Edgehill Sermon - Sunday 21 October 2001
Reverend Philip Francis BA MTh CF (V)

Orders of the day, Volume 34, Issue 2, 2002

Let me begin with an apology for the hymn we have just sung:

Lord it belongs not to my care
Whether I die or live:
To love and serve thee is my share
And this thy grace must give.

I realise the words will be unknown to many of you, however the hymn, unfamiliar as it might be, has a relevance to our service today. I want to use it to try and stretch you to think about the English Civil War in a different way to the way you would normally do and approach it from another angle. I know that many of you are focused on the political, military and social background and facts about the Civil War and the Interregnum. However, I’d be prepared to put money on the fact that the religious and theological influences, the social determinants on religion, the interplay between theology and society that so deeply affected the period are largely ignored. I would encourage you to go back to the religious and theological manuscripts and literature to find for yourselves a hitherto unquarried source of material. This is why I have included Richard Baxter’s hymn, because on it hangs a story and involvement with this battle we commemorate today.

Richard Baxter (1615-1691) has given us an eyewitness account of the Battle of Powick Bridge and an interesting account of the Battle of Edgehill. He was born at Rowton in Shropshire in 1615. In December 1638 he was licensed to teach as Master of Dudley Grammar School. He was ordained deacon at Worcester, but was never priested. In 1641 he was appointed Lecturer of Kidderminster Parish, in the year that Parliament enabled parishioners in England and Wales to set up lectureships and develop a preaching ministry. In this ministry he continued for fifteen months until the quarrel between King and Parliament forced him into retirement.

After viewing the skirmish at Powick Bridge and visiting the battle site here, Baxter withdrew to Coventry. Following the King’s defeat at the Battle of Naseby in June 1645 he joined the Parliamentary forces as Chaplain to Colonel Walley’s Regiment. After a physical breakdown he returned to Kidderminster in June 1647 - as he thought as Lecturer. Unbeknown to him, the people of the town had sought his appointment as Vicar and this was confirmed by the Westminster Assembly in March 1648. Baxter only discovered this fact on the eve of the Battle of Worcester some three years later. His preaching and catechising, his pastoral visits and encouragement of the parishioners and local clergy to discuss the weekly Lecture helped consolidate a godly ministry and led to the formation of the Worcester Association in 1653. This body sought to draw the Episcopal, Presbyterian and Independent clergy together in a voluntary association. Fifty eight ministers subscribed, representing about half of the parishes in the diocese of Worcester.

Baxter’s politics and theology were broad and wide. He supported the King, but sought to see an end to Charles’ personal rule and advocated the King ruling through Parliament. He came to support the Parliamentary cause because he believed it would best ‘secure the welfare of the nation’ and would defend the land in an independent way against various vested interests.^[1] He believed in a reformed national Church that was large enough to include many different shades of Protestant opinion but he fought against sectarianism, the Anabaptists, Independents and sects that proliferated during the Commonwealth.

Let me share with you some of the detail Baxter recorded about the Battle of Powick Bridge and Edgehill. He records the breakdown of society and social order in an England that was on the verge of Civil War. His writing captures the tensions in that society, the fear of arbitrary government and that Catholicism would be reimposed. He reveals the way that religious thought and ideas fuelled the controversy, and points to the way that society was becoming increasingly polarised. For example, he was forced to retire from his ministry at Kidderminster when he tried to administered an Oath from Parliament to the people to defend the King’s person, honour and authority, and the power and privileges of Parliament; while at the same time enforcing the destruction of religious images. When the churchwardens attempted to destroy a crucifix in the churchyard a riot took place. Baxter was in a no-win situation. Some were offended by the Oath, others by the destruction of images. Misunderstanding, prejudice and people’s decision to take sides in the forthcoming conflict made his ministry in Kidderminster impossible. He was branded a traitor and forced to withdraw to a friend’s house in Inkborough.

At Inkborough, hearing news of Essex’s army, Baxter went to Powick Bridge on 23rd September 1642. There he found a forward party under the command of Colonel Brown, along with Colonel Edwin Sandys of Kent, Colonel Nathan Finnes, Captain John Finnes and Captain Wingate. This party had heard that Lord Byron was fleeing Worcester, and while the others wanted to stand their ground, Sandys and Brown wanted to engage the enemy. They eventually crossed the river and led a disastrous charge right into Prince Rupert’s cavalry, who routed them. Baxter witnessed the action and this skirmish deeply affected him, turning him against the use of force to settle disputes. It also contributed to his withdrawal from life and semi-retirement in Coventry, and explains why he refused to be commissioned and act as a chaplain in the early stages of the Civil War.

Interestingly, Baxter gives us a list of the chaplains who served in Essex’s Army. This shows how closely related religion and politics were and the way one influenced the other. He favourably compared the civility of Essex’s troops with the rude and rough behaviour of the King’s rabble army.^[2]

On Sunday 23rd October while Baxter was preaching in Alcester he recorded that “people heard the cannons play and perceived that the armies were engaged; when the sermon was done the report was more audible, which made us all long to hear of the success.”^[3] That evening he recorded many troops fleeing through Alcester with the news that all was lost on the Parliament side, with carriages and baggage taken and wagons plundered. On the Monday news from Stratford-upon-Avon informed them that Prince Rupert had wholly routed the left wing of Essex’s army and had gone on to plunder the wagons. While Rupert was thus engaged, Baxter reports that the main body of Essex’s army routed the King’s force and captured the Royal Standard, killing the Earl of Lindsey and capturing his son. The treachery of Sir Faithful Fortescue who turned to the King was noted.

On Tuesday 24th Baxter travelled to the site of the battle. He wrote, “I went to Edgehill and found the Earl of Essex with the remaining part of his army keeping the ground and the King’s army facing them upon the hill a mile off; and about one thousand dead bodies in the field between them (and I suppose many were buried before) and neither of the armies moving toward each other. The King’s army presently drew off towards Banbury and so to Oxford. The Earl of Essex army went back to provide for the wounded and refresh themselves at Warwick Castle”.’^[4]

Again, this battle un-nerved Baxter; he did not know what to do - whether to return to his home or flee. A schoolmaster friend from Bridgnorth finally persuaded him to go to Coventry, where he stayed until he took a commission and served as a Parliamentary Army chaplain in 1645.

In the hymn we sang, Baxter’s words reflect the dark days he experienced through the effects of the skirmish at Powick Bridge and the scene of the battle here at Edgehill. He was deeply affected and traumatised by all he saw and experienced. The horrors of warfare, faced by what must have been apocalyptic style events, made him inward looking and led him to the realisation of the smallness and vulnerability of man. The effect was to make him withdraw into himself and focus on seeking and doing God’s will. And so we come again to our hymn to find deeper meaning in the words:

Lord it belongs not to my care whether I die or live:
To love and serve thee is my share and this thy grace must give.

Baxter knew that he had to follow Christ through ‘dark doors’ in order to enter God’s Kingdom.

Over time at Coventry Baxter experienced peace and a healing of the mind. He came to see the effects of radical politics in the Parliamentary Army as something leading to the ruin of the King and the kingdom. He came to blame himself and ministers like him for negligence, for seeking a quiet life when there was a job to be done for God’s Kingdom. This is why Baxter, who had hitherto refused to serve as a minister in Cromwell’s own troop, in 1645 took a commission as a chaplain in Whalley’s Regiment. In that role he came to find peace and a sense of joy in doing God’s will.

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians chapter 4 verse 4-8 speaks to us about the way we too can find joy and strength in the Lord, when we seek God’s will and strive to live God’s way. Paul urged us not to be over-anxious, but to pray that God’s peace may guard our hearts and thoughts. As we face the events of September 11th that seem as apocalyptic to us, as Baxter must have feared the events of his day were to him, let us have hope, and seek to bring joy and peace to all people and search for all that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely and excellent. These attributes we find in God. God calls us to think on them and put them into practice. Only then in the doing of God’s will and in being God’s people will we find that lasting peace in our hearts and share that peace with all people. Amen.