English Civil War. Scottish Covenanter forces abandon their month-long Siege of Hereford, a Cavalier stronghold, on news of Royalist victories in Scotland.

The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Royalists and Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the struggle consisted of the First English Civil War and the Second English Civil War. The Anglo-Scottish War of 1650 to 1652 is sometimes referred to as the Third English Civil War.

The Kingdom of Scotland was a sovereign state in northwest Europe, traditionally said to have been founded in 843. Its territories expanded and shrank, but it came to occupy the northern third of the island of Great Britain, sharing a land border to the south with the Kingdom of England. During the Middle Ages, Scotland engaged in intermittent conflict with England, most prominently the Wars of Scottish Independence, which saw the Scots assert their independence from the English. Following the annexation of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles from Norway in 1266 and 1472 respectively, and the capture of Berwick by England in 1482, the territory of the Kingdom of Scotland corresponded to that of modern-day Scotland, bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest.

Covenanters were members of a 17th-century Scottish religious and political movement, who supported a Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the primacy of its leaders in religious affairs. It originated in disputes with James VI and his son Charles I over church organisation and doctrine, but expanded into political conflict over the limits of royal authority.

The siege of Hereford took place in 1645 during the English Civil War when the city of Hereford and its English Royalist garrison was besieged by a Scottish Covenanter army under the command of the Earl of Leven. The Covenanters were allied to the English Parliamentarian cause and moved to take the Royalist stronghold in the wake of their victory at the Battle of Naseby. After a month-long siege, the approach of Royalist reinforcements and news of Montrose's victories against the Covenanters in Scotland forced Leven to abandon the siege and retreat. However, in December of the same year the city was taken in a surprise attack by Colonel John Birch and remained in Parliamentarian hands for the remainder of the conflict.