ABSTRACT
Sir Thomas Fairfax followed up his victory at Naseby not by pursuing the defeated king but by laying siege to Leicester. As a result, Charles was able to make his way safely across the Midlands, arriving at Hereford on the following day. Soon afterwards, he was joined by Charles Gerard and his corps from southwest Wales. Possibly as many as 4,000 horse had escaped from Naseby, which meant that, even after he had sent what was left of the Newark and Midlands horse back to their garrisons, the king was still in command of an army of 5,000–6,000 men. This he had every intention of using in an offensive capacity. Sir William Vaughan was sent into Shropshire, where he won a notable victory over the local Parliamentarians at High Ercall, capturing their commander and over 200 men, while Prince Maurice was sent to secure Worcester and its bridge over the Severn, the most important staging post on the way to Bristol or Oxford. On 23rd June, the council of war decided to ‘form the body of a new army’ by raising 6,500 infantry in South Wales and the border counties and adding to them 800 men already raised in North Wales. 1 Soon afterwards, it was agreed that the best strategy for turning the tables on the New Model was to assemble as many troops as possible in the west of England, where Goring still had a force of 5,000 foot and 4,000 horse besieging Taunton. Gerard’s corps and the newly raised infantry were to be transported across the Bristol Channel to join him, while the cavalry that the king had with him, now under Gerard’s command as lieutenant-general of horse, were to take the overland route via Worcester to Devizes in Wiltshire, where they were to await further orders. Rupert himself then went first to Barnstaple to discuss strategy with the Prince of Wales’s council and then to Bristol to prepare the garrison for a possible siege if that should be Fairfax’s next destination, but also for the king’s arrival once all the other pieces on the chessboard were in place. This frantic activity probably helps to explain the mood of optimism that pervades the letters written by Rupert, Digby and the king in late June, but even if Wales did produce infantry in the numbers anticipated, it is difficult to see how they could have been armed at such short notice. Hutton writes confidently about Richard Foley’s ironworks turning out weapons for them, but his furnaces and forges in Shropshire and Worcestershire could supply only pike heads and cast iron objects like cannonballs, not muskets. Rupert was concerned (wrongly) about munitions and wrote to this effect to an unknown correspondent on 5th July, but he nevertheless expected there to be an army of 8,000 foot and 7,000 horse in Somerset shortly. However, success also depended on the speed with which Parliament and its general understood, and then responded to, the new strategic plan. 2 The Langport campaign, July 1645 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315835617/61a24393-0d19-4284-a442-db9eae2eb435/content/map_7_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
