Qualla: First Battle of Middlewich

First Battle of Middlewich: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sir William Brereton was a baronet of Handforth, a Cheshire man and a Parliamentarian, and on 13 March 1643 he won the engagement at Middlewich that would shape his county's experience of the English Civil War. He did not regard the victory as his own. I desire the whole praise and glory may be attributed to Almighty God, he wrote afterwards, who infused courage into them that stood for His cause and struck the enemy with terror and amazement. Reading those words today, it is easy to mistake them for performance. They were not. Brereton was a serious Puritan, and the war for him was a religious one. The professor John Morrill, who wrote a major study of seventeenth-century Cheshire, made a striking claim about him: because Cheshire mattered as much as it did, Brereton had more influence on the outcome of the First English Civil War than Oliver Cromwell had.

Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

First Battle of Middlewich: A County That Could Not Stay Out

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pete Hanley at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cheshire in 1643 was strategically valuable to both sides. The county sat on the route between Royalist Wales and the Royalist garrisons of the north Midlands, and it controlled the road and river crossings that any march south or north had to use. Middlewich, in the middle of th...

Image: Pete Hanley at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

First Battle of Middlewich: A Setback at the Second Battle

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Brereton was not invincible. In December 1643 the Royalists turned on him at the Second Battle of Middlewich and inflicted his only major defeat of the war. He recovered, regrouped, and resumed his slow grinding-down of Royalist strength in the county. The two battles at Middlewi...

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First Battle of Middlewich: The Death of Sir Thomas Aston

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geni, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sir Thomas Aston, the Royalist commander defeated at the first battle, did not have a long life left after Middlewich. He served in the West Country under George Goring in 1645, then decided to head home through Kidderminster and Stourbridge. In November of that year a Parliament...

Image: Geni | CC BY-SA 4.0

First Battle of Middlewich: After the Peace

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. When peace returned in 1646 and Brereton's military command ended, he moved south to London and became an active Member of Parliament. As a reward for his services he was made chief forester of Macclesfield and seneschal of the Hundred of Macclesfield, civic offices with rights t...

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0