Worcestershire in the English Civil War Gloucestershire, made the county vulnerable to raiding and requisitions. Nevertheless, the county was strategically vital to the Royalists, as a bridge from their mostly Western territories including Wales and Ireland back to their headquarters in Oxford. Worcestershire also provided the Royalists with industrial capacity to produce armaments and munitions. In June 1644, General William Waller's force of around 10,000 men pursued the King's army into Worcestershire as it retreated from Oxford. Waller was supported by the residents of Evesham, who repaired their bridge which had been broken to slow his passage into Worcestershire; the town was heavily fined and the
Worcestershire in the English Civil War strong Parliamentarian contingent. The immediate cause of the war was a struggle between Parliament and the Crown to control of the country's armed forces, the Trained Bands, which were ordinarily under the control of the crown. A split between the county's aristocratic families, who helped organise Royalist control of the Trained Bands, and the city of Worcester, which attempted to gain control its own forces from the county from 1641, can also be seen. Nevertheless, the city of Worcester equivocated about whether to support the Parliamentary cause immediately before the outbreak of civil war in 1642, raising its own independent