Worcestershire in the English Civil War
Similarly, the Ship Money taxation levied in 1636 fell heavily on Worcester, which was the sixteenth highest paying city in England.
The unpopularity of these Royalist policies stemmed from the perception that Charles I was attempting to establish a more authoritarian, non-Parliamentary kind of monarchy.
[1] Worcestershire had also seen a number of divisive enclosure schemes during Charles' reign, including attempts to enclose Malvern Chase and the more successful sale of Feckenham Forest in the 1630s, which in both cases had led to rioting as well as the displacement of the rural poor that had depended on the use of these Royal lands as effectively common land, with long-established although informal usage rights.
[2] Other local grievances against the Crown included action to suppress profitable tobacco production, which was well established in the Vale of Evesham.
Although the county had a Catholic minority among its aristocratic families, the rest of the population was firmly Anglican, with a growing group of more radical Protestants in some of its northern towns, such as Kidderminster.
Charles' apparent Catholic sympathies, such as the reforms of William Laud that reintroduced many of the trappings of Catholicism back into the Church of England, would have been viewed with suspicion by many.
[4] Nevertheless, the city of Worcester equivocated about whether to support the Parliamentary cause immediately before the outbreak of civil war in 1642, raising its own independent and neutral armed forces in June.
A Grand Jury then declared the King's Commission of Array illegal, and gathered signatures in support of Parliament's Militia Ordinance.
[6] When the forces were summoned again at the outbreak of war on 22 August, just 500 men were present, a much lower figure than might be expected, suggesting a lack of enthusiasm for either side and desire to avoid the conflict if possible.
the Royalist trained bands of Warwickshire requested help from Worcestershire, but did not receive it, as the Commissioner did not wish to force his troops to serve outside the county against their expectations.
[9] Royalists were using the building to store munitions when Essex briefly retook the city after the Powick Bridge skirmish on its outskirts.
[12] The same pressures created great strain on the county as a whole, as it had to sustain a large, unproductive force drawn out of its productive labour.
In 1643, for instance, Royalist troops used physical violence and deliberately destroyed pea and bean crops at Amscote and Treadington when residents tried to resist their demands.
The Royalist horse regiments stripped much of northern Worcestershire of produce to the extent that Droitwich, Bromsgrove, King's Norton, Alvechurch and Abbots Morton were unable to pay their tax demands.
[15] The proximity of Worcestershire to Parliamentary forces to the north around Birmingham, to the east in Warwickshire, and at certain times to the south in Bristol and Gloucestershire, made the county vulnerable to raiding and requisitions.
[16] Nevertheless, the county was strategically vital to the Royalists, as a bridge from their mostly Western territories including Wales and Ireland back to their headquarters in Oxford.
[18] In June 1644, General William Waller's force of around 10,000 men pursued the King's army into Worcestershire as it retreated from Oxford.
After Waller had left, the Royalist army in the vale of Evesham was forced to bring in supplies from outside, for instance Bridgnorth and Shropshire, because of the scale of requisitioning.
[19] The Scottish army that entered Worcestershire in 1645 gained a particularly bad reputation, reflected in claims made to the Exchequer after the war.
[20] Bands of Clubmen formed in west Worcestershire in the later part of the first war, with the objective of keeping both armies and their demands away from the rural civilian population, to resist despoliation and requisitioning.
[23] In 1651 a Scottish army marched south along the west coast in support of Charles II's attempt to regain the Crown and entered the county.
[27] In the aftermath of the battle, Worcester was heavily looted by the Parliamentarian army, with an estimated £80,000 of damage done, and the subsequent debts still not recovered into the 1670s.
The Earl of Essex, who commanded the Parliament army, was ordered to prevent the King advancing on London, so marched from Northampton to Stratford-on-Avon, Pershore to Worcester.
Waller followed him, but the two armies did not come to close quarters; the only fighting was Wilmot's attempt to relieve Dudley Castle, which was being besieged by Lord Denbigh.
Charles marched to Inkberrow, Droitwich, Bromsgrove, and on to Leicester and then to Naseby, where he was defeated; then back by Kidderminster, Bewdley to Hereford and South Wales.
The Scottish army came to the help of the English, and marched to Alcester on their way to attack Worcester, but turned off to Droitwich, Bewdley, and so to Hereford, which they besieged.
During the winter a Royalist army was collected in Wales, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire, and marched towards Oxford, but were met by the Parliamentary troops near Stow-on-the-Wold and destroyed.
After a good deal of negotiations and manoeuvres Charles II, at the end of July, invaded England, marching through Carlisle on London.
