ground was slightly higher. While Byron and most of his cavalry were still on the eastern side, the flood swept away Beam Bridge to the north of Nantwich and split the Royalist army in two. Byron was forced to march to the next bridge over the Weaver at Minshull to try to reunite his forces. In Byron's absence, the Royalist troops on the western side of the river were commanded by Colonel Gibson who drew up his forces around Acton church, deploying four regiments to block the road from the north along which Fairfax was marching, and another to cover the approach into Nantwich itself.
The Parliamentarians approached Gibson's position at around 2 o'clock in the afternoon. At the same time, news reached Fairfax that Byron's cavalry was approaching the rear of the Parliamentarian column, having worked its way round from Minshull. Fairfax calmly detailed two regiments to hold the Royalist cavalry at bay and continued his advance towards Acton, turning his troops from the line of march so that the rearguard and vanguard became the wings of his battle formation. Fairfax planned to defeat the Royalist infantry at Acton before the cavalry arrived to reinforce them. Unable to operate effectively among the small fields, hedgerows and lanes that made up the local terrain, Byron's cavalry were held back while Fairfax attacked the infantry. Despite the lack of cavalry support, the regiments on the Royalist wings held firm against the Parliamentarian attack, inflicting heavy casualties. In the centre, however, the Royalists gave ground. Colonel Monck succeeded in rallying them but the centre began to give way again when the Parliamentarians charged a second time. At this critical point, a force of musketeers from the Nantwich garrison marched out and swept aside the Royalist reserve regiment guarding the road into the town. With the added pressure of reinforcements from the garrison threatening the rear, the Royalist centre collapsed completely. Fairfax's Parliamentarians swept through the gap in the centre of the Royalist line and quickly overwhelmed the stalwart regiments holding out on the flanks.
The Royalists fell back to Acton church where Colonel Gibson surrendered to Fairfax under terms. The artillery and baggage train were captured and about 1,500 officers and men taken prisoner, many of whom changed sides. Abandoning his infantry, Lord Byron fled to Chester with the cavalry. Sir Thomas Fairfax's victory at Nantwich effectively neutralised the first wave of Royalist reinforcements from Ireland.
Sources:
A.H. Burne & P. Young, The Great Civil War, a military history (London 1959)
S.R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War vol. i (London 1888)
Peter Gaunt, The Cromwellian Gazetteer (Stroud 1987)
P.R. Newman Atlas of the English Civil War, (London 1985)
Stuart Reid, All the King's Armies (Staplehurst 1998)
Links:
Battle of Nantwich : UK Battlefields Resource Centre
Barthomley church and massacre : Cheshire ghosts and hauntings website
Nantwich 1644, Alf Thompson, Sealed Knot Knowledge Base