The vicinity of Ealing appears to have known little of the horrors of war, from the time of Canute to that of the Civil war when, on November 12th, 1642, an engagement took place at Brentford between the Royalist and Parliament forces, which though of no great magnitude was the occasion of much recrimination between the King and his disaffected subjects, as it occurred at a time when efforts, more or less sincere, were being made to accommodate the differences between the Throne and the people. Lord Clarendon in his history thus narrates the battle: “So the King marched with his whole army towards Brentford, where were two regiments of their best foot, for so they were accounted, being those who had eminently behaved themselves at Edge-Hill, having barricaded the narrow avenues of the town, and cast up some little breastworks at the most convenient places. Here a Welsh regiment of the King’s, which had been faulty at Edge-Hill recovered its honour, and assaulted the works and forced the barricades, well defended by the enemy. Then the King’s forces entered the town, after a very warm service; the chief officers, and many soldiers of the other side being killed; and they took there about five hundred prisoners, eleven colours, and fifteen pieces of cannon and good store of ammunition. But this victory, for considering the place, it might well be called so, proved not at all fortunate to his Majesty.” An officer of the King’s says of his colonel in this battle (Sir Edward Tritton,) that “it was his happy honour (assisted by God and a new piece of cannon newly come up) to drive the Roundheads from their works, where it was an heart breaking object to hear and see the miserable deaths of many goodly men; we slew a Lieutenant Colonel, two Sergeant Majors, some Captains, and other officers and soldiers there, about thirty or forty of them, and took four hundred prisoners. But what was most pitiful was, to see how many poor men ended and lost their lives, striving to save them, for they run into the Thames, and about two hundred of them, as we might judge, were there drowned by themselves, and so were guilty of their own deaths; for had they stayed and yielded up themselves, the King’s mercy is so gracious that he had spared them all.” The first blood was shed in the civil war at Edgehill, on Sunday, October 23rd, 1642, so that when the encounter took place at Brentford the young officer whose letter survives him, was fresh to the gruesome attendants of war, and it may be presumed that if he had the good luck to see its end, he was less appalled by the sights he witnessed than he seems to have been, after what was probably his baptism of fire at Brentford. However, that affair, trivial as in some aspects it appears, served unhappily to fan the flame, and of course each side was anxious to throw the responsibility for the bloodshed upon the other. Each side was anxious to say “You began it.” The Parliamentarians, as we have