Leicester Castle still exists only in a portion of the great hall, but it has been enlarged and modernized, and is now used for the county offices. The castle was built after the Norman Conquest to keep the townspeople in check. It was afterwards a stronghold of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and it then became part of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Dukes of Lancaster restored it, and lived there frequently in great pomp, and they also built the adjoining Hospital of the Newarke and a singular earthwork alongside, called the Mount. Several parliaments were held here, but after the time of Edward IV. the castle fell into decay. There are now few remains of the original castle, excepting part of the great hall and the Mount or earthwork of the keep, which is about thirty feet high and one hundred feet in diameter upon its flat, circular top. Not far from Leicester was fought the last great battle of the "Wars of the Roses," Bosworth Field, upon Redmoor Plain, about two miles from the village now known as Market Bosworth. It was a moor at the time of the battle in 1485, overgrown with thistles and scutch-grass. Shakespeare has been the most popular historian of this battle, and the well where Richard slaked his thirst is still pointed out, with other localities of the scenes of the famous contest that decided the kingship of England, Richard III. giving place to Richmond, who became Henry VII.
THE EDGEHILL BATTLEFIELD.
While we are considering this locality two other famous battlefields not far away, that together were decisive of the fate of England, must not be overlooked. These were Edgehill and Naseby, the opening and closing contests of the Civil War that overthrew Charles I., the scene of one being visible from the other, though the intervening contest spread almost all over the island. The high ground that borders Warwickshire and Northamptonshire has various roads crossing it, and the opposing forces meeting on these highlands made them the scenes of the battles—practical repetitions of many hot contests there in earlier years. The command of the Parliamentary army had been given to the Earl of Essex, and he and all his officers were proclaimed traitors by the king. Charles I. assembled an army at Nottingham in 1642 to chastise them, and it was considered an evil omen that when the royal standard was set up on the evening of the day of assemblage, a gale arose and it was blown down. Charles moved west from Nottingham to Shrewsbury to meet reinforcements from Wales, and then his army numbered eighteen thousand men. Essex was at Northampton, and moved southward to Worcester. Charles desired to march to London to break up the Parliament, but to do this must either defeat or outflank Essex. He chose the latter plan, moved to Kenilworth, but could not enter Coventry, because Lord Brooke, who was afterwards killed at Lichfield, held it for the Parliament. Essex left Worcester, and pressed the king by forced marches, but Charles turned his flank and started for London with Essex in pursuit. In October he reached Edgecot, near the field at Edgehill, and there in the open country he was astonished to find a gentleman amusing himself with a pack of hounds. He asked who it was who could hunt so merrily while his sovereign was about to fight for his crown. Mr. Richard Shuckburgh was accordingly introduced, and the king persuaded him to take home his hounds and raise his tenantry. The next day he joined Charles with a troop of horse, and was knighted on the field of Edgehill.
Charles slept in the old house at Edgecot: the house has been superseded by a newer one, in which is preserved the bed in which the king rested on the night of October 22, 1642. At three o'clock next morning, Sunday, he was aroused by a messenger from Prince Rupert, whose cavalry guarded the rear, saying that Essex was at hand, and the king could fight at once if he wished. He immediately ordered the march to Edgehill, a magnificent situation for an army to occupy, for here the broken country of the Border sinks suddenly down upon the level plain of Central England. Essex's camp-fires on that plain the previous night had betrayed his army to Prince Rupert, while Rupert's horsemen, appearing upon the brow of the hill, told Essex next morning that the king was at hand. Edgehill is a long ridge extending almost north and south, with another ridge jutting out at right angles into the plain in front: thus the Parliamentary troops were on low ground, bounded in front and on their left by steep hills. On the southern side of Edgehill there had been cut out of the red iron-stained rock of a projecting cliff a huge red horse, as a memorial of the great Earl of Warwick, who before a previous battle had killed his horse and vowed to share the perils of the meanest of his soldiers. Both sides determined to give battle; the Puritan ministers passed along the ranks exhorting the men to do their duty, and they afterwards referred to the figure as the "Red Horse of the wrath of the Lord which did ride about furiously to the ruin of the enemy." Charles disposed his army along the brow of the hill, and could overlook his foes, stretched out on the plain, as if on a map, with the village of Kineton behind them. Essex had twelve thousand men on a little piece of rising ground known afterwards as the "Two Battle Farms," Battledon and Thistledon. The king was superior both in numbers and position, with Prince Rupert and his cavalry on the right wing; Sir Edmund Verney bore the king's standard in the centre, where his tent was pitched, and Lord Lindsey commanded; under him was General Sir Jacob Astley, whose prayer before the battle is famous: "O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day; if I forget thee, do not thou forget me.—March on, boys!" The king rode along in front of his troops in the stately figure that is familiar in Vandyke's paintings—full armor, with the ribbon of the Garter across his breastplate and its star on his black velvet mantle—and made a brief speech of exhortation. The young princes Charles and James, his sons, both of them afterwards kings of England, were present at Edgehill, while the philosopher Hervey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, was also in attendance, and we are told was found in the heat of the battle sitting snugly under a hedge reading a copy of Virgil.
MILL AT EDGEHILL.
The battle did not begin till afternoon, and the mistake the king made was in not waiting for the attack in his strong position on the brow of the hill; but his men were impatient and in high spirits, and he permitted them to push forward, meeting the attack halfway. Rupert's cavalry upon encountering the Parliamentary left wing were aided by the desertion of part of the latter's forces, which threw them into confusion; the wing broke and fled before the troopers, who drove them with great slaughter into the village of Kineton, and then fell to plundering Essex's baggage-train. This caused a delay which enabled the Parliamentary reserves to come up, and they drove Rupert back in confusion; and when he reached the royal lines he found them in disorder, with Sir Edmund Verney killed and the royal standard captured. Lord Lindsey wounded and captured, and the king in personal danger: but darkness came, and enabled the king to hold his ground, and each side claimed a victory. The royal standard was brought back by a courageous Cavalier, who put on a Parliamentary orange-colored scarf, rode into the enemy's lines, and persuaded the man who had it to let him carry it. For this bold act he was knighted by the king on the spot and given a gold medal. 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."