Leslie, marching parallel along the hill-ridges, occupied Doonhill and secured a long, deep, and steep ravine, "the Peaths," near Cockburnspath, barring Cromwell's line of march.

On September 2 the controlling clerical Committee was still busily purging and depleting the Scottish army.

The night of September 2- 3 was very wet, the officers deserted their regiments to take shelter.
Says Leslie himself, "We might as easily have beaten them as we did James Graham at Philiphaugh, if the officers had stayed by their own troops and regiments." Several witnesses, and Cromwell himself, asserted that, owing to the insistence of the preachers, Leslie moved his men to the lower slopes on the afternoon of September 2.

"The Lord hath delivered them into our hands," Cromwell is reported to have said.

They now occupied a position where the banks of the lower Broxburn were flat and assailable, not steep and forming a strong natural moat, as on the higher level.