Battle of Worcester: Crowning Mercies

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Tue, 01/07/2025 - 00:00

Yesterday I caught the train down to Worcester in Worcestershire in order to inspect the cathedral. Gentle readers will, I know, be scarcely able to contain their excitement at the prospect of the inevitable write-up. I was here twenty-five years ago but had only a passing interest in old churches; I do not think I even bothered to go in. Having spent the early afternoon enjoying the cathedral’s cool air, the mid-afternoon I elected to walk along the River Severn and find the site of Worcester Battle. It was a foolish decision, and one for which I paid a price later in the day. Having left home in a northern fog, I was quite unprepared for Worcester’s scorching 31 degrees centigrade. Hatless and in black shorts and a deep red tee, my face must have resembled a rasher of fried bacon upon my return, for it certainly felt like one. Thankfully, I found cold, liquid refreshment at The King’s Head and some more at The Crown before I reached my hotel, whereat I closed the window and curtains to hamper the solar heat, and tried to sleep.

My choice of refreshment purveyance is curious, considering my staunchly Cromwellian sympathies (though I remain a monarchist and loyal subject). As I walked beside the Severn and along the tracks through the arable fields, I imagined the ground groaning under the weight of 16,000 royalists and 28,000 roundheads, fully armed and supported by horses and artillery. That September of 1651 might have been a little cooler than this June of 2025, but their woollen tunics, armour and weaponry would have rendered them even less comfortable than me. Cromwell and the Parliament were successful and the royalist cause was set back, again. He wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons:

"The dimensions of this mercy are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy”

-by which he thought it was a wonderful favour granted by God, bespeaking his personal modesty as well as his trust in the providential workings of the inscrutable, Soveriegn One. Although this bloody battle (three thousand lay dead on those fields) ended the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which we Englishmen are lazily inclined to call the English Civil War, Charles Stuart was to return nine years later, and the brief puritan republic came to an end. It is as true now as it was back then: we get the governments we deserve, not the ones we need.

Unusually for one of my little excursions, I was able to afford a hotel close by the railway station. It is next to the site of the Old Hop Pole Inn where in April, 1786, the second and third presidents of the United States, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, dined during their tour of English gardens and Civil War battles. Adams was disappointed by the locals’ perceived ambivalence towards the battlefield:

The people in the neighborhood appeared so ignorant and careless at Worcester that I was provoked and asked "And do Englishmen so soon forget the ground where liberty was fought for? Tell your neighbors and your children that this is holy ground, much holier than that on which your churches stand. All England should come in pilgrimage to this hill, once a year".

So far, I have come but once a lifetime rather than annually, and his comments about churches may reveal something of his snooty deism and unitarianism. Yet he was essentially correct: our civil freedoms were partly purchased at so dear a price at Worcester those four centuries ago. As I returned from my walk seeking any tavern with an open door, I reflected on God’s goodness to our land, and how very little we deserve it.

King Charles II had arranged for the Worcester clothiers to provide his men with uniforms but was unable to pay the £453 and 3 shillings bill having lost the battle. Charmingly, King Charles III finally paid it while still Prince of Wales, in June, 2008. He did not pay the interest, however, which would have amounted to nearly £48,000.