Qualla: Battle of Burton Bridge (1643)

Battle of Burton Bridge (1643): Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phil Campbell from Midlands, England, CC BY 2.0. Queen Henrietta Maria had been gone from her husband for almost a year. The Catholic French queen of a Protestant English king had spent that year raising arms and supplies on the continent, and in summer 1643 she was returning south leading a convoy from Yorkshire to her husband Charles I at Oxford. The route ran through Burton upon Trent, and Burton's medieval bridge, a 36-arched stone structure described as "the only passage over the Trent and Dove to the North," was held by Parliamentarian troops. The queen's convoy could not pass while they remained. On 4 July 1643 a Royalist cavalry under Colonel Thomas Tyldesley charged across the bridge to clear them out. The bridge that had carried Edward II's pursuit of Lancaster three centuries earlier became, briefly, a battlefield again.

Image: Phil Campbell from Midlands, England | CC BY 2.0

Battle of Burton Bridge (1643): A County That Did Not Want to Pay

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MissvainOriginal author: User:Pahazzard, CC BY-SA 3.0. Staffordshire had been resisting royal taxation for decades before the war began. Several days' travel from London, the county had a long-standing reluctance to fund military adventures it did not understand. James I's Privy Council had been forced to write to the local Justices ...

Image: MissvainOriginal author: User:Pahazzard | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Burton Bridge (1643): Burton in the Middle

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0. Burton's location was its curse. Unfortified, possessing few natural defences, the town sat exactly between Royalist and Parliamentarian zones, and the bridge across the Trent made it strategically essential. The town changed hands at least a dozen times during the war. The Earl ...

Image: Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom | CC BY-SA 2.0

Battle of Burton Bridge (1643): Tyldesley's Charge

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M J Richardson, CC BY-SA 2.0. By July 1643 Gell's garrison at Burton was under Captain Thomas Sanders and the town's military governor Colonel Richard Houghton. Gell summoned the Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire associations for support. They refused to muster. When Tyldesley's Royalists arrived ahead of the...

Image: M J Richardson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Battle of Burton Bridge (1643): After the Battle

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Thompson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Henrietta Maria delivered her supplies safely. Tyldesley received a knighthood for the action and a promotion. Burton, miserably plundered, would change hands several more times before finally settling under Parliamentarian control in 1646. The town's role in the war was the role...

Image: Nigel Thompson | CC BY-SA 2.0