More on Cheriton - Orders of Battle

After my last post, I started thinking more about getting Cheriton on to the gaming table. First thoughts turned to the order of battle, so I reached for all the books on my shelves that 'covered' Cheriton, and I also searched for key sites on the internet, to see what they had to say.

If you're interested in the ECW you'll probably not be surprised that information is thin on the ground. There is mention of a few specific units and leaders on each side (but nowhere near the full order of battle). There are some names common to all sources, and a few that only pop in one place or another. Overall troop numbers are given with a remarkable degree of confidence in most of the books, but with not much consistency and with little in the way of sources quoted. I have to say here and now that I do not (yet) possess any of the books specifically about Cheriton published in the last 50 years, and they might reveal more. At 28 pages I don't anticipate a lot of detail in the Spring book; the Sawyer booklet seems currently unavailable; asking prices on the Adair book are beyond what I'm currently prepared to pay; and the Jones book is not yet published. Maybe I should get down to the library this weekend to see if I can find the Adair book through the inter-library lending service.

Being the slightly-OCD geek that I am (if you can be slightly OCD) I tabulated the sources thus:

Source	Author	Sources referenced
With Pike and Musket: Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Battles for Wargamers	CF Wesencraft	No sources referenced
The English Civil War 1642-1651: An Illustrated History, (London 1983)  pp76-7	Philip Haythornthwaite	Not specifically referenced. Select bibliography includes Cheriton, Adair, J (Kineton 1973)
A Battlefield Atlas of the English Civil War, (Leicester 1986) pp51-53	Anthony Baker	No sources referenced. No bibliography.
The Complete Guide to the Battlefields of Britain with Ordnance Survey Maps (London 1993) pp 152-153	David Smurthwaite	Not specifically referenced. Select bibliography does not show any primary sources or anything specifically related to Cheriton. Usefully overlays supposed dispositions onto OS Map but with no cited authorities.
The Great Civil War: A Military History of the First Civil War 1642-1646 (London 1959)	Alfred H Burne and Peter Young	Not specifically referenced. Bibliography includes Gardiner; Lord Hopton ‘Bellum Civile’; Thomason Tracts; Godwin, The Civil War in Hampshire (London 1904); E.Walsingham, Brittanicae Virtutis Imago; Webb & Webb, ‘Military Memoirs of Colonel John Birch’ (Camden 1873)
BCW Project http://bcw-project.org/military/english-civil-war/southern-england/battle-of-cheriton		John Adair, Roundhead General, a military biography of Sir William Waller (London 1969) C.E.H. Chadwyck-Healey (ed), Bellum Civile (Somerset Record Society 1902) Stuart Reid, All the King's Armies (Staplehurst 1998) Laurence Spring, The Campaigns of Sir William Waller's Southern Association 1643-45 (Bristol 1997) Laurence Spring, The Battle of Cheriton 1644 (Bristol 1997)
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cheriton		Adair, John Eric (1973). Cheriton 1644: The Campaign and the Battle. Kineton, Godwin, G. N. (1918). The Civil War in and around Winchester. Winchester, Spring, Laurence (1997). The Battle of Cheriton 1644. English Civil War battles series. Bristol Memoirs of Colonel John Birch, London: Camden Society, 1st ed., 1846. P. R. Newman, "Atlas of the English Civil Wars", 44-5
UK Battlefields Resource Centre http://www.battlefieldstrust.com/resource-centre/civil-war/battleview.asp?BattleFieldId=11

Overall numbers of troops quoted on the royalist side vary from 5000 to 7900. On the Parliamentarian side the lowest number given is 8000 but most quote 10000. Again I tabulated what I found in the various texts. The squared bracketed numbers against Baker are my suppositions derived from his comment that the Roundhead cavalry was over 1/3 of the 10000 strong army.

	Royalists					Parliamentarians
Source	Horse	Dragoons	Foot	Guns	Total	Horse	Dragoons	Foot	Guns	Total
With Pike and Musket: Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Battles for Wargamers	4100 (breakdown doesn’t add up)		3800 (breakdown doesn’t add up	11	7900	5800 (breakdown doesn’t add up)		3100 (breakdown doesn’t add up)	a few	8900
The English Civil War 1642-1651: An Illustrated History, (London 1983)  pp76-7					Some 6000					10,000
A Battlefield Atlas of the English Civil War, (Leicester 1986) pp51-53						Over 1/3 [3500]	[6500]			10,000
The Complete Guide to the Battlefields of Britain with Ordnance Survey Maps (London 1993) pp 152-153			1000 musketeers under Appleyard		6000	300 under Hazelrig				10000
The Great Civil War: A Military History of the First Civil War 1642-1646 (London 1959)	Nearly 3000		3000	11	Not less than 6000					Outnumbered Hopton’s army by several thousand
BCW Project http://bcw-project.org/military/english-civil-war/southern-england/battle-of-cheriton	3800		3200		7000	3000	600	5000		8600
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cheriton	2500		3500		6000	3500		6500		10000
UK Battlefields Resource Centre http://www.battlefieldstrust.com/resource-centre/civil-war/battleview.asp?BattleFieldId=11					c 5000					c 10000

Apologies for the small font on the table. I was struggling to fit it in.

On no stronger a basis than them being the most commonly quoted numbers, I'll probably go with 6000 Royalists vs 10000 Parliamentarians. Note of warning - the fact they're so frequently quoted but without good references probably suggests they're mostly repeating what some other secondary source said. Some of the books give some detail on the make up of the horse and foot, such as the oft quoted 'Appleyard's 1000 musketeers' sent to Cheriton Wood by Hopton.

Some leaders are mentioned, sometimes linked to specific units. The most useful sources in this regard are Burne & Young,  the BCW Project and Wikipedia. Putting them together we have the following:

Royalists
Titular commander:               Earl of Forth
De facto commander:            Hopton
Cavalry Commander:             Lieut. General Lord John Stuart
Major General of Horse:        Sir John Smith (Right wing cavalry?)
Left wing cavalry:                   Sir Henry Stowell
Commanded musketeers:      Col. Matthew Appleyard

Unfortunately not much else is clear about the infantry commanders.

Also mentioned; Col. George Lisle, who is the subject of one of my favourite anecdotes from the Civil War*, and Sir Henry Bard, the villain of the piece at Cheriton from the Cavalier point of view.

Parliamentarians
Commander:                           William Waller
Right Wing Cavalry:                William Balfour
Left Wing Cavalry:                  Sir Arthur Haselrig (I surmise he was in overall command)
                                                (he of the Lobsters, not present at Cheriton)
London Brigade# (infantry):    Major General Sir Richard Brown
London regiments (infantry)
in Cheriton Wood:                   Col. Walter Leighton (possibly a sub-unit of Brown's command?)

*# 4 regiments mentioned by Burne and Young: being the Red, White, Yellow and Green, of which White and Yellow were sent into Cheriton Wood under Leighton.

As with the Royalists, the PBI don't seem to get much of a look in.

In looking at the Smurthwaite book, I noticed that he has the Parliamentarian starting positions north of the Petersfield Road, and atop the ridge seen in my photo of Broad Lane in the previous post. This, if accurate, answers a conundrum for me. Most accounts refer to the 'arena' created by the ridges which run north, east and south of the field of battle. On walking the ground I found there was a ridge between the usually quoted starting positions of Hinton Ampner for the Roundheads and the monument near Scrubbs Farm for the Royalists. So the note with my fourth picture in the previous post wrongly says this is were the Parliamentarian line was - they would have passed through that way, but carried on to the next ridge. That being said, there is still a spur of higher ground jutting from Cheriton Wood into the eastern half of the field between the two starting positions as seen in this OS based map from the Battlefield Trust.

http://www.battlefieldstrust.com/media/575%2Epdf

As I can testify, the spur does not have particularly steep slopes, but it is high enough to block line of sight of anything not near the crest. I would say it is a significant enough feature to represent on the gaming table. Talking of which, from that map I reckon an area modelling 2.5km by 1.5m would be needed as a minimum. My table, at my usual 1mm to the yard groundscale, is not deep enough. I'm about 700mm out. Hmmm! Back to the drawing board.

Totally a propos of nothing, except this post being short of pictures, I wonder if this car has anything to do with the late Dan O'Herlihy.

* Captured after the siege of Colchester in 1648, Lisle was sent before a firing squad with his friend Charles Lucas. Lucas was first and opened his shirt and invited the 'Rebels' to "do your worst". Lisle came next and having kissed his dead friend, invited the firing squad to step closer. "Sir, I warrant we will hit you", declared the officer in charge. Lisle smiled, then replied, "I have been nearer to you, friend, when you missed me".