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continuing with his forees in the field all the whole of the first and 
second onset, but then perceiving his forces were likely to have the 
foil, left them, and with some lords in company went to Nottingham, 
where he remains for the present. The Lord Grey behaved himself 
most valiantly in this encounter, and deserves much honour for his 
undaunted courage; he with the other forces plied the cavaliers with 
very thick and hot charges, their young soldiers being so full of 
courage and eagerness to the battle, that the cavaliers having lost 
great numbers of their men (without any loss of the other side) that 
for haste they left their ordnance behind them, which the Lord Brooke, 
the Lord Grey, and other forces seized upon, and also took their chief 
agent, Captain Legge, prisoner. The King’s forces are now got 
to Leicester, bemoaning their sad success, which doth much 
dishearten them from any further attempt. The Lord Brooke 
and other forces are now marched toward Werwick Castle, to 
serve that place, and intend to have a bout with the Earl of 
Northampton if he can be met withall.”. There are two other 
accounts of this skirmish, which took place on the 23rd of August, 
two days before the King set up his standard at Nottingham. On the 
24th the Lord Brooke and Colonel Hampden, with all their force of 
horse and foot and their train of artillery, entered Coventry. One of 
the accounts of this skirmish states that some nine of the King’s 
troops were taken prisoners and forty of them slain. In a letter from 
Nehemiah Wharton, an officer in the Parliamentary forces present at 
this engagement, dated Coventry, August 26, the number of slain of 
the King’s forces is stated to be fifty. In another account the number 
is estimated at sixty. Of Lord Brooke’s forces some twelve are said 
to have been wounded by the firing of some powder, and one shot 
another in the back; but these accounts are all from one party, that 
of the Parliamentarians. The account Lord Clarendon gives of this 
conflict is very different, and can hardly be considered as correct, 
though he admits the retirement of the King’s forces—for after 
mentioning the King’s repulse before Coventry, he goes on to say :— 
“The King could not remedy the affront, but went that night to 
Stoneley, the house then of Sir Thomas Lee, where he was well 
received ; and the next day his body of horse, having a clear view upon 
an open campania, for five or six miles together, of the [enemy's] 
small body of foot, which consisted not of above twelve hundred men, 
