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Background
Following the execution of Charles I in January
1649, the Scottish parliament recognised his son, Charles II, as
king of Great Britain, France and Ireland. Charles reached Scotland
in June1650, which brought Oliver Cromwell into Scotland with an
army of about 16,000 men in July 1650. He was opposed by a Scottish
army of about 20,000 under the command of veteran general David
Leslie. Leslie’s army had carried out a scorched earth policy in
East Lothian, in order to deny the English food supplies, and had
established a strong position near Edinburgh in August 1650. However,
the army had been purged of around 5000 men, many professional soldiers,
deemed to be Engagers (supporters of a previous alliance between
many of the Scottish nobility and Charles I) by the kirk party,
which controlled Scotland at that time.
The Battle
Cromwell’s advance had been frustrated and
his army was short of supplies and suffering from sickness. On 31
August 1650 he withdrew to the port of Dunbar, but the Scottish
army followed him and on the 2 September the Scots moved down from
a strong position on high ground and were surprised by an attack
on the following morning by Cromwell. In the resulting rout the
Scots lost 3000 men and between 5,000 and 10,000 men were captured
by the English and force-marched to Durham, from where over 200
were transported to Virginia.
Aftermath
Cromwell’s victory left much of Scotland
at his mercy, but illness prevented him occupying more than the
south east of the country immediately. Members of the kirk party
succeeded in raising what was, in effect, an independent army in
the shires of Ayr, Renfrew, Lanark and Galloway (the Western Association),
which was defeated in the battle of Hamilton in December 1650. Charles
II meanwhile had raised a royalist army north of the Tay, which
marched into England and was defeated at Worcester on 3 September
1651. From 1651 Cromwell’s control was extended to most of Scotland
by General Monck, who garrisoned major towns, ports and castles
Bibliography
John Grainger, Cromwell Against the Scots:
the last Anglo-Scottish War 1650-1652 (East Linton, 1997); Frances
Dow, Cromwellian Scotland (Edinburgh, 1999); Edward M Furgol,
A Regimental History of the Covenanting Armies 1639-51 (Edinburgh,
1990); David Stevenson, Revolution and Counter Revolution in
Scotland, 1644 -1651 (London, 1977); W S Douglas, Cromwell’s
Scotch Campaigns 1650-51 (London, 1898); Philip Warner, British
Battlefields: Scotland and the Border (Reading, 1975).
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1.
How can I confirm whether someone was captured at the battle of
Dunbar?
Image 1
Extract from a list of Scottish army officers
captured at the Battle of Dunbar, 1651 (National Archives of Scotland,
reference: GD40/2/16).
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