“As to what the enemy were doing during this day we had no information worth speaking of, although there was a rumour going about late in the afternoon that Braintree had been occupied by the Hanoverians, and that the head of General Von Kronhelm’s Army Corps had arrived at Witham. However this may have been, we neither saw nor heard anything of them during the night, and I much enjoyed my slumbers after the fatigues of the last twenty-four hours. But this was but the lull before the storm. About ten a.m. the low growl of artillery rolled up from the south-east, and it began to be bruited about that the Saxons were attacking South Hanningfield in force, doubtless with the object of turning our right flank. I ordered out my motor, thinking I would run down to the high ground at Stock, five miles to the southward, and see if I could get an inkling of how matters were progressing. That heavy fighting was in progress I felt certain, for the cannonade grew momentarily louder and heavier. Hardly had I cleared the town, when a fresh outburst of firing boomed out from a northerly direction. I stopped irresolute. “Should I go on or turn back and set my face towards Dunmow? I eventually decided to go on, and arrived at Stock about eleven. I could not get much information there, or see what was going on, so I decided to make for South Hanningfield. At the foot of the hill leading up to Harrow Farm I came across a battalion of infantry lying down in quarter column behind the woods on the left of the road. From some of the officers I ascertained that it was the 1st Buffs, and that they were in support of two Militia battalions who were holding the ridge above. The Saxons, they said, had come up from the direction of Woodham Ferris in considerable force, but had not been able to advance beyond the Rettendon-Battles-Bridge Road on account of the heavy fire of our artillery, which comprised several heavy guns, protected both from fire and sight, and to which their field batteries in the open ground below could make no effective reply.