Cavalry manoeuvres from John Vernon's The Young Horse-man (1644):

"The Motions for the Cavalrie are of foure kinds, as Facings, Doublings, Countermarchings, and Wheelings: the use of Facings is to make the Troop perfect, to be sodainly prepared for a Charge on either Flank or Reare, Doublings of Ranks or by half Files, or by Bringers up, serveth to strengthen the Front, Doubling the Files serveth to strengthen the Flanks, Countermarching serving to reduce the File-leaders into the place of the bringers up, that so the best men may be ready to receive the charge of the Enemy in the Reare."

First, however, you must get on your horse.

Private thoughts

One of the pleasures of researching the Civil War era is the amount of surviving information: private and public correspondence, charters, manuals, satirical pamphlets etc etc. Great heaps of the stuff. The more intimate material, which rarely survives for the medieval era, gives an insight into the private thoughts of individuals.

The below was written in 1638 by Bevil Grenville, a royalist commander and nobleman of Devon and Cornwall, on the eve of war with Scotland: "I cannot contain myself within my doors when the King of England's standard waves in the field upon so just occasions, the cause being such as must make all those that die in it little inferior to Martyrs. And for mine own part I desire to acquire an honest name in an honourable grave. I never loved my life or ease so much as to shun an occasion which if I should I were unworthy of the profession I have held, or to succeed those ancestors of mine, who have so many of them in several ages sacrificed their lives for their country."

 Bevil seems to have been well aware he would not survive. In 1643 he led the charge of Cornish infantry at the Battle of Lansdowne near Bath in Somerset. As the fight raged, his skull was broken by a pole-axe and he was carried off the field to a nearby rectory, where he died the same day. His Cornishmen refused to serve under any other leader and returned home.

Above is a pic of Bevil's monument, which stands on Lansdowne Hill near Bath.

God save the King!

Let's take a break from the medieval era for a moment, and move forward in time to a blustery summer's day in Nottingham on 22 August 1642. On that day Charles I unfurled his standard of war on the summit of the highest tower of Nottingham Castle, heralding the start of the English Civil War - or the War of the Three Kingdoms, or the British & Irish Civil Wars (delete or add to taste). 

Charles I

From the evidence given by eye-witnesses at the trial of the King in 1649, we learn the following particulars concerning the raising of his standard:—

"Robert Large, painter, of the town and county of Nottingham, deposed upon oath that in the summer of 1642 he painted, by command of my Lord Beaumont, the great standard of war that was placed upon the high tower of the Castle of Nottingham, and that he often saw the King thereabouts, at the same time that his standard was erected and displayed.”

"Samuel Lawson, of Nottingham, maltster, aged 30 years or thereabouts, sworn and examined, saith: That about August, 1642, he this deponent saw the King’s standard brought forth of Nottingham Castle, borne upon divers gentlemen’s shoulders, who (as the report was) were noblemen; and he saw the same carried by them on the Hill close adjoining the Castle, with a herald before it; and there the said standard was erected, with great shouting, acclamations, and sound of drums and trumpets; and that when the said standard was so erected there was a proclamation made; and that he, this deponent, saw the King present at the erecting thereof.”

We are told the standard was “a large red streamer, pennon shaped, cloven at the end, attached to a long red staff having about twenty supporters, and bore next the staff a St. George’s Cross, then an escutcheon of the Royal Arms, with a hand pointing to the crown above it, and the legend:

"GIVE UNTO CAESAR HIS DUE,"

together with two other crowns, each surmounted by a lion passant."

Three days later the royal standard was unfurled again, this time on an open field on the north side of the castle wall (now marked by a tablet). It took twenty men to carry the banner into the field, and they had to hold it upright after digging an insufficiently deep hole with daggers and knives. The royal herald made a mess of his speech, and then a strong gust of wind blew the standard down. Not a very auspicious start for the royalists.

Push of pike

A subtle hint as to the subject matter of my next project. Giving the Middle Ages a rest for a while...