18 
soldiers can get neither beds, bread, nor water.” On 
Thursday they marched ten miles, to Assincantlo (Aston 
Cantlow), ‘‘ where,” says he, ‘“‘we could get no quarter, 
neither bread nor drink, by reason of the Lord Compton’s 
late being there.” On Saturday, the 24th of September, 
they marched into Worcester. I must now proceed with 
the ‘Iter Carolinum.”. The King having, whilst at Shrews- 
bury and Chester, increased his forces considerably, though 
many of them were ill- armed, commenced his march 
towards London. Leaving Shrewsbury on the 12th of 
October, 1642, he proceeded to Bridgenorth ; from whence, 
on the 15th of that month, he went to Wolverhampton ; 
thence, on the 17th, to Bremichem (Birmingham), to the 
mansion of Sir Thomas Holt, Aston Hall; on the 18th 
he went to Packington, the house of Sir Robert Fisher ; 
on the 19th to Killingworth (Kenilworth.) Whether the 
castle was then garrisoned by the forces of the Parliament 
or abandoned by them, whether for the night he took up 
his abode in the castle or elsewhere, the writer of this Iter 
does not inform us. Lord Clarendon, however, states 
that it was ‘‘a house of the kings and a very noble seat ;” 
so I conceive it must have been the castle—no longer the 
Sebastapol of the Midland Counties, as in the reign of 
Henry III., but a more palatial and less defensive resi- 
dence. He was now with his army between the two hostile 
garrisons of Coventry and Warwick Castle. On the 21st 
of October he proceeded with his army to Southam, pro- 
bably crossing the Avon at Chesford Bridge. At Southam 
he issued a Proclamation, which I have before me. On 
the 22nd of Oct. he proceeded to Edgcott, Prince Rupert 
taking up his quarters the same night at Wormleighton, 
at a fine mansion belonging to the Spencer family, now in 
ruins. There is an anecdote related by Dr. Thomas, in 
the continuation of the Antiquities of Warwickshire, by 
Sir Wm. Dugdale, which I shall do well here to mention. 
He speaks of Mr. Richard Shuckburgh, of an ancient 
family in Warwickshire, the possessor of the Shuckburgh 
estates in this county in the time of the Civil Wars, as in 
no way inferior to his ancestors, and then goes on to say, 
‘As Charles I. marched to Edgcot, near Banbury, on the 
29nd October, 1642, he saw him hunting in the field, not 
far from Shuckburgh, with a very good pack of hounds, 
vpon which, it is reported, that he fetched a deep sigh and 
asked who that gentleman was that hunted so merrily 
that morning, when he was going to fight for his crown 
