First English Civil War, 1644 First English Civil War, 1644 1644 was the third year of the First English Civil War. The King's position continued to decline and the Long Parliament sent the Propositions of Uxbridge, an attempt to end the war, to the king at Oxford Hopton had to retire from the area around Arundel, and on 6 January 1644, Waller recaptured the town. Byron's Cheshire army was in no better case. Newcastle's retreat from Hull and the loss of Gainsborough had completely changed the situation in the Midlands. Brereton was joined by the younger Fairfax from Lincolnshire, and the Royalists were severely defeated
English Civil War Cotswolds, a strategy which placed his army between the Royalists and London. With the size of both armies now in the tens of thousands, and only Worcestershire between them, it was inevitable that cavalry reconnaissance units would sooner or later meet. This happened in the first major skirmish of the Civil War, when a cavalry troop of about 1,000 Royalists commanded by Prince Rupert, a German nephew of the King and one of the outstanding cavalry commanders of the war, defeated a Parliamentary cavalry detachment under the command of Colonel John Brown in the Battle of Powick Bridge, at a