ABSTRACT
The king was not giving his speech in parliament’s usual chamber, but in the great hall at Christ Church, Oxford. He did not address the whole company, but a minority of royalists and moderates. As usual parliament’s initial reaction to the king’s opening speech was favourable. On 26 January the Oxford assembly voted that all loyal Englishmen must resist the Scots invasion on penalty of treason. Henrietta Maria was in Exeter where, on 14 June, she had given birth to a daughter. It was a painful confinement that left the mother very weak, and the baby with one shoulder permanently lower than the other. A few days after the battle Newcastle went into exile on the Continent. The royalist rank and file neither particularly liked nor feared Charles as a man. Charles’s strategic flaws filtered over into the way in which he organized his army.
