God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [227]
Whatever each side had been trying to achieve, it is difficult to see why the royalists ended up fighting a pitched battle against a larger army in the Midlands. Behind the various shifts of the spring and summer lay divisions and rivalries but also distinct strategic views, and the mutually paralysing effect of successful manoeuvring by the two sides. The fall of Leicester, the culmination of a month of apparently aimless activity, was blamed on the continuing influence of the old generals who now sat on the Committee of Both Kingdoms every day (an unfair charge). Goring’s reluctance to rejoin the main royalist army has been blamed on personal rivalries and his vanity, although there were sound military reasons for him to stay, or in favour of a march northwards by a united royalist army. The campaign had been shapeless, but not purposeless, and decisions which in retrospect seem misjudged had at the time something to commend them. Moreover, if Cromwell and Fairfax had not rallied the parliamentary cavalry and turned the battle at Naseby all this would seem rather different now. However, although the battle might have gone the other way, it would have been better to have stuck to the plan – it was not really clear what the royalists had to gain from seeking an engagement in Leicestershire. Before the battle, with Montrose’s success inducing caution in Leven’s army, the New Model detained by an ill-advised siege of Oxford and a successful assault on Leicester having been carried out, Charles was in a reasonably strong position. As at Marston Moor, the decision to join in battle with numerically superior forces had been avoidable, and had backfired.
Naseby did not end the war, but it began the end of the war and had important political implications too. It was a victory for the New Model, not the Anglo-Scottish alliance, and that increased the temperature of discussions about the post-war settlement. Thomas Edwards complained that the sectaries ‘especially in this last year since the victory at Naseby [have] abused (in most insolent and unheard of manner, and that all kind of ways) all sorts and ranks of men even to the highest’.23 For the same reason it was a blow to those who hoped for a rapid settlement, strengthening the hand of those keen to extract maximum advantage from the military victory. Revelation of the King’s private calculations about his public negotiations was used to reinforce the point. It was bad news for the royalists, but also for Presbyterians and those seeking relatively limited concessions from the King. It was certainly a blow for traditionalists: a ballad of the following year complained that Naseby had killed Christmas.24
There could be no doubt that this victory belonged to the New Model, and many contemporaries assumed that it was therefore a victory for Independency and sectarianism. Whatever the truth of that, this was certainly not a victory for the Presbyterian interest. Cromwell wrote to Speaker Lenthall after the battle that ‘Honest men served you faithfully in this action. Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you, in the name of God, not to discourage them… He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for’. The letter, as authorized for publication by the Commons, had these sentences cut – the thought that the war might be for freedom of conscience was not at all consensual among parliamentarians. Oddly, however, the Lords authorized its publication