Oliver Cromwell with Sir Thomas Fairfax in command and Cromwell as Lieutenant-General of cavalry and second-in-command. At the critical Battle of Naseby in June 1645, the New Model Army smashed the King's major army. Cromwell led his wing with great success at Naseby, again routing the Royalist cavalry. At the Battle of Langport on 10 July, Cromwell participated in the defeat of the last sizeable Royalist field army. Naseby and Langport effectively ended the King's hopes of victory, and the subsequent Parliamentarian campaigns involved taking the remaining fortified Royalist positions in the west of England. In October 1645, Cromwell besieged and took
John Gerard (Royalist) in 1654 Gerard went over to France, where he was presented to Charles II by his cousin, Charles Gerard, Lord Brandon. Soon after his return to England in May 1654 he was arrested, with two others, on a charge of conspiring against the government in what became known as Gerard's conspiracy. It was alleged that in company with a Royalist major, one Henshaw, whom he had met in France, Gerard with 30 other mounted men were to attack the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell as he rode to Hampton Court, and, after overwhelming his body guard and killing him, to besiege