Dasset Hills, which throw out a spur of high ground into the level. At the time of the battle the whole country was unenclosed, and there can have been but little of the wood that now clothes the slope of the hill, and gives a wonderful beauty to the foreground. The troops of Essex found themselves in the plain, bounded in front and on their left by steep green hills, from which they were about two miles distant. On the southern side of Edgehill they could see the Red Horse, which still gives its name to the

plain (the Vale of the Red Horse), and which had been cut into the red iron-stained rock as a memorial of that Earl of Warwick who, before the battle of Towton, killed his horse, and vowed to share the perils of the meanest of his soldiers. The Puritan ministers, who passed along the ranks, exhorting the men to do their duty, afterwards referred to this figure as "the Red Horse of the wrath of the Lord," which He caused "to ride about furiously to the ruin of the enemy." On the other hand, Charles, whose whole army was at length disposed along the hill, could overlook the entire position of his adversaries. They lay below him as on a map. The little town of Kineton was at their back; and Essex himself occupied a plot of rising ground now known as "the Two Battle Farms," Battledon and Thistledon. His army numbered between 12,000

and 13,000 men. That of the king was superior by at least 2,000 infantry, and some troops of horse. The right wing of the royal army, consisting of Prince Rupert's Cavalry, rested upon what is now called Bullet Hill, where the road comes up from Kineton. The centre, where the king's tent was pitched, and his standard displayed, covered the site of the "Round House," now marked by a sham ruin, immediately over the village of Radway. Here was Lord Lindsey at the head of the royal footguards, the "redcoats," as they were called. The standard was borne by Sir Edmund Verney. The left, commanded by Lord Wilmot, stood where the road from Stratfordon-Avon runs up to what was then a country hostel called the "Sunrising." Had Charles chosen to await the attack of Essex in this strong position his success could hardly have been doubtful. But his men were impatient and high in spirit; in the plain below his cavalry might act with great advantage; and in spite of the prudent counsel of his brave old general, the Earl of Lindsey, the king determined to push forward the two first lines, and to meet the attack half-way. He rode along in front of his troops, in full armour, with the ribbon of the Garter across his breastplate, and its star on his mantle of black velvet-the stately figure which is familiar to us in the "presentations of Vandyck. In his tent he addressed his principal officers. "If this day shine prosperous unto us, we shall all be happy in a glorious victory. Your king is both your cause, your quarrel, and your captain. The foe is in sight..... The best encouragement I can give you is this: that come life or death, your king will bear you company, and ever keep this field, this place, and this day's service in his grateful remembrance."

The prayer before the battle of Sir Jacob Astley,* Major-General under Lord Lindsey, is famous: "O Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me. ... March on, boys." The princes Charles and afterwards Lord Clarendon.

James were placed during the battle under the care of Hyde, There was also in attendance on them William Harvey, the famous discoverer of the circulation of the blood; and it is asserted that this philosopher was found, during the heat of the battle, ensconced under a hedge, quietly reading Virgil. He was persuaded to withdraw to a place of greater safety.

It was not until two o'clock in the afternoon that the army advanced, and the battle commenced about three, when the Parliament's guns opened fire from their right flank. On the king's right, as Rupert advanced, he encountered the enemy's left on the side of Bullet Hill, so called from the relics of the fight still often turned up there. But suddenly Sir Faithful Fortescue and his men, who were in Essex's ranks, fired their pistols into the ground, and galloped into Rupert's lines. This desertion entirely confused the Parliamentarians; that wing broke, and fled before Rupert's troopers, and the pursuit, accompanied with great slaughter, lasted across the open fields for nearly three miles, as far as the town of Kineton. In Kineton, Rupert imprudently allowed himself to be detained for an hour in plundering the baggage of the Parliamentary troops which had been left in the streets. An alarm was all at once given that the enemy was again forming, and the prince drew up his cavalry on ground that still bears the name of

* This prayer is generally assigned to Lord Lindsey. The authority, however, is the "Memoirs" of Sir Philip Warwick; and the passage, properly read, distinctly gives it to Sir Jacob Astley.

"Rupert's Headland." But it was too late. Hampden and his troops, who had been some marches behind Essex, came up at this juncture and opened fire. Rupert was compelled to recross the plain in great confusion, throwing away his feathered hat that he might not be too clearly marked; and he reached the king's centre only to find it in complete disorder. The royal standard had been taken, and Sir Edmund Verney killed.* Lord Lindsey had been shot in the thigh and made prisoner; and the king himself, as Clarendon admits, was in great personal danger, since with fewer than one hundred horse, and they without an officer, he was within half musket-shot of the enemy. It was, in short, the darkness of the October evening which enabled the royal troops to hold their ground. Charles, says Clarendon, "caused his cannon. which were nearest to the enemy to be drawn off, and with his whole forces spent the night in the field, by such a fire as could be made with the little wood and bushes which grew thereabouts." At daybreak, part of the Parliament's army was still seen in array, but the ill success of either side had been nearly evenly balanced, and neither was anxious to renew the struggle. Both sides claimed the victory; and a fire was lighted on the curious beacon-tower which still rises on the edge of the Dasset Hills, conveying the news to a hill above Ivinghoe in Buckinghamshire, thence to Highgate, and so to London. The real advantage, nevertheless, rested with the king. His army was still between Essex and the Parliament; and all the country round Edgehill fell at once into his power.

A.D 1642

The dead on either side, whose numbers were greatly exaggerated, but who seem to have been about thirteen or fourteen hundred, were buried for the most part between the two farmhouses of Battledon and Thistledon, on ground now called "The Graveyards," where relics are often turned up. On the king's side, besides Verney, fell Colonel Munro, Lord Aubigny, and Lord Lindsey, who died in Essex's coach on his way to Warwick Castle, "under the portcullis of which his corpse entered side by side with that of his youthful and gallant enemy, Charles Essex." Lord Willoughby, son of the Earl of Lindsey, was made prisoner in attempting to rescue his father. The chief person killed on the Parliament's side was Lord St. John of Bletshoe.

After the death of Sir Edmund Verney, the royal standard was taken by an ensign named Young, and delivered by Lord Essex to his secretary, Chambers, who rode by his side. But in the confusion one of the king's officers, Captain Smith, drew on the orange scarf of a fallen Parliamentarian, and riding in among the enemy's lines, told the secretary that "it was a shame so honourable a trophy of war should be borne by a penman." He resigned it. The Cavalier galloped back with it, and before evening was knighted under its shadow. He afterwards received a golden medal, with the king's portrait on one side and the banner on the reverse, and wore it, we are told, "by a green-watered ribbon across his shoulders," until his death, at "Cheriton Fight," in 1646.

Clarendon (Life, Vol. I., p. 134) records a remarkable conversation between himself and Sir Edmund Verney at the time of the setting up of the standard at Nottingham. Sir Edmund declared that "he did not like the quarrel," but that he would in no case forsake the king. "I choose rather," he added, "to lose my life (which I am sure I shall do) to preserve and defend those things which are against my conscience to preserve and defend."

The actual scene of the battle is the best memorial of the fight at Edgehill. Much of the country has been enclosed and planted, but in its main outlines it is unchanged. The "Round House," close to which the king's standard was planted, has given place to a modern ruin, constructed, after the fashion of the time, by a member of the family of Miller, of Radway Grange, a friend of Fielding and of Shenstone.

Below it, a track in

the woods, now much overgrown, is pointed out as that by which the king, on the morning of the battle, drove down the hill in his coach, to breakfast in a cottage at Radway, which is still shown; and in Radway Church is the tomb and effigy of Captain Kingsmill, who fell on the king's side. The house called the "Sunrising," an inn in 1642, has been converted into a private dwelling, and in it is preserved a sword with the Lindsey crest, which is said to be that carried into battle by the unfortunate general. And from the upper room of the "tower" among the artificial ruins, or from other points along the ridge, a vast prospect is commanded across the plain, from the Malverns on one side to Charnwood

THE LAST FIGHT OF THE CIVIL WAR.

133

Forest on the other.

The Avon is seen at a distance of ten or twelve miles, its course being marked by the spires of Coventry, the tower of St. Mary's at Warwick, the spire of Stratford-on-Avon, and Bredon Hill, in Worcestershire; and in storm, or in the dim October twilight, it would not be difficult to re-people the plain with such a phantom fight as many another battle-field is held sometimes to witness, and as was duly beheld here about three months after the struggle. Apparitions and prodigious noyses of war and battels" were then seen and heard on Edgehill, sundry of the "incorporeal substances" being distinctly known by their faces, as Sir Edmund Verney, "and others who were there slaine."

It is, of course, impossible to follow here the course of the Civil War between the battle of Edgehill and that of Naseby, which took place nearly three years later (June 14, 1645). In this, the last great fight of the war, the fate of the king was really decided. The plateau of high land on which stands the village of Naseby is, according to a

local saying, the "highest ground in England." The actual height of its loftiest point is 697 feet, which may perhaps make it one of the most elevated table-lands in the island. It is here, and among the neighbouring ridges, that so many important rivers have their springs: the Nen and the Welland running north and east into the German Ocean; the Avon and the Leam flowing westward to join the Severn. The country is not so picturesque as that round Edgehill, but it has the same general character, and very extensive views in all directions are commanded from the higher crests. Edgehill itself is visible in the far distance toward the south-west, but Naseby is some miles within the Northamptonshire border.

On the 7th of May, 1645, the king and Prince Rupert left Oxford and took the field, hoping to raise the siege of Chester. Hearing this, the "Committee" of Parliament, then sitting in London, ordered Fairfax, with his army of the "new model," then in the West, to return at once and invest Oxford. This was done. Charles advanced to Leicester, and took the town by storm; then, learning that Oxford was blockaded, he moved southward for the relief of that place, and established his head-quarters at the "Wheatsheaf" inn, in Daventry. Here he remained for six nights. His army consisted of rather more than 10,000 men, of whom the infantry were at first stationed in Daventry "Field" (then unenclosed), while the cavalry were dispersed through the adjacent villages. All were after