The prince left Oxford and advanced through Chipping Norton, Shipston on Stour, Stratford-upon-Avon and Henley-in-Arden. It was Easter. The cavaliers stayed around Henley for four days, celebrating Holy Week by pillaging the countryside. Word of their presence, and their energetic plundering, quickly ran north.
Ten miles away, the inhabitants of Birmingham tried to believe the Royalists would pass them by. Henley was so near, they could almost hear the protests of outraged farmers being robbed of horses, poultry and beef. By Saturday, most people accepted that Prince Rupert would attack their town. They had time to send messages, begging for reinforcements, to the three main Parliamentary garrisons at Warwick, Kenilworth and Coventry. Only their desperate pleas to Coventry produced results, but Coventry was also threatened by Rupert's presence and could only spare one troop of light horse, dragoons under Captain Castledowne. In the end, the Coventry men withdrew from what was obviously a losing situation, three days before the prince arrived.
In Birmingham, a worried discussion took place. First Francis Roberts, the puritan minister, pleaded with the militia captains and the chief men of the town to take the sensible course: with the odds so great against them, he said, they should march away, saving their arms and themselves even if it meant leaving behind their goods. That might avert Prince Rupert's wrath. It was like throwing raw meat to distract a vicious dog. The captains and chief men were eager, and Royalist sympathisers, of whom there were some among the wealthier townsmen, also spoke for appeasement. However, the crusty middle and lower classes, which included men who could afford their own arms, refused to abandon their town. This forced the captains and civil leaders to stay with them, rather than departing among curses and accusations of cowardice.
Preparations began. They created crude barricades to block streets. Arms were handed out to all who were capable and willing to bear them. At Deritend, they dug a trench to block the road from Henley and Stratford. On Easter Monday, scouts raced into town and reported that Prince Rupert was coming. By now it was known that he was bringing two thousand men, and cannon. Undeterred, into Birmingham's defensive trench climbed all the soldiers they had: a hundred musketeers.
It was a morning's march from Henley. The Royalist soldiers had been slow to move, many with hangovers, all encumbered with personal booty, besides the stolen cattle which they now drove up the muddy roads along with them as their general food supply. Hung about with dead ducks, household pots and cheeses, the foot soldiers cursed as they bestirred themselves at the drumbeat, dragging their pikes at a lacklustre angle, shouldering their muskets with a bad grace, and stumbling with curses down ill-maintained country roads through slurry churned up by the cavalry that had already gone ahead.
Henley-in-Arden was a hamlet. Few had found quarters under cover, so most had spent the last four nights sleeping out of doors on the hard ground. At the end of March the fields and coppices were cold, still bleak after winter, with thawing drips from trees and hedges making everywhere damp. Those who had bread or biscuit soon found it mouldy. Their campfires smoked and spluttered. The soldiers all stank of the smoke, along with a perpetual odour of unwashed clothes on unwashed bodies. Men rose in the mornings stiffly, their coats and britches clammy, their powder and match at risk.
Orlando Lovell and Edmund Treves had spent three days in an outhouse, which they shared with their horses. It showed. Mud and straw besmirched their once-gallant cloaks and boots. Their beards were ragged. Their tempers were short. As they made the journey to Birmingham, their mounts were fretful, only willing to move forwards because they were part of a group. When they reached the town's outskirts, the beasts stamped and steamed and dragged at the bit rebelliously Treves soothed his horse, Faddle, a bounding brown mare bought with money his mother had sent him after accepting that her son could not be deterred from fighting. Lovell had stopped bothering to quieten his mount, an anonymous bay of very much superior quality, which he had borrowed — without mentioning it — from a higher officer in Oxford who was indisposed.
Quartermasters had been sent ahead, as was conventional. They were held up at the barricade. Arriving at the head of his small army, Prince Rupert quickly set up a military headquarters in the Ship Inn. He issued a message to the townspeople that if they provided shelter and received his men quietly, he would do them no injury. This was also conventional; he cannot have expected anyone would believe the offer. As Lovell and Treves rode up, the defenders raised their colours in the Deritend trench, then at once sallied forth and fired briskly.
Surprised, the Royalists pulled back.
'Madness!' scoffed Lovell, quietly counting them. He got to sixty, assessed the length of the trench, doubled his figure and was distressed by the pathetic opposition. From what he could see, the Birmingham musketeers confirmed the Royalist view that the rebels fighting against them were 'men without shirts': ships' deserters, runaway prisoners, beggars and broken-down serving men. 'They have no idea of their danger!'
'They have courage, Orlando.' Treves saw good where he could.
'The traitors will die for their bravado then.'
The location was bad, however. The prince — young, handsome, and in full body armour with his trademark pistol and poleaxe — took cover under the overhang of a building and consulted with advisers while his large white poodle, Boy, austerely sniffed the air. A signboard creaked with mournful insistence. High grey clouds moved slowly, shadowing the dreary scene. Rain was in the air, but would not fall.
The Royalists had approached on a badly maintained country road that crossed half-flooded, inhospitable water meadows and narrowed awkwardly between old half-timbered houses just before the bridge across the River Rea. They were overlooked by fourteenth-century inns, with steep roofs and crooked gables above the street. Although it seemed a meagre defence, the rebels' trench blocked a bottleneck and would serve its turn temporarily. Beyond it, on a shallow rise, a manor-house and church stood before a ribbon of almost medieval houses; it was a rural backwater, unprotected by walls or other fortifications. Word had it that there might be a few more musketeers hidden up; plus maybe a small troop of dragoons; maybe another troop of horse. No reinforcements from the Parliamentary garrisons were reported in the area.
Prince Rupert brought up his artillery, two sakers, which were heavy long-range field guns, and four lighter, more manoeuvrable drakes. He prepared to fire, using his own musketeers, though the defenders did not waver. An annoying barrage began, which the rebels managed somehow to sustain for over an hour. They yelled the usual shouts of 'Cursed dogs! Devilish cavaliers! Popish traitors!' The Royalists replied with desultory oaths of their own. Not taking the defenders seriously, they charged — and to their astonishment, were beaten back again by musketfire.
A second hour passed, before the Parliamentarians were inevitably forced out — only to take up another position in a second trench behind the first, at Digbeth. An untrained collection of smiths, nailmakers, labourers and cutlers was holding up a small army of professional soldiers. The rebels' boldness only increased the Royalists' bitterness against this town. Cannon could achieve little in such a tight situation. Eventually the prince ordered a thatched house to be fired, which spread to a couple more buildings, opening up an access route. This sent the right message.
Impatient to advance, a group of cavalry under the Earl of Denbigh set off across the water meadows to find other roads in. Lovell and Treves went along. They splashed through the shallows, managed to ford the river, and rode into the town through the back ways. Lord Denbigh led them, singing loudly as he went. Soon they were breaking through hedges, leaping garden walls, and bursting among the houses on the south side. Now Edmund Treves learned to be a cavalier, as the horsemen announced their presence by shooting at doors and windows whenever anyone showed a face. Enemy fire came sporadically from upper-storey windows. Barging along amongst his colleagues in the single winding main street, Edmund felt his heart pound. His right arm was up, bearing his sword, and he fired off his remaining pistol with his left hand, aiming badly as he held the reins, unaware whom he shot at, unable to determine friend or foe among the citizens who stared out in curiosity. Exhilarated, the cavaliers stormed at full tilt through the markets. Then at the north end where habitation petered out, quite suddenly they came upon a troop of rebel horse. These were local riders, raised and armed by a Mr Perkes of Birmingham and led by Captain Richard Greaves, who had already fought Prince Rupert once at King's Norton the previous year.