A third and most formidable danger was the superiority of the Royalist cavalry. The long neglect of the mounted service left the supremacy to the ablest amateurs, and the majority of these, though there were hundreds of gentlemen on the Parliamentary side, were undoubtedly for the King. Nor was it only the courage, honour, and resolution of which Cromwell had spoken that favoured them; they had from the nature of the case better horses, a higher standard of horsemanship and equipment, a quicker natural intelligence and a higher natural training. The thousand lessons which the county gentlemen learned when riding with hawk and hound were of infinite advantage in the casual and irregular warfare of the first two or three years; and whatever may be said of Rupert's ability on the battlefield, there can be no question that the work of his innumerable patrols was admirably done. The dashing character of Rupert was also an advantage in a sense to the King's cause, for it attracted to him a group of fellow hot-heads similar to those that had followed Thomas Felton under the Black Prince. One fatal defect however marred what should have been a most efficient cavalry, the blot that had been hit by Cromwell, indiscipline. [Sidenote: 1643.] The campaign of 1643 found Parliament little wiser than before as to the true method of conducting a war. Though it had named Lord Essex as General it gave him no control over the operations of any army but his own, and there was consequently no unity either of design or of purpose. Charles, on the contrary, had a definite plan, which had been mapped out for him by some unknown hand and was within an ace of successful execution. He himself with one army fixed his headquarters at Oxford; a second army under Newcastle was to advance from the north, a third under Prince Maurice and Sir Ralph Hopton from the extreme west, both converging on Charles as a centre; and the united forces were then to advance on London. Hopton, an experienced soldier and as noble a man as fought in the war, executed his part brilliantly, advancing victoriously into Somerset from Cornwall, and finally defeating the force specially sent to meet him by the Parliament at Roundway Down. This action is memorable for the appearance, and it must be added the defeat, of what was probably the last fully mailed troop of horse ever seen in England, Sir Arthur Hazelrigg's "Lobsters," so called from the hardness of their shells. Hopton's advance was only stayed by the unwillingness of his Western levies to move any further from their homes. In the north again the Parliament had suffered disaster; the Fairfaxes, who were the mainstay of the cause, sustained a crushing defeat, and but one man stood in the way to bar Newcastle's march upon London.