]
We were quite surprised to find that the night before we had been
walking along the site of one of the most famous battles--because it was
the first--in the Great Civil War of the seventeenth century, named
after the strange hill we had walked over, and known to history as the
"Battle of Edge Hill." We learned that had we crossed it on a fine clear
day instead of in the dark we should have obtained a splendid view over
the shires of Warwick, Gloucester, and Worcester, and portions of other
counties besides. The hill itself stood in Warwickshire, but we had
crossed the boundary into Oxfordshire on our way to Banbury some time in
the early hours of the morning. The Royalist Army, under King Charles I,
had encamped a few miles from Banbury, when Prince Rupert sent the king
word that the army of the Parliament, under the command of the Earl of
Essex, had arrived at Kineton. The king's army had left Shrewsbury two
days before Essex's army departed from Worcester, and, strange as it
might appear, although they were only about twenty miles away from each
other at the start, they travelled almost side by side for ten days
without either army knowing the whereabouts of the other.
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