army directly under the command of Prince Rupert of the Rhine and on 29 June when he was created Baron Wilmot of Adderbury, Oxfordshire; these honours may well have been assisted by the restored influence of his old patroness, the queen. Later that year he commanded a large cavalry contingent that was sent to help the western royalist army, and on 13 July he defeated Sir William Waller at the Battle of Roundway Down opening the way for the royalists to solidify their position in the west. In 1644 when Rupert took over a regional command in the North, Wilmot stepped into his shoes as commander of all the Royalist cavalry and as the dominant influence on military matters. On 29 June at the Battle of Cropredy Bridge he participated in defeating Waller for the second time, but not before he had had to lead a charge, in which he was wounded and briefly taken prisoner. When his father died (shortly before April 1644) Wilmot inherited the title of Viscount Wilmot of Athlone and much of his father's political standing in Ireland. In April he was, jointly with Thomas Dillon, 4th Viscount Dillon, made Lord President of Connaught, a post that his late father had held jointly with the late Viscount Ranelagh since 1630 ; this appointment laid the foundations for his becoming a major political figure in both England and Ireland. All recognised that Wilmot was popular with the soldiers he commanded, due to a "mixture of courage, enterprise, and boozy affability" Clarendon famously, if waspishly, noted "He was a man proud and ambitious, and incapable of being contented; an orderly officer in marches and governing his troops. He drank hard, and had a great power over all who did so, which was a great people". This popularity and his central position in the army command, allowed him to start to exert political influence. In June Wilmot felt in a strong enough position to canvas support in the army to ask the king to dismiss his two principal civilian advisers, Lord Digby and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Culpeper, and to adopt the strategy of a march on London. Charles, who had no personal affection for Wilmot (because Wilmot had voted for the death of the Earl of Strafford), dismissed the strategy and kept Digby and Culpeper on as his advisers. With the failure of his first