to be found, and therefore they soon came together; for though Waller seeing too late, that he was in an error, would have been glad to have got off without fighting, yet seeing the king’s troops advance in full march to attack him, boldly drew up in order of battle, and marched forward to meet them: Upon which ensued an obstinate, and very bloody, fight; for Waller was brave, and his men had been enur’d to victory, especially his infantry, and though they were gallantly attacked by Colonel Slanning, and Greenville, the latter of whom was slain, yet they stood their ground, and could not be broken, but rather gain’d upon the Royalists: But the Lord Wilmot charging with an irresistable fury at the head of the cavalry, the rebel horse were broken, and put into confusion, a body of Wilmot’s horse pushing them quite out of the field: Lord Wilmot then falling with the like fury upon the rear of the foot, while the king’s foot lay hard upon them in the front: They were, at last, broken also; and, in a word, quite overthrown: And there being no way to escape the horse, upon an open wild down, as that is, they were most of them cut in pieces, or taken prisoners. All their cannon and baggage were also taken, with their arms and ammunition; and Waller himself, with great difficulty, escaped. This was in the month of August, 1643.
From this action, as I said, this place was ever after called Runaway-Down, instead of Roundway-Down.
At Newbery there was another, or rather a double scene of blood; for here were two obstinate, and hard fought, battles, at two several times, between the king’s army, and the Parliament’s, the king being present at them both, and both fought almost upon the same spot of ground. In these two battles, said an old experienced soldier, that served in the king’s army, there was more generalship shewn on both sides, than in any other battle through the whole course of the war; his meaning was, That the generals, on both sides, shewed the most exquisite skill in the managing, posting, bringing up, and drawing off their troops; and as the men fought with great bravery on both sides, so the generals, and officers, shewed both their bravery, and their judgment. In the first of these battles, the success was doubtful, and both sides pretended to the advantage: In the last, the king’s army had apparently the worst of it and yet the king, in a very few days, with a great body of horse, fetch’d off his cannon, which he had, in the close of the battle, thrust into Dunington Castle, and carried them away to Oxford the head quarter of his army, or his place of arms, as it would be called now; and this he did in the sight of the victorious army, facing them at the same time, with a body of six thousand horse, and they, on the other hand, did not think fit to draw out to attack him. That retreat, in point of honour, was equal to a victory, and gave new courage, as well as reputation, to the king’s troops. Indeed the Parliament’s army was out-general’d in that part; for as they had beaten the long s army out of the field, and obliged them to shelter their train of artillery and carriages in the castle, which was m itself a place of no great strength; they ought immediately, even the same night, to have invested the place, and posted their army so, as to cover the siege; in which case, the cannon, and all that was in the castle, had been their own; for though the king had indeed, a gallant body of horse, and superior to the Parliament cavalry by almost three thousand, yet his best regiments of foot had been roughly handled in the battle, and some of them quite cut in pieces; so that his majesty would not have been in condition to have attacked them in their posts, in order to have raised the siege.
But this is not my business: This town of Newbery is an antient cloathing town, though, now, little of that part remains to it; but it retains still a manufacturing genius, and the people are generally imployed in making shalloons, a kind of stuff, which, though it be used only for the lineing and insides of mens cloaths, for women use but little of it, nor the men for any thing but as above, yet it becomes so generally worn, both at home and abroad, that it is increased to a manufacture by itself, and is more considerable, than any single manufacture of stuffs in the nation. This imploys the town of Newbery, as also, Andover, another town on the side of Wiltshire, about twelve miles from it, and abundance of other towns, in other counties of England, of which I shall speak in their place.
And, having mentioned Andover, though out of the road that I was in, I must digress to tell you, that the town of Andover lies on the very edge of the downs which I have so often mentioned, and is in the road from Newbery to Salisbury, as it is from London to Taunton, and all the manufacturing part of Somersetshire; ’tis a handsom town, well built, populous, and much inrich’d by the manufacture, as above, and may be called a thriving town: It sends two members to Parliament, and is an antient corporation.
But the chief reason of my making this digression, is to mention, that within a mile, or thereabouts, of this town, at the place where the open down country begins, is Wey-Hill, where the greatest fair for sheep is kept, that this nation can shew. I confess, though I once saw the fair, yet I could make no estimate of the number brought thither for sale; but asking the opinion of a grasier, who had used to buy sheep there, he boldly answered, There were many hundred thousands. This being too general, I pressed him farther; at length he said, He believed there were five hundred thousand sheep sold there in one fair. Now, tho’ this might, I believe, be too many, yet ’tis sufficient to note, that there are a prodigious quantity of sheep sold here; nor can it be otherwise, if it be considered, that the sheep sold here, are not for immediate killing, but are generally ewes for store sheep for the farmers, and they send for them from all the following counties, Berks, Oxford, Bucks, Bedford, Hertford, Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex: The custom of these farmers, is, to send one farmer in behalf of (perhaps) twenty, and so the sheep come up together, and they part them when they come home. These ewes have also this property, that they generally bring two lambs at a time. What weathers are bought here, are carried off by the farmers, who have feeding grounds, in order to fat them for killing; but they are but few compared to the ewes.
But to go back to Newbery: Not to insist upon the famous Jack of Newbery, who was so great a clothier, that when King James met his waggons loaden with cloths going to London, and inquiring whose they were, was answered by them all, They were Jack of Newbery’s, the king returned, if the story be true, That this Jack of Newbery was richer than he: But not to insist upon this man’s story, which is almost grown fabulous, yet another story is fact, and to be proved, viz. That this is one of the two legatee towns (as they were called) in the will of the late famous Mr. Kenrick, who being the son of a clothier of Newbery, and afterwards a merchant in London, left four thousand pounds to Newbery, and seven thousand five hundred pounds to Reading, to incourage the cloathing trade, and set the poor at work, besides other gifts of extraordinary value to the poor, as such. This gentleman I shall have occasion to mention again, and therefore I say no more now, only, that his effigie, or picture, was to be seen, before the Fire, in S. Christopher’s Church in Thread Needle Street, London, where he is buried, and where the benefaction he left for prayers every morning at six a clock, winter and summer, in that church, is still injoyed, and the prayers performed there accordingly: As likewise, it is at Reading, and at Newbery.
This extraordinary will is to be seen at large in Stow’s Survey of London, to which I refer, and which it is well worth the reader’s while to look over, the like not being heard of in England, before. It seems he died a batchelor, or, at least, without children, and his legacies, all in ready money, cannot amount to less than forty thousand to fifty thousand pounds, besides what might be included in the general clause of leaving all the rest of his estate to him who he made his universal heir; which estate, as I have heard, amounted to a very great value. That forty or fifty thousand pounds also, being considered at the time it was left, might well be rated at four times the value, as the rate of things goes now, it being in the year 1624. What improvement the town of Newbery, or the town of Reading, has made of the great sums he left to their management, that I did not inquire into.
Near this town of Newbery, the late Earl of Craven built a very stately pile of buildings for his own dwelling, called Spine; but as it was never quite finished, so I do not understand, that his lordship ever came to live in it, and, within these few years, it was, by a sudden fire, which no-body can, or no-body will, tell how it began, burnt down to the ground. It was reported, the old lord built this magnificent palace, for such it really was, at a time when he (flatter’d himself, at least, with expectation, and) had hopes
