Advance of Hampden_Retreat of Rupert & King BATTLE OF EDGE HILL part 7

Meanwhile Rupert had been lost to sight in
 
Kineton streets. When he learned that the fortunes of the day were, in other parts of the field, in full flow against his cause, he and his cavaliers re-formed for the retreat
. The place is still known as Prince Rupert’s Headland. There was, however, another factor to be taken into consideration. Some of Hampden’s green-coated soldiers, stimulated no doubt by the sounds of the fight, had in the meantime come up from Stratford-on-Avon, and were prepared to dispute Rupert’s return
. They also succeeded in re-forming many of the fugitives, in which duty Captains Cromwell, Nathaniel Fiennes and Kightley, took part.
 The guns and infantry opened fire upon the retreating cavaliers, who had a hard fight to regain the hill butt, for Stapleton’s horse, after fighting along the whole of the Royalist line, chased them home
. Nevertheless, two of the royal regiments refused to be beaten; falling back upon their guns, they made a stand, probably along the line from Radway to Bullet Hill, and there, reinforced by Rupert’s returning troops, they held their ground, repulsing the Parliamentarian attacks, and so says Fiennes, “horse and foot stood together against horse and foo
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until night, when the Royalists retired up hill.” It is probably from this stage of the fight that Bullet Hill got its name. The braided lovelock of many a cavalier who rode so exultingly down the hill in the afternoon sunlight had a stain of a far deeper colour ’ere sunset, and with the phase of the fight
 following the straggling return of Rupert’s Horse, the events of the day seem to have ended. The King would have tried a final charge with some unbroken regiments to test once more the fortunes of the day, but was with difficulty persuaded from so perilous an enterprise
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Each side claims that only the night prevented a completely victorious issue for its cause, but when we consider that the right wing and centre of the King’s army were disorganised, and in part driven up the hill, and that the Parliamentarians were in possession of the battle ground, the Royalists retaining possession only of the low ground from Radway to Bullet Hill, it seems that the advantage rested on the Puritan side. One remained master of the field of battle, the other kept the London road .