The Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652), also known as the Third Civil War, was the final conflict in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between shifting alliances of religious and political factions in England, Scotland and Ireland.
The 1650 English invasion of Scotland was a pre-emptive military incursion by the English Commonwealth's New Model Army, intended to allay the risk of Charles II invading England with a Scottish army. The First and Second English Civil Wars, in which English Royalists, loyal to Charles I, fought Parliamentarians for control of the country, took place between 1642 and 1648. When the Royalists were defeated for the second time the English government, exasperated by the duplicity of Charles I during negotiations, set up a High Court of Justice which found the King guilty of treason and executed him on 30 January 1649. At the time, England and Scotland were separate independent kingdoms, joined politically through a personal union; Charles I was, separately, both the King of Scotland, and the King of England. The Scots had fought in support of the English Parliamentarians in the First English Civil War, but sent an army in support of Charles I into England during the Second English Civil War. The Parliament of Scotland, which had not been consulted before the execution, declared his son, Charles II, King of Britain.
In 1650 Scotland was rapidly raising an army. The leaders of the English Commonwealth government felt threatened and on 22 July the New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell invaded Scotland. The Scots, commanded by David Leslie, retreated to Edinburgh and refused battle. After a month of manoeuvring, Cromwell unexpectedly led the English army out of Dunbar in a night attack on 3 September and heavily defeated the Scots. The survivors abandoned Edinburgh and withdrew to the strategic bottleneck of Stirling. The English secured their hold over southern Scotland, but were unable to advance past Stirling. On 17 July 1651 the English crossed the Firth of Forth in specially constructed boats and defeated the Scots at the Battle of Inverkeithing on 20 July. This cut off the Scottish army at Stirling from its sources of supply and reinforcements.
Charles II, believing that the only alternative was surrender, invaded England in August. Cromwell pursued, few Englishmen rallied to the Royalist cause and the English raised a large army. Cromwell brought the badly outnumbered Scots to battle at Worcester on 3 September and completely defeated them, marking the end of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Charles II was one of the few to escape. This demonstration that the English were willing to fight to defend the republic and capable of doing so effectively strengthened the position of the new English government. The defeated Scottish government was dissolved and the kingdom of Scotland was absorbed into the Commonwealth. Following much in-fighting Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector. After his death, further in-fighting resulted in Charles II being crowned King of England on 23 April 1661, twelve years after being crowned by the Scots. This completed the Stuart Restoration.
Terminology
Some historians have referred to the conflict, which followed the First and Second English Civil Wars, as the Third Civil War. This view has been criticised: John Philipps Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer noted that the conflict was not an exclusively English affair, so cannot be considered part of the English Civil War; the historian Austin Woolrych observed that it was almost entirely a conflict between Scottish and English forces, involving very few English soldiers fighting on behalf of the King at the final battle at Worcester, so it was "seriously misleading" to refer to it as a civil war. Although the conflict was certainly a part of the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms, rather than being a continuation of the English Civil War, it was by this stage a war between Scotland, ruled by the Covenanting government under Charles II, and the English Commonwealth.
Background
Bishops' Wars and English Civil Wars
In 1639, and again in 1640, Charles I, who was king of both Scotland and England in a personal union, went to war with his Scottish subjects in the Bishops' Wars. These had arisen from the Scots' refusal to accept the attempts of Charles I to reform the Scottish Kirk to bring it into line with English religious practices. Charles I was not successful in these endeavours, and the ensuing settlement established the Covenanters' hold on Scottish government, requiring all civil office-holders, parliamentarians and clerics to sign the National Covenant, and giving the Scottish Parliament the authority to approve all the King's councillors in Scotland. After years of rising tensions the relationship between Charles I and his English Parliament broke down, starting the First English Civil War in 1642.
In England the supporters of Charles I, the Royalists (Cavaliers), were opposed by the combined forces of the Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and the Scots. In 1643 the latter pair formed an alliance bound by the Solemn League and Covenant, in which the English Parliament agreed to reform the English church along similar lines to the Scottish Kirk in return for the Scots' military assistance. After four years of war the Royalists were defeated and Charles I surrendered to the Scots at their camp near Newark-on-Trent on 5 May 1646. The Scots agreed with the English Parliament on a peace settlement which would be put before the King. Known as the Newcastle Propositions, it would have required all the king's subjects in Scotland, England and Ireland to sign the Solemn League and Covenant, brought the church in each kingdom into accordance with the Covenant and with Presbyterianism, and ceded much of secular authority of Charles I as king of England to the English Parliament. The Scots spent some months trying to persuade Charles I to agree to these terms, but he refused to do so. The Scottish army had remained in England after the war, pending payment of the large subsidy the Parliamentarians had promised. A financial settlement was reached, the Scots handed Charles I over to the English Parliamentary forces and they left England on 3 February 1647.
Charles I now engaged in separate negotiations with different factions. Presbyterian English Parliamentarians and the Scots wanted him to accept a modified version of the Newcastle Propositions, but in June 1647, Cornet George Joyce of the New Model Army seized Charles I, and the army council pressed him to accept the Heads of Proposals, a less demanding set of terms which, crucially, did not require a Presbyterian reformation of the church. He rejected these as well and instead signed an offer known as the Engagement, which had been thrashed out with the Scottish delegation, on 26 December 1647. Charles I agreed to confirm the Solemn League and Covenant by Act of Parliament in both kingdoms, and to accept Presbyterianism in England, but only for a trial period of three years, in return for the Scots' assistance in regaining his throne in England.
When the delegation returned to Edinburgh with the Engagement, the Scots were bitterly divided on whether to ratify its terms. Its supporters, who became known as the Engagers, argued that it offered the best chance the Scots would get of acceptance of the Covenant across the three kingdoms, and that rejecting it risked pushing Charles I to accept the Heads of Proposals. It was opposed by those who believed that to send an army into England on behalf of the King would be to break the Solemn League and Covenant, and that it offered no guarantee of a lasting Presbyterian church in England; the Kirk went so far as to issue a declaration on 5 May 1648 condemning the Engagement as a breach of God's law. After a protracted political struggle, the Engagers gained a majority in the Scottish Parliament, by which time war had again broken out in England between Royalists and Parliamentarians. The Scots sent an army under the command of the Duke of Hamilton into England to fight on behalf of the King in July, but it was heavily defeated at Preston and then Winwick in August 1648 by a force led by Oliver Cromwell. The rout of the Engager army led to further political upheaval in Scotland, and the faction opposed to the Engagement was able to gain control of the government, with the assistance of a group of English Parliamentary cavalry led by Cromwell.
Death of Charles I
Exasperated by the duplicity of Charles I and by the English Parliament's refusal to stop negotiating with him and accept the demands of the New Model Army, the Army purged Parliament and established the Rump Parliament, which appointed a High Court of Justice to try Charles I for treason against the English people. He was convicted and on 30 January 1649 beheaded. On 19 May, with the establishment of the Commonwealth of England, the country became a republic. The Scottish Parliament, which had not been consulted before the king's execution, declared his son Charles II, King of Britain. Before they would permit him to return from exile in the Dutch Republic to take up his crown, they demanded he sign both Covenants: recognising the authority of the Kirk in religious matters, and that of Parliament in civil affairs. Charles II was initially reluctant to accept these conditions, but after Cromwell's campaign in Ireland crushed his Royalist supporters there, he felt compelled to accept the Scottish terms, and signed the Treaty of Breda on 1 May 1650. The Scottish Parliament set about rapidly recruiting an army to support the new king, and Charles II set sail to Scotland, landing on 23 June.
English invasion of Scotland (1650–1652)
The leaders of the English Commonwealth felt threatened by the Scots reassembling an army. They pressed Thomas Fairfax, lord general of the New Model Army, to launch a pre-emptive attack. Fairfax accepted the commission to lead the army north to defend against the possibility of a Scottish invasion, but was unwilling to strike the first blow against his former allies, believing England and Scotland were still bound by the Solemn League and Covenant. When a formal order to attack came on 20 June 1650, Fairfax resigned his commission. A parliamentary committee which included Cromwell, his close friend, attempted to dissuade him, pleading with him over the course of a whole night to change his mind, but Fairfax remained resolute, and retired from public life. Cromwell succeeded to his office as lord general, becoming commander-in-chief of the New Model Army. He received his commission on 28 June, and set out for Scotland the same day, crossing the Tweed at the head of 16,000 men on 22 July.
Once the Treaty of Breda had been signed, the Scottish Parliament started levying men to form a new army, under the command of the experienced general David Leslie. Their aim was to increase their forces to more than 36,000 men, but that number was never achieved; by the time Cromwell entered Scotland, Leslie had fewer than 10,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry, although these numbers fluctuated during the course of the campaign. The government instituted a commission to purge the army of anyone suspected of having supported the Engagement, as well as men considered sinful or undesirable. This was opposed, unsuccessfully, by much of the Scottish nobility and most of the experienced military leaders, including Leslie. The purge removed many experienced men and officers, and the bulk of the army was composed of raw recruits with little training or experience.
Leslie prepared a defensive line of earthworks between Edinburgh and Leith, and employed a scorched earth policy between this line and the English border. He then allowed Cromwell to advance unopposed. Lack of supplies, and the hostility of the local people towards the English invaders forced Cromwell to rely on a seaborne supply chain, and he captured the ports of Dunbar and Musselburgh to facilitate this. Operations were hampered by persistent bad weather. These adverse conditions caused a shortage of food and much sickness in the English army, substantially reducing its strength.
Cromwell attempted to bring the Scots to battle at Edinburgh. He advanced on Leslie's lines on 29 July, capturing Arthur's Seat and bombarding Leith from Salisbury Crags. Cromwell was not able to draw Leslie out, and the English retired to their camp at Musselburgh, where they were subjected to a night raid by a party of Scottish cavalry. Cromwell's attack coincided with a visit by Charles II to the Scottish army, where he was warmly received. Members of the Covenanter government, concerned that their godly war would be corrupted by feelings of personal loyalty to the King, asked Charles II to leave. They then ordered a new purge, which was quickly enacted in early August, removing 80 officers and 4,000 of Leslie's men. This damaged morale as well as weakening the army's strength.
Throughout August Cromwell continued to try and draw the Scots out from their defences to enable a set piece battle. Leslie resisted, ignoring pressure from the secular and religious Scottish hierarchy to attack Cromwell's weakened army. He reasoned that the persistent bad weather, the difficult English supply situation, and the dysentery and fever that had broken out in the English camp would force Cromwell to withdraw back into England before winter set in.
On 31 August Cromwell did withdraw; the English army reached Dunbar on 1 September, having taken two days to march the 17 miles (27 km) from Musselburgh, harassed day and night by the pursuing Scots. The road was left littered with abandoned equipment and the men arrived hungry and demoralised. The Scottish army outflanked the English, blocking the road to Berwick and England at the easily defended Cockburnspath Defile. Their main force encamped on the 177-metre-high (581 ft) Doon Hill, 2 miles (3 km) south of Dunbar, where it overlooked the town and the coastal road running south west from the town. The hill was all but invulnerable to direct assault. The English army had lost its freedom of manoeuvre, although they could supply themselves by sea and, if need be, evacuate the army the same way. On 2 September Cromwell surveyed the situation, and wrote to the governor of Newcastle warning him to prepare for a possible Scottish invasion.