The royalists in like manner were impatient to bring the affair to a decision before Ruthven's army should receive so considerable a reenforcement.

The battle was fought on Bradoc Down; and the king's forces, though inferior in number, gave a total defeat to their enemies.

Ruthven, with a few broken troops, fled to Saltash; and when that town was taken, he escaped with some difficulty, and almost alone, into Plymouth.

Stamford retired, and distributed his forces into Plymouth and Exeter.
Notwithstanding these advantages, the extreme want both of money and ammunition under which the Cornish royalists labored, obliged them to enter into a convention of neutrality with the parliamentary party in Devonshire; and this neutrality held all the winter season.

In the spring, it was broken by the authority of the two houses; but war recommenced with great appearance of disadvantage to the king's party.
Stamford, having assembled a strong body of near seven thousand men, well supplied with money, provisions, and ammunition, advanced upon the royalists, who were not half his number, and were oppressed by every kind of necessity.