soldiers, and excellent firemen; while on the other hand, Yorkshire was a more open country and full of heaths, where we might both make use of our horse, and come sooner to push off pike’ with our foot. ‘My Lord Duke was for Lancashire way; and it seems he had hopes that some forces would join with him in his march that way. I have indeed heard him say, that he thought Manchester his own if he came near it. Whatever the matter was, I never saw him tenacious in anything during the time of his command but in that. We chose to go that way, which led us to our ruin.
‘Our march was much retarded by most rainy and tempestuous weather, the elements fighting against us; and by staying for country horses to carry our little ammunition. The vanguard is constantly given to Sir Marmaduke, upon condition that he should constantly furnish guides; pioneers for clearing the ways; and, which was more than both these, have good and certain intelligence of all the Enemy’s motions. But whether it was by our fault or his neglect, want of intelligence helped to ruin us; for,’—in fact we were marching in extremely loose order; left hand not aware what the right was doing; van and rear some twenty or thirty miles apart;—far too loose for men that had a Cromwell on their flank!
On the night of Wednesday 16th August 1648, my Lord Duke has got to Preston with the main body of his foot; his horse lying very wide,—ahead of him at Wigan, arear of him, one knows not where, he himself hardly knows where. Sir Marmaduke guards him on the left, ‘on Preston Moor, about Langridge Chapel,’ some four miles up the Ribble,—and knows not, in the least, what storm is coming. For Cromwell, this same night, has got across the hills to Clitheroe and farther; this same Wednesday night he lies ‘at Stonyhurst,’ where now the College of Stonyhurst is,—‘a Papist’s house, one Sherburn’s’; and tomorrow morning there will be news of Cromwell.
‘That night, says Hodgson, ‘we pitched our camp at Stanyares Hall, a Papist’s house, one Sherburn’s; and the
