The main Royalist and Parliamentarian armies fought an indecisive battle at Edgehill in Warwickshire on 23 October 1642. Cavalry successes failed to produce a decisive Royalist victory, while both armies suffered heavy casualties. The encounter demonstrated that the conflict would not be settled quickly.

Edgehill inspired eyewitness narratives, providential interpretations, elegies and popular stories of supernatural apparitions. Poets confronted the shock of Englishmen killing one another within a familiar rural landscape.