were all quite routed, and’—driven along Slash Lane at a terrible rate, unnecessary to specify. Sir Ingram Hopton, who had been so near killing Cromwell, was himself killed. ‘Above a hundred of their men were found drowned in ditches,’ in quagmires that would not bear riding; the ‘dragooners now left on foot’ were taken prisoners; the chase lasted to Horncastle or beyond it,—and Henderson the renegade Scot was never heard of in those parts more. My Lord of Manchester’s foot did not get up till the battle was over.
This very day of Winceby Fight, there has gone on at Hull a universal sally, tough sullen wrestle in the trenches all day; with important loss to the Marquis of Newcastle; loss of ground, loss of lives, loss still more of invaluable guns, brass drakes, sackers, what not:—and on the morrow morning the Townsfolk, looking out, discern with emotion that there is now no Marquis, that the Marquis has marched away under cloud of night, and given up the siege. Which surely are good encouragements we have had; two in one day.
This will suffice for Winceby Fight, or Horncastle Fight, of 11th October 1643;[1] and leave the reader to imagine that Lincolnshire too was now cleared of the ‘Papist Army,’ as we violently nickname it,—all but a few Towns on the Western border, which will be successfully besieged when the Spring comes.
In the month of January 1643-4, Oliver, as Governor of Ely, is present for some time in that City; lodges, we suppose, with his own family there; doing military and other work of government:—makes a transient appearance in the Cathedral one day; memorable to the Reverend Mr. Hitch and us.
- ↑ Account of it from the other side, in Rushworth, v. 282; Hull Siege, etc. ib., 280.
