34 



Canal Cornpanj' and since hy the present owner), which commanded the High- 

 leadon passage, and on which the skeletons were found. The Welsh were scarcely 

 likely to have left this passage unguarded ; it was their line of communication 

 with Wales. If held by any considerable force, Waller could not have left that 

 force in his rear when marching to the attack on Highnam ; and here, perhaps, 

 occurred that resistance on the first day, which according to the " Mcrcurius 

 Aulicus," cost him 400 men. 



But even if the Welsh had relied on their entrenchments above the three 

 mile stone. Waller was not likely to overlook the strategic importance of a 

 position which would enable him to intercept the retreat of an enemy he must 

 have felt confident he was about to put to flight, and the occupation of which by 

 him would explain the disaster said by the old blacksmith to have befallen the 

 Welsh on their retreat from Ludnam's hill. That Highleadon Passage was a 

 point of strategic importance at that time may well be conceived by those who 

 know it now, and as it would be if unbridged, and if it had not been so, Corbett 

 would not have thought it necessary to tell us, in describing the march of Massey 

 to Hartpury, in 1645, that " late in the afternoon our party began to advance, and 

 at Highleadon Passage got over the Brook." 



Moreover, the tradition handed down through Samuel Colwell would seem 

 to show that the encampment at Highleadon was established chiefly for the 

 protection of this passage, though it was only held in force by day. 



It is submitted, therefore, that beyond all question the skeletons at 

 Barber's Bridge, or at "Barbarous" E ridge, as some suppose the original name 

 to have been, are the remains of such of the Welsh army as perished in their 

 fight on 24th March, 1643, and though i he original letter of Sir William Waller 

 to both Houses of Parliament, as corrected by Sir Thomas Barrington, and in 

 which no doubt further details were given, has not yet been discovered, it is 

 possible that it may still exist among the large number of letters and papers 

 belonging to the period which have recently been found in the Victoria Tower, 

 at Westminster, and which were saved when the Houses of Parliament were 

 destroyed by fire. 



The only question would seem to be whether the remains may not be those 

 of the 400 men said to have been lost by Waller himself, the first day, as stated by 

 the " Mcrcurius Aulicus," hvit the tr&dition through the blacksmith's family that 

 they were Welshmen is very precise, and as many other bodies have been found in 

 Rudford Churchyard, and beneath the Chancel of the Church, which were 

 evidently the harvest of some battle field ; it is possible that these may have been 

 the remains of Waller's men, and the others the remains of the Welshmen, 

 especially as the victors would in all probability have shown the preference to 

 their own dead, and have buried them in or nt^ar the Church. 



