their general results and from the number of men in action, are the fields of Stamford, Lansdowne, Roundway Down, Marston Moor, and Naseby, in which last but one more than 50,000 British troops engaged in mutual slaughter; and these we propose to relate in their chronological order, as examples of the warfare of the time.

During the winter, after Edgehill, Charles established his head-quarters at Oxford, the ancient University of which has at all times been distinguished for loyalty; but when the war had lasted a year, the advantage thereof seemed to be with the Royalists and their unfortunate master. Few kings have been more distinguished for the talents and virtues which adorn and dignify domestic life than

relations of son, husband, and father, Charles was a pattern to all; while, half Scot, half Dane, by his courage he did honour to the races from which he sprang. With regard to his struggle with the Parliament, it is impossible not to perceive that he strove to maintain a portion of prerogative that had become totally incompatible with the advanced ideas of civil and religious liberty; yet it is equally certain that he only sought to retain the powers his English predecessors had possessed. "The errors of Charles," says one of our historians, than atoned for by his sufferings; and although many may demur to his title of martyr, few will hesitate to regard him as the victim of a crisis, which the growing power of the Commons and the

were more

By the end of a year, then, the Royalists were victorious in the western and northern counties of England. Bristol, the second city in that kingdom, had been wrested from the Parliament. They had won several battles, without encountering any very inglorious defeat; so adversity and dissension began to produce weakness among the less enthusiastic Roundheads. Plots and riots kept the Parliament forces in alarm. At one time it was thought necessary to fortify London against Charles; and those assertors of freedom of thought found it necessary to hang at their own doors certain citizens who differed from them in opinion. Several of the nobles, who had hitherto remained at Westminster, joined the Court at Oxford; and there seems little doubt that, if the operations of the Cavaliers had at this season been conducted by a sagacious military mind, the king would have returned in triumph to Whitehall.

Of the savage civil strife which was waging in Scotland during these events, we shall speak at a future time.

All England exhibited a most melancholy spectacle. No man was permitted to remain neuter; all intercourse between distant parts of the country was interrupted, and all the operations of commerce were totally suspended. Already the nation was tiring of civil strife ere it was well begun. Petitions for peace, ungraciously received, loaded the tables of both Houses in vain. Charles proposed a cessation of hostilities, and a negotiation was opened at Oxford; but no pacific result took place. On the 27th of April, Reading surrendered to the Parliamentary forces, under the Earl of Essex. The Earl of Northumberland united in a league for the king the counties of Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, with the bishopric of Durham, and engaged, some time after, other counties in the same association. The same nobleman captured York, and dislodged the troops of the Puritans from Tadcaster. In March, Lord Brook was shot in the attack on Lichfield Cathedral; and on the 18th of June there was a fight at Chalgrove Field, where Hampden, deemed the great champion of English liberty, fell when engaged with the cavalry of Prince Rupert; but, on the 16th of the preceding month there had been fought the battle of Stamford Hill.

By Clarendon's account, it was about the middle of May when the Parliamentary forces, under the Earl of Stamford, marched into Cornwall. This noble was Henry, second Lord Grey of Groby, whom Charles I., in 1628, had created Earl of

his marriage with the heiress of the Earl of Exeter, obtained the castle, borough, and manor of Stamford. He was a zealous enemy of Charles, like his son, Lord Grey, whose signature appears to the death-warrant of the unhappy king. The earl was at the head of 1,400 horse, 5,400 infantry, and a park of artillery, consisting of thirteen pieces of brass ordnance and a mortar. In those days the latter piece was usually carried on a block-carriage. With these forces he encamped near Stratton, on a lofty hill that was steep on all sides, rising amid a bare, wild, undulating region, and now named, from the event that took place there, after the Parliamentary earl, who sent thence 1,200 horse, under Sir George Chudleigh, to surprise Bodmin, an ancient town, situated in the middle of the duchy, and twelve miles from the two Channels.

At that time the king's Cornish forces were at Launceston, fourteen miles distant. They were in number not half the strength of those led by the earl, and were under Sir Ralph Hopton, K.B., and Sir Beville Grenville, a distinguished Royalist, who was born on the estate of Brynn, close to Bodmin. Stamford thought himself secure from any attack in a position so strong by nature, and though he had frequent notice that the Cornish Cavaliers were in motion, he would not believe the tidings; while Sir Ralph Hopton saw that, unless he achieved some signal success, he and his forces would be inevitably driven out of the county.

It would have been rash indeed, to have attacked the earl, posted as he was, had there been any other way of luring him into action, or of saving Cornwall for King Charles. He marched from Launceston on Monday, the 15th of May, with 500 horse and 2,500 foot, upon Stratton, although his small army was not favourably circumstanced, being "so destitute of provisions that the best officers had but a biscuit per man."

By daybreak next morning they appeared before the hill on which Stamford was posted. Keeping his little body of horse as a reserve, to cover his retreat in case of reverse, or to aid in the assault if possible, he ordered the position to be attacked from four different points.

Sir Ralph and Lord Mohun led one division; Sir Beville Grenville and Sir John Berkeley a second; Sir Nicholas Slaining and Colonel Trevanion a third; Colonel Basset and Colonel Godolphin the fourth.

The pikemen and musketeers pushed briskly up the hill, which Stamford had trenched at certain points; and for some hours a skirmishing conflict was waged with varying success, during which the

Royalists finding that their supply of powder was reduced to four barrels, they-having resolved to conquer or die-advanced to gain the summit of the hill at push of pike, before they fired another shot.

With this intention, they advanced at a rush, and broke sword in hand among the Puritans. At the same moment they were toughly met by Major-General Chudleigh (the son of the absent Sir George), who was beaten down and taken prisoner, on which the enemy began to recoil. Stamford, in his rage, charged Chudleigh with treachery.

Hopton and Grenville, at the head of their brave little body of Cornishmen, pushed vigorously with clubbed musket and levelled pike upon the broken enemy. Lord Stamford gave the signal of defeat, by wheeling round his horse and galloping wildly down the

hill; his men began to follow in helpless disorder, until they fled on all sides, leaving victory with the Cavaliers.

The latter found on the field 200 dead, the whole of the colours, cannon, baggage, and ammunition of the latter, Père d'Orleans says seventy barrels, and that they took

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circumstance that after this encounter they entered the service of the king (Salmon's Chronicles); while Hopton marched from Cornwall to join the Marquis of Hertford in the capture of Taunton and Bridgewater.

To this day Stamford Hill bears some traces of the hostile encounter there. It is crowned by a tumulus, from which the plough frequently turns up the bones of Cavalier and Roundhead, and they are left to lie bleaching in the furrows. The summit is of small extent, and the ground slopes steeply from it to the east and south; but on the north and west the position must have been more easily assailable. A monument erected on the hill, in commemoration of the battle, was wantonly destroyed; but the inscription, in white letters on a black tablet, was preserved, and in 1851 was built into the wall of the "Tree" inn at Stratton. It is to the following effect:

"In this place ye army of the rebells, under ye command of ye Earl of Stamford, received a signal overthrow by the valor of Sir Beville Grenville and ye Cornish army, on Tuesday, the 16th of May, 1643." After a few skirmishes, on the 5th of

Stamford's charge of treachery against MajorGeneral Chudleigh, and also his father, Sir George, may have had some colouring of truth, from the

between the united forces of the Marquis of Hertford and Sir Ralph Hopton, and those of the enemy under Sir William Waller, whom Sir Philip Warwick characterises as "a gentleman of courage and parts, and of a civil and ceremonious behaviour. He held a gainful farm from the crown of the butlerage and prizage of wines; but upon a quarrel between him and Sir Thomas Reynolds, a courtier, who had an interest in the farm of the