OOB Battle of Lansdowne Hill 1643

[Unlucky General]

Comrades,

I am at about the 3/4 mark with a significantly developed order of battle for both Parliamentary and Royalist forces and I've arrived at a significant difference of opinion from what appears to be the accepted wisdom of the numbers present.

I've conducted an extensive internet cross referencing exercise to identify the regiments present and I have an issue with estimations of the Parliamentarian foot at the battle. Waller is accorded only 1,500 foot at the battle in almost all document on the subject (English Heritage, The Battlefield's Trust, and the BCW and so on). Yet I think this must be a gross under-estimate.

We have accounts of the following known strengths: A detachment of Sir John Merricks regiment of foot (200) and the Bristol Garrison detachment of 500. According to BCW research (an essential and wonderful website) it is highly probable that Lord Oliver St John;s regiment of foot had near 800 just before he campaign and battle. So that's the first 1,500 accounted for by my reckoning. I have confirmed the presence of a further five known regiments at Lansdowne which, even estimating them as under-strength at a speculative 400 apiece would provide for a conservative and speculative additional 1,200.

I believe that this might also better explain the disproportionate casualty rate suffered by the Royalists apart from the prepared defences on unfavourable ground.

I have all of Robert Giglio's reputed scenario works on the way and I have also ordered the new William Waller campaign book through Helion & Co. and I'm certainly open to suggestions, correction and ideas.

I have always been dumfounded by historians' tendency to down-grade troop numbers whilst offering no justification or reasoning - I suppose I'm after an explained calculation.  I'm having difficulty finding where the initial number was first recorded and why it seems (to me) to have been uncritically accepted and repeated. I suspect it might be contained within John Byron's 'Relations' account of the war but I can't access a copy. If so, it would be relying on an estimate and memory of a protagonist on the other side.

I intend to post my results on my blog but I'd like it to be as helpful as I can. I could be way off the mark.

Can anyone shed light on this?

[janner]

Lawrence Spring cites Sir John Byron for 2,500 foot spread across five regiments, along with another 2,500 horse in six regiments, a regiment of dragoons, and seven cannon.

The Bristol detachment seemingly arrived a day after the battle of Lansdown but fought at Roundway Down.

[westwaller]

Does this help? From what I have read it seems that the numbers present at ECW battles is hard to determine partly due to their being an 'official' number of men mustered for a regiment and the actual numbers present on the day of battle due to illness, desertion etc. I think a lot of the trained bands would have not been active for an entire campaign, perhaps returning to their town or villages from time to time?

[Unlucky General]

Thank you both. Please excuse the recent silence - I'm back at work and hit the ground sprinting once more. I am following both of your helpful leads and attempting to clarify what's proving to be an array of oblique and sometimes contradictory references. I think there's a lot of lazy and quick acceptances and assumption by some of our secondary sources and I find myself applying levels of scrutiny I don't normally have to.

Thanks again. There's probably a paper in this but I'm really just trying to get an army list I'm happy with worth sharing.

BTW Janner - love your blog.

[westwaller]

Those numbers above are from a Stuart press publication by Robert Morris on the battles of Lansdown and Roundway.