The Bravest Battell

The battle of Cheriton, in March 1644, was a decisive yet unexpected defeat for the Hampshire detachment of King Charles’s ‘Oxford Army’. Despite starting the day in a strong position on high ground, by the end of it the Royalists had been decisively routed and had fled north towards Basing House, Oxford, and Reading. Charles had intended that in 1644 he would threaten the Parliament’s strongholds in London and the south-east, but after Cheriton he found himself on the back foot and fighting to keep Oxford – and indeed himself – from the dual clutches of Sir William Waller and the Earl of Essex. In this book Serena Jones re-examines the battle by revisiting in detail the numerous contemporary sources such as memoirs and printed newsbooks, and for the first time using drone images to view a critical section of the battlefield from above.