Montrose sent in the Gordon and Ogilvy horse. The leading half of the column was surrounded, broken up and annihilated. The rear half, seeing the fate of its comrades, took to flight, but in vain, for the Highlanders pursued à outrance. Only about one hundred Covenanting infantry out of six thousand escaped. Montrose was now indeed the king’s lieutenant in all Scotland.
41. Fall of Bristol.—But Charles was in no case to resume his northern march. Fairfax and the New Model, after reducing Bridgwater, had turned back to clear away the Dorsetshire Clubmen and to besiege Sherborne Castle. On the completion of this task, it had been decided to besiege Bristol, and on the 23rd of August—while the king’s army was still in Huntingdon, and Goring was trying to raise a new army to replace the one he had lost at Langport and Bridgwater—the city was invested. In these urgent circumstances Charles left Oxford for the west only a day or two after he had come in from the Eastern Association raid. Calculating that Rupert could hold out longest, he first moved to the relief of Worcester, around which place Leven’s Scots, no longer having Leslie’s cavalry with them to find supplies, were more occupied with plundering their immediate neighbourhood for food than with the siege works. Worcester was relieved on the 1st of September by the king. David Leslie with all his cavalry was already on the march to meet Montrose, and Leven had no alternative but to draw off his infantry without fighting. Charles entered Worcester on the 8th, but he found that he could no longer expect recruits from South Wales. Worse was to come. A few hours later, on the night of the 9th-10th, Fairfax’s army stormed Bristol. Rupert had long realized the hopelessness of further fighting—the very summons to surrender sent in by Fairfax placed the fate of Bristol on the political issue,—the lines of defence around the place were too extensive for his small force, and on the 11th he surrendered on terms. He was escorted to Oxford with his men, conversing as he rode with the officers of the escort about peace and the future of his adopted country. Charles, almost stunned by the suddenness of the catastrophe, dismissed his nephew from all his offices and ordered him to leave England, and for almost the last time called upon Goring to rejoin the main army—if a tiny force of raw infantry and disheartened cavalry can be so called—in the neighbourhood of Raglan. But before Goring could be brought to withdraw his objections Charles had again turned northward towards Montrose. A weary march through the Welsh hills brought the Royal army on the 22nd of September to the neighbourhood of Chester. Charles himself with one body entered the city, which was partially invested by the Parliamentarian colonel Michael Jones, and the rest under Sir Marmaduke Langdale was sent to take Jones’s lines in reverse. But at the opportune moment Poyntz’s forces, which had followed the king’s movements since he left Doncaster in the middle of August, appeared in rear of Langdale, and defeated him in the battle of Rowton Heath (September 24), while at the same time a sortie of the king’s troops from Chester was repulsed by Jones. Thereupon the Royal army withdrew to Denbigh, and Chester, the only important seaport remaining to connect Charles with Ireland, was again besieged.
42. Philiphaugh.—Nor was Montrose’s position, even after Kilsyth, encouraging, in spite of the persistent rumours of fighting in Westmorland that reached Charles and Digby. Glasgow and Edinburgh were indeed occupied, and a parliament summoned in the king’s name. But Montrose had now to choose between Highlanders and Lowlanders. The former, strictly kept away from all that was worth plundering, rapidly vanished, even Alastair Macdonald going with the rest. Without the Macdonalds and the Gordons, Montrose’s military and political resettlement of Scotland could only be shadowy, and when he demanded support from the sturdy middle classes of the Lowlands, it was not forgotten that he had led Highlanders to the sack of Lowland towns. Thus his new supporters could only come from amongst the discontented and undisciplined Border lords and gentry, and long before these moved to join him the romantic conquest of Scotland was over. On the 6th of September David Leslie had recrossed the frontier with his cavalry and some infantry he had picked up on the way through northern England. Early on the morning of the 13th he surprised Montrose at Philiphaugh near Selkirk. The king’s lieutenant had only 650 men against 4000, and the battle did not last long. Montrose escaped with a few of his principal adherents, but his little army was annihilated. Of the veteran Macdonald infantry, 500 strong that morning, 250 were killed in the battle and the remainder put to death after accepting quarter. The Irish, even when they bore a Scottish name, were, by Scotsmen even more than Englishmen, regarded as beasts to be knocked on the head. After Naseby the Irishwomen found in the king’s camp were branded by order of Fairfax; after Philiphaugh more than 300 women, wives or followers of Macdonald’s men, were butchered. Montrose’s Highlanders at their worst were no more cruel than the sober soldiers of the kirk.
43. Digby’s Northern Expedition.—Charles received the news of Philiphaugh on the 28th of September, and gave orders that the west should be abandoned, the prince of Wales should be sent to France, and Goring should bring up what forces he could to the Oxford region. On the 4th of October Charles himself reached Newark (whither he had marched from Denbigh after revictualling Chester and suffering the defeat of Rowton Heath). The intention to go to Montrose was of course given up, at any rate for the present, and he was merely waiting for Goring and the Royalist militia of the west—each in its own way a broken reed to lean upon. A hollow reconciliation was patched up between Charles and Rupert, and the court remained at Newark for over a month. Before it set out to return to Oxford another Royalist force had been destroyed. On the 14th of October, receiving information that Montrose had raised a new army, the king permitted Langdale’s northern troops to make a fresh attempt to reach Scotland. At Langdale’s request Digby was appointed to command in this enterprise, and, civilian though he was, and disastrous though his influence had been to the discipline of the army, he led it boldly and skilfully. His immediate opponent was Poyntz, who had followed the king step by step from Doncaster to Chester and back to Welbeck, and he succeeded on the 15th in surprising Poyntz’s entire force of foot at Sherburn. Poyntz’s cavalry were soon after this reported approaching from the south, and Digby hoped to trap them also. At first all went well and body after body of the rebels was routed. But by a singular mischance the Royalist main body mistook the Parliamentary squadrons in flight through Sherburn for friends, and believing all was lost took to flight also. Thus Digby’s cavalry fled as fast as Poyntz’s and in the same direction, and the latter, coming to their senses first, drove the Royalist horse in wild confusion as far as Skipton. Lord Digby was still sanguine, and from Skipton he actually penetrated as far as Dumfries. But whether Montrose’s new army was or was not in the Lowlands, it was certain that Leven and Leslie were on the Border, and the mad adventure soon came to an end. Digby, with the mere handful of men remaining to him, was driven back into Cumberland, and on the 24th of October, his army having entirely disappeared, he took ship with his officers for the Isle of Man. Poyntz had not followed him beyond Skipton, and was now watching the king from Nottingham, while Rossiter with the Lincoln troops was posted at Grantham. The king’s chances of escaping from Newark were becoming smaller day by day, and they were not improved by a violent dispute between him and Rupert, Maurice, Lord Gerard and Sir Richard Willis, at the end of which these officers and many others rode away to ask the Parliament for leave to go over-seas. The pretext of the quarrel mattered little, the distinction between the views of Charles and Digby on the one hand and Rupert and his friends on the other was fundamental—to the latter peace had become a political as well as a military necessity. Meanwhile south Wales, with the single exception of Raglan Castle, had been overrun by the Parliamentarians. Everywhere the Royalist posts were falling. The New Model, no longer fearing Goring, had divided, Fairfax reducing the garrisons of Dorset and Devon, Cromwell those of Hampshire. Amongst the latter was the famous Basing House, which was stormed at dawn on the
