Lord Grandison’s Regiment of Horse

The Lydiard portrait of Grandison,
school of Anthony van Dyck, c. 1640

The sixth regiment of horse to join the project as a whole, the third for the Royalists, and these guys will bring parity back between the two sides...  welcome return to the glorious Peter Pig figures for this unit, who represent Lord Grandison's Regiment of Horse at Edgehill..

Both Young ("Edgehill"), and Scott, Turton and Gruber ("Edgehill: The Battle Reinterpreted") say the regiment was about 200 men strong in 4 troops at the battle, the ECW Wiki site [clicky] agrees with them all - but I suspect they are all going with Young..

The Colonel of the regiment was William Villiers, Second Viscount Grandison; by all accounts something of a veteran having already led a troop of horse in the First and Second Bishops' War.

He raised this regiment for the King in August 1642, and it had already seen action at Nantwich [clicky] where, with an additional regiment of Dragoons, Grandison had managed to capture the town from the Parliamentary garrison. He abandoned the town in order to join the King at Edgehill.

The Regiment was in the front line of the Royalist left wing at the battle, under the overall command of Wilmot. That wing of cavalry had charged at the same time as Rupert on the other wing and with the same results..  the Parliamentary troops were outnumbered and quickly gave way. Wilmot's cavalry then proceeded to chase them all the way to Kineton, where they then started looting the Parliamentarian baggage. In their favour Grandison and Lucas rallied about 200 men, but when they tried to charge the Parliamentarian rear, they were distracted by fugitives from Charles Essex's routed brigade (which we've heard of already).

One other story of note - during the battle the Kings standard bearer Sir Edward Verney was killed and the Royal standard captured - a Captain John Smith along with two others (Welch was one, don't know the other) managed to recapture it and for that service he was knighted on the field. Smith served in Grandison's, and following the battle Grandison gave him his own troop, and promoted him major.

After Edgehill, the regiment was sent as part of the garrison of Winchester, but in December 1643 Sir William Waller surprised Lord Grandison’s regiment in Winchester (on his advance to Chichester), and captured most of its men, Grandison and a few of his officers managing to escape.  

"....Lord Grandison by the miscarriage of orders was exposed at too great a distance from the army with his single regiment of horse consisting of three hundred and a regiment of two hundred dragoons to the unequal encounter of a party of the enemy of five thousand horse and dragoons and so was himself after a retreat made to Winchester there taken with all his party which was the first loss of that kind the King sustained but without the smallest fault of the commander and the misfortune was much lessened by his making an escape himself with two or three of his principal officers who were very welcome to Oxford ..." from 'Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain Volume 6'
By Edmund Lodge (published 1835)

After his escape he was made Colonel General of Foot in the Oxford Army under Lord Forth, but was mortally wounded leading an infantry brigade at the storm of Bristol - he died a couple of months later from a fever related to the injury.

Clearly a brave and dedicated man to the cause of the King, but as Bonaparte was to say "was he lucky"?

One last interesting story - his daughter, Barbara (Villiers), was to become mistress to Chales II...

Eight Peter Pig cavalry - 15mm - painted January 2020