In Loyalty and Locality (1994, p. 112) Mark Stoyle points out that while many landed families maintained their allegiance, in spite of personal loss, others changed sides. Sir Alexander Carew, the Parliamentary governor of the fort guarding Plymouth harbour, promised to betray the fort to the Royalists, presumably to preserve his estate at Antony, but was himself betrayed and executed on 23 December, 1644. Lord Robartes was made governor of Plymouth, a vital Parliamentary port, to restore morale.
Two defectors are players in The Splendid Spur, Sir George Chudleigh of Ashton, near Newton Abbot (Q attended Newton College), and his son Major-General James Chudleigh. They were instrumental in raising Devon for Parliament but after the Battle of Stratton changed sides. They are more important to the plot than is at first apparent. Sir George Chudleigh is not mentioned by name until Chapter XV, and James Chudleigh until Chapter XVII.
Just as Sir Bevil Grenville played a central role in rallying Cornwall for the Royalists, in the face of counter-efforts by Puritans such as Richard Buller and Sir Alexander Carew, so the Chudleighs and others, like Sir Shilston Calmady, rallied Parliamentary support in Devon, silencing the Royalist voices existing in the working population, even in Puritan Exeter. This is what prevented Hopton moving his forces eastwards in response to the letters of the King. The novel only mentions the Devon Parliamentarians. In Chapter XIII, the reader learns that Sir Shilston Calmady was taken prisoner during the Battle of Braddock Down, which is historically correct. Maybe the Lieutenant-Colonel Calmady who fought under Major-General James Chudleigh at Polson Bridge on 22 April, 1643, was a son.
The Chudleighs were accessories to the Truce of 28 February to 22 April 1643 which Jack Marvel hears of when convalescing at Temple. James Chudleigh led the Parliamentary forces on Sourton Down on 25 April, which discovered the King’s correspondence with Hopton and led Stamford to plan the Stratton campaign – an event Q transfers to Bristol Castle in Chapter IX.
With the Stratton campaign the Chudleighs appear by name in the novel. James Chudleigh moved his forces from Sourton Down to Okehampton, where he was joined by his father, Sir George Chudleigh, and the Earl of Stamford. Sir George Chudleigh and 1,200 horse were then detached for a raid on Bodmin, while James Chudleigh and the bulk of the army made for Stratton.
Jack Marvel encounters Sir George Chudleigh’s horses at Temple on 15 May, 1643, in Chapter XV. He and Delia Killigrew encounter them again following Chudleigh’s retreat from Bodmin to Launceston, in Chapter XVIII.
The Battle of Stratton Heath took place on 16 May, 1643, with Ralph Hopton in command of the Royalists and Major-General James Chudleigh in effective though not official charge of the Parliamentarians. Chapter XVI omits any mention of Chudleigh yet he is central to the action in the text. Q correctly states that by three o’clock all Royalist advances had been beaten back and the Royalists were at the end of their strength. A final charge is attempted by the regiment of Sir Bevil Grenville but is met with a counter-charge by a ‘stand of pikes’. This is led by Chudleigh, although the novel does not state it. Sir Bevil Grenville falls to his knees and is righted by Jack Marvel. The charge is resumed and the Parliamentary position is taken, with Sir Bevil as the hero. This is not quite what happened.
The novel states that at an earlier time in the battle, Sir John Berkeley had lined his troop along the hedges to repulse a Parliamentary attack. In fact, this lining of the hedges took place to counter the repulse of Sir Bevil Grenville’s final charge, and Berkeley used musketeers who fired into the flanks of the Parliamentarians. With Chudleigh’s pikes destroyed and Chudleigh taken prisoner, Grenville resumed his charge and overran the demoralised Parliamentarians, with the Earl of Stamford leading the retreat. The real hero was less Sir Bevil Grenville but the man who kept his head in the crisis, Sir John Berkeley.
With the Parliamentarians in an impregnable position, Chudleigh’s charge grasped defeat out of victory. Why this happened is not clear, nor is it known why Chudleigh, and later his father, defected to the Royalists. Q simply informs us that Major-General James Chudleigh was taken prisoner. Yet the novel may well give us an insight. Q describes the radicalisation of the Parliamentarians and the detestation of this by individuals like Col. Essex. One suspects that the Chudleighs eventually found themselves with more in common with Hopton and Grenville than with Robartes, Carew and Nathaniel Fiennes.