24 
is an ancient Beacon Tower, a structure of the 15th 
century, and now perhaps unique of its kind. It is of 
stone, circular in its form, 62 feet in girth at the base, and 
15 feet in height to the top of the parapet, rising from 
within which is a conical roof formed entirely of stone. 
Now the Parliament had given orders for firing the nearest 
beacon whenever the Earl of Essex might overtake the 
King. The smoke by day and the light by night was to 
be the signal which the country people on the heights up 
to London were by proclamation directed to repeat. On 
Sunday night, after the battle had ceased, a party of the 
Parliamentarian troops ascended the Beacon hill at Burton 
Dassett and fired the beacon, and a tradition is preserved 
that some shepherds on a part of the high ridge over 
Ivinghoe, on the borders of Buckinghamshire and Hert- 
fordshire, forty miles in a direct line from Edgehill, saw 
a twinkling light to the north-westward, and upon ¢om- 
munication with their minister, one of the Presbyterian 
party and in the phrase of the times denominated ‘‘a godly 
and well affected person,”’ fired the beacon there also, which 
was seen at Harrow-on-the-Hill, and thence the intelli- 
gence was at once carried to London. Another anecdote 
or two respecting the battle will bring my paper to a 
conclusion. The battle commenced on a Sunday after- 
noon, when the villagers of Tysoe and Oxhill were in 
church. At one of these villages the clerk, on hearing 
the report of the first cannon, exclaimed, with an expletive 
which I need not repeat, ‘‘ They’re at it!’’ and rushed out 
of the church, followed by the congregation. At the other 
village a tailor ran off towards the field of battle to see, 
as he said, the fun. He was evidently unacquainted with 
or had forgotten that sage maxim, turned into Hudibrastic. 
verse by one Butler, a Justices’ clerk— 
“They who in quarrels interpose, 
Will ofttimes get a bloody nose.” 
and so it was in this case, the poor tailor returned home 
mortally wounded, having received a sword cut from 
one of the Parliamentary troopers in a vital part of his 
body. An officer in the Royal army was seen ascending 
the hill on a white horse, which rendered him a conspicu- 
ous object at a distance. A gunner in the Parliamentarian 
army aimed his field-piece at him, fired it, and the ball 
struck the officer in the thigh and mortally wounded him, 
and he was buried in the churchyard at Radway. Twenty- — 
