moved two days later on by rapid
marches into Warwickshire, it was only to find that he had been
out-marched by the King, who, after resting at Southam, stood with the
Royalist army at Edgcot across the way to the capital. That this had been
accomplished, notwithstanding the opposition of the strongholds of Warwick
and Coventry, speaks not unfavourably for the generalship of Earl Lindsay,
the King's Lieutenant-General, whom we find at Edgcot contemplating an
attack upon Banbury Castle. The King's was a good position: it commanded
all the roads to London, held Banbury in its hand, covered the Cherwell
bridge and fords, and had within touch the dominating escarpment of Edge
Hill. If the purpose was the subjection of some prominent leaders of the
Parliamentarians it succeeded only in the taking of Lord Saye and Sele's
house at Broughton, and of Banbury, and Banbury Castle; in the partial
destruction of Lord Spencer's house[B] at Wormleighton, and in sending a
summons to Warwick Castle[P] to surrender.

Kineton, on October 22nd, was the headquarters of the Parliamentary army,
the troops in the evening disposing themselves on the surrounding plain.
"The common soldiers have not come into a bed, but lain in the open field
in the wet and cold nights," says the Worthy Divine[PG] "and most of them
scarcely eat or drank at all for 24 hours together, nay, for 48, except
fresh water when they could get it." The want of transport, which had
necessitated Hampden and Hollis struggling behind a day's march in the
rear in the neighbourhood of Stratford-on-Avon, had no doubt entailed
these privations upon the army. Nor do the Royalists appear to have fared
better, for Clarendon[B381] complains of the hostility of the country
people, stating also that the circuit in which the battle was fought,
being between the dominions of Lord Saye and Lord Brooke, was the most
eminently corrupt of any in the kingdom. The King's forces seem to have
been quartered about the country between Wormleighton and Cropredy, Prince
Rupert with his cavalry near Wormleighton, the King himself staying at
Edgcot House, whilst the main body of the army occupied the slopes and
high lands on the Northamptonshire side of the Cherwell vale near by. Thus
the three roads North of Banbury were dominated by the Royalist troops,
and the fourth, the old London road, was within striking distance.

The preaching of the local divines, Robert Harris, John Dod, and Robert
Cleaver,