The Royalist horse were driven back upon the foot, which had no room to deploy and let them pass; and tradition says that at the boundary between Winceby and Scrafield—along what is still known as “Slash Lane”—a closed gate intercepted their headlong flight, and here the Roundhead troopers, pressing upon the confused multitude, did terrible execution. Their victory was complete; and the pursuit was continued, in spite of the tired horses, beyond Horncastle. Eight hundred prisoners were taken, and the number of the dead, some of whom were drowned in crossing the fens, is variously placed between 500 and 1000. The Parliament’s loss was trifling, and included but a single officer. The affair was entirely a cavalry action, for Manchester’s foot was not engaged, and the Royalist infantry seem to have run away without striking a blow. If the scythes now displayed on the walls of Horncastle Church were carried, as tradition says, by some of the foot at Winceby, it seems that many of them were peasant levies, indifferently armed. The consequences of the victory, for the moment at least, were far-reaching. A Puritan chronicler[127] could truthfully exclaim: “Yorkshire is discouraged, Lincolnshire is delivered, Cambridge is secured.” On the very day of Winceby some of Newcastle’s forts at Hull were captured by the garrison; and the following day he raised the siege and retreated to York. On the 20th Lincoln capitulated to Manchester, who soon after laid siege to Gainsborough.[128] Manchester did his best by persuasion to win back the county to Parliament; and a number of Royalist gentry changed sides from a rumour that the King was bringing over an army of native Irish. The scare of “Popery” was always the Parliament’s strongest card. Their own alliance at this time with the equally foreign Scots, which really changed the fortune of the war, aroused no such feeling. Late in the year a force of 800 Danes, sent by the King’s uncle, Christian IV., landed on the Lincolnshire coast, and met with a warmer reception than their pirate forefathers. The trained bands were called out, and killed about fifty of them, forcing the rest back upon their ships. Winter set in early, and there was much snow in November. The force besieging Gainsborough suffered much privation; and an Essex officer among them writes:[129] “Our lying in the field hath lost us more men than have been taken away either by the sword or bullet.” He adds that at the time of writing he had only two shillings, and his troop was without money, even for shoeing their horses, repairing saddles, &c. The perseverance of Fairfax, who was in command, was at length rewarded by the surrender of the town on December 20.