In order to bring on an action, he directed his march towards the capital, which he knew the enemy would not abandon to him.

Essex had now received his instructions.
The import of them was, to present a most humble petition to the king, and to rescue him and the royal family from those desperate malignants who had seized their persons.[*] Two days after the departure of the royalists from Shrewsbury, he left Worcester.

Though it be commonly easy in civil wars to get intelligence, the armies were within six miles of each other ere either of the generals was acquainted with the approach of his enemy.

Shrewsbury and Worcester, the places from which they set out, are not above twenty miles distant; yet had the two armies marched ten days in this mutual ignorance: so much had military skill, during a long peace, decayed in England.[**] * Whitlocke, p.59.Clarendon, vol.iii, p.

27, 28, etc.
** Clarendon, vol.iii.p.