156 
As nothing further came of the volley, after about an hours’ 
waiting Prince Maurice gave a soldier a reward to go as near as 
possible to the Parliament quarters to find out the meaning of it. 
Creeping up and sheltering in the many pits between the wall and 
the wood, he was able soon to return with the information that 
lighted matches had been fixed in the wall and whole bodies of 
pikes left standing upright within, as if held there by the pikemen, 
and that the camp was empty. 
We were glad they were gone, wrote Col. Slingsby, for if they 
had not, I know who would within another hour.* 
By some mistake during the night there “fell out a great 
“skirmish” amongst the royalist horse and foot ; they falling foul 
of one another and fighting furiously, each party supposing the 
other to be of the Parliamentary army. Thus, quoting the language 
of the time, “the Lord dealt with them as with the army of the 
“ Ammonites, Moabites, and the inhabitants of Seir, made them 
“turn their swords one against the other and slay one another.” 
At daybreak, the king’s commanders found themselves in pos- 
session of the hardly contested ground, with some three or four 
hundred arms, and nine or ten barrels of powder. Having first 
looked up their plunder, several parties of horse were sent out by 
different ways to discover the whereabouts of the enemy and soon 
brought back news that he was safely in Bath. "Then, making no 
attempt to retain the battle field, at eight o’clock all marched away 
to their old quarters at Marshfield. 
Parties of horse were also sent out from Bath for a similar 
purpose, and about noon some encountered an outpost of the other 
party with a slight mutual loss. On their return and reporting 
that the royalists had retired to Marshfield, Sir William Waller 
at once left Bath and re-occupied Lansdown.t 
Sir Ralph Hopton, who was hurt in the arm early in the fight, 
his men being retired, rode up and down visiting the wounded ; 
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* Clar. MSS, 1738-4, + Clar. MSS., 1738-4—Hopton’s, 
