Edge Hill: The Battle and Battlefield; With Notes on Banbury & Thereabout

THE TOWER, EDGE HILL.
SECOND EDITION.
Banbury: E. A. Walford, 71 & 72, High Street. London: Castle, Lamb & Storr, Salisbury Square. 1904.
For the present edition the available material of the last eighteen years has been consulted, but the plans of battle are similar to two of those of my book of 1886. They were then the first series of diagrammatic representations of the fight published, but in no case has this been acknowledged in the many plans of like kind subsequently published. Some new facts and inferences the author hopes may increase the value of the account.
The letters of Captain Nathaniel Fiennes and Captain Kightley, now added, may serve to make the tale a more living one. They are reproduced, by the kind courtesy of the authorities of the Radcliffe Library, Oxford, and the Birmingham Reference Library.
New pages of Notes on Banbury, and an extended bibliography are also given.
Edwin A. Walford.
Banbury, March, 1904.
In the following pages an endeavour has been made to give a concise account of the physical features of the Edge Hill district, as well as to describe the events of the first great battle of the Civil War, with which it is so intimately associated. The intention is to provide a handbook for the guidance of the visitor rather than to attempt any elaborate historical or scientific work. Though Nugent’s “Memorials of John Hampden” has supplied the basis of the information, Clarendon’s “History of the Great Rebellion,” the various pamphlets of the time, and Beesley’s “History of Banbury,” have also been freely used. In order to avoid burdening the pages with foot notes, a catalogue of works upon the subject is printed as an appendix, and the letters and numbers throughout the text refer thereto. The catalogue, it is hoped, may be of use to the future student. The plans of the battle, based upon Nugent’s account, must be looked upon as merely diagrammatic, the scale being unavoidably distorted for the purpose of showing the conjectured positions of the troops. In the plans it may be worth note that the troops then known as “dragooners” are classed with the infantry.