ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the 1644 campaigning season, the effective balance between the field armies of king and Parliament tipped significantly in favour of Parliament. The collapse of the Northern command in response to the Scottish invasion and the destruction of Lord Bellasis’s corps at Selby ensured that the new army Prince Rupert was assembling in the Welsh Marches would be unable to take part in the war in the south, while Prince Maurice’s was still in the far southwest of England. This left the king potentially facing two armies, those of Essex and Waller, and possibly part of a third, the revived army of the Eastern Association under the Earl of Manchester. Moreover, for the first time in the war the enemy forces operating in the southern theatre of war enjoyed a numerical advantage in cavalry as well as infantry. However, an encounter between the army groups was not to take place until almost the end of the campaigning season, and in much less favourable circumstances. This was primarily the fault of operational decisions taken by Parliament’s new war cabinet, the Committee of Both Kingdoms.
