NEAR YORK: King Charles declared his opponents traitors, named his generals, and marched forth from York toward Nottingham, where he intends to raise his standard and declare war against Parliament as early as next week.

Charles, who fled London for the North in March, said in a proclamation issued August 9 that the Earl of Essex, captain-general of the army of Parliament, and all who follow him are "traitors and rebels." The same proclamation named the Earl of Lindsay lieutenant-general of the King's army, and Sir Jacob Astley sergeant-major-general commanding the foot. The place of major-general of horse is said to be reserved for Charles’ nephew Rupert, Prince of the Rhine, who is reportedly en route from the Low Countries, where he'd been assisting Queen Henrietta in the purchase of munitions.

Lindsay was vice-admiral to the Duke of Buckingham on the disastrous La Rochelle expedition of 1627. Astley saw service against the Spanish in the Netherlands. He was also tutor to Prince Rupert, a veteran of campaigns in Germany against the Holy Roman Emperor.

It is the fervent prayer and hope of Charles that the procession south from York will inspire the countryside, from plowmen to grandees, to rise and join his army, whose numbers are currently "very few." While some speculate his departure is meant to avoid making England's largest county, with its considerable wealth of wool, cloth, and coal, the "seat of the war," it's more likely the case that, his recruiting having failed there, he must needs discover greener pastures, or at least ones outside of Yorkshire, whose support has been somewhat less than fervent.

Charles' attempt in April to seize the arsenal at Hull was denied by Sir John Hotham; later, the city's defenders opened the Humber sluicegates, flooding the countryside. An attempt by a troop of his horse to set fire to some barns outside the city walls was answered with vigorous musket-fire. A counter-attack by the defenders resulted in the loss of several of the artillery pieces purchased in Holland by Queen Henrietta. And Sir Thomas Fairfax presented Charles with a petition signed by numerous nobles asking the King to reconcile with Parliament.

The proclamation of August 9 also requested all "good subjects" to "assist his lordship and colonel Goring in defense of Portsmouth," which Goring seized in the King's name on August 2.

The King's strategy is to trap the the armies of Essex between his northern force and a southern army led by Goring. The combined forces would "crush" the "atheistical apprentice pups" of Parliament's armies, Goring recently told Anglia Rediviva over a breakfast of wine and eggs in Portsmouth.

Goring is  currently beset from the sea by naval forces commanded by the Earl of Warwick, and from land by the Trained-Bands of Sussex, Hampshire, and Surrey led by Sir William Waller. Waller served in the Palatinate and was a member of the Life-Guard of Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, Charles' daughter and Rupert's mother, and his best-known for escorting the unhappy princess to safety after the armies of her husband Frederick Elector Palatinate were crushed by the Hapsburgs at the White Mountain.