Unveiling of the Marston Moor Memorial

On a rather on a grey day a sombre crowd assembles to witness the unveiling of a memorial to the 4,000, mainly Royalists, who fell at Marston Moor in one day in July 1644. Nearly three hundred years later in July 1939, with Europe on the verge of a much bloodier conflict, Liberal politician and founder and President of the Cromwell Association, Isaac Foot, speaks to the crowd before performing the ceremony.

Presumably the unveiling took place on or near the date of anniversary of the date of the battle on 2nd July 1644. The Battle of Marston Moor, just to the west of York, was the biggest of the battles of the English Civil War. The English and Scots, Independents and Presbyterians, united on the side of the Parliamentarians to defeat the Royalists, who consequently lost their foothold in the north. Over the years many similar memorials have been erected to commemorate battles of the Civil War, often with annual battle re-enactments, as at Marston Moor. One of Isaac Foot’s sons was the left wing Labour politician Michael Foot, and a grandson was the even more left-wing journalist and political activist Paul Foot.