Not with less valor was the conflict sustained on the part of the royalists. Sir John Henderson, the hardy veteran of former battles, firm as a rock amid the rushing of the waves, resisted every impetuous assault. His adversaries were driven back in disorder; but these men, not readily to be repulsed, returned, with a cool bravery and redoubled vigor to the attack. For half an hour, firm and undecided, continued the contest, sword against sword, and fortitude repelling courage. The resolute warriors, who sustained the furious charges of Fairfax and Cromwell, (for the whole were not engaged,) relinquished not a portion of their ground. At last, a division commanded by Sir William Saville wavering, though reluctant to give way, became routed and completely disordered. Yielding they struck confusion into the other bodies of their own horse; and these again were hurled with precipitance upon the mass of their infantry. All being alike borne down in this part of the field, none were left to second the broken and disordered in again advancing to the combat. The division of Sir John Henderson and Lord Ething alone maintained itself unyielding and unsubdued. The exulting army of the parliament, now taking advantage of the discomfiture of the other troops, and the tumult of the infantry, assailed with a desperate charge the yet unrepulsed. In vain did the royalist commander exhort his men to be resolute and undismayed; but no prudence could uphold the advantages which valor must lose. Their fortitude was giving way to despair; and the successful, elated with the promises of victory, found no equal disputants in men dismayed by the certainty of a defeat. Perplexed amid the various and ineffectual efforts of the other bodies of the royal troops, the disheartened defenders of the field yielded beneath the shock of the adverse weapons. The victorious soldiers now fiercely plunging in amidst the routed dragoons, many of whom at this time were on foot and in the most appalling confusion, saw them quickly disappearing beneath the havoc of their swords and the fury of their horses. The infantry were for the most part destroyed; for being intercepted by a body of cavalry, scarce a man survived the carnage. [21a] There was now no safety but in a dishonorable flight. The pursuit continued beyond Horncastle with unremitting fury; and along the road were strewed the horse and the rider, the dead and the dying. [21b]
The soldiers under the command of Manchester, who as yet had partaken in no respect in the glory of the blood-shed, reserved their efforts for securing the prisoners, and assisting the scarce breathing wounded of the enemy, who were scattered about the field in groups. Such partisans as had recently been embodied by the commission of array were pitiably supplicating the mercy of their conquerors. Cursing with deep execration that little regard which had hurried them to the fight, without a feeling of interest in its issue, they cried out that the commission of array had brought them thither against their wills, and blessing the cause of liberty and religion, added “We die as true servants of the parliament as any in England, and woe be to those who were the cause that Lincoln and York became the prey of such a war.” [22a]
Though the battle was fought with determined obstinacy; yet, whilst the parties maintained their ground, the loss was comparatively small: the havoc that ensued was among the routed and the flying. There were killed but few on the side of the parliament. Those of rank who were slain of the royal forces were Sir George Bolles, and Sir Ingram Hopton. The prisoners, about one thousand in number, were the wounded on the field, and those parties of the dispersed fugitives, who to avoid the overwhelming carnage of their pursuers had secreted themselves amongst the rugged and winding banks of a neighbouring river: many indeed were taken whilst seeking refuge in the very waters, where some had already perished, bleeding and wearied in their armour, overcome in their inability to recover themselves from the deeper parts of the stream. The trophies which the conquerors obtained in the fight of Winceby field, were arms for fifteen hundred men, and thirty-five standards. [22b]
Returning from the pursuit, the exhausted cavalry rested for the night in the villages around Horncastle. The infantry occupied quarters in the town, where they found two hundred horses left by their fugitive enemy. Of the wounded, the Earl of Manchester ordered especial care to be taken, whilst the dead were hastily consigned to the nearest graves. The body of Sir Ingram Hopton was brought to Horncastle and buried in the church: for Cromwell who did not permit his political resentment to render him callous or insensible to the generous feelings of a soldier, experienced some sympathy for the individual whose ardor in attempting his destruction, for what was deemed the welfare of his country, had cost the sacrifice of his own life; he therefore, upon his arrival in the town, commanded the inhabitants to fetch the body of Sir Ingram Hopton, and inter it with the honors due to his rank; observing that though an enemy, he was a gentleman and a soldier. [23a]
Of those royalists who escaped the slaughter, there were scarce a thousand efficient for the field; and these were destined to sustain another overthrow at the battle of Lincoln close, which completed the warfare in this county. Bolingbroke castle had already yielded; and this with Tattershall, the principal places of defence in this neighbourhood, were soon after devoted to the dismantling policy of the parliament, which doomed them with the noble edifices of the country, to that destruction which left them but ruins in silent and lingering decay.
Although this victory afforded a cause for so much rejoicing to the friends of the parliament; yet were its consequences mightier for the interests which it strengthened, by the defeat, on the same day, [23b] of the Marquis of Newcastle before the fortress of Hull. The Lord Fairfax and Sir John Meldrum, making a desperate sortie, had completely overthrown the royalists with much slaughter; forcing them, though protected behind strong entrenchments, to abandon the siege with the loss of all their cannon. The impolicy of the royalist commander was now perceptible too late. This ruin of the affairs of the king seemed at once to have obliterated all the generous services which the faithful Newcastle had made in the cause of his sovereign; and shortly after these disasters he retired to the continent, [23c] where he spent a life of indigence, until the restoration gave again the royal authority to Britain. These actions, though inconsiderable in themselves, were yet great in their effects. The expectations of the royalists in Yorkshire were now nearly blasted: Lincolnshire, after the occupation of its city, escaped the further deluge of blood; and the defeats served to assist in hastening the fight of Marston Moor, where the hopes of Charles were reduced to that one gleam of hope, which was finally extinguished at the battle of Naseby.
ANTIQUITIES.
Amongst the remains of antiquity at this place, the vestiges of the Roman fortress are the most worthy of attention; and although they are too small to give an adequate idea of the original structure, are yet sufficient to show the form and extent of the space enclosed, which appears to have been nearly a parallelogram, of about six hundred feet in length, and in breadth three hundred and fifty on the east, and three hundred on the west. [25] The wall by which this area was surrounded was fifteen or sixteen feet in thickness, and composed of small blocks of a loosely aggregated sand stone, dug from the neighbouring hills. It was formed with casing stones on the outside, the internal parts being filled up with courses laid diagonally, which according to the customary and substantial mode of building among the Romans, were run together by mortar disseminated through the interstices in a fluid state, forming a cement which has acquired by time an imperishable induration. Of the casing stones none are now to be seen, except in cellars which have been formed by the side of the wall. Where the fragments are sufficiently high, those portions of the Roman masonry, which remained after the destruction of the fortress, may be perceived rising to about six or seven feet above the ground, the diagonal courses of stone then ceasing. Above this the construction is marked by masses of larger dimensions than the lower parts; a circumstance evincing that another structure of a different period has been erected on the original foundation: this was probably a reparation which was made in the time of the Anglo-Saxons. At the north-east corner of the enclosure the remains of a circular turret are still visible; but of towers or gateways no traces are left.
Near the junction of the two rivers, on the south-west of the town, was formerly one of those mazes common to Roman stations, called the Julian Bower. In these the youth were exercised in a martial game, called Troy Town, which in after years, though divested of its martial character, continued to be amongst the healthy pastimes of the young, in their evening assemblies of pleasure and sport. [26] Cultivation has long since effaced every vestige of the maze; but the piece of land on which it stood still retains the name of the Julian Bower Close.