41S 



To the Editor of the Analyst, 

 Sir, 



Looking cursorily this morning over your instructive and 

 amusing periodical (No. 5), my eye fell upon the following sen- 

 tence. "At Madresfield, in the king's room, Charles II. slept the 

 night before the Battle of Worcester." Now there are others 

 besides the inaccurate Mr. Tymms, "our family topographer,'* 

 who have committed this little mistake of fact and error of judg- 

 ment. To most of your readers perhaps it may be unknown that, 

 in a small tract ascribed to the pen of Madox, Bishop of Worcester, 

 and entitled " Reflexions upon King Charles's providential escape 

 from Worcester, Lond. 17^4," it is positively asserted that His 

 Majesty slept at the Deanery on the night before the crowning 

 victory of Cromwell j while Lord Clarendon tells us, if I rightly 

 remember, that he passed half of that night on horseback. There 

 is evidence undeniable that on the 3rd of September (1651) the 

 day of this memorable engagement, Charles, early in the morning, 

 ascended to the tower of the cathedral, and there held a council 

 with his general officers. From this eminence he was enabled to 

 survey the disposition of the enemy's forces. At noon, when the 

 heat of the action commenced, according to Clarendon, the king 

 put himself forward with the foremost ranks, and might have 

 struck a great and decisive blow, if the Scottish general Lesley* had 

 not failed him at the critical moment of his fortune, by keeping his 

 troops stationary in the rear. 



Certain it is, as certainty itself can make it, that if Charles slept 

 at Madresfield, it must have been on the 26th or 27th of August, or 

 before that time, and which was probably the case, for family 

 traditions are not to be lightly rejected, as they are never formed 

 upon imaginary grounds. At the same time nothing can be 

 clearer, from the position of the Republicans, that it was next to 

 impossible for the king to have slept at Madresfield, on the 2nd of 

 September, since Cromwell's head-quarters were fixed on the 29th 

 of August at Judge Berkeley's house, (Spetchley,) so that Charles 

 •would hardly have stirred from Worcester j while we find from 

 the high authority of the parliamentary papers of the day, that the 

 king's party having fortified Madresfield, or Maxfield House, as it 

 is sometimes spelt, for there are many verbal inaccuracies in these 



* Some writers have imputed this conduct of Lesley to treachery, and others to 

 cowardice ; but as Mr, Hughes justly observes in a note upon this subject, " the 

 probability is, that many among the Scottish army who would have fought with 

 spirit in the defence of their own country, considered the English expedition as a 

 hopeless act of desperation on the part of the young king ; a conclusion which the 

 scanty muster on the Pitchcroft would confirm in the minds of the best informed."— 

 Boscobel Tracts, p. 34. In the parliamentary papers there is a letter dated Sep. I, 

 1651, which shows that Lesley's troops were no favorites with the people of 

 Worcester. " The Scotch army lies in Worcester ; the citizens of that town grow 

 weary of them, and curse themselves that they had a hand in bringing them in." 



