← Back to the front page

Fascinating and Lesser Known People Who Changed American History

Khalid Elhassan May 5, 2020 33 min

Normandy landings - Operation Overlord — Men of the 320th in Normandy. YouTube

14. The English Civil War’s Final Battle Was Fought in Maryland

14battle of the severn. in red coat rags attired — Battle of the Severn. In Red Coat Rags Attired

In 1655, Maryland’s governor, sworn to the colony’s royalist Catholic Lord Baltimore, sailed with a small militia to the Puritan settlement of Providence, today’s Annapolis. His goal was to surprise the region’s Puritans, and compel them to swear allegiance to Lord Baltimore. Unfortunately for Maryland’s governor, things did not work out as he had planned.

Instead of surprising the Puritans of Providence, they ended up surprising the governor on March 25^th, 1655. By attacking the governor’s forces unexpectedly from the rear, the Puritans routed their opponents at the Battle of the Severn. By the time it was over, the governor’s militia had lost 49 men, while the Puritans lost only 2. The Battle of the Severn holds the distinction of being the last battle fought in the English Civil War.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.