Second Bishop's War: King Charles I's English army loses to a Scottish Covenanter force at the Battle of Newburn.
The Battle of Newburn, also known as Battle of Newburn Ford, took place on 28 August 1640, during the Second Bishops' War. It was fought at Newburn, a village just outside Newcastle, situated at a ford over the River Tyne.
A Scottish Covenanter army of 20,000 under Alexander Leslie defeated an English force of 5,000, led by Lord Conway. The only significant military action of the war, victory enabled the Scots to occupy Newcastle, which provided the bulk of London's coal supplies and allowed them to put pressure on the central government.
The Treaty of Ripon agreed on 26 October allowed the Scots to occupy large parts of northern England, and paid them daily expenses of £850, which only ended with the August 1641 Treaty of London. Funding this forced Charles to recall Parliament, a key element in the series of events that led to the First English Civil War in August 1642.
The 1639 and 1640 Bishops' Wars (Scottish Gaelic: Cogaidhean nan Easbaigean) were the first of the conflicts known collectively as the 1638 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which took place in Scotland, England and Ireland. Others include the Irish Confederate Wars, the First, Second and Third English Civil Wars, and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.
The wars originated in disputes over governance of the Church of Scotland or kirk that began in the 1580s and came to a head when Charles I attempted to impose uniform practices on the kirk and the Church of England in 1637. These were opposed by most Scots, who supported a Presbyterian church governed by ministers and elders and the 1638 National Covenant pledged to oppose such "innovations". Signatories were known as Covenanters.
Although the Covenant made no reference to Bishops, they were seen as instruments of Royal control and in December were expelled by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which was the origin of the term "Bishops Wars"; this action gave a political dimension to a conflict previously focused on religious practice. After the Covenanters took control of government following the 1639 war, they passed a series of acts that amounted to a constitutional revolution, confirmed by victory in 1640.
In order to protect that settlement, the Scots sought support from sympathisers in Ireland and England, chiefly Puritans who objected to the religious reforms and those who wanted to force Charles to recall Parliament, suspended since 1629. When Charles did the same, it destabilised all three entities; the October 1641 Irish Rebellion was followed by the First English Civil War in August 1642.