{"title":"‘Where England’s Sorrows Began’: A Reassessment of the Battle of Powick Bridge, 1642","authors":"J. Spiller","doi":"10.1080/0047729X.2021.2024659","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article seeks to provide a comprehensive reassessment of the battle of Powick Bridge by focusing on all surviving eye-witness testimonies, unlike previous accounts, and by examining the engagement in its own right, rather than simply as a prelude or sideshow to the events at Edgehill a month later. Particular attention is given to the theory that some sort of false message was sent by the Royalist leader Prince Rupert to the Parliamentarian troops to lure them into a trap, which has been generally overlooked or dismissed by many writers, while the problems with the Earl of Clarendon’s narrative of events and his legacy regarding source interpretation, are also considered carefully. The article concludes that the action at Powick Bridge was far from being the chance-encounter of minor significance which secondary accounts have broadly maintained it was, and that the battle therefore merits more attention than it has previously been given.","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"21 - 37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Midland History","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729X.2021.2024659","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT This article seeks to provide a comprehensive reassessment of the battle of Powick Bridge by focusing on all surviving eye-witness testimonies, unlike previous accounts, and by examining the engagement in its own right, rather than simply as a prelude or sideshow to the events at Edgehill a month later. Particular attention is given to the theory that some sort of false message was sent by the Royalist leader Prince Rupert to the Parliamentarian troops to lure them into a trap, which has been generally overlooked or dismissed by many writers, while the problems with the Earl of Clarendon’s narrative of events and his legacy regarding source interpretation, are also considered carefully. The article concludes that the action at Powick Bridge was far from being the chance-encounter of minor significance which secondary accounts have broadly maintained it was, and that the battle therefore merits more attention than it has previously been given.