Battle of Nantwich

In the battle, Sir Thomas Fairfax in command of a Parliamentarian relief force defeated Lord Byron and the Royalists.

The Parliamentarian victory halted a series of Royalist successes in the area and was a major setback to King Charles' planned military campaign for 1644.

Capell was replaced in December by Lord Byron, who had been a successful cavalry brigade commander in the King's main "Oxford Army".

[4] On 27 December, Sir William Brereton, the Parliamentarian commander in Cheshire and Lancashire, attempted to concentrate his forces to confront Byron, but was defeated by a sudden Royalist attack at the Second Battle of Middlewich.

Together with losses from sickness and desertions and casualties from the earlier fighting in Cheshire, Byron's forces shrunk to a total size of about 3,800 men.

Despite the heavy rain and the numerous ditches and hedges which broke up the ground in front of Gibson's position, Fairfax's force attacked at about 14:00.

Fairfax was informed that Byron was approaching his left rear from the direction of Minshull Vernon, but he deployed only two regiments of infantry and his own troop of cavalry to face them, while his main body pushed forward against Gibson.

Behind Gibson's position, Booth led a sortie from Nantwich with 600 musketeers which overcame Hunke's regiment and reached Acton churchyard, overrunning the Royalist artillery and wagon park.

The defeat at Nantwich thwarted King Charles's plan to create a field army in the northwest based on regiments returned from Ireland.

The Parliamentarians mistakenly thought that the "Irish" regiments were Catholics, whom they loathed, and also feared their professionalism, but in fact the Royalist general Sir Ralph Hopton wrote of some "Irish" units which joined his army in the South of England at about the same time: ... bold, hardy men, and excellently well officer'd, but the common-men verie mutenous and shrewdly infected with the rebellious humour of England being brought over meerly by the vertue and loyalty of theire officers and large promesses, which there was then but smale meanes to performe.

[6] One Royalist officer taken prisoner at Nantwich was Colonel George Monck (in command of Michael Warren's regiment), who later changed sides and was to play a prominent part in the Commonwealth of England and the Restoration.