being,' etc. Avon Well, the distinct source of Shakspere's Avon, is on the western slope of the high grounds; Nen and Welland streams leading towards Cromwell's Fen-country, begin to gather themselves from boggy places on the eastern side. The grounds, as we say, lie high; and are still, in their new subdivisions, known by the name of 'Hills,' 'Rutput Hill,' 'Mill Hill,' 'Dust Hill,' and the like, precisely as in Rushworth's time; but they are not properly hills at all; they are broad, blunt, clayey masses, swelling towards and from each other, like indolent waves of a sea, sometimes of miles in extent.

"It was on this high moor-ground, in the centre of England, that King Charles, on the 14th of June, 1645, fought his last battle; dashed fiercely

Obelisk Erected on Naseby Field in Commemoration of the Battle.

against the New-Model army, which he had despised till then; and saw himself shivered utterly to ruin thereby. 'Prince Rupert, on the king's right wing, charged up the hill, and carried all before him;' but Lieutenant-General Cromwell charged down-hill on the other wing, likewise carrying all before him, and did not gallop off the field to plunder. Cromwell, ordered thither by the Parliament, had arrived from the association two days before, amid shouts from the whole army:' he had the ordering of the horse this morning. Prince Rupert, on returning from his plunder finds the king's infantry a ruin; prepares to charge again with the rallied cavalry; but the cavalry too, when it came to the point, broke all asunder,'-never to reassemble more. The chase went

through Harborough; where the king had already been that morning, when in an evil hour he turned back, to revenge some 'surprise of an outpost at Naseby the night before,' and gave the Roundheads battle. . . .

"The parliamentary army stood ranged on the height still partly called 'Mill Hill,' as in Rushworth's time, a mile and a half from Naseby; the king's army on a parallel Hill,' its back to Harborough, with the wide table of upland now named Broad Moor between them; where indeed the main brunt of the action still clearly enough shows itself to have been. There are hollow spots, of a rank vegetation, scattered over that Broad Moor; which are understood to have once been burial mounds; some of which have been (with more or less of sacrilege) verified as such. A friend of mine has in his cabinet two ancient grinder-teeth, dug lately from that ground, and waits for an opportunity to re-bury them there. Sound effectual grinders, one of them very large, which ate their breakfast on the fourteenth of June two hundred years ago, and, except to be clenched once in grim battle, had never work to do more in this world!"

Another popular historian thus describes the battle :"The parliamentary army ranged itself on a hill, called yet the Mill Hill, and the king's on a parallel hill, with its back to Harborough. The right wing was led by Cromwell, consisting of six regiments of horse, and the left consisting of nearly as many, was, at his request, committed to his friend Colonel Ireton, a Nottinghamshire man. Fairfax and Skippon took charge of the main body, and colonels Pride, Rainsborough, and Hammond, brought up the reserves. Rupert and his brother Maurice led on the right wing of Charles's army, Sir Marmaduke Langdale the left, Charles himself the main body, and Sir Jacob Astley, the Earl of Lindsay, the Lord Baird, and Sir George Lisle, the reserves. The word for the day of the royalists, was 'God and Queen Mary!' that of the parliamentarians, 'God our strength!' A wide moorland, called Broad Moor, lay between them. The cavaliers made themselves very merry at the new modelled army of Roundheads, for which they had the utmost contempt, having nothing aristocratic about it, and its head being farmer Cromwell, or the brewer of Huntingdon, as they pleased to call him. They expected to · sweep them away like dust, and Rupert making one of his headlong charges, seemed to realise their anticipations, for he drove the left wing of the Roundheads into instant confusion and flight, took Ireton prisoner, his horse being killed under him, and himself wounded severely in two

places; and, in his regular way, Rupert galloped after the fugitives, thinking no more of the main battle. But the scattered horse, who had been diligently taught to rally, collected behind him, returned to the defence of their guns, and were soon again ready for action. On the other hand, Cromwell had driven the left wing of the king's army off the field, but took care not to pursue them too far. He sent a few companies of horse to drive them beyond the battle, and with his main body he fell on the king's flank, where at first the royal foot was gaining the advantage. This unexpected assault threw them into confusion, and the soldiers of Fairfax's front which had given way, rallying and falling in again with the reserve as they came to the rear, were brought up by their officers and completed the route. Rupert, who was now returning from the chase, rode up to the wagon-train of the parliamentary army, and, ignorant of the state of affairs, offered the troops guarding the stores quarter. The reply was a smart volley of musketry, and, falling back and riding forward to the field, he found, as usual, a regular defeat. His followers stood stupefied at the sight, when Charles, riding up to them in despair, cried frantically, 'One charge more and the victory is ours yet!' But it was in vain, the main body was broken, that of Fairfax was complete; the artillery was seized, and the Roundheads were taking prisoners as fast as they could promise them quarter. Fairfax and Cromwell the next moment charged the confounded horse, and the whole fled at full gallop on the road towards Leicester, pursued almost to the gates of the town by Cromwell's troopers.

"The slaughter at this battle was not so great as might have been expected. May, the historian, says that the slain did not exceed four hundred men, three hundred of the royalists and one hundred of the parliamentarians; but five thousand prisoners were taken, including a great number of officers, and a considerable number of ladies in carriages. All the king's baggage and artillery, with nine thousand stand of arms were taken, and amongst the carriages that of the king's, containing his private papers. Clarendon accuses the Roundheads of killing above a hundred women, many of them of quality, but other evidence proves that this was false; the only women who were roughly treated were a number of wild Irish ones, who were armed with skeans, knives a foot long, and who used them like so many maniacs.”

After the defeat of Naseby the king retreated with that body of horse which still remained entire, first to Hereford, then to Abergavenny, and

IRETON TAKEN PRISONER AT THE BATTLE OF NASEBY, JUNE 14, 1645.