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The two sides were in place by the afternoon, and Essex decided to provoke battle with a cannonade. Prince Rupert responded with a cavalry charge which drove off the forces directly facing him, but most of his cavalry were inexperienced, and the Prince was unable to bring them quickly back to the battlefield, where the Royalist infantry was struggling. A small force of Parliamentary cavalry had managed to silence the Royalist guns, and the Parliamentary infantry had the advantage in the struggle. Lindsey was wounded and captured, and died soon after the battle, while the King's standard bearer, Sir Edmund Verney, was killed in the fighting. By this point, the scattered Royalist cavalry was returning to the field, and under their pressure Essex was forced to withdraw.
The battle was a draw. Both sides camped on the battlefield overnight. The next day Essex claimed victory but then withdrew to Warwick, while Charles, shocked by the death toll, missed a possible chance to march on London. While Charles moved on to Oxford, which became his base for much of the year, Essex returned to London, and the chance was gone.
The English Civil War , Richard Holmes & Peter Young, an early work by one of the country's best known military historians, this is a superb single volume history of the war, from its causes to the last campaigns of the war and on to the end of the protectorate.
