Lord Belasyse’s Regiment of Horse

Royalist regiment of horse serving in the North and West

• Winter: Belasyse returns to Yorkshire from Oxford to recruit his regiment of horse

• Summer: Serving in Glouscetershire
• September: First Battle of Newbury*
• November: At Oxford
• November: Serving with Sir Jacob Astley, reinforcing Hopton
• December: Siege of Arundel?
• December to January 1644: Besieged in Arundel

• January: Belasyse returns to Yorkshire to govern York
• April: Battle of Selby, Belasyse captured and imprisoned until February 1645

Newman provides a history of the regiment and biographies of its officers¹⁾.

Rather confusingly the regiment’s officers are mainly from the North, but it is noted as serving in the West, the North, then the West again. Possibly this represents two regiments, one serving in the South under Belasyse until he was appointed Governor of York, then another raised in Yorkshire, or a split in the unit around January 1644. The Southern unit appears to have been led by Major Bovill in the absence of Belasyse. Possibly he is the Colonel Jordan Bovell who later surrendered at Truro.

In November 1643 the regiment received 40 cases of pistols at Oxford.

Lists of officers are shown in The Royalist Army in Northern England 1642-45 (2 vols) Peter R Newman, PhD Thesis, The University of York, 1978

John, 1st Baron Belasyse