The Military Career of (Young) Old Rowley Quiz

Answer: Dr John Hinton

The Battle of Edgehill, the first pitched battle of the English Civil Wars, took place approximately two months after King Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham, effectively declaring war on Parliament. His two eldest surviving sons, Charles, Prince of Wales and James, Duke of York, were aged twelve and nine respectively, but witnessed the action first hand. Both were very keen to participate directly, and Charles showed his determination by drawing a pistol and resolving to charge the enemy. However, this bravado almost led to his comeuppance as, in the confusion of battle, he saw himself left behind from most of the party charged by the King to protect his sons, and thus the target of an attack by a lone Parliamentarian.

Having been appointed as physician to Queen Henrietta Maria in 1640, Dr John Hinton was a trusted member of the Royal Household, and was present with the royal party at Edgehill. Seeing the imminent danger to Prince Charles, he fired at the onrushing cavalryman and dodged returning fire, before a Gentleman Pensioner named Matthews, using his poleaxe, killed the Parliamentarian soldier. Prince Charles was frustrated as he then returned to safe lodging and continued hoping for the opportunity of seeing real action. One week after the battle, Hinton was appointed by the King as physician to Prince Charles, and retained favour for several decades afterwards.

Answer: Sir Richard Grenville

When Prince Charles took overall command of the Royalist army in the West Country in 1645, Sir Richard Grenville was one of three officers vying with one another for operational command. All three - Grenville, Sir John Berkeley and Lord Goring - were headstrong and argumentative, refusing to cooperate or accept one another's orders. When Goring was eventually elevated above the other two to command the army, Grenville was ordered to blockade Lyme Regis, but resigned in disgust at being forced to act as Goring's subordinate, and left, whereupon most of his soldiers deserted.

Prince Charles and his council were angry at Grenville's behaviour, particularly as this was the latest in a series of problems Grenville had caused them. Therefore, Grenville was summoned to Liskeard in Cornwall to appear before Charles on 25 July 1645. Here, in front of many of Grenville's peers and contemporaries, the errant commander received a severe and very public reprimand from the fifteen-year-old prince. Following his reprimand, Grenville proposed the foundation of an independent Cornwall under the Prince of Wales (who was also Duke of Cornwall), and suggested coming to a truce with the Parliamentarian army. This idea was immediately refused, and indirectly led to Grenville's imprisonment in January 1646.

Answer: Jersey

After news of a plot to kidnap him in early 1646, Charles reluctantly left England, first for the Isles of Scilly, then Jersey in the Channel Islands. He spent around two months on the island, which he found ecstatically royalist, with islanders flocking to watch him dine, worship in church, and engage in outdoor pursuits. Jersey was also where Charles developed a lifelong passion for sailing, as he had a pinnace constructed for his personal use while residing at Elizabeth Castle in Saint Helier.

Part of the royalist fervour on the island was apparent through the military, and particularly during a Grand Militia Field Day. This was intended to show the island's loyalty, and was put on after Sir George Carteret, the island's Lieutenant-Governor, ordered a muster of the men of the island. It was Carteret who had initially organised the Jersey Militia, and he took the opportunity of the Prince's presence to show its loyalty, with troops enthusiastically shouting "Dieu sauve le roi et le prince" ("God Save the King and the Prince").

Answer: France

In 1646, Charles had gone to France on the understanding that an army would be provided for him by Cardinal Mazarin, the Chief Minister of Louis XIV's government. However, this never came to fruition and Charles was somewhat trapped at the French royal court with Mazarin refusing him permission to leave. During this period, Charles was living closely with his mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, who controlled his finances and argued with him incessantly. As a result, Charles grew restless and, partly to defy his overbearing mother, wrote to his father to ask permission to join the army of Louis XIV.

At the time, France was engaged in a war with Spain, and Charles dreamed of fighting in Flanders to help secure French victory. However, his wish did not come to pass, and the following year he left France to take up residence in the Dutch Republic. Nevertheless, six years after Charles's attempt to join the army of his cousin Louis, Charles himself gave permission for his younger brother James to join the French Army., in which he served with some distinction in the French war against Spain.

Answer: Earl of Warwick

When Charles heard of the mutiny, he was coming to a decision to join forces with the Engagers, a group that had broken from the Covenanters and were more sympathetic to the Royalist cause. Owing to his consequential desire to reach Scotland and his potential new allies, he moved from France to Holland, which was also where the mutineers had taken their ships. Having taken control of this fleet, Charles then sailed towards England with the intention of gathering more support for the Royalist cause. First communicating with the town of Kingston-Upon-Hull, he then anchored off Great Yarmouth before heading south and ultimately anchoring in The Downs, a roadstead off the coast of Kent.

The Earl of Warwick, the commander of the Parliamentarian navy, was at the time, supporting the army's attempts to retake the castles at Deal and Sandown. Made aware of the presence of a Royalist naval force, Warwick sent a summons ordering the removal of the royal standard. Charles instead offered pardon, pay and protection to anyone who left Warwick's service, but Warwick remained hostile, with the result that the two agreed to engage in battle. For this, Charles put himself on deck in direct line of fire, but Warwick was waiting for additional ships. When both sides were finally ready to engage in battle, a storm erupted, scattering Charles's ships and forcing them to return to Holland through a lack of supplies. Although Warwick pursued in an attempt to join battle, the Dutch prevented his force from approaching the Royalists. Even though there was subsequent mutiny among the Royalists, Warwick was unable to capture the fleet despite remaining in blockade for two months.

Answer: Marquess of Montrose

After a month and a half of negotiations with the Covenanters in the spring of 1650, Charles signed the Treaty of Breda and reluctantly agreed to disavow the military campaign that the Marquess of Montrose had been leading for the Royalists against the Covenanters. This campaign had seen Montrose invade Scotland in Charles's name, but Charles's decision now meant Montrose was classed as a traitor. The Covenanters had been insistent about this part of the agreement, as Montrose was an enemy of theirs, with history encompassing not only conflict between Covenanters and Royalists, but also more ancient disputes between Scottish clans.

In May 1650, the defeated Montrose was captured following the Battle of Carbisdale, after which he was immediately taken to Edinburgh. There, he was condemned to death by the Scottish Parliament without a trial, and was hanged on 21 May. After his hanging he was quartered, with his head placed on the "prick on the highest stone" of the Old Tollbooth outside St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, remaining there until 1661, while other parts of his body were distributed to the four corners of Scotland.

Answer: Duke of Buckingham

Before the English Civil Wars, England had been at war with Scotland, and many Englishmen harboured deep hostility towards the Scots by 1651. This posed problems for Charles that summer, because the force he was marching into England was largely made up of Scots. In order to gain legitimacy for his invasion, Charles therefore needed Englishmen to also join his army as it moved south, but very few offered themselves into Charles's service. Noting this disappointment, the English Duke of Buckingham advised Charles to replace the Scottish commander, David Leslie, with an English commander instead. Buckingham's rationale was that, with an English commander, more English troops would be likely to sign up.

Charles ignored this advice, partly because Buckingham appeared self-seeking in proposing himself as Leslie's replacement, but also because Leslie had significantly more experience than Buckingham. However, the result was a force roughly half the size of that of the enemy. It was with this largely Scots army that Charles took on the Parliamentarian forces at the Battle of Worcester, in which he lost approximately 3000 men while the New Model Army casualties numbered a reported 200. Despite fighting bravely in the thick of battle, Charles remained unscathed, but a huge manhunt followed his escape, which saw him effect a series of guises while on the run for the next six weeks.

Answer: The Fronde of the Princes

The Fronde of the Princes was a French civil conflict that pitted Louis XIV against various noblemen. Charles did not wish to make enemies on either side, so when Louis asked him to negotiate peace, Charles found himself in a difficult situation. Two opposing armies - one led by the Duc de Lorraine, and the other by Louis's commander-in-chief, the Vicomte de Turenne - were approaching each other at the time, and Charles aimed to prevent battle being joined. Proposals from Turenne over negotiations were delivered by Charles's brother, James, with Charles asking James to encourage a level of compromise. However, James in fact encouraged battle between the two sides instead of negotiation.

Battle was ultimately avoided through Lorraine's troops disobeying orders and not firing their cannon at the royal army, which led to Lorraine agreeing to sign the peace treaty as urged by Charles. There was no happy ending for Charles however, because he was suspected of meddling, and Lorraine's ally, the Duc de Beaufort, turned the Parisian population against Charles and his family, threatening violence towards them. This left Charles and his mother trapped in the Palais du Louvre while mobs surrounded it. However, they were able to escape from the mob to the Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye thanks to Louis providing an escort.

Answer: Fishing rights

By 1652, England was well into its period of republicanism, and seeking to expand its power with trade monopolisation. As a result, Oliver Cromwell, at the time Commander-in-Chief of the Forces and de facto head of the English state, sought to take trade from the Dutch Republic by any means possible. The First Anglo-Dutch War was thus fought with the result that Charles's main enemy became an enemy of one of his semi-allies - while the recently deceased Prince of Orange, William II, had been helpful to Charles, the States-General (the representative body of the Dutch provinces) was notably hostile. Charles now saw a way to bring the States-General around to his side, by offering them assistance in their war against England.

As an inducement to the Dutch, Charles offered not just land in both Scotland and Ireland, but also rights for the Dutch fishing fleets to use the waters around the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. However, this was dependent on his regaining control of these areas from the English government, which he hoped the Dutch would help him achieve. The States-General were not impressed by the offer, particularly as they would have had to help Charles regain the lands in the first place. This saw the offer being refused, and Charles continuing an unhappy existence in France, rather than fighting with the Dutch as he had hoped.

Answer: Mardyck

When, in 1656, Oliver Cromwell allied with France against Spain, Charles allied with the Spanish against his erstwhile French hosts. Part of this agreement involved new royalist regiments being established at the expense of Spain, on the proviso that these regiments would fight alongside the Spanish Army. At the same time, Spain promised to assist Charles in retaking the throne of England when victory in England appeared likely. Because this victory seemed less likely with the passing of time, Charles became despondent by 1657, and, somewhat inexplicably, asked to fight directly in Spain's war with France. When finally receiving permission to do this, he ironically ended up fighting the English instead.

In September 1657, the fall of Mardyck, a town in southern Flanders, to an Anglo-French force, led to the town coming under English control. When Spain attempted to recapture it the following month, this meant Charles and his brother James were engaged in a siege against the English New Model Army. In an attack led by Don Juan Jose de Austria, the Spanish governor, Charles led his cavalry in a night attack that was ultimately repelled by the defenders. Ultimately, the siege was unsuccessful, and Charles had a near miss with deadly shot landing all around him, with the best that his soldiers could achieve being damage to the walls. Charles ultimately never participated in battle again.