14 
of his men and some horses, yet made he shift to disarm some of them. 
And then advances to the constable’s house, where he finds more 
company, but commanding his men not to discharge a pistol upon 
pain of death, hoping yet by fair means to qualifiy them. Immediately 
divers shots are made from the windows at him. Whereupon he 
commanded his men to give fire, and so presently despatched three or 
four of them, which the others perceiving ran away, all except an old 
man, that with his pitch-fork ran at Captain Smith, and twice struck 
the tines against his breast, who by reason of his arms under a light 
coat, received no hurt; yet could not this old man by any intreaty be 
pursuaded to forbeare, till a pistol quieted him. Here he took forty 
muskets, and the same day marched towards the valiant Earl of 
Northampton, whom he met with Brooke’s ordnance about three 
miles from Warwick, and attended him thither.” There is no entry 
in the parish register of Kilsby about this time, there being a void, as 
in most registers, but I have conversed with old people in Kilsby, 
and the number of persons slain in this encounter, is, by tradition, 
said to have been fourteen. In the letters of Nehemiah Wharton, a 
subaltern officer in the Earl of Essex’s army in the early part of the 
Civil Wars, and who was quartered at Rugby on the 19th of September, 
1642, he informs us, ‘“ This town (Rugby) also was lately disarmed by 
the Cavaliers on the Sabbath day, the inhabitants being at church.” 
An exploit, though it be not mentioned in his life, I attribute to 
Captain John Smith. In the latter part of August, 1642, the King 
came out of Leicestershire into Warwickshire, with a body of horse 
computed at about 1,500. I fancy he crossed the Avon near Rugby, 
and, taking Kings Newnham on his way, the seat of Lord Dunsmore, 
afterwards created Earl of Chichester, he proceeded by way of Wolston, 
on to Coventry. The King in his way over Dunsmore Heath is said, 
by tradition, to have halted and dined under an oak tree near the Foss 
yoad in the parish of Wolston. I well remember the tree, thus 
traditionally noticed; it was rapidly falling into decay, although 
preserved as long as possible; and some thirty years ago a wintry 
storm felled it to the ground. In the year 1825, I walked over to 
Wolston, in company with a late and revered friend, Mr. Edward 
Pretty, sometime drawing master to Rugby School, and as a draftsman 
inferior to few. He then took a sketch of this tree which I still retain. 
’ 
