marching along the Cotswolds on a line parallel to that followed by the Lancastrians, but some distance in rear, though gradually gaining on them. Towards evening, in passing through Cheltenham, he heard positively that the enemy were in Tewkesbury; and he also halted for the night about three miles off. The author of the _Arrivall of King Edward_, who obviously accompanied his master to Tewkesbury, takes great pains to describe what he saw. Like many other writers, he has no names but "hill" and "valley" for trifling inequalities of ground, but otherwise he writes with unusual precision, and there is no reason whatever for distrusting his authority. The Lancaster position, he says, was "in a close, even at the towne's end, the towne and abbey at their backs, afore them, and upon every hand of them, fowle lanes and depe dikes with hills and valleys, a ryght evill place to approache." Their leaders doubtless deemed it impossible to escape across the Avon without fighting, and as they were certainly not seriously outmatched in numbers,[45] they had no reason to avoid a battle. As usual in that age they took up a position well chosen for fighting on the defensive; but it had a muddy brook between them and Tewkesbury, and the Avon beyond the town, so that defeat involved total destruction. Sir John Ramsay[46] gives a very good map, which shows all the ancient lanes, as well as the modern road and other things which have materially altered the ground. It is of course impossible to discover exactly which enclosures are ancient, and there are now no "depe dikes." The small numbers engaged could not have covered nearly the length of front possible according to the topography; but the left flank must have been near the easternmost of the ancient lanes, for the author of the _Arrivall_ speaks of Somerset having "passyd a lane" in his attempted turning movement in the battle, which can have been no other. Whatever the exact position of the Lancastrian line, king Edward brought his own troops up opposite to them, except that he posted two hundred spears "near a quarter of a myle from the fielde," to watch a wood by means of which he thought his right flank might be threatened. The battle began with some cannonading and "shott of arrows," in both of which the Yorkists had rather the advantage. The position was however very difficult to assail at close quarters, and the Lancastrians might apparently have held it successfully, had not Somerset attempted a counter-stroke. He, we are told, "somewhat asydehand the king's vaward, and by certain paths and ways therefore afore purveyed, and to the king's party unknown, departed out of the fielde, passyd a lane, and came into a faire place or close even afore the king where he was embattailed, and from the hill that was in that one of the closes, he set right fiercely upon the end of the king's battaile." There must have been a gap between the king's division in the centre and the vaward, or right, for this