page_title: Battle of Worcester
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Worcester / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Plaque commemorating the Battle of Worcester on the site of the Sidbury Gate, Worcester, England.
context_page_description: The Battle of Worcester took place on 3 September 1651 at Worcester, England, and was the final battle of the English Civil War. Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarian New Model Army, 28,000 strong, defeated King Charles II's 16,000 Royalists, of whom the vast majority were Scottish.
context_section_description: About 3,000 men were killed during the battle and a further 10,000 were taken prisoner at Worcester or soon afterwards. The Earl of Derby was executed, while the other English prisoners were conscripted into the New Model Army and sent to Ireland. Around 8,000 Scottish prisoners were deported to New England, Bermuda, and the West Indies to work for landowners as indentured labourers. Parliamentary casualties numbered in the low hundreds.
  Charles II's escape included various incidents, including one of his hiding from a Parliamentarian patrol in an oak tree in the grounds of Boscobel House. The result of the battle was, in brief, one of those rare victories in which a pursuit is superfluous. In announcing the Worcester victory of the day earlier, Cromwell's 4 September 1651 despatch to William Lenthall, the Speaker of the House of Commons, has become famous: "The dimensions of this mercy are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy". Hence, Cromwell thought the victory was the greatest of all the favours, or mercies, given to him by God. The expression "crowning mercy" is frequently linked to the battle as it heralded the end of the English Civil War by completely destroying the last major Royalist army.
  The Parliamentary militia were sent home within a week. Cromwell, who had ridiculed "such stuff" six months ago, knew them better now. "Your new raised forces", he wrote to the Rump Parliament, "did perform singular good service, for which they deserve a very high estimation and acknowledgement". The New England preacher Hugh Peters gave the militia a rousing farewell sermon "when their wives and children should ask them where they had been and what news, they should say they had been at Worcester, where England's sorrows began, and where they were happily ended", referring to the first clash of the Royalist and Parliamentarian Armies at the Battle of Powick Bridge on 23 September 1642, almost exactly nine years before.
  Prior to the battle King Charles II contracted the Worcester Clothiers Company to outfit his army with uniforms but was unable to pay the £453.3s bill. In June 2008 Charles, Prince of Wales paid off the 357-year-old debt (less the interest, which would have amounted to around £47,500.)
caption: Plaque on at the Sidbury Gate, Worcester, U.K., inscribed with part of Cromwell's post-victory despatch: "IT IS FOR AUGHT I KNOW A CROWNING MERCY".[18]
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