While the king remained at Shrewsbury, his loyal friends bestirred themselves in several parts of the kingdom.  Goring had secured Portsmouth, but being young in matters of war, and not in time relieved, though the Marquis of Hertford was marching to relieve him, yet he was obliged to quit the place, and shipped himself for Holland, from whence he returned with relief for the king, and afterwards did very good service upon all occasions, and so effectually cleared himself of the scandal the hasty surrender of Portsmouth had brought upon his courage.

The chief power of the king’s forces lay in three places, in Cornwall, in Yorkshire, and at Shrewsbury.  In Cornwall, Sir Ralph Hopton, afterwards Lord Hopton, Sir Bevil Grenvile, and Sir Nicholas Slanning secured all the country, and afterwards spread themselves over Devonshire and Somersetshire, took Exeter from the Parliament, fortified Bridgewater and Barnstaple, and beat Sir William Waller at the battle of Roundway Down, as I shall touch at more particularly when I come to recite the part of my own travels that way.

In the north, The Marquis of Newcastle secured all the country, garrisoned York, Scarborough, Carlisle, Newcastle, Pomfret, Leeds, and all the considerable places, and took the field with a very good army, though afterwards he proved more unsuccessful than the rest, having the whole power of a kingdom at his back, the Scots coming in with an army to the assistance of the Parliament, which, indeed, was the general turn of the scale of the war; for had it not been for this Scots army, the king had most certainly reduced the Parliament, at least to good terms of peace, in two years’ time.

The king was the third article.  His force at Shrewsbury I have noted already.  The alacrity of the gentry filled him with hopes, and all his army with vigour, and the 8th of October 1642, his Majesty gave orders to march.  The Earl of Essex had spent above a month after his leaving London (for he went thence the 9th of September) in modelling and drawing together his forces; his rendezvous was at St Albans, from whence he marched to Northampton, Coventry, and Warwick, and leaving garrisons in them, he comes on to Worcester.  Being thus advanced, he possesses Oxford, as I noted before, Banbury, Bristol, Gloucester, and Worcester, out of all which places, except Gloucester, we drove him back to London in a very little while.

Sir John Byron had raised a very good party of 500 horse, most gentlemen, for the king, and had possessed Oxford; but on the approach of the Lord Say quitted it, being now but an open town, and retreated to Worcester, from whence, on the approach of Essex’s army, he retreated to the king.  And now all things grew ripe for action, both parties having secured their posts, and settled their schemes of the war, taken their posts and places as their measures and opportunities directed.  The field was next in their eye, and the soldiers began to inquire when