s, and made himself master of a battery of cannon. In another part
of the field the king's guards, with his standard, bore down every corps
that opposed them, till Essex ordered two regiments of infantry and a
squadron of horse to charge them in front and flank, whilst Balfour,
abandoning the guns which he had taken, burst on them from the rear. They
now broke; Sir Edward Varner was slain, and the standard which he bore was
taken; the earl of Lindsey received a mortal wound; and his son, the lord
Willoughby, was made prisoner in the attempt to rescue his father[1].
Charles, who, attended by his troop of pensioners, watched the fortune of
the field, beheld with dismay the slaughter of his guards;

[Footnote 1: The standard was nevertheless recovered by the daring or the
address of a Captain Smith, whom the king made a banneret in the field.]

and ordering the reserve to advance, placed himself at their head; but
at the moment Rupert and the cavalry reappeared; and, though they had
withdrawn from Keynton to avoid, the approach of Hampden with the rear of
the parliamentary army, their presence restored the hopes of the royalists
and damped the ardour of their opponents. A breathing-time succeeded; the
firing ceased on both sides, and the adverse armies stood gazing at each
other till the darkness induced them to withdraw,--the royalists to their
first position on the hills, and the parliamentarians to the village of
Keynton. From the conflicting statements of the parties, it is impossible
to estimate their respective losses. Most writers make the number of the
slain to amount to five thousand; but the clergyman of the place, who
superintended the burial of the dead, reduces it to about one thousand two
hundred men.[1]

Both armies claimed the honour, neither reaped the benefit, of victory.
Essex, leaving the king to pursue his march, withdrew to Warwick, and
thence to Coventry; Charles, having compelled the garrison[a] of Banbury to
surrender, turned aside to the city of Oxford. Each commander wished for
leisure to

[Footnote 1: This is the most consistent account of the battle, which I can
form out of the numerous narratives in Clarendon, May, Ludlow, Heath, &c.
Lord Wharton, to silence the alarm in London, on his arrival from the
army, assured the two houses that the loss did not exceed three hundred
men.--Journ. v. 423. The prince of Wales, about twelve years old, who was
on horseback in a field under the care of Sir