Fairfax formed a second line of battle, and the king's wiser friends, seizing his horse's bridle, turned him about, telling him his charge would lead to certain destruction. Then a panic came, and the whole body of Royalists fled, with Fairfax's cavalry in pursuit. Cromwell and his "Ironsides" chased the fugitives almost to Leicester, and many were slaughtered. The king never halted till he got to Ashby de la Zouche, twenty-eight miles from the battlefield, and he then went on to Lichfield. There were one thousand Royalists killed and four thousand five hundred captured, with almost all the baggage, among it being the king's correspondence, which by disclosing his plans did almost equal harm with the defeat. The prisoners were sent to London. A monument has since been erected on the battlefield, with an inscription describing the contest as "a useful lesson to British kings never to exceed the bounds of their just prerogative; and to British subjects, never to swerve from the allegiance due to their legitimate monarch." This is certainly an oracular utterance, and of its injunctions the reader can take his choice. THE LAND OF SHAKESPEARE. [Illustration: SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE.] Close to the village of Naseby rises the Avon, some of its springs being actually within the village, where their waters are caught in little ponds for watering cattle. The slender stream of Shakespeare's river flows downward from the plateau through green meadows, and thence to the classic ground of Stratford and of Warwick. It was at Stratford-on-Avon that Shakespeare was born and died; "Here his first infant lays sweet Shakespeare sung, Here the last accents faltered on his tongue." [Illustration: ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE.]