THB TLJCE OF WATTLS 181 



of the cavalry. The labourer's spade has drained 

 and filled the " pits off water and other peeces off 

 ditches" that checked the Roundhead charge. A 

 group of farm buildings stands, perhaps on the very 

 spot, where, when all was lost, the last regiment of 

 Royalist infantry faced " like a wall of brasse " the 

 torrent of victorious Ironsides. " Prince Rupert's 

 Lodge " looks down the slope where he led his gallant 

 Cavaliers. The only part of the field which is said to 

 have escaped the plough is the rank pasture of The 

 Doctor's Meadow, where, when the fight was over, the 

 bodies of the slain were heaped into unhonoured graves. 

 Here the ground has sunk in long, deep hollows, where 

 in winter, water still collects in pools, though all have in 

 modern times been partially filled up. 



It is hardly likely that the ancient hawthorns standing 

 in the meadow, are really old enough to have been under 

 fire on the day of Naseby fight ; and it is probable that 

 the only feature of the battle-ground which remains un- 

 changed is the " double hedge " that parts the adjacent 

 manors of Sulby and Naseby. So huge are the black- 

 thorn stems of its broad thickets, that it needs no 

 effort of imagination to believe that it was from the 

 cover of these very boughs that Okey's dismounted 

 troopers took toll with their carbines as Prince Rupert 

 passed. 



Carlyle, describing Naseby as he saw it half a hundred 

 years back, calls it a " peaceable old hamlet of some eight 

 hundred souls ; clay cottages for the labourers, but neatly 

 thatched and swept." The mud cabins of those days, in 



