regiment of horse, into the county, and ordered reinforcements to join him from Yorkshire and Cheshire.  Derby, with the concurrence of the royalists in Manchester, undertook to surprise Lilburne in his quarters near that town, but was himself surprised by Lilburne, who marched on the same day[a] to observe the earl’s motions.  They met unexpectedly in the lane leading from Chorley to Wigan.  The heads of the opposite columns repeatedly charged each other; but the desperate courage of the Cavaliers was foiled by the steadiness and discipline of their opponents; the Lord Widrington, Sir Thomas Tildesly, Colonel Throckmorton, Boynton, Trollop, and about sixty of their followers were slain, and above three hundred privates made prisoners.  The earl himself, who had received several slight wounds on the arms and shoulders, fled to Wigan with the enemy at his heels.  Observing a house open, he flung himself from his horse, and sprung into the passage.  A female barred the door behind him; the pursuers were checked for an instant; and when they began to search the house, he had already escaped through the garden.  Weak with fatigue and the loss of blood, he wandered in a southerly direction, concealing himself by day, and travelling by night, till he found[b] a secure asylum, in a retired mansion, called Boscobel House, situate between Brewood and Tong Castle, and the property of Mrs. Cotton, a Catholic recusant and royalist.  There he was received and secreted by William Penderell and his wife, the servants entrusted with the care of the mansion; and having recovered his strength, was conducted by the former to the royal army at Worcester.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Whitelock, 503, 504.  Clarendon, iii. 399, 403.  Memoirs of the Stanleys, 112-114.  Journals, Aug. 29.  Leicester’s Journal, 116.  Boscobel, 6-8.  Boscobel afterwards belonged to Bas.  Fitzherbert, Mrs. Cotton’s son-in-law.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1651.  August 25.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1651.  August 29.]

The occurrences of each day added to the disappointment of Charles and the confidence of his enemies.  He had summoned[a] by proclamation all his male subjects between the age of sixteen and sixty to join his standard at the general muster[b] of his forces, on the 26th of August, in the Pitchcroft, the meadows between the city and the river.  A few of the neighbouring gentlemen with their tenants, not two hundred in number, obeyed the call;[1] and it was found that the whole amount of his force did not exceed twelve (or according to Cromwell, sixteen)[2] thousand men, of whom one-sixth part only was composed of Englishmen.  But while a few straggling royalists thus stole into his quarters, as if it were to display by their paucity the hopelessness of his cause, the daily arrival of hostile reinforcements swelled the army in the neighbourhood to more than thirty thousand men.  At length Cromwell arrived,[c] and was received with enthusiasm.  The royalists had broken down an arch of the bridge over the Severn at Upton; but a few soldiers passed on a beam in the night; the breach was repaired, and Lambert crossed with ten thousand men to the right bank.  A succession of partial but obstinate actions alternately raised and depressed the hopes of the two parties; the grand attempt was reserved by the lord general for his