Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

THE BATTLE OF CHALGROVE , 1643

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capital in Oxford. 11 On joining the Royalists, Urry informed them that one of Essex’s regiments of dragoons was posted in the village of Chinnor and that the Earl’s army was expecting a convoy from London containing £21,000 to pay the troops. The King’s field commander, Prince Rupert, devised a plan to take advantage of this intelligence and to strike at the Parliamentarian force, hoping, perhaps, that he might capture the treasure waggons. Rupert left Oxford in the afternoon of Saturday 17th June 1643 with about 2,000 men. 12 This force comprised three regiments of Horse – Rupert’s own regiment plus his Troop of Lifeguards, Lord Percy’s regiment, and that of the Prince of Wales – with 350 dragoons under Lord Wentworth, and 500 ‘commanded’ foot without colours under Colonel Henry Lunsford. This force marched through the night, leaving a guard at Chiselhampton Bridge over the River Thame to secure Rupert’s withdrawal route. It fell upon an outpost of Colonel Herbert Morley’s regiment of Horse at the hamlet of Postcombe early in the morning of Sunday 18th June, capturing nine men, some horses and arms and Morley’s cornet. Approaching from the north-west, Rupert then attacked Chinnor. The Royalists killed about 50 men, captured 120 prisoners, three guidons of Sir Samuel Luke’s newly-raised dragoon regiment and some unspecified ‘booty’. While some allowance must be made for approximate contemporary estimates of timing, the analysis of the contemporary reports coupled with the reconstruction of the landscape and reasonable deduction allows all those units and individuals named in the accounts to be located with some confidence. The Late Beating Up , for example, gives timings and placement of key figures throughout the actions. Rupert and the cavalry left the village of Chinnor at about 0630 to follow the foot, which had been set in motion earlier. His pace appears to have been extraordinarily leisurely for around 0730, ‘in the village hard upon the left hand of us’ some rebels were encountered. This was the village of Aston Rowant and the rebels were about 200 men in the troops of Major John Gunter, and Captains James Sheffield and Richard Crosse. Gunter had originally been an officer of Essex’s own regiment of Foot but had been given a troop in Essex’s regiment of Horse. Significantly, he also appears to have had some responsibility for pay warrants: he was killed at Chalgrove. 13 Sheffield, formerly MP for St Mawes, Cornwall in the Short Parliament, would later rise to the rank of colonel in the New Model Army, while Crosse had succeeded Lord Brooke in command of the latter’s Troop of Horse, again in Essex’s own regiment of Horse. Crosse’s troop was transferred to a new regiment of Horse formed by Sheffield in July 1643. 14 11 Andrew Hopper, Turncoats & Renegadoes: Changing Sides during the English Civil Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 226. 12 Peter Young & Richard Holmes, The English Civil War: A Military History of the Three Civil Wars, 1642-51 (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 123. 13 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), SP28/1a/34, SP28/1d/461, 468, SP28/2a/223, 227, SP28/3a/124, SP28/3b/513, SP28/7/395. 14 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/cromwell-army-officers