"_Oxford, November_ 1, 1642.--Victoria! The first step is gained; the first lesson given, though at some cost of noble lives to us and to the king. Lord Essex is fain to retreat to London to console the affrighted citizens, leaving the whole country open to the king. Yet my Father saith privately to us, this victory of Edgehill might have been far more complete had it not been for Prince Rupert's rashness. Indeed, after the fight there had well-nigh been a duel in the king's presence between the prince and a gentleman who expressed his mind pretty freely on the matter. The prince, after pursuing the rebels to Keinton, lingered there, plundering the baggage, and returned with his horses laden with the spoils to find the royal army not in such order as it might have been had his troops kept with it. 'We can give a good account of the enemy's horse, your Majesty,' he said. 'Yes,' said this gentleman standing by, 'and of their carts too.' For which jest the haughty hot-blooded prince would have had severe revenge, had not the king with much ado brought them to an accommodation. "_Note_.--The young Princes Charles and James, of but ten or twelve years old, had a narrow escape. Their governor, Dr. Harvey, a learned man, was sitting quietly with them on the grass reading his book, and never perceived anything was amiss until the bullets came whizziug round him. I wonder royal persons should be trusted to the care of people whose wits are always at the ends of the earth, like philosophers. Who knows how different things might have been in the world if Dr. Harvey and the young princes had sat there a few minutes longer! "However, the best fruits of victory are beginning to appear. Gentlemen, whose loyalty had been somewhat wavering, are riding in from all quarters, well accoutred, abundantly attended, finely mounted, to offer their services to His Majesty. "This grave and stately old city is gorgeous with warlike array, and echoing with warlike music. "My Father, Mother, and I are lodged in Lincoln College. A distant cousin of ours, Sir William Davenant, who hath writ many plays and farces, and now fights in the army, being of this college, and also others of our kindred from the north country. I feel quite at home in the rooms with their thick walls, and high narrow arched windows like those in the turret-chamber at the Hall, more at home than the old quadrangles and walls themselves can be with all this clamour and trumpeting to arms.