ABSTRACT
On 21 March 1646 Lord Jacob Astley surrendered the remnants of the king’s field army at Stow-on-the-Wold. Even though Charles did not personally capitulate to the Scots until 5 May, when he still retained garrisons in the West Country and Wales (the last of which, Harlech, held out until the following March) for the cavalier army the first civil war was over. As Astley sat on the ground, contemplating his future, with a veteran’s sardonic sense of realism he told his captors, ‘You have done your work boys, you can now go and play, unless you fall out amongst yourselves.’1
