The enemy lost about
3000 men, and we carried away near 150 prisoners, with 500 horses,
some standards and arms, and among the prisoners their colonel; but he
died a little after of his wounds.
Upon the approach of the enemy, Worcester was quitted, and the forces
marched back to join the king's army, which lay then at Bridgnorth,
Ludlow, and thereabout. As the king expected, it fell out; Essex found
so much work at Worcester to settle Parliament quarters, and secure
Bristol, Gloucester, and Hereford, that it gave the king a full day's
march of him. So the king, having the start of him, moves towards
London; and Essex, nettled to be both beaten in fight and outdone in
conduct, decamps, and follows the king.
The Parliament, and the Londoners too, were in a strange consternation
at this mistake of their general; and had the king, whose great
misfortune was always to follow precipitant advices,--had the king,
I say, pushed on his first design, which he had formed with very good
reason, and for which he had been dodging with Essex eight or ten
days, viz., of marching directly to London, where he had a very
great interest, and where his friends were not yet oppressed and
impoverished, as they were afterwards, he had turned the scale of his
affairs.
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