Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/207

 with the horse, we perceive, have still the brunt of the work to do. Here, after much marching and skirmishing, is an account of Winceby Fight, their chief exploit in those parts, which cleared the country of the Newarkers, General Kings, and renegade Sir John Hendersons;—as recorded by loud-spoken Vicars. In spite of brevity we must copy the Narrative. Cromwell himself was nearer death in this action than ever in any other; the victory too made its due figure, and ‘appeared in the world.’

Winceby, a small upland hamlet, in the Wolds, not among the Fens, of Lincolnshire, is some five miles west of Horncastle. The confused memory of this Fight is still fresh there; the Lane along which the chase went bears ever since the name of ‘Slash Lane,’ and poor Tradition maunders about it as she can. Hear Vicars, a poor human soul zealously prophesying as if through the organs of an ass,—in a not mendacious, yet loud-spoken, exaggerative, more or less asinine manner:

* * * ‘All that night,’ Tuesday 10th October 1643, ‘we were drawing our horse to the appointed rendezvous; and the next morning, being Wednesday, my Lord’ Manchester ‘gave order that the whole force, both horse and foot, should be drawn up to Bolingbroke Hill, where he would expect the enemy, being the only convenient ground to fight with him. But Colonel Cromwell was no way satisfied that we should fight; our horse being extremely wearied with hard duty two or three days together.

‘The enemy also drew, that’ Wednesday ‘morning, their whole body of horse and dragooners into the field, being 74 colours of horse, and 21 colours of dragoons, in all 95 colours. We had not many more than half so many colours of horse