The Battle of Dunbar - 1650
Commemoration of the 350th Anniversary of the Battle of Dunbar
delivered at the Saugus Iron Works, Saugust, Massachusetts
by Bruce Hedman on September 3, 2000
We have come here today to commemorate the lives of those Scots who 350 years ago were exiled from their beloved Scotland to this remote corner of the New World. They were what today we call Prisoners of War, captured by Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Dunbar, which was fought on September 3, 1650, precisely three and a half centuries ago today.
The year 1650 was pivotal for Scotland. The Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland held the reins of government, and in 1650 they allowed Charles the Second to be crowned king, once he promised to establish the Presbyterian church in both Scotland and England. Thus, Charles II became the last king in Britain to be crowned in Scotland on this historic hill of Scone.
But this aggressive Scottish Presbyterianism threatened Oliver Cromwell and his parliament of Puritans in England, who wanted little centralized power in either church or state. They had the year before executed Charles the First, and tried to govern England as a Republic. When Scotland audaciously crowned the son of the monarch they deposed, Cromwell invaded Scotland with 16,000 men of his New Model Army, called "Ironsides" for their undefeated martial discipline.
But Cromwell underestimated the Scottish general David Leslie, who burned all crops and stores in Cromwell's path through the Lowlands, depriving the invaders of food. By the time Cromwell reached Edinburgh, his army was weak with hunger and dysentery. Leslie fortified trenches dug from Edinburgh to Leith, to prevent Cromwell's fleet from resupplying the English army. So Cromwell retreated to Dunbar, the next deep water port east along the coast.
Then Leslie marched his Scottish troops, numbering some 25,000, south of Dunbar to bottle Cromwell up against the sea and block any retreat back into England. Leslie arrayed his Scottish forces along the heights of Doon Hill across the Brox Burn two miles south of Dunbar, to force Cromwell either to fight uphill or else to starve in Dunbar. Leslie was in position to give Scottish history a victory over English invaders that would echo alongside Sterling and Bannockburn. All he had to do was wait.
The Scottish historian Nigel Trantor in his wonderful book Honours Even describes the disaster that followed. The Kirk held the reins of power in the government, and believed that God was a Presbyterian, not a Puritan, and would insure a Presbyterian victory. First, the ministers of the Kirk purged Leslie's army of any who drank, carroused, or cursed, meaning most of his professional soldiers. Second, they insisted that Leslie quick skulking on the high ground and "go down into the plain and smite the Philistine" like Israel in the land of Canaan. Leslie had no choice but to obey.
This fanatical stupidity was an answer to Cromwell's prayers. His was the best cavalry in Europe, and on the level ground rolled up the flanks of the Scottish infantry. By leaving the high ground a promising victory became a general rout in which 3,000 Scottish troops were cut down by Cromwell's pursing cavalry. Another 10,000 were taken prisoner. Cromwell was so relieved at escaping from his near defeat that it is said on the battlefield in the midst of the carnage he was overcome by maniacal laughter.
But now Cromwell was faced with the problem of what to do with his prisoners. Half he freed as their wounds rendered them unfit for further military service. But 5,000 were still an able-bodied threat. Cromwell ordered Sir Arthur Haselrigge of Newcastle to deal with the problem. Haselrigge forced the 5,000 Scottish POWs to march 120 miles in eight days with little food from Dunbar through Berwick, Morpeth, and Newcastle, to Durham. Any who tried to escape, any who fell behind, any who became sick were shot. In his article Derek Bell called this the "Durham Death March," and likened it to Bataan. Some 1500 Scots died on the march.
In Durham the survivors were confined in the abandoned cathedral where they were kept in unsanitary conditions with little food and no medical attention. The prisoners were reduced to robbing the old crypts for bits of interred jewelry to bribe their English guards for better food. In two months by the end of October out of the original 5,000 only 1,400 Scottish prisoners survived. In 1946 while installing new heating pipes, workmen unearthed a long forgotten ditch extending from the cathedral's north door straight for several hundred feet. It contained thousands of skeletons, piled like cord wood, presumably the remains of the Durham Death March.
Those 1,400 survivors were still a threat to Cromwell's Commonwealth, and the government ordered their exile from the British isles. Five hundred were sold into the French army to fight in Spain, and nine hundred were sold as indentured servants to the New World. Most went to Virginia, but 150 on November 11 were put aboard a ship named the Unity captained by Augustine Walker out of London bound for Boston. Conditions aboard ship for the Scottish prisoners were little better than on slaving ships, and we do not know how many died during the voyage. But we do know that in Boston 25 were sold to a sawmill on the Piscataqua River in Maine, and 62 were sent to the Saugus by The Company of Undertakers of the Iron Works of New England. These are the men whom we are commemorating today.
Soon after they arrived here one of their number, Davidson, died of poor health, probably from the sea voyage. Seventeen were sent back to Boston to work in the company's warehouses. Five to ten were sold off to work off their indenture in local businesses and homes. The remainder lived and worked here at the Saugus Iron Works, serving as forge hands, colliers, blacksmiths, miners, woodcutters, and domestics. Their names include John Toish, James Mackall, John Mackshane, Thomas Tower, John Clark, John Steward, James Gourdan, James Adams, and many others. In time some married and raised families whose descendants are among us here today.
We are gathered here today to remember the souls of those Scots who lost their lives or their freedom fighting to defend their country at the Battle of Dunbar 350 years ago today. And we are gathered here specifically at the Saugus Iron Works to give thanks for the lives of those prisoners of that war who survived the rigors of their ill-treatment and exile to begin new families here in this country.
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Here are the Ruins of Dunbar Castle.
Scotland Honors Her Soldiers
