The Roundheads drew off toward Tadcaster to guard the route to Newark and the south. Horse and foot were strung out like stretched elastic as Rupert’s men began to appear behind them on Marston Moor at dawn on July 2.

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Rupert had snatched a few hours of sleep in the Forest of Galtres. He then sent a peremptory message to the Marquis of Newcastle demanding he be present with his forces on the moor at 4 a.m. Newcastle replied by saying he was ‘made of nothing but thankfulness and obedience to your highness’ commands,’ but not until 9 a.m. did he arrive with a small party. ‘My Lord, I wish you had come sooner with your forces,’ said Rupert dolefully, ‘but I hope we shall yet have a glorious day.’

Newcastle was a patrician who had been born in 1592; he was a learned man-poets John Dryden and Ben Jonson were among his friends-but he made no claim to being a great general. ‘He loved monarchy,’ wrote sir Edward Hyde, ‘as it was the foundation and support of his own greatness; and the Church, as it was well constituted for the splendour and security of the Crown; and religion, as it cherished and maintained that order and obedience that was necessary to both.’ In contrast, the 60-year-old commander of the Scots, the Earl of Leven, was said to be almost illiterate, although he held a Swedish knighthood.

Newcastle’s military advisor was James King, first Baron Eythin, who had been with Rupert at Lemgo, Germany, in 1638 when the latter was taken prisoner. Eythin had not covered himself with glory then, and now Newcastle was faced with the fact that this 25-year-old nephew of King Charles was his Royalist commander.

At Gloucester and again at Newbury in 1643, Rupert had balked and overruled. At Newark he had been his own boss. Now once again his plans were thwarted by powerful older men. Newcastle was not going to meet Rupert-an upstart half his age-on a moor at 4 a.m., forsooth! Nine o’clock was a much more civilized hour, and even that was earlier than he was used to. Lord Eythin, too, made no attempt to get his men moving that morning of July 2. When he did turn up in the afternoon, he grumbled to Rupert that a plan of battle was all very well, ‘but there is no such thing in the field.’Somewhere about midday, the Roundheads realized the Royalists were gathering on Marston Moor, and they frantically began giving ground. Rupert contemplated sending his cavalry to swirl among the disordered enemy, but presumably felt he was not strong enough to withstand a counterattack without the support of Newcastle’s men. He hesitated and settled for watching while Cromwell, Manchester, Leven, Lord Fairfax and his son, Sir Thomas Fairfax, moved their forces into battle order. His hesitation at that critical moment was to lose the war for the Royalist cause.

Many similarities come to mind between Marston Moor and the battle that reputedly decided another civil war two centuries later: Gettysburg. Two months earlier, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, had won the Battle of Chancellorsville but lost his great deputy, Lt. Gen. Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson. At Lansdown Hill, the Royalists had won the battle but lost the incomparable Sir Bevil Grenville, who, if he had lived, might have become to Rupert what Jackson could have been to Lee. At Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, the Confederates would fail to seize the commanding heights as they arrived on the field and then would delay the great assault that might have shattered the Union Army of the Potomac. The man filling Jackson’s role at Gettysburg, Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, is often blamed for Lee’s defeat for failing to fully maintain the initiative based on his commander’s intent and take the heights outside the town straightaway. At Marston Moor, Eythin prevented the prompt assembly of the Royalists when they could have destroyed the scattered Roundheads with ease. At 4 p.m. the Royalists were finally ready for battle-but so were the Parliamentarians.

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