If our business had been to keep the Parliament army from coming to Worcester, we had a very good opportunity to have secured the bridge at Pershore; but our design lay another way, as I have said, and the king was for drawing Essex on to the Severn, in hopes to get behind him, which fell out accordingly.

Essex, spurred by this affront in the infancy of their affairs, advances the next day, and came to Pershore time enough to be at the funeral of some of his men; and from thence he advances to Worcester.

We marched back to Worcester extremely pleased with the good success of our first attack, and our men were so flushed with this little victory that it put vigour into the whole army.  The enemy lost about 3000 men, and we carried away near 150 prisoners, with 500 horses, some standards and arms, and among the prisoners their colonel; but he died a little after of his wounds.

Upon the approach of the enemy, Worcester was quitted, and the forces marched back to join the king’s army, which lay then at Bridgnorth, Ludlow, and thereabout.  As the king expected, it fell out; Essex found so much work at Worcester to settle Parliament quarters, and secure Bristol, Gloucester, and Hereford, that it gave the king a full day’s march of him.  So the king, having the start of him, moves towards London; and Essex, nettled to be both beaten in fight and outdone in conduct, decamps, and follows the king.

The Parliament, and the Londoners too, were in a strange consternation at this mistake of their general; and had the king, whose great misfortune was always to follow precipitant advices,—­had the king, I say, pushed on his first design, which he had formed with very good reason, and for which he had been dodging with Essex eight or ten days, viz., of marching directly to London, where he had a very great interest, and where his friends were not yet oppressed and impoverished, as they were afterwards, he had turned the scale of his affairs.  And every man expected it; for the members began to shift for themselves, expresses were sent on the heels of one another to the Earl of Essex to hasten after the king, and, if possible, to bring him to a battle.  Some of these letters fell into our hands, and we might easily discover that the Parliament were in the last confusion at the thoughts of our coming to London.  Besides this, the city was in a worse fright than the House, and the great moving men began to go out of town.  In short, they expected us, and we expected to come, but Providence for our ruin had otherwise determined it.

Essex, upon news of the king’s march, and upon receipt of the Parliament’s letters, makes long marches after us, and on the 23rd of October reaches the village of Kineton, in Warwickshire.  The king was almost as far as Banbury, and there calls a council of war.  Some of the old officers that foresaw the advantage the king had, the concern the city was in, and the vast addition, both to the reputation of