Edgehill, 23 October 1642

The battle, stage by stage

1. 23 October 1642, morning

   The King on Edge Hill

   Two months after Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham, the King's army was marching on London, and the Earl of Essex's Parliamentarian army, coming from Worcester, caught up with it in south Warwickshire. On the night of 22 October the armies found they were only a few miles apart, Essex around Kineton and the Royalists scattered between Edgcote and Wormleighton. The King ordered his army to gather on Edge Hill, an escarpment rising about 300 feet above the Vale of the Red Horse. Essex's army had word that the Royalists were on the ridge that morning; by tradition Essex was at Sunday service in Kineton church when the news came. Rupert was on the hill at dawn, but the Royalist horse took until about 11 AM to arrive and the foot and guns until early afternoon. Essex drew up his regiments in the vale south-east of Kineton. John Hampden's two regiments and much of Essex's artillery were still a day's march behind.

2. Early afternoon (about 2 PM)

   Down from the escarpment

   Essex would not attack up the slope, so in the early afternoon the Royalists came down and formed at the foot of the hill near Radway; by one later account Rupert's wing descended through Arlescote wood and by the Kineton road. A quarrel over formation had already cost the army its commander: the Earl of Lindsey, preferring the Dutch order, resigned and went to fight at the head of his own regiment, and the Earl of Forth took command. Rupert's horse, about 1,700 by one estimate, took the right; Wilmot's, perhaps 1,000, the left; Sir Jacob Astley's five foot brigades the center in a checkerboard, three in front and two behind, with dragoons on the flanks and six heavier guns on the lower slopes. Facing them, perhaps under a mile away, Essex placed Sir James Ramsey's horse on his left behind a long hedge lined with musketeers, Charles Essex's and Sir John Meldrum's foot brigades in front with Thomas Ballard's behind, horse and about 700 dragoons on his right, and Sir William Balfour's and Sir Philip Stapleton's horse in reserve. Each army had roughly 13,000-15,000 men. Exact positions are disputed; these are a reconstruction.

3. About 2-3 PM

   Rupert's and Wilmot's charges

   The battle opened with about an hour of artillery fire that did little harm. Royalist dragoons then cleared the hedges on the Parliamentarian left, and Rupert led the right wing forward at a trot and then a gallop. Ramsey's horse fired once, by most accounts out of range, and broke; some of his troopers had already changed sides. The rout swept into Charles Essex's brigade, which also fled. On the other flank Wilmot's horse rode over the Parliamentarian right-wing horse and dragoons. The Royalist foot began to advance.

4. About 3-4 PM

   The pursuit to Kineton

   Instead of rallying, both Royalist wings galloped after the fugitives, and the second-line horse, Sir John Byron's and Lord Digby's, followed without orders. Rupert's troopers rode at least a mile and a half along the Kineton road into the town and plundered the Parliamentarian wagons. Only about 200 horse under Sir Charles Lucas stayed on the Royalist left. In the center the foot met at push of pike; Ballard's brigade closed the gap left by Charles Essex's, and the Earl of Essex himself fought with a pike. Metal-detector survey finds the densest musket-ball scatter here, with its western edge near Graveyard Coppice, where the dead were later buried.

5. About 4 PM

   Balfour and Stapleton; the standard lost

   With no Royalist horse left on the field, Essex threw in his untouched reserve. Balfour's horse broke into Richard Fielding's brigade in the Royalist center and routed it, taking Fielding and two other colonels prisoner, then rode on to the Royalist guns on the lower slopes and cut down the gunners. Near King's Ley Barn, by tradition, his troopers came close to the King's sons, Charles and James, without knowing who they were. Balfour and Stapleton then fell on Sir Nicholas Byron's brigade. Sir Edmund Verney, the King's standard-bearer, was killed and the royal standard was taken; Lindsey was mortally wounded and captured, and his son, Lord Willoughby, was taken trying to rescue him.

6. About 4:30 PM to nightfall

   The standard retaken; stalemate at the ditch

   The standard did not stay lost. Captain John Smith, with Lucas's rallied horse, recovered it and was knighted for it, though another contemporary claim credits Lieutenant Colonel Robert Welch. Gerard's brigade on the Royalist right held firm, and the battered Royalist foot fell back toward their guns, behind a ditch, possibly a stream in the vale east of the long hedge, where they re-formed. Balfour's men were fired on by their own side as they returned. Rupert and Wilmot came back in the failing light, their horses too spent to charge again; by later accounts the approach of Hampden's brigade helped turn the plunderers back from Kineton. Darkness and a shortage of powder and shot ended the fighting.

7. Night of 23 October and 24 October

   A cold night and a drawn battle

   Both armies spent a bitterly cold night in the open without food; the Royalists drew back toward the hill and lit fires on the slopes. Perhaps 1,000 men were dead and about 2,000 wounded; Historic England's report puts the loss at 3,000 dead and wounded, together with the day's desertions, and Newcastle University's British Civil Wars site about 500 killed on each side. Many were buried near Graveyard Coppice, where a monument now stands inside the Ministry of Defence depot, and a replica stands on the Kineton road. On 24 October both armies formed up but neither renewed the fight, and Essex then fell back to Warwick, leaving the road to London open. The King took Banbury on 27 October and Oxford, which became his capital, but Essex reached London first, and at Turnham Green on 13 November the King turned back. Neither side won, but Edgehill made clear that the war would not be over in one battle.