The parliamentary scheme was that Skippon’s foot, with the horse of Cromwell and Waller, should attack the King’s position on the west, while Manchester assaulted it on the north-east. It failed through lack of combination. Skippon’s infantry carried the royalist intrenchments, and recaptured several guns they had lost in Cornwall, but the cavalry, impeded by the nature of the ground, could effect little. Manchester delayed his attack till it was too late to assist them, and was repulsed with heavy loss. Nevertheless the result of the day’s fighting was that the King’s position was so seriously compromised that only a retreat could save his army. In the night, the royalist army silently marched past Manchester’s outposts, and by morning it was half way to Wallingford. Waller and Cromwell set out in pursuit with the bulk of the cavalry, but as Manchester and the majority of the committee refused to support them with infantry Charles made good his retreat to Oxford. A fortnight later, the King, reinforced by Rupert with five thousand men, returned to relieve Donnington Castle and carry off the artillery he had left there (October 9, 1644). He offered battle, and Cromwell was eager to fight, but Manchester and a majority of the committee declared against it. Foot and horse alike were greatly reduced in numbers, and the latter “tired out with hard duty in such extremity of weather as hath been seldom seen.” Manchester, in addition to military reasons, urged political arguments against risking a battle.
“If we beat the King ninety-nine times, yet he is King still, and so will his posterity be after him; but if the King beat us once we shall all be hanged, and our posterity made slaves.” “My Lord,” retorted Cromwell, “if this be so, why did we take up arms at first? This is against fighting ever hereafter. If so, let us make peace, be it ever so base.”
But much as he might despise Manchester’s logic, he had to bow to the logic of facts, and to accept the view of the committee in general.
So ended the campaign of 1644. The north of England had been definitely won, and with capable leadership the defeat of Essex in Cornwall might have been compensated by the defeat of the King in Berkshire. When Cromwell came to reflect on the incidents of the last few months, he attributed the failure to obtain this victory entirely to Manchester. He had failed, apparently, not through accident or want of foresight, but through backwardness to all action. And this backwardness, concluded Cromwell, came “from some principle of unwillingness to have the war prosecuted to a full victory; and a desire to have it ended by an accommodation on some such terms to which it might be disadvantageous to bring the King too low.” On November 25th, Cromwell rose in the House of Commons, told the story of the Newbury campaign, and made this charge against Manchester. Manchester vindicated his generalship in the House of Lords, alleging that he had always acted by the advice of the council of war, and that Cromwell was a factious and obstructive subordinate. Then, leaving military questions alone, he made a bitter attack on Cromwell as a politician. He had once given great confidence to the Lieutenant-General, but latterly he had become suspicious of his designs, and had been obliged to withdraw it. For Cromwell had spoken against the nobility, and had said that he hoped to live to see never a nobleman in England. He had expressed himself with contempt against the Assembly of Divines, and with animosity against the Scots for attempting to establish Presbyterianism in England. Finally, he had avowed that he desired to have none but Independents in the army of the Eastern Association, “so that in case there should be propositions for peace, or any conclusion of a peace, such as might not stand with those ends that honest men should aim at, this army might prevent such a mischief.”