Note 54 — Chapter IX · THE GREAT CIVIL WAR

Hodgson, an officer who was in the battle, says that Cromwell sent four regiments to circle round the enclosures of Brocksmouth House and fall on the enemy's right flank. Such a manœuvre was hard to work accurately in the dark, but if successful was bound to be decisive. The evidence is good: but this very decisiveness makes me hesitate to believe that Cromwell himself, to say nothing of other narrators, could have described the battle without mentioning so important a fact.