Nor was it all fruitless, though seeming so. From it we inherit such fragment of liberty as is left us, and to it all such aspirations turn. Not all stifled by the corruption which came immediately after under the rule of the Merry Monarch; nor yet by what followed further on, during the foul reign of "Europe's first gentleman;" and let us hope still to survive through one foreshadowing, nay, already showing, corruption great as either. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Though in the Parliamentary wars no great battle occurred in the counties of Monmouth or Hereford, in both there was much partisan strife, at first chiefly along their eastern borders. Their interior districts, save during the Earl of Stamford's brief occupation, and Waller's sweeping raid, had been hitherto in the hands of the Royalists; and no traveller thought of venturing on their roads who was not prepared upon challenge to cry "For the King!" Two routes were especially frequented; but more by warlike men than peaceful wayfarers. One of them ran due north and south between their respective capitals. The other passed through the same, but with a bow-like bend eastward, keeping to the valley of the Wye, and about midway communicating with the town of Ross. Between them lay a wild-wooded district of country, the ancient kingdom of Erchyn, to this day known as the Hundred of Archenfield. Through this was a third road, leading from Goodrich Castle north-west; which, on the shoulder of a high hill, Acornbury, some six miles south of Hereford, met the more direct route from Monmouth--the two thence continuing the same to the former city. On the morning of the capture of Monmouth, at the earliest hour of dawn, a cavalcade was seen issuing from the gates of Goodrich Castle, and turning along this road in the direction of Hereford. It numbered nigh an hundred files, riding "by twos," a formation which the narrow trackway rendered compulsory. Most of the men comprising it carried the lance, a favourite weapon with Colonel Sir Henry Lingen, its commanding officer. But some twenty were without arms of any kind, though on horseback: the prisoners of whom Kyrle had spoken as likely to be transferred from Goodrich to the capital. The information accidentally received by him was correct; they were now in transit between the two places, escorted by nearly all the castle's garrison, Lingen himself at the head. Had he known of Monmouth being in the hands of the enemy, he would not have been thus moving away from his stronghold. But, by some mischance, the messenger sent to apprise him of the disaster, did not reach Goodrich till after his departure for Hereford.