1. Introduction
  2. The Civil War
  3. Naseby Campaign
  4. The Approach
  5. Formal Phase
  6. The Retreat
  7. The Flight
  8. The Aftermath
  9. The Armies
  10. Furthur Reading

The Flight

It was reported in The Moderate Intelligencer of 12th -19th June that the king was nearly taken prisoner as he rode away. As is natural, his party was retracing its steps to Market Harborough, making for the ford over the river Welland through which they had marched so optimistically that morning. From the account it appears that the Parliamentarian horse had cut them off. '...the King in person being necessitated, with his own troop only, to charge through the body for his escape and it is said that his flight was aided by "a gentleman of the bedchamber, that stood next the King, and cryed, hold your hands the King will yield his person, which while they did, hee got away, and so escaped."

Bloodymans Ford Marston Trussell Church The flight of a party of Royalist horse into Marston Trussell

Click on an image for a larger version.

Other horsemen attempted to flee by way of Marston Trussell, where some had been billeted the night before and the church reared prominently above the fields. Here, local tales asserted, Royalists had been caught and cut down after the battle, and therefore, in 1842, Edward Fitzgerald went to investigate. He wrote to Thomas Carlyle on 30 September to report his findings. 'I drove my gig into Marston, straight along the road from Sibbertoft, to the Church: where, at the very church yard gate, the road stopped: went no farther.' It was, he explained, a 'Pudding-bay-end' or 'cul-de-sac'. The parson told Fitzgerald that the field beyond was called Slawford, meaning Slaughterford, and that his father had, when digging to make a family vault, come upon a mass burial. Today the road continues past the church and the dog-leg of the old road can be traced in the bridle-path that leads north off the high street, and the village name 'Pudding-bag Marston' is just a memory.

The Scene After the Battle

An unknown 'Gentleman in Northampton' toured the field after the battle and wrote on 15 June, 'The Field was about a mile broad where the Battell was fought, and from the outmost Flanke of the right, to the left wing, tooke up the whole ground; The bodies lay slaine about four miles in length, the most thicke on the hill the Kings men stood on; I cannot think there was few lesse than four hundred men slaine, and truly I think not many more, and neere 300 Horses; Wee tooke at least four thousand Prisoners on the ground between Navesby and Harborough, neere three hundred carriages, whereof twelve of them were Ordnance . there was many of the Wagons laden with rich plunder, and others with Arms and Ammunition .'