Battle of Powick Bridge

Date	23 September 1642
Location	Worcester 52°10′12″N 2°14′33″W / 52.170°N 2.2425°W / 52.170; -2.2425Coordinates: 52°10′12″N 2°14′33″W / 52.170°N 2.2425°W / 52.170; -2.2425
Result	Royalist victory

Belligerents

Royalists

Parliamentarians

Commanders and leaders

Prince Rupert

Nathaniel Fiennes

Strength

1,000 horse

Casualties and losses

negligible

40 killed, 100 wounded

The Battle of Powick Bridge, fought on 23 September 1642, was the first major cavalry engagement of the English Civil War. It was a Royalist victory. According to Hugh Peters it was "where England's sorrows began".

King Charles I of England had left London and raised his standard in Nottingham on 22 August 1642. Although some skirmishing had occurred throughout the country, it was on 13 September, that the main campaign of the First English Civil War opened. King Charles, in order to reach the armouries of Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and find recruits amongst his sympathisers and trained bands, and also to be in touch with his disciplined regiments in Ireland by way of Chester, moved westward from Nottingham through Cheshire to Shrewsbury. The Earl of Essex with an army of about 20,000 men followed suit by marching his army from Northampton to Worcester.

Near Worcester, a sharp cavalry engagement, now known as the Battle of Powick Bridge, took place on 23 September between the advanced cavalry of Essex's army, and a force under Prince Rupert, which was engaged in protecting a small Royalist supply train bringing "plate" donated by the University of Oxford to the King's mint for smelting into coin, and which was sheltering in Worcester.

The "battle" was closer to a skirmish, but nonetheless important. It started almost farcically, the two opposing cavalry units having set up camp in almost adjacent fields, it was only by luck that the Royalists stumbled across the enemy first and did not give the game away.

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