l. There were about fourteen hundred killed in the battle, and
buried between the two farm-houses of Battledon and Thistledon, at a
place now called the Graveyards. Lord Lindsey died on his way to Warwick
with his captors. Cromwell was not personally engaged at Edgehill,
although there as a captain of cavalry. Carlyle says that after watching
the fight he told Hampden they never would get on with a "set of poor
tapsters and town-apprentice people fighting against men of honor; to
cope with men of honor they must have men of religion." Hampden
answered, "It was a good notion if it could be executed;" and Cromwell
"set about executing a bit of it, his share of it, by and by."

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY.

[Illustration: CHURCH AND MARKET-HALL, MARKET HARBOROUGH.]

The last great contest of the Civil War, at which the fate of King
Charles was really decided, was fought nearly three years afterwards,
June 14, 1645, and but a few miles north-east of Edgehill, at Naseby,
standing on a high plateau elevated nearly seven hundred feet. The
Parliamentary forces had during the interval become by far the stronger,
and were engaged in besieging Chester. The king and Prince Rupert in May
left Oxford with their forces, and marched northward, hoping to raise
this siege. The king had gone as far north as Leicester, when, hearing
that Lord Fairfax had come from the borders of Wales and besieged
Oxford, he turned about to relieve it. His army was about ten thousand
strong, and, having reached Daventry in June, halted, while Fairfax,
leaving Oxford, marched northward to meet the king, being five miles
east of him on June 12. Being weaker than Fairfax, the king determined
on retreat, and the movement was started towards Market Harborough, just
north of Naseby. The king, a local tradition says, while sleeping at
Daventry was warned, by the apparition of Lord Strafford in a dream, not
to measure his strength with the Parliamentary army. A second night the
apparition came, assuring him that "if he kept his resolution of
fighting he was undone;" and it is added that the king was often
afterwards heard to say he wished he had taken the warning and not
fought at Naseby. Fairfax, however, was resolved to force a battle, and
pursued the king's retreating army. On June 13th he sent Harrison and
Ireton with cavalry to attack its rear. That night the king's van and
main body were at Market Harborough, and his rear-guard of horse at
Naseby, three miles s