History of the Stewarts | Battles and Historic Events
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The battle of Inverkeithing
A battle of the three Kingdoms fought on the 20th July 1651
Cromwell had invaded Scotland in July 1650; after a period of unproductive manoeuvring, Cromwell inflicted a heavy defeat on the Scottish army under David Leslie at Dunbar on 3 September 1650. However, Cromwell was still blocked by Leslie and unable to advance further into Scotland. Cromwell soon realised that Fife was the key to outflanking Leslie, and prepared for a sea-borne assault on the Fife coast at North Queensferry. On the night of 16/17 July 1651, Colonel Overton led around 2,000 men to a landing on the north shore of the Forth, possibly at Inverkeithing Bay or Port Laing; by 20 July, the Parliamentarian force numbered around 4,500 men and was dug in on the Ferry Hills looking north towards roughly the same number of Scots at Castland Hill. When they heard report of Scottish reinforcements coming from Stirling, the Parliamentarians attacked. After a cavalry action that saw losses on both sides, the Scottish infantry retreated north towards Pitreavie Castle, fighting all the way.. At Pitreavie, the infantry made a final stand but were overwhelmed by the more experienced Parliamentarians who had the additional advantage of cavalry. The Scots took heavy losses, including many prisoners.
This was the last major battle of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in Scotland, and from 1652 Scotland was wholly under the control of the Protectorate.
Colonel Overton’s force consisted of 1,600 foot plus four troops of cavalry. The landing took place on the peninsula at Queen’s Ferry on the night of 16/17 July, with, according to Cromwell, the loss of only six men. The Scots had a garrison nearby at Burntisland and the alarm was quickly sent to Stirling; Sir John Browne and Major General James Holbourne were sent with their brigades of cavalry and infantry. The two armies drew up facing each other, with the English dug in on the Ferry Hills and the Scots on the lower slopes of Castland Hill, with their right anchored on Whinney Hill and their left on the Hill of Selvege or Muckle Hill, a little to the south of Inverkeithing. Once the deployments had been made, nothing happened for an hour and a half, with each side expecting to be attacked by the other. The trigger for action was a report from Cromwell that Scots reinforcements were marching from Stirling. As the English attacked, Browne on the Scots right led a cavalry charge using the slope and the Scots lancers broke the English cavalry opposite, who were probably inexperienced troopers. However, the English counter-attacked, routing the Scottish cavalry and capturing Browne himself. On the left, the moss troopers were initially successful, but lack of discipline began to tell and they, in turn, were routed. With the rout of the Scots cavalry the battle was effectively over, with relatively little serious fighting at the initial battle lines. It seems the Scots cavalry either covered the retreat of the infantry, or that Holbourne withdrew the infantry leaving the cavalry to fight on alone. The pursuit of the defeated was protracted and bloody. Holbourne’s experienced troops and Gray’s regiment both seem to have escaped intact, although it is said that the Pinkerton Burn ran red with blood for three days, but the Highlanders were almost wiped out after a four hour running battle culminating in a stand on the slopes around Pitreavie Castle. Duart and his men turned to fight, the English accounts said that all but thirty-five out of 800 Highlanders were killed, though Balfour records that the Scots lost 800 in total of whom 100 were Duart’s men
Lambert had fought for Parliament throughout the First English Civil War. He was at Marston Moor and later at Preston as Cromwell’s second-in-command. In 1651, after Inverkeithing, he was with Cromwell at Worcester, the battle that ended Scotland’s role in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. He was a commissioner for Scotland’s affairs and appointed briefly as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; he took a role of leading military interests in the Protectorate, and led an army to meet Monck after Richard Cromwell’s resignation; Monck brought about the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, and Lambert ended his days in prison as a traitor to the Crown. The Scots infantry was commanded by Major General James Holbourne and the Scots cavalry by Sir John Browne. Holbourne fought against the Crown throughout the First English Civil War as an infantry commander. In 1645, he was offered a commission in the New Model Army but declined. He was one of the three man deputation from the Committee of Estates who opened unsuccessful negotiations with Cromwell in 1648 about the fate of the king and the future relationship between the two parliaments. In 1650, he was the commander of the escort that took the captive Marquis of Montrose from Ardvreck Castle to Edinburgh, where Montrose was executed. Holbourne was also part of Leslie’s army at Dunbar later that year, and like him was able to escape to Stirling. From here, he was sent to engage the English landing at Inverkeithing Bay, commanding the cavalry on this occasion, and Holbourne once again was able to escape the battlefield. Sir John Brown of Fordell was an experienced cavalry commander, who had driven a Royalist army under Lord Digby and Sir Marmaduke Langdale back into England in a small engagement known as the Battle of Annan Moor in late October 1645. They had been trying to force a passage north to link up with Montrose, although by that stage he had already been forced to flee after his defeat at Philiphaugh. Sir Hector Maclean of Duart, the eighteenth clan chief of Clan Maclean and second Baronet of Morvern, was in command of the Highland soldiers during the battle. He and his father had fought for Montrose in 1645, and Maclean now found himself allied with his former enemies against Cromwell. He was killed in the battle, and one of the two slogans (war cries) of the Macleans dates from the battle: Fear eile airson Eachuinn!. This is a reference to seven brothers who are supposed to have shouted this, which translates as “Another for Hector”, as each in turn stepped forward to protect their clan chief. All seven of the brothers were killed, and Hector died with them near Pitreavie Castle.
