ABSTRACT
On the very day that the queen’s convoy arrived in the Oxford area, Parliament’s hopes in the west of England were dashed by the comprehensive defeat of Sir William Waller’s army at the battle of Roundway Down. The root cause was that every strategic decision that he had made since Prince Maurice left the Severn valley in mid-April had been a mistake. First, by disobeying Essex’s orders to join him in besieging Reading, he must bear some responsibility for the ease with which the first convoy from the north reached Oxford. His strength in horse and dragoons, although not as great as it was to be in July, would have enabled the lord general to put together a flying army operating out of Aylesbury, Coventry or Northampton to block its advance. Second, his failure to concentrate his forces in the southern part of his command in late May, despite Essex’s orders and the pleas of the local Parliamentarians, had allowed the western Royalists to unite to form an army similar in strength to his own. Thus he had made his task of preventing it joining the king’s field army much more difficult. Finally, when on the verge of destroying the Western army, he failed to plan with his usual thoroughness against the possibility of a rescue expedition from Oxford, relying instead on the Earl of Essex to prevent such a thing happening.
