A fight for the possession of Lord Spencer's house at Wormleighton was the Saturday evening's prelude to the Sunday's battle. It had been garrisoned by some Parliamentarian troops sent by Essex, and in Rupert's attack some prisoners were taken, from whom, it is said, the whereabouts of the Parliamentarian army was learned.[Y] The house is said to have been partly burned down in the fight, but it is not clear whether it happened then or in the year 1643. Though with the Parliamentarians in the early part of the Rebellion, Lord Spencer became Royalist long ere the campaigns were over. The fact of an outpost being pushed so far as Wormleighton shows that the Dassett Hills were held by the Parliament forces. The Royalists had marched into the heart of a hostile country, Warwick Castle and Lord Brooke on the N.W., Fawsley House and the Knightleys on the N.E., and on the South, Sir A. Cope and Hanwell Castle, and Banbury and Broughton Castle. Lord Northampton's lands on the Western border of Oxfordshire were near enough to find touch with the King. His house played locally a most prominent part for the Royalist cause, and its military leadership was of the best. III. Early on the morning of Sunday, October 23rd, Prince Rupert forwarded information to the King that the camp fires of the Parliamentarian army had been seen on the plain between Edge Hill and Kineton. With keen foresight Earl Lindsay abandoned the intended advance upon Banbury, and speedily began the movement of the Royalist army towards the fringe of hills which dominates the Warwickshire vale. It seems at first strange that the Parliamentarians, familiar as so many of them were with the physical features of the neighbourhood, should have neglected when so near to secure possession of some part of the Edge Hill ridge. This, however, is explained in a pamphlet of the time,[PH] "An Exact and True Relation of the Dangerous and Bloudy Fight between his Majestie's Army and the Parliament near Keynton." Therein we learn that the artillery were unready, for want of draught horses, and with Colonel Hampden and Colonel Grantham were forced to be left behind, and hence no advance could safely be made beyond Keynton. Hampden had with him three regiments of foot, nine or ten troops of horse, some companies of dragooners, and seven pieces of cannon, with the necessary ammunition train,[PB] perhaps about 4,000 men in all. The troops of the Parliament were quartered in the villages of the plain. Tradition says that Tysoe was occupied, and that the soldiers took the bread from the village ovens ere they marched down street to the fight. But of the doings at Compton in the Hole, barely a mile distant, during the occupation we know nothing.