ose 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Charles slept in the old house at Edgecot: the house has been superseded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