I can't remember anything about the matter myself, for it happened just one hundred years before I was born, but my father was acquainted with an old countryman, who lived not many miles from here, who said he remembered perfectly well the day of the battle; that he was a boy at the time, and was working in a field near the place where the battle was fought: and he heard shouting, and noise of firearms, and also the sound of several balls, which fell in the field near him.

Come this way, measter, and I will show you some remains of that day's field." Leaving the monument, on which was inscribed an account of the life and sufferings of the Royalist Rector of Horncastle, I followed the sexton to the western end of the church, where, hanging against the wall, were a number of scythes stuck in the ends of poles.

"Those are the weapons, measter," said the sexton, "which the great people put into the hands of a number of the country folks, in order that they might use them against Oliver's men; ugly weapons enough; however, Oliver's men won, and Sir Jacob Ashley and his party were beat.

And a rare time Oliver and his men had of it, till Oliver died, when the other party got the better, not by fighting, 'tis said, but through a General Monk, who turned sides.

Ah, the old fellow that my father knew said he well remembered the time when General Monk went over and proclaimed Charles the Second.