[Illustration: EDGEHILL.]
While we are considering this locality two other famous battlefields not
far away, that together were decisive of the fate of England, must not
be overlooked. These were Edgehill and Naseby, the opening and closing
contests of the Civil War that overthrew Charles I., the scene of one
being visible from the other, though the intervening contest spread
almost all over the island. The high ground that borders Warwickshire
and Northamptonshire has various roads crossing it, and the opposing
forces meeting on these highlands made them the scenes of the
battles--practical repetitions of many hot contests there in earlier
years. The command of the Parliamentary army had been given to the Earl
of Essex, and he and all his officers were proclaimed traitors by the
king. Charles I. assembled an army at Nottingham in 1642 to chastise
them, and it was considered an evil omen that when the royal standard
was set up on the evening of the day of assemblage, a gale arose and it
was blown down. Charles moved west from Nottingham to Shrewsbury to meet
reinforcements from Wales, and then his army numbered eighteen thousand
men. Essex was at Northampton, and moved southward to Worcester. Charles
desired to march to London to break up the Parliament, but to do this
must either defeat or outflank Essex. He chose the latter plan, moved to
Kenilworth, but could not enter Coventry, because Lord Brooke, who was
afterwards killed at Lichfield, held it for the Parliament. Essex left
Worcester, and pressed the king by forced marches, but Charles turned
his flank and started for London with Essex in pursuit. In October he
reached Edgecot, near the field at Edgehill, and there in the open
country he was astonished to find a gentleman amusing himself with a
pack of hounds. He asked who it was who could hunt so merrily while his
sovereign was about to fight for his crown. Mr. Richard Shuckburgh was
accordingly introduced, and the king persuaded him to take home his
hounds and raise his tenantry. The next day he joined Charles with a
troop of horse, and was knighted on the field of Edgehill.
Charles slept in the old house at Edgecot: the house has been superseded
by a newer one, in which is preserved the bed in which the king rested
on the night of October 22, 1642. At three o'clock next morning, Sunday,
he was aroused by a messenger from Prince Rupert, whose cavalry guarded
the rear, saying that Essex was at hand, and the king could fight at
once if he wished. He immediately ordered the march to Edgehill, a
magnificent situation for an army to occupy, for here the broken country
of the Border sinks suddenly down upon the level plain of Central
England. Essex's camp-fires on that plain the previous night had
betrayed his army to Prince Rupert, while Rupert's horsemen, appearing
upon the brow of the hill, told Essex next morning that the king was at
hand. Edgehill is a long ridge extending almost north and south, with
another ridge jutting out at right angles into the plain in front: thus
the Parliamentary troops were on low ground, bounded in front and on
their left by steep hills. On the southern side of Edgehill there had
been cut out of the red iron-stained rock of a projecting cliff a huge
red horse, as a memorial of the great Earl of Warwick, who before a
previous battle had killed his horse and vowed to share the perils of
the meanest of his soldiers. Both sides determined to give battle; the
Puritan ministers passed along the ranks exhorting the men to do their
duty, and they afterwards referred to the figure as the "Red Horse of
the wrath of the Lord which did ride about furiously to the ruin of the
enemy." Charles disposed his army along the brow of the hill, and could
overlook his foes, stretched out on the plain, as if on a map, with the
village of Kineton behind them. Essex had twelve thousand men on a
little piece of rising ground known afterwards as the "Two Battle
Farms," Battledon and Thistledon. The king was superior both in numbers
and position, with Prince Rupert and his cavalry on the right wing; Sir
Edmund Verney bore the king's standard in the centre, where his tent was
pitched, and Lord Lindsey commanded; under him was General Sir Jacob
Astley, whose prayer before the battle 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 king rode along in front of his troops in the
stately figure that is familiar in Vandyke's paintings--full armor, with
the ribbon of the Garter across his breastplate and its star on his
black velvet mantle--and made a brief speech of exhortation. The young
princes Charles and James, his sons, both of them afterwards kings of
England, were present at Edgehill, while the philosopher Hervey, who
discovered the circulation of the blood, was also in attendance, and we
are told was found in the heat of the battle sitting snugly under a
hedge reading a copy of Virgil.
[Illustration: MILL AT EDGEHILL.]
The battle did not begin till afternoon, and the mistake the king made
was in not waiting for the attack in his strong position on the brow of
the hill; but his men were impatient and in high spirits, and he
permitted them to push forward, meeting the attack halfway. Rupert's
cavalry upon encountering the Parliamentary left wing were aided by the
desertion of part of the latter's forces, which threw them into
confusion; the wing broke and fled before the troopers, who drove them
with great slaughter into the village of Kineton, and then fell to
plundering Essex's baggage-train. This caused a delay which enabled the
Parliamentary reserves to come up, and they drove Rupert back in
confusion; and when he reached the royal lines he found them in
disorder, with Sir Edmund Verney killed and the royal standard captured.
Lord Lindsey wounded and captured, and the king in personal danger: but
darkness came, and enabled the king to hold his ground, and each side
claimed a victory. The royal standard was brought back by a courageous
Cavalier, who put on a Parliamentary orange-colored scarf, rode into the
enemy's lines, and persuaded the man who had it to let him carry it. For
this bold act he was knighted by the king on the spot and given a gold
medal. There were about fourteen hundred killed in the battle, and
buried between the two farm-houses of Battledon and Thistledon, at a
place now called the Graveyards. Lord Lindsey died on his way to Warwick
with his captors. Cromwell was not personally engaged at Edgehill,
although there as a captain of cavalry. Carlyle says that after watching
the fight he told Hampden they never would get on with a "set of poor
tapsters and town-apprentice people fighting against men of honor; to
cope with men of honor they must have men of religion." Hampden
answered, "It was a good notion if it could be executed;" and Cromwell
"set about executing a bit of it, his share of it, by and by."