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The only encouragement for Parliament in the north came from Lancashire. The Earl of Derby had taken Lancaster for the royalists, but then burnt it, thereby grasping a political defeat from the jaws of military victory. Local opinion, which was by no means uniformly parliamentarian, turned against him and, following a defeat at Whalley Abbey on 20 April, he fled into exile on the Isle of Man. He returned in early 1644, when the arrival of Prince Rupert’s troops in Lancashire made it safe for him, but in the meantime the Stanley (and Stuart) interest in Lancashire was defended by his wife. The Countess of Derby held out at Lathom House in one of the more celebrated acts of heroism from this period of the war. This was of larger military significance too, since it tied down parliamentarian forces that might otherwise have been engaged elsewhere.7

The Earl of Essex was based at the eastern end of the Thames Valley, and Waller to the south and west of the main royalist forces, centred in Oxford. Waller became something of a darling of the parliamentary side in these early months of the war. Between January and March he won a string of victories at Winchester, Farnham Castle, Arundel Castle and Chichester. Although these were relatively minor victories, they earned him the title ‘William the Conqueror’ from the London press, not least perhaps because the picture elsewhere was so discouraging for Parliament. In central England the balance of advantage swung quite rapidly. Royalist control of Banbury and Brill gave solidity to the position in Oxford, while Waller’s victories had given Parliament secure control of the areas south of the Thames as far west as Devon. In the late spring he won victories against Herbert’s forces in Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire, but his advances were halted by Prince Maurice at Ripple Field, north of Tewkesbury (13 April). In the north Midlands, Brereton held much of Cheshire, but not Chester, for Parliament, and Sir John Gell held much of Derbyshire. But in Lichfield local royalists seized control of the cathedral close and in the course of the ensuing siege Lord Brooke was killed by a single shot from the roof of the cathedral. At Hopton Heath (19 March) royalist forces under Compton and Hastings won an important battle over Gell and Brereton, although the loss of the Earl of Northampton was a blow to the royalists. That, and the successful defence of Lichfield by parliamentary forces, prevented a significant follow-up to the victory. Rupert took and sacked Birmingham on 3 April, but, on 21 April, Lichfield Cathedral was captured by Parliament, albeit briefly.8

It has been widely accepted that the King had a consistent concern to capture London, and that during 1643 this involved a three-pronged advance from the west, centre and north. In fact, it is not clear that there was a general strategy, or at least one that could be executed. Command structures were rather confused, and communications imperfect, so much of the war had the quality of separate, reactive and tactical skirmishing. At the same time, Parliament’s strategy was probably clearer than was once argued – seeking to push back the regional armies sufficiently to allow Essex to move on Oxford from the lower end of the Thames Valley. In either case, it seems that Parliament had little to be cheerful about in strategic terms by late spring 1643 (see map 1).9 Before the cessation in the west the advantage had clearly been with Hopton, and in the north the war had gone badly for parliamentary forces everywhere except in Lancashire. In the Midlands the picture was more confused, but it is hard to make a case that the parliamentary cause was thriving. The death of Lord Brooke and the victory at Hopton Heath certainly seemed to give the advantage to the royalists.

Told as a series of regional stories, some order can be imposed on the campaign history, but as a week-by-week account, as it might have been heard in Oxford or London, the war made much less sense. In these