"Craggy Biston" is clearly Beeston Castle, one of the outlying defences of Chester, situated on a steep rock not very far east of the Dee. This castle was besieged on several occasions during the Civil War, especially during the campaign of 1645, when Chester was also besieged by the Parliamentarians.[12] Between Beeston and the Dee was fought, on September 24, 1645, the battle of Rowton Heath, after which Charles the First, who had hoped to raise the siege of Chester, was obliged to retreat to Denbigh.[13] The following lines from Vaughan's _Elegy on Mr. R. W._ (vol. ii., p. 79), who fell in that battle, seem to have been written by an eye-witness: "O that day When like the fathers in the fire and cloud I miss'd thy face! I might in ev'ry crowd See arms like thine, and men advance, but none So near to lightning mov'd, nor so fell on. Have you observ'd how soon the nimble eye Brings th' object to conceit, and doth so vie Performance with the soul, that you would swear The act and apprehension both lodg'd there? Just so mov'd he: like shot his active hand Drew blood, ere well the foe could understand. But here I lost him." This appears to me pretty conclusive evidence; against it, however, must be set the passage on the Civil War in the autobiographical poem _Ad Posteros_ (vol. ii., p. 51). Vixi, divisos cum fregerat haeresis Anglos Inter Tysiphonas presbyteri et populi. His primum miseris per amoena furentibus arva Prostravit sanctam vilis avena rosam. Turbarunt fontes, et fusis pax perit undis, Moestaque coelestes obruit umbra dies. Duret ut integritas tamen, et pia gloria, partem Me nullam in tanta strage fuisse, scias; Credidimus nempe insonti vocem esse cruori, Et vires quae post funera flere docent. Hinc castae, fidaeque pati me more parentis Commonui, et lachrimis fata levare meis; Hinc nusquam horrendis violavi sacra procellis, Nec mihi mens unquam, nec manus atra fuit. The natural interpretation of this certainly is that Vaughan took no share in the disturbances of his time, except to grieve over them in retirement. Yet, in the first place, the lines may have been written before he took up arms in 1645, and, in the second, they may only mean that he had no share in _bringing about_ the troubles of England, or in shedding _innocent_ blood. Similarly when elsewhere, as in _Abel's Blood_ (vol. i. p. 254), and in the prayer to be quoted below, he expresses horror of blood-guiltiness, this need not necessarily be taken as extending to the man who fights in a righteous cause.