We had small rest at Oxford, or indeed anywhere else; for the king was marched from thence, and we followed him.  I was something uneasy at my absence from my regiment, and did not know how the king might resent it, which caused me to ride after them with all expedition.  But the armies were engaged that very day at Newbury, and I came in too late.  I had not behaved myself so as to be suspected of a wilful shunning the action; but a colonel of a regiment ought to avoid absence from his regiment in time of fight, be the excuse never so just, as carefully as he would a surprise in his quarters.  The truth is, ’twas an error of my own, and owing to two day’s stay I made at the Bath, where I met with some ladies who were my relations.  And this is far from being an excuse; for if the king had been a Gustavus Adolphus, I had certainly received a check for it.

This fight was very obstinate, and could our horse have come to action as freely as the foot, the Parliament army had suffered much more; for we had here a much better body of horse than they, and we never failed beating them where the weight of the work lay upon the horse.

Here the city train-bands, of which there was two regiments, and whom we used to despise, fought very well.  They lost one of their colonels, and several officers in the action; and I heard our men say, they behaved themselves as well as any forces the Parliament had.

The Parliament cried victory here too, as they always did; and indeed where the foot were concerned they had some advantage; but our horse defeated them evidently.  The king drew up his army in battalia, in person, and faced them all the next day, inviting them to renew the fight; but they had no stomach to come on again.

It was a kind of a hedge fight, for neither army was drawn out in the field; if it had, ’twould never have held from six in the morning to ten at night.  But they fought for advantages; sometimes one side had the better, sometimes another.  They fought twice through the town, in at one end, and out at the other; and in the hedges and lanes, with exceeding fury.  The king lost the most men, his foot having suffered for want of the succour of their horse, who on two several occasions could not come at them.  But the Parliament foot suffered also, and two regiments were entirely cut in pieces, and the king kept the field.

Essex, the Parliament general, had the pillage of the dead, and left us to bury them; for while we stood all day to our arms, having given them a fair field to fight us in, their camp rabble stripped the dead bodies, and they not daring to venture a second engagement with us, marched away towards London.