Returning from the pursuit, the exhausted cavalry rested for the night in the villages around Horncastle. The infantry occupied quarters in the town, where they found two hundred horses left by their fugitive enemy. Of the wounded, the Earl of Manchester ordered especial care to be taken, whilst the dead were hastily consigned to the nearest graves. The body of Sir Ingram Hopton was brought to Horncastle and buried in the church: for Cromwell, who did not permit his political resentment to render him callous or insensible to the generous feelings of a soldier, experienced some sympathy for the individual whose ardor in attempting his destruction, for what was deemed the welfare of his country, had cost the sacrifice of his own life: he therefore, upon his arrival in the town, commanded the inhabitants to fetch the body of Sir Ingram Hopton, and inter it with the honors due to his rank; observing, that though an enemy, he was a gentleman and a soldier. {20b} Of those royalists who escaped the slaughter, there were scarce a thousand efficient for the field; and these were destined to sustain another overthrow at the battle of Lincoln close, which completed the warfare in this county. Bolingbroke castle had already yielded; and this with Tattershall, the principal places of defence in this neighbourhood, were soon after devoted to the dismantling policy of the parliament, which doomed them with the noble edifices of the country, to that destruction which left them but ruins in silent and lingering decay. Although this victory afforded a cause for so much rejoicing to the friends of the parliament; yet were its consequences mightier for the interests which it strengthened, by the defeat, on the same day, {20c} of the Marquis of Newcastle before the fortress of Hull. The Lord Fairfax and Sir John Meldrum, making a desperate sortie, had completely overthrown the royalists with much slaughter; forcing them, though protected behind strong entrenchments, to abandon the siege with the loss of all their cannon. The impolicy of the royalist commander was now perceptible too late. This ruin of the affairs of the king seemed at once to have obliterated all the generous services which the faithful Newcastle had made in the cause of his sovereign; and shortly after these disasters, he retired to the continent, {21} where he spent a life of indigence, until the restoration gave again the royal authority to Britain. These actions, though inconsiderable in themselves, were yet great in their effects. The expectations of the royalists in Yorkshire were now nearly blasted: Lincolnshire, after the occupation of its city, escaped the further deluge of blood; and the defeats served to assist in hastening the fight of Marston Moor, where the hopes of Charles were reduced to that one gleam, which was finally extinguished at the battle of Naseby. ANTIQUITIES. [Picture: Roman Urns found at Horncastle]