Battle of Worcester, 1651: the last battle of the Civil Wars

After the execution of Charles I in January 1649, the Scots proclaimed his son king as Charles II. Cromwell invaded Scotland and on 3 September 1650 shattered David Leslie's Covenanter army at Dunbar. Leslie fell back to Stirling with the survivors, and Charles raised a new army to join him. In the summer of 1651, while Cromwell was taking the surrender of Perth, the royal army slipped past him and marched south into England, hoping that Royalists would rise to join it.²

The march to Worcester

Few did. Charles marched down the west side of England, and although he was greeted with enthusiasm, few men were ready to take up arms, BritishBattles.com notes. On 22 August his army reached Worcester, some 300 miles from Scotland, and stopped there to rest, recruit and repair the old city defenses. A large new earthwork, Fort Royal, was added to the defenses. Cromwell followed with the main Parliamentary army, gathering reinforcements as he went. By the time he reached Evesham, 15 miles away, on 27 August, he had about 28,000 men, nearly twice the 16,000 of Charles, according to BritishBattles.com.³

The city was a strong position. The Severn and the Teme protected it on the west and south, and the Royalists broke down bridges to hold the crossings. On the night of 29 August, however, Parliamentary dragoons under John Lambert crossed the Severn at Upton on the single plank left over the broken bridge, and soon Charles Fleetwood's force was across.⁴

Bridges of boats

Cromwell attacked on 3 September, the anniversary of Dunbar. The Battlefields Trust describes a fight spread over a wide area: around Powick Bridge in the south, between the Severn and Perry Wood in the east, at Pitchcroft to the north, and in St John's and Wick fields to the west, before it moved into the city streets. Cromwell's plan was to encircle the city. His guns bombarded Worcester from the east while Fleetwood, with some 12,000 men, came up from the south. Two bridges of boats were floated into place near the meeting of the rivers, one across the Severn and one across the Teme.⁵

Fleetwood's advance over Powick Bridge met fierce resistance, and the Scottish Highlanders under Pitscottie held the hedgerows facing the bridge of boats. Cromwell then led three brigades across the Severn bridge into their flank. Pitscottie's men gave way, the troops at Powick followed, and the retreat became a rout back toward the city. Archaeologists working near Powick in 2019 found clusters of musket, carbine and pistol balls around old field boundaries, physical traces of the hedge to hedge fighting the written accounts describe.⁶

The king's sortie

Charles had watched the fighting from the cathedral tower. Seeing that Cromwell had stripped his eastern front, he led an attack of horse and foot out of the Sidbury Gate against the Parliamentary militia on Red Hill and in Perry Wood. For a time it went well: the militia fell back all along the line. Cromwell hurried back across the Severn with his brigades, and after hard fighting the Parliamentarians regained the ground and drove the Royalists back through the gate in confusion.⁷

Leslie's Scottish cavalry, posted on Pitchcroft north of the city, took no part, despite the king's pleas and threats. The Battlefields Trust quotes contemporary accounts of a broken man who rode up and down as one amazed. Fort Royal was stormed and its guns turned on the city, and by nightfall the fighting was in the streets. Charles tried to rally his troops but was persuaded to flee, escorted out of the city by a small party of horsemen.⁸

The crowning mercy

The Royalist army was destroyed. BritishBattles.com counts 2,000 to 3,000 killed and about 10,000 captured, on the field or in flight toward Scotland, among them some 640 officers; many prisoners died in makeshift camps and several hundred were shipped to the American colonies as indentured servants. Parliament's losses are put at a few hundred. The Duke of Hamilton died of his wounds, and Leslie was captured.⁹

Charles went on the run, famously hiding in an oak tree near Boscobel House while soldiers searched the woods, before he took ship for France from Shoreham in Sussex. He did not return until the Restoration of 1660. Cromwell called the victory a crowning mercy in his letter to the Speaker. Worcester ended the civil wars, and he never fought another battle.¹⁰ › Battle of St Fagans, 1648