ABSTRACT
The year 1643 had ended in Cheshire and North Wales with the wholesale retreat of the parliamentary forces into Nantwich, following the arrival in large numbers of royalist reinforcements from the army operating in Ireland, all veterans of the Irish wars. The battle of Nantwich, begun on 25 January, at first went in the royalists’ favour, but faulty dispositions worked in the interests of Sir Thomas Fairfax, and he won a sweeping victory, inflicting heavy losses on Byron’s army. In the wake of it, the royalist command in Oxford ordered Prince Rupert to take overall command of the situation and to repair the damage, and he reached Shrewsbury in early February. His attention, however, was to be deflected from Cheshire by events to the east around the major royalist fortress of Newark on the Trent. Rupert, in Chester on 12 March, was ordered from Oxford to relieve Newark, and he moved rapidly.
