As the Parliamentary soldiers were marching up and down the country, after the fashion described in Nehemiah Wharton's letters, Royalists were working out their will in another kind of lawless way. They had no psalm-singing or prayer, they built no pulpits in market-places, and if they did not retaliate upon conventicles the puritan treatment of parish churches, it was simply because conventicles did not exist, or were not within their reach. Royalist excesses were of another order. Whitelocke, describing the plunder of his own house, tells us that the enemy consumed whatever they could find, lighted their pipes with his MSS., carried away his title deeds, littered their horses with his wheat sheaves, broke down his park pales, killed his deer, broke open his trunks and chests, cut his beds and let out the feathers, and seized his coach and horses. In a word, they committed "all the mischief and spoil that malice and enmity could provoke barbarous mercenaries to commit."[313] [Sidenote: _Battle of Edgehill._] [Sidenote: 1642, October.] The first serious conflict between the two armies happened at Edgehill, on Sunday, October the 23rd. The Puritan forces were marching to worship at Keynton church, when news reached them of the enemy being only two miles distant. Upon hearing this, they proceeded that morning--as the autumnal tints dyed the landscape--to a broad field at the hill foot, called the Vale of the Red Horse, where, as they took up their position, the Royalists came down and arranged their forces in front of them. Amongst the cavaliers rode Sir Jacob Astley, whose prayer and charge were so characteristic of the bluff piety of the best of that class, "O Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee do not forget me. March on, boys!" Then began the rush of pikes, the crack of musketry, and the roar of cannon, which lasted till dark. Richard Baxter was preaching that day at Alcester, and heard the tumult of the distant fight. Some fugitives ran into the town, startling and alarming the inhabitants with the news, that the Parliament had been defeated; but early next morning other messengers relieved the panic-stricken inhabitants by the assurance that while Prince Rupert's men were plundering the waggons of Lord Essex's routed wing, the main body with the right wing had prevailed and won the day. The preacher walked over to the spot next morning, and found the Parliamentary General in possession of the field.[314] The battle decided nothing, but it nourished the hopes of Parliament. A few days afterwards, the House of Lords ordered the Lord Mayor of London to summon a Common Hall at five o'clock, when a committee of peers and commons met the citizens, and amidst the gathering shadows of the afternoon, told the eagerly-listening crowd the story of the fight; Lord Say and Sele closing his speech with the exhortation, "Up and be doing, and the Lord be with you."[315]